The different character now assumed by the ice, while it certainly damped our hopes of the passage being cleared this season by the gradual effects of dissolution, confirmed, however, in a very satisfactory manner, the belief of our being in a broad channel communicating with a western sea.  As the conclusions we immediately drew from this circumstance may not be so obvious to others, I shall here briefly explain that, from the manner in which the hummocky floes are formed, it is next to impossible that any of these of considerable extent can ever be produced in a mere inlet having a narrow communication with the sea.  There is, in fact, no ice to which the denomination of “sea-ice” may be more strictly and exclusively applied than this; and we therefore felt confident that the immense floes which now opposed our progress must have come from the sea on one side or the other; while the current, which we had observed to run in an easterly direction in the narrows, of this strait, precluded the possibility of such ice having found its way in from that quarter.  The only remaining conclusion was, that it must have been set into the strait from the westward towards the close of a summer, and cemented in its present situation by the frost of the succeeding winter.

A great deal of snow having fallen in the last two days, scarcely a dark patch was now to be seen on any part of the land, so that the prospect at daylight on the 30th was as comfortless as can well be imagined for the parties who were just about to find their way among the rocks and precipices.  Soon after four A.M., however, when we had ascertained that the drift-ice was no longer lying in their way, they were all despatched in their different directions.  For each of the land-parties a depot of several days’ provision and fuel was, in case of accidents, established on the beach; and Lieutenant Palmer took in his boat a supply for nine days.

On the 31st the wind blew fresh and cold from the northwest, which caused a quantity of ice to separate from the fixed floe in small pieces during the day, and drift past the ships.  Early in the morning, a she-bear and her two cubs were observed floating down on one of these masses, and, coming close to the Hecla, were all killed.  The female proved remarkably small, two or three men being able to lift her into a boat.

At half past nine on the morning of the 1st of September, one of our parties was descried at the appointed rendezvous on shore, which, on our sending a boat to bring them on board, proved to be Captain Lyon and his people.  From their early arrival we were in hopes that some decisive information had at length been obtained; and our disappointment may therefore be imagined, in finding that, owing to insuperable obstacles, on the road, he had not been able to advance above five or six miles to the southward, and that with excessive danger and fatigue, owing to the depth of the snow, and the numerous lakes and precipices.