for procuring any water. The first party, consisting of six men, under Captain Hoppner, were instructed to travel to the eastward, to endeavour to reach the sea in that direction and to discover the communication which probably exists there with Admiralty Inlet, so as to determine the extent of that portion of insular land on which Port Bowen is situated. They returned on the 14th, after a very fatiguing journey, and having with difficulty travelled a degree and three-quarters to the eastward of the ships, in latitude 73° 19′, from which position no appearance of the sea could be perceived. Captain Hoppner described the ravines as extremely difficult to pass, many of them being four or five hundred feet deep and very precipitous. These being numerous and running chiefly in a north and south direction, appearing to empty themselves into Jackson’s Inlet, preclude the possibility of performing a quick journey to the eastward. During the whole fortnight’s excursion scarcely a patch of vegetation could be seen. Indeed, the hills were so covered in most parts with soft and deep snow that a spot could seldom be found on which to pitch their tent. A few snow-buntings and some ivory gulls were all the animals they met with to enliven this most barren and desolate country; and nothing was observed in the geological character differing from that about Port Bowen.
In the bed of one of the ravines Captain Hoppner noticed some immense masses of rock, thirty or forty tons in weight, which had recently fallen from above, and he also passed over several avalanches of snow piled to a vast height across it.
The two other parties, consisting of four men each, under the respective commands of Lieutenants Sherer
and Ross, were directed to travel, the former to the southward, and the latter to the northward, along the coast of Prince Regent’s Inlet, for the purpose of surveying it accurately, and of obtaining observations for the longitude and variation at the stations formerly visited by us on the 7th and 15th of August, 1819. I was also very anxious to ascertain the state of the ice to the northward to enable me to form some judgment as to the probable time of our liberation.
These parties found the travelling along shore so good as to enable them not only to reach those spots, but to extend their journeys far beyond them. Lieutenant Ross returning on the 15th, brought the welcome intelligence of the sea being perfectly open and free from ice at the distance of twenty-two miles to the northward of Port Bowen, by which I concluded—what, indeed, had long before been a matter of probable conjecture,—that Barrow’s Strait was not permanently frozen during the winter. From the tops of the hills about Cape York, beyond which promontory Lieutenant Ross travelled, no appearance of ice could be distinguished. Innumerable ducks, chiefly of the king, eider, and long-tailed species, were flying about near the margin of the ice, besides dovekies, looms, and glaucous, kittiwake, and ivory gulls. Lieutenant Sherer returned to the ships on the evening of the 15th, having performed a rapid journey as far as 72¼°, and making an accurate survey of the whole coast to that distance. In the course of this journey a great many remains of Esquimaux habitations were seen, and these were much more numerous on the southern part of the coast. In a grave which Lieutenant Sherer opened, in order to form some idea whether the Esquimaux had lately been here, he found the body apparently quite
fresh; but as this might in a northern climate remain the case for a number of years, and as our board erected in 1819 was still standing untouched and in good order, it is certain these people had not been here since our former visit. Less numerous traces of the Esquimaux, and of older date, occur near Port Bowen and in Lieutenant Ross’s route along shore to the northward, and a few of the remains of habitations were those used as winter residences. I have since regretted that Lieutenant Sherer was not furnished with more provisions and a larger party to have enabled him to travel round Cape Kater, which is probably not far distant from some of the northern Esquimaux stations mentioned in my Journal of the preceding voyage.
Towards the end of June, the dovekies (Colymbus Grylle) were extremely numerous in the cracks of the ice at the entrance of Port Bowen, and as these were the only fresh supply of any consequence that we were able to procure at this unproductive place, we were glad to permit the men to go out occasionally with guns, after the ships were ready for sea, to obtain for their messes this wholesome change of diet; while such excursions also contributed essentially to their general health and cheerfulness. Many hundreds of these birds were thus obtained in the course of a few days. On the evening of the 6th of July, however, I was greatly shocked at being informed by Captain Hoppner that John Cotterell, a seaman of the Fury, had been found drowned in one of the cracks of the ice, by two other men belonging to the same party who had been with him but a few minutes before. We could never ascertain precisely in what manner this accident happened, but it was supposed that he must have overreached himself in stooping for a bird
that he had killed. His remains were committed to the earth on Sunday the 10th, with every solemnity which the occasion demanded, and our situation would allow; and a tomb of stones with a suitable inscription was afterwards erected over the grave.
In order to obtain oil for another winter’s consumption before the ships could be released from the ice, and our travelling parties having seen a number of black whales in the open water to the northward, two boats from each ship were, with considerable labour, transported four miles along shore in that direction, to be in readiness for killing a whale and boiling the oil on the beach, whenever the open water should approach sufficiently near. They took their station near a remarkable peninsular piece of land on the south side of the entrance to Jackson’s Inlet, which had on the former voyage been taken for an island. Notwithstanding these preparations, however, it was vexatious to find that on the 9th of July the water was still three miles distant from the boats, and at least seven from Port Bowen. On the 12th, the ice in our neighbourhood began to detach itself, and the boats under the command of Lieutenants Sherer and Ross being launched on the following day, succeeded almost immediately in killing a small whale of “five feet bone,” exactly answering our purpose. Almost at the same time, and as it turned out very opportunely, the ice at the mouth of our harbour detached itself at an old crack, and drifted off, leaving only about one mile and a quarter between us and the sea. Half of this distance being occupied by the gravelled canal, which was dissolved quite through the ice in many parts and had become very thin in all, every officer and man in both ships were set to work without delay to commence a fresh canal from the open water, to
communicate with the other. This work proved heavier than we expected, the ice being generally from five to eight feet, and in many places from ten to eleven, in thickness. It was continued, however, with the greatest cheerfulness and alacrity from seven in the morning till seven in the evening daily, the dinner being prepared on the ice and eaten under the lee of a studding sail erected as a tent.