By the 25th July we had opened the entrance of Davis Straits and in the afternoon spoke the Andrew Marvell, bound to England with a cargo of fourteen fish.  The master informed us that the ice had been heavier this season in Davis Straits than he had ever recollected, and that it lay particularly close to the westward, being connected with the shore to the northward of Resolution Island and extending from thence within a short distance of the Greenland coast; that whales had been abundant but the ice so extremely cross that few could be killed.  His ship, as well as several others, had suffered material injury, and two vessels had been entirely crushed between vast masses of ice in latitude 74 degrees 40 minutes North, but the crews were saved.  We inquired anxiously but in vain for intelligence respecting Lieutenant Parry and the ships under his command; but as he mentioned that the wind had been blowing strong from the northward for some time, which would probably have cleared Baffin’s Bay of ice, we were disposed to hope favourably of his progress.

The clouds assumed so much the appearance of icebergs this evening as to deceive most of the passengers and crew; but their imaginations had been excited by the intelligence we had received from the Andrew Marvell that she had only parted from a cluster of them two days previous to our meeting.

On the 27th, being in latitude 57 degrees 44 minutes 21 seconds North, longitude 47 degrees 31 minutes 14 seconds West and the weather calm, we tried our soundings but did not reach the bottom.  The register thermometer was attached to the line just above the lead, and is supposed to have descended six hundred and fifty fathoms.  A well-corked bottle was also fastened to the line two hundred fathoms above the lead and went down four hundred and fifty fathoms.  The change in temperature shown by the register thermometer during the descent was from 52 to 40.5 degrees; and it stood at the latter point when taken out of the tin case.  The temperature of the water brought up in the bottle was 41 degrees, being half a degree higher at four hundred and fifty than at six hundred and fifty fathoms and four degrees colder than the water at the surface which was then at 45 degrees, whilst that of the air was 46 degrees.  This experiment in showing the water to be colder at a great depth than at the surface, and in proportion to the increase of the descent, coincides with the observations of Captain Ross and Lieutenant Parry on their late voyage to these seas, but is contrary to the results obtained by Captain Buchan and myself on our recent voyage to the north between Spitzbergen and Greenland, in which sea we invariably found the water brought from any great depth to be warmer than that at the surface.