In running along the shore this evening we had noticed near the sea what at a distance had every appearance of a high wall artificially built, which was the resort of numerous birds. Captain Sabine being desirous to examine it, as well as to procure some specimens of the birds, set out, as soon as we anchored, for that purpose. The wall proved to be composed of sandstone in horizontal strata, from twenty to thirty feet in height, which had been left standing, so as to exhibit its present artificial appearance, by the decomposition of the rock and earth about it. Large flocks of glaucous gulls had chosen this as a secure retreat from the foxes, and every other enemy but man; and when our people first went into the ravine in which it stands, they were so fierce in defence of their young that it was scarcely safe to approach them till a few shots had been fired.
On the morning of the 7th a black whale came up close to the Hecla, being the first we had seen since the 22d of August the preceding year, about the longitude of 91¾° W.; it therefore acquired among us the distinctive appellation of the whale. Since leaving Winter Harbour we had also, on two or three occasions, seen a solitary seal. The wind continued fresh from the east and E.N.E. in the morning, and the loose ice came close in upon us, but the main body remained stationary at the distance of nearly half a mile.
In the afternoon a man from each mess was sent on shore to pick sorrel, which was here remarkably fine and large, as well as more acid than any we had lately met with. The shelter from the northerly winds afforded by the high land on this part of the coast, together with its southern aspect, renders the vegetation here immediately next the sea much more luxuriant than in most parts of Melville Island which we visited, and a considerable addition was made to our collection of plants.
The easterly breeze died away in the course of the day, and at three P.M. was succeeded by a light air from the opposite quarter; and as this freshened up a little, the loose ice began to drift into our bight, and that on the eastern side of the point to drive off. It became expedient, therefore, immediately to shift the ship round the point, where she was made fast in four fathoms abaft and seventeen feet forward, close alongside the usual ledge of submarine ice, which touched her about seven feet under water, and which, having few of the heavy masses aground upon it, would probably have allowed her to be pushed over it had a heavy pressure occurred from without. It was the more necessary to moor the ship in some such situation, as we found from six to seven fathoms water by dropping the hand-lead down close to her bow and quarter on the outer side.
Several heavy pieces of floes drove close past us, not less than ten or fifteen feet in thickness, but they were fortunately stopped by a point of land without coming in upon us. At eleven o'clock, however, a mass of this kind, being about half an acre in extent, drove in, and gave the ship a considerable "nip" between it and the land ice, and then grazed past her to the westward. I now directed the rudder to be unhung, and the ship to be swung with her head to the eastward, so that the bow, being the strongest part, might receive the first and heaviest pressure.
The ice did not disturb us again till five A.M. on the 8th, when another floe-piece came in and gave the ship a heavy rub, and then went past, after which it continued slack about us for several hours. Everything was so quiet at nine o'clock as to induce me to venture up the hill abreast of us, in order to have a view of the newly-discovered land to the southwest, which, indeed, I had seen indistinctly and much refracted from the Hecla's deck in the morning. This land, which extends beyond the 117th degree of west longitude, and is the most western yet discovered in the Polar Sea to the northward of the American Continent, was honoured with the name of BANKS'S LAND, out of respect to the late venerable and worthy president of the Royal Society.
On the morning of the 9th a musk-ox came down to graze on the beach near the ships. A party was despatched in pursuit, and, having hemmed him in under the hill, which was too steep for him to ascend, succeeded in killing him. When first brought on board, the inside of this animal, which was a male, smelled very strong of musk, of which the whole of the meat also tasted more or less, and especially the heart. It furnished us with four hundred and twenty-one pounds of beef, which was served to the crews as usual, in lieu of their salt provisions, and was very much relished by us, notwithstanding the peculiarity of its flavour.[*] The meat was remarkably fat, and, as it hung up in quarters, looked as fine as any beef in an English market. A small seal, killed by the Griper's people, was also eaten by them; and it was generally allowed to be very tender and palatable, though not very sightly in its appearance, being of a disagreeable red colour.
[Footnote: Some pieces of this meat which we brought to England were found to have acquired a much more disagreeable flavour than when first killed, though they had not undergone putrefaction in the slightest degree.]
At ten P.M. the whole body of ice, which was then a quarter of a mile from us, was found to be drifting in upon the land, and the ship was warped back a little way to the westward, towards that part of the shore which was most favourable for allowing her to be forced up on the beach. At eleven o'clock, the piece of a floe which came near us in the afternoon, and which had since drifted back a few hundred yards to the eastward, received the pressure of the whole body of ice as it came in. It split across in various directions with a considerable crash, and presently after we saw a part, several hundred tons in weight, raised slowly and majestically, as if by the application of a screw, and deposited on another part of the floe from which it had broken, presenting towards us the surface that had split, which was of a fine blue colour, and very solid and transparent. The violence with which the ice was coming in being thus broken, it remained quiet during the night, which was calm, with a heavy fall of snow.
The mass of ice which had been lifted up the preceding day being drifted close to us on the morning of the 10th, I sent Lieutenant Beechey to measure its thickness, which proved to be forty-two feet; and as it was a piece of a regular floe, this measurement may serve to give some idea of the general thickness of the ice in this neighbourhood.