The wind having fallen, we made little progress to the southeast till the morning of the 12th, when a light breeze springing up from the southwest, all sail was made to examine the state of the ice.  On approaching the floes, however, we found such a quantity of bay-ice, the formation of which upon the surface had been favoured by the late calm weather, that the Hecla was soon stopped altogether; a circumstance which gave us, as usual, much trouble in extricating ourselves from it, but not very material as regarded our farther progress to the southward, the floes being found to stretch quite close in to the land, leaving no passage whatever between them.  The compasses now traversed very freely, and were made use of for the purposes of navigation in the ordinary way.

The fog continued so thick on the 16th as to oblige us to keep the ships fast to the floe.  In the afternoon the deep-sea clamms were sent down to the bottom with two thousand and ten fathoms of line, which were fifty-eight minutes in running out, during which time no perceptible check could be observed, nor even any alteration in the velocity with which the line ran out.  In hauling it in again, however, which occupied both ships’ companies above an hour and a half, we found such a quantity of the line covered with mud as to prove that the whole depth of water was only eight hundred and nine fathoms, the rest of the line having continued to run out by its own weight, after the instrument had struck the ground.  I have before had occasion to remark that, on this account, it is not easy to ascertain the actual depth of the sea in the usual manner when it exceeds five or six hundred fathoms.

The ships were secured to a berg at six P.M. of the 18th, and the wind having freshened up to a gale from the N.W.b.N., with some swell, we were much annoyed during the night by the ice which drifted under the lee of it, and on which the ships were constantly striking with a heavy shock, such as no others could have long withstood.  This danger is avoided by ships lying very close under the lee of a berg, but a much greater is thereby incurred from the risk of the berg’s upsetting; a circumstance which is always to be apprehended in a swell, and which must be attended with certain destruction to a ship moored very near to it.

On the 24th and 25th we continued our progress to the southward, but without any success in approaching, or even getting sight of, the land; the ice being as close and compact as when we sailed along the margin of it in July of the preceding year.  Soon after noon on the 24th we crossed the Arctic Circle, having been within it fourteen months and three weeks.