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11 in the Western Arctic Sea. &c. should be removed into the Hecla, and the voyage be prosecu ted in that ship alone. About noon the wind coming away from SSW. a heavy floe of ice closed in on the shore, and the ships found a convenient spot behind some heavy grounded ice, our ship touching the beach, that the Hecla might have room to lie without us. Soon after we had made fast a bear was heard growling near our ship, but we did not get sight of him. This was the second animal of that kind that came near us since we arrived on the coast of Mel ville island ; the first was on the 1st of October, soon after our entrance into Winter Harbour. In this place the men of both ships went ashore to gather sorrel, which was found in abundance, but rather too old for use, having lost its acid juices. At noon of the 4th, the wind having come round to the east ward of N. the heavy ice moved off from the land, and near mid night we gained to the westward to Cape Providence, the place where our Greenland master and his party were restored on board from their very dangerous situation on shore, on the 13th Septem ber last year. The coast here being lofty and precipitous, the water was deep, and notice could take the ground to afford any shelter amongst it, in the case of the outward floes closing in on the land. We were therefore anxious to push on westward, and had just got far enough to see the channel quite clear at the sup posed extreme point of the island, when the wind failed, and we could make little or no way. Here again we had sight of what had been so often taken for land to the southward, still under the same appearance as before. As the ice never moved off above five or six miles from the shore, this seemed to strengthen the no tion that its motion was stopped only by bearing on some land to the southward. At noon of the 5th, Captain Parry and some gentlemen of the Hecla landed near one of the deep and broad ravines with which the western part of Melville Island is broken down. The height of the cliffs was measured, nearly 850 feet, composed of sandstone and clay ironstone. While they were on shore a breeze from the eastward brought us up with the Hecla, and her party return ing on board, both ships stood again to the westward. In a short time, however, the ice was’found to be close in with the land at Cape Hay: the Hecla therefore chose a position in seven fathoms water, not more than 20 yards from the beach, which was lined all round the point with masses of ice of great size and weight, forced upon the ground by the prodigious pressure of the floes out at sea. We were considerably to the eastward at this time, and by signal from the Hecla, also made fast at a point two or three miles from her. In sailing along the shore this evening the cliffs presented the