to return by the way we came and get round a point to the northward.  This was however impracticable, the channel being blocked up by drift ice, and we had no prospect of release except by a change of wind.  This detention was extremely vexatious as we were losing a fair wind and expending our provision.  In the afternoon the weather cleared up and several men went hunting but were unsuccessful.  During the day the ice floated backwards and forwards in the harbour, moved by currents not regular enough to deserve the name of tide, and which appeared to be governed by the wind.  We perceived great diminution by melting in the pieces near us.  That none of this ice survives the summer is evident from the rapidity of its decay and because no ice of last year’s formation was hanging on the rocks.  Whether any body of it exists at a distance from the shore we could not determine.

The land around Cape Barrow and to Detention Harbour consists of steep craggy mountains of granite rising so abruptly from the water’s edge as to admit few landing-places even for a canoe.  The higher parts attain an elevation of fourteen or fifteen hundred feet and the whole is entirely destitute of vegetation.

On the morning of the 27th, the ice remaining stationary at the entrance, we went to the bottom of the harbour and carried the canoes and cargoes about a mile and a half across the point of land that forms the east side of it, but the ice was not more favourable there for our advancement than at the place we had left.  It consisted of small pieces closely packed together by the wind extending along the shore but leaving a clear passage beyond the chain of islands with which the whole of this coast is girt.  Indeed when we left the harbour we had little hope of finding a passage, and the principal object in moving was to employ the men in order to prevent their reflecting upon and discussing the dangers of our situation which we knew they were too apt to do when leisure permitted.  Our observations place the entrance of Detention Harbour in latitude 67 degrees 53 minutes 45 seconds, longitude 110 degrees 41 minutes 20 seconds West, variation 40 degrees 49 minutes 34 seconds East.  It is a secure anchorage being sheltered from the wind in every direction; the bottom is sandy.

July 28.

As the ice continued in the same state several of the men were sent out to hunt, and one of them fired no less than four times at deer but unfortunately without success.  It was satisfactory however to ascertain that the country was not destitute of animals.  We had the mortification to discover that two of the bags of pemmican which was our principal reliance had become mouldy by wet.  Our beef too had been so badly cured as to be scarcely eatable through our having been compelled from haste to dry it by fire instead of the sun.  It was not however the quality of our provision that gave us uneasiness but its diminution and the utter incapacity to obtain any addition.  Seals were the only animals that met our view at this place and these we could never approach.