Having at length succeeded in reaching a small floe, we halted at half past six A.M., much wearied by nearly eleven hours’ exertion, by which we had only advanced three miles and a half in a N.N.W. direction.  We rose at six P.M., and prepared to set out, but it rained so hard and so incessantly that it would have been impossible to move without a complete drenching.  It held up a little at five, and at six we set out; but the rain soon recommenced, though less heavily than before.  At eight the rain again became heavier, and we got under shelter of our awnings for a quarter of an hour, to keep our shirts and other flannel clothes dry; these being the only things we now had on which were not thoroughly wet.  At nine we did the same, but before ten were obliged to halt altogether, the rain coming down in torrents, and the men being much exhausted by continued wet and cold, though the thermometer was at 36 deg., which was somewhat above our usual temperature.  At half past seven P.M. we again pursued our journey, and, after much laborious travelling, we were fortunate, considering the fog, in hitting upon a floe which proved the longest we had yet crossed, being three miles from south to north, though alternately rugged and flat.  From this we launched into a lane of water half a mile long from east to west, but which only gave us a hundred and fifty yards of northing.

The floe on which we stopped to dine, at one A.M. on the 16th, was not more than four feet thick, and its extent half a mile square; and on this we had the rare advantage of carrying all our loads at one journey.  At half past six the fog cleared away, and gave us beautiful weather for drying our clothes, and once more the cheerful sight of the blue sky.  We halted at half past seven, after being twelve hours on the road, having made a N.b.W. course, distance only six miles and a quarter, though we had traversed nine miles.  We saw, during this last journey, a mallemucke and a second Ross gull:  and a couple of small flies (to us an event of ridiculous importance) were found upon the ice.

We again pursued our way at seven in the evening, having the unusual comfort of putting on dry stockings, and the no less rare luxury of delightfully pleasant weather, the wind being moderate from the S.S.E.  It was so warm in the sun, though the temperature in the shade was only 35 deg., that the tar was running out of the seams of the boats; and a blackened bulb held against the paint-work raised the thermometer to 72 deg.  The floes were larger to-day, and the ice, upon the whole, of heavier dimensions than any we had yet met with.  The general thickness of the floes, however, did not exceed nine or ten feet, which is not more than the usual thickness of those in Baffin’s Bay and Hudson’s Strait.

The 17th of July being one of the days on which the Royal Society of Edinburgh have proposed to institute a series of simultaneous meteorological observations, we commenced an hourly register of every phenomenon which came under our notice, and which our instruments and other circumstances would permit, and continued most of them throughout the day.  Our latitude, observed at noon, was 82 deg. 32’ 10”, being more than a mile to the southward of the reckoning, though the wind had been constantly from that quarter during the twenty-four hours.