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.