shore; and the circumstance of our meeting so few whales in Sir
James Lancaster's Sound this season was at once accounted for by
supposing, what, indeed, we afterward found to be the case, that
the fishing-ships had been there before us, and had, for a time,
scared them from that ground.

It was so squally on the morning of the 5th that we could scarcely
carry our double-reefed topsails, while, as we afterward learned
from the fishing-ships, which were in sight at daylight, there was
scarcely a breath of wind at a few leagues' distance from the
land. We coasted this low shore, as we had done in the preceding
voyage, at the distance of two or three miles, having from
twenty-three to twenty-nine fathoms water. We here met with
another of our fishing-ships, which proved to be the Lee, of Hull,
Mr. Williamson, master; from whom we learned, among other events
of a public nature which were altogether new to us, the public
calamity which England had sustained in the death of our late
venerable and beloved sovereign, and also the death of his Royal
Highness the Duke of Kent. Mr. Williamson, among others, had
succeeded in getting across the ice to this coast as high as the
latitude of 73°, and had come down to this part in pursuit of the
fish. One or two of the ships had endeavoured to return home by
running down this coast, but had found the ice so close about the
latitude of 69½° as to induce most of the others to sail back to
the northward, in order to get back in the same way that they
came. Mr. Williamson also reported his having, a day or two
before, met with some Esquimaux in the inlet named the River Clyde
in 1818, which was just to the southward of us. Considering it a
matter of some interest to communicate with these people, who had,
probably, not been before visited by Europeans, and that it might,