In the evening of the 16th, the weather cleared up, and we then found ourselves surrounded on every side by land.  Our station was on the east side of the Sound, in a place, which in the chart is distinguished by the name of Snug Corner Bay.  And a very snug place it is.  I went, accompanied by some of the officers, to view the head of it, and we found that it was sheltered from all winds, with a depth of water from even to three fathoms over a muddy bottom.  The land, near the shore, is low, part clear, and part wooded.  The clear ground was covered, two or three feet thick, with snow; but very little lay in the woods.  The very summits of the neighbouring hills were covered with wood; but those farther inland seemed to be naked rocks, buried in snow.

The leak being stopped, and the sheathing made good over it, at four o’clock in the morning of the 17th, we weighed, and steered to the north-westward, with a light breeze at E.N.E.; thinking, if there should be any passage to the north through this inlet, that it must be in that direction.  Soon after we were under sail, the natives, in both great and small canoes, paid us another visit, which gave us an additional opportunity of forming a more perfect idea of their persons, dress, and other particulars, which shall be afterward described.  Our visitors seemed to have no other business, but to gratify their curiosity; for they entered into no sort of traffic with us.  After we had got over to the N.W. point of the arm in which we had anchored, we found that the flood-tide came into the inlet through the same channel by which we had entered.  Although this circumstance did not make wholly against a passage, it was, however, nothing in its favour.  After passing the point above mentioned, we met with a good deal of foul ground, and many sunken rocks, even out in the middle of the channel, which is here five or six leagues wide.  At this time the wind failed us, and was succeeded by calms and light airs from every direction; so that we had some trouble to extricate ourselves from the threatening danger.  At length, about one o’clock, with the assistance of our boats, we got to an anchor, under the eastern shore, in thirteen fathoms water, and about four leagues to the north of our last station.  In the morning, the weather had been very hazy; but it afterward cleared up, so as to give us a distinct view of all the land round us, particularly to the northward, where it seemed to close.  This left us but little hopes of finding a passage that way, or, indeed, in any other direction, without putting out again to sea.