To-day only a few icebergs have been seen. There is a good deal of swell, so we tumble about. Roast veal has appeared amongst the delicacies of our table since the battue of yesterday, and Christian has asked for a portion of the old bear to carry home to his mother. Bear's flesh is really considered a delicacy in Greenland.
25th.—Becalmed off Hare Island, and getting the steam ready. We are only 108 miles from Godhavn, and the anxiety to clutch our letters has become intolerable. No pack-ice has been met with in our passage across Baffin's Bay, but many icebergs. This morning the lofty snow-clad land of Noursoak and Disco was beautifully distinct; and at the same time the wind died away, leaving us, at least, the opportunity to contemplate at our leisure their gloomy grandeur.
CAPTAIN YOUNG'S JOURNEY.
26th.—Steamed for ten hours last night. Fair winds and calms have alternated since then, but this evening we are within 20 miles, and hope soon to get into port. I have been reading over Young's report of his spring journey. It comprises seventy-eight days of sledge-travelling, and certainly under most discouraging circumstances. Leaving the ship on 7th April, he crossed the western strait to Prince of Wales' Land, and thence traced its shore to the south and west. On reaching its southern termination—Cape Swinburne, so named in honor of Rear-Admiral Swinburne, a much-esteemed friend of Sir J. Franklin, and one of the earliest supporters of this final expedition—he describes the land as extremely low and deeply covered with snow, the heavy grounded hummocks which fringed its monotonous coast alone indicating the line of demarcation betwixt land and sea. To the north-east of this terminal cape the sea was covered with level floe formed in the fall of last year, whilst all to the north-westward of the same cape was pack consisting of heavy ice-masses, formed perhaps years ago in far distant and wider seas.
Young attempted to cross the channel which he discovered between Prince of Wales' Island and Victoria Land; but from the rugged nature of the ice, found it quite impracticable with the means and time remaining at his disposal. Young expresses his firm conviction that this channel is so constantly choked up with unusually heavy ice as to be quite unnavigable; it is, in fact, a continuous ice-stream from the N.W. His opinion coincides with my own, and with those of Captains Ommanney and Osborn, when those officers explored the north-western shores of Prince of Wales' Land in 1851.
Fearing that his provisions might run short he sent back one sledge with four men, and continued his march with only one man and the dogs for forty days! They were obliged to build a snow-hut each night to sleep in, as the tent was sent back with the men; but latterly, when the weather became more mild, they preferred sleeping on the sledge, as the constructing of a snow-hut usually occupied them for two hours. Young completed the exploration of this coast beyond the point marked upon the charts as Osborn's farthest, up nearly to lat. 73° N., but no cairn was found. Young, however, recognized the remarkably shaped conical hills spoken of by Osborn, when he at his farthest, in 1851, struck off to the westward.
The coast-line throughout was extremely low; and in the thick disagreeable weather which he almost constantly experienced, it was often a matter of great difficulty to prevent straying off the coast-line inland. He commenced his return on the 11th May, and reached the ship on 7th June, in wretched health and depressed in spirits.
Directly his health was partially re-established, he, in spite of the Doctor's remonstrances, as I have before said, again set out on the 10th with his party of men and the dogs, to complete the exploration of both shores of the continuation of Peel Sound, between the position of the 'Fox' and the points reached by Sir James Ross in 1849, and Lieutenant Browne in 1851. This he accomplished without finding any trace of the lost expedition, and the parties were again on board by 28th June. The ice travelled over in this last journey was almost all formed last autumn.
The extent of coast-line explored by Captain Young amounts to 380 miles, whilst that discovered by Hobson and myself amounts to nearly 420 miles, making a total of 800 geographical miles of new coast-line which we have laid down.
HOBSON'S JOURNEY.