We reached the ships at ten o’clock P.M. on Tuesday the 20th.  On almost all the shores both of the main land and islands that we visited, some traces of the Esquimaux were found; but they were less numerous than in any other places on which we had hitherto landed.  This circumstance rather seemed to intimate, as we afterward found to be the case, that the shores of the strait and its immediate neighbourhood are not a frequent resort of the natives during the summer months.

We got under way on the 21st, were off Cape Northeast on the 26th, and I gave the name of CAPE OSSORY to the eastern point of the northern land of the Narrows; but on that day, after clearing two dangerous shoals, and again deepening our soundings, we had begun to indulge the most flattering hopes of now making such a rapid progress as would in some degree compensate for all our delays and disappointments, when, at once to crush every expectation of this sort, it was suddenly announced from the crow’s nest that another barrier of fixed ice stretched completely across the strait, a little beyond us, in one continuous and impenetrable field, still occupying its winter station.  In less than an hour we had reached its margin, when, finding this report but too correct, and that, therefore, all farther progress was at present as impracticable as if no strait existed, we ran the ships under all sail for the floe, which proved so “rotten” and decayed that the ships forced themselves three or four hundred yards through it before they stopped.  Keeping all our canvass spread, we then tried to break the thin edges about the numerous holes, by dropping weights over the bows, as well as by various other equally ineffectual expedients; but the ice was “tough” enough to resist every effort of this kind, though its watery state was such as to increase, if possible, our annoyance at being stopped by it.  The passage to the northward of the island was not even so clear as this by above two miles of ice, so that in every respect our present route was to be preferred to the other; and thus, after a vexatious delay of six weeks at the eastern entrance of the strait, and at a time when we had every reason to hope that nature, though hitherto tardy in her annual disruption of the ice, had at length made an effort to complete it, did we find our progress once more opposed by a barrier of the same continuous, impenetrable, and hopeless nature as at first!

As soon as the anchors were dropped, my attention was once more turned to the main object of the expedition, from which it had for a moment been diverted by the necessity of exerting every effort for the immediate safety of the ships.  This being now provided for, I had leisure to consider in what manner, hampered as the ships were by the present state of the ice, our means and exertions might, during this unavoidable detention, be employed to the greatest advantage, or, at least, with the best prospect of ultimate utility.