in the Western Arctic Sea. 38 From the 15th to the evening of the 18th, we were engaged in trying to discover a passage through the ice between Prince Leo pold’s Island and the north coast of the sound. The weather was very thick and foggy so that it was impossible to avoid many smart blows from the loose ice in our way. At midnight of the 18th, the light was still sufficient to enable us to read or write in the ship’s cabin. Near the north shore the sea was clear of ice ; but on Thursday the 19th, the wind and swell from the east, and the absolute inutility of the compass in a heavy fall of snow, placed the vessels in a very hazardous situation. For at 2 p. m. they were found to be so close under the land that they had no more room than was necessary to put about. The land proved to be several leagues to the eastward of our position on the 4th of the month. The ice extending in some places within three miles of the coast, we had opportunities of examining various inlets by which the land seemed to be broken into islands, and not one con tinued tract of country. Various parts of the coast, particularly about Cape Felfoot, displayed the horizontal strata in a very distinct manner. For this perfect regularity of the horizontal distribution is one of the characteristics of the shores, where we see no marks of those great convulsions of the earth by which the component substances, in other parts of the world, have been thrown into such apparent disorder. Maxwell Bay now lay open before us, exhibiting a number of islands and inlets in the bottom. To the head-land which forms its west point was given the name of the celebrated astronomer Herschel. On Saturday the 21st, the broad opening from Baffin’s Bay being perfectly free of ice, want of wind alone retarded our course to tbe westward. When off Cape Hurd a piece of wood, seemingly part of a boat’s yard, was picked up, and occasioned no small speculation, as it denoted that we were not the first navigators in the strait. At last, however, it turned out that it had been dropt by one of our own boats when formerly on the neighbouring north coast. On the 22d we found the land falling off much to the north-west, a circumstance which gave no small encouragement to our hopes; for it had been apprehended that the coast might take just the contrary direction and come to be connected with the American lands. Here we had a clear view of an open channel of upwards ol eight leagues in width, in which neither ice nor land could be seen. This opening was named Wellington’s Channel, from the Master General of the Ordnance; and to that portion of the broad passage from Baffin’s Bay, at the beginning of Lancaster’s Sound, westward to this channel, the commander gave the name of Barrow’s Strait. The island on the west side of Wellington Channel was named after Admiral Cornwallis. The opening on the south side of this Voyages, Vol. V. F