On the 16th Lieutenant Hoppner and his party returned to the ships, having only been enabled to travel to the south shore of Cockburn Island, on account of their guides not yet proceeding any farther.  Two of the Esquimaux accompanied our travellers back to Igloolik, and, being loaded with various useful presents from the ships, returned home the following day.

CHAPTER XV.

Extraordinary Disruption of Ice in Quilliam Creek.—­Some Appearance of Scurvy among the Seamen and Marines.—­Discovery of Gifford River.—­Commence cutting the Ice outside the Ships to release them from their Winter-quarters.—­Considerations respecting the Return of the Expedition to England.—­Unfavourable State of the Ice at the Eastern Entrance of the Strait.—­Proceed to the Southward.—­Ships beset and drifted up Lyon Inlet.—­Decease of Mr. George Fife.—­Final Release from the Ice, and Arrival in England.—­Remarks upon the practicability of a Northwest Passage.

Among the various changes which the warmth of the returning summer was now producing around us, none was more remarkable than that noticed by Captain Lyon in an excursion to Quilliam Creek, and which, in a note received from him by the return of the sledges on the 17th, he thus describes:  “Between the two points forming the entrance of the creek, we saw a high wall of ice extending immediately across from land to land, and on arriving at it, found that, by some extraordinary convulsion, the floe had burst upward, and that immense masses of ice had been thrown in every direction.  Several blocks, eight or nine feet in thickness, and many yards in diameter, were lying on the level solid floe; yet we were for some time at a loss to discover whence they had been ejected, till at length we found a hole or pool, which appeared so small as to be hardly capable of containing the immense fragments near it; yet from this place alone must they have been thrown.”

Captain Lyon subsequently added, that “the water, which was found to be quite fresh, was running rapidly to seaward in this opening; and it seemed probable that the vast accumulation from the streams at the head of the creek, although at about ten miles distance, had burst a passage, and thus ejected the ice.  The force employed for this purpose may be conceived, when I mention that, of several masses of ice, one in particular was above eight feet thick, full forty yards in circumference, and lay more than five hundred yards from the pool.  No traces could be found of the manner in which these bodies had been transported, as not a single small fragment was seen lying about, to warrant the supposition that they had fallen with a shock.  Neither were there any marks observable on the smooth uncracked floe to cause a suspicion that they had slidden over it, the general appearance of the floe at this place being the same as at all other parts of the inlet, and bearing no marks of having had any rush of water over it.”