"Ice quarter-master, H.M.S. 'Pioneer.'
"To Lieut. Sherard Osborn."
The italics in the above letter serve to show how correctly these observations of my quarter-master agreed with the sound we were up; and taking this, together with the description of the land seen by Captain Stewart and Dr. Sutherland, during their late journey up the eastern side of Wellington Channel, I believe that a very narrow intervening belt of low land divides Jones's Sound from Baring Bay, in Wellington Channel, and that, turning to the northward, this sound eventually opens into the same great Polar Sea which washes the northern shores of the Parry group.
ERECTION OF A CAIRN.
Unable to advance, we returned, upon our wake, to the conical island on the north side of the sound; and a boat, with two officers in it, was sent to erect a cairn. They returned next morning, having found, what interested me very much, numerous Esquimaux traces, though of very ancient date, and shot several birds—a seasonable increase to our stock for table-consumption. One of the sportsmen assured me that, in spite of the increased number of glaciers around us, and other appearances of a more severe climate than we had been in the habit of seeing in Barrow's Strait, he was of opinion that there was much more vegetation in our neighbourhood than in the more southern latitude of Cornwallis Island. The specimens of plants brought off in the boat, such as poppies, saxifrage, and moss, were all finer than we had seen elsewhere; and reindeer horns, near the Esquimaux ruins, showed that these animals were to be found.
The island was a mass of gray-coloured granite, with some dark masses of ferruginous-coloured rock intermixed, the whole much broken and rent by the agency of frost and water.
Monday, the 18th of August, we proceeded along the northern shore, towards another entrance which had shown itself on the north side of Leopold Island,—the Jones's Sound of the old charts,—which we now proved not to have been blocked up by either land or glaciers.
The land about Cape Hardwicke was little else, in my opinion, than a group of islands,—an impression in which I became the more confirmed when the ice obliged us to strike off directly to the eastward; and Cape Clarence stood out bold and clear, with a midnight sun behind it: and the light streamed through the different ice-choked channels between Capes Hardwicke and Clarence, throwing up the land, where there was land, in strong and dark relief.
Beyond Cape Clarence I saw no symptom of land, nor did any one else either. It is said to recede; very possibly it may; but as neither we, nor the "Resolute" and "Assistance," (who all reached a higher latitude than any discovery-ships have been since Baffin's memorable voyage,) ever saw land north of Cape Clarence, I trust, for the sake of geography, that the beautifully-indented line which now joins the land about Smith's Sound to that of Clarence Head, in our charts, may be altered into a dotted one, as denoting that the said coast exists rather in the imagination of channel-closing voyagers than actually in the north-west corner of Baffin's Bay.
A multitude of grounded icebergs showed a shoal, which appears to bar the northern entrance to Jones's Sound; and, during the night, a sudden gale from the north, together with high water in the tides, set them all floating and dancing around us in a very exciting style. Edging constantly along large floe-pieces, we were eventually carried next day into the packed ice, through which our way had to be found under double-reefed sails, the two pretty screw-schooners thrashing away in gallant style, until a dead calm again left us to steam our best; indeed, all night of the 19th was a constant heavy tussle with a pack, in which the old floe-pieces were being glued together by young ice, varying from two to five inches in thickness; patches of water, perhaps each an acre in extent, were to be seen from the crow's nest, and from one to the other of these we had to work our way. By-and-by the Cary Isles showed themselves to the northward, and then the flat-topped land between Cape York and Dudley Digges.