to take the Hecla in-shore immediately, and to pick out the best
berth which circumstances would admit. As I was returning on board
with this intention, I found that the ice was already rapidly
approaching the shore; no time was to be lost, therefore, in
getting the Hecla to her intended station, which was effected by
half past eight P.M., being in nine to seven fathoms water, at the
distance of twenty yards from the beach, which was lined all round
the point with very heavy masses of ice that had been forced by
some tremendous pressure into the ground. Our situation was a
dangerous one, having no shelter from ice coming from the
westward, the whole of which, being distant from us less than half
a mile, was composed of floes infinitely more heavy than any we
had elsewhere met with during the voyage. The Griper was three or
four miles astern of us at the time when the ice began to close,
and I therefore directed Lieutenant Liddon, by signal, to secure
his ship in the best manner he could, without attempting to join
the Hecla; he accordingly made her fast at eleven P.M., near a
point like that at which we were lying, and two or three miles to
the eastward.

On the whole of this steep coast, wherever we approached the
shore, we found a thick stratum of blue and solid ice, firmly
imbedded in the beach, at the depth of from six to ten feet under
the surface of the water. This ice has probably been the lower
part of heavy masses forced aground by the pressure of the floes
from without, and still adhering to the viscous mud of which the
beach is composed, after the upper part has, in course of time,
dissolved. From the tops of the hills in this part of Melville
Island a continuous line of this submarine ice could be distinctly
traced for miles along the coast.