112
POST CAPTAINS OF 1823.
trading had continued some time before we discovered four small puppies, and they were, of course, immediately purchased, as an incipient team for future operations. As a lane of water was seen in shore at noon, we were under the necessity of bidding our visitors adieu; my last purchase at parting was the ingeniously-constructed sail of a woman’s boat, which was gladly bartered for a knife. This was nine feet five inches at the head, by only six feet at the foot, and having a dip of thirteen feet. The gut of which it was composed was in four-inch breadths, neatly sewed with thread of the same material, and the whole sail only weighed three pounds three quarters.
“Our progress was now painfully slow. A thick fog distressed us all day on the 13th; but in the evening the sky broke, and the weather calmed. The temperature since morning had been as low as 30°, and the fog froze thickly in the rigging. At night-fall, a light breeze sprung up from the southward, and for the first time in many days the ship lay her course unimpeded by ice. We were off Cape Wolstenholm by the morning of the 20th, and in the afternoon abreast of Digg’s Islands, where we found the sea very full of ice. At day-light of the 24 th, we found ourselves near a heavy pack of ice, which lay against a yellow shoal beach at about four miles distant. Having stood along the coast with a light air, I landed with Mr. Kendall, for the purpose of obtaining observations. The situation of the point on which we landed, differs so much from the position assigned by Baffin to Sea-Horse Point, that I imagine he did not see this low part of the coast, but the mountainous land to the N.E., which answers more nearly to his latitude. The point we called after Mr. Leyson; and a broad strait of about .30 miles, which runs between this and Cape Pembroke received the name of Evans’s Inlet. The soundings in which the ship had worked at five miles from the shore, varied from 50 to 35 fathoms, muddy bottom. I am thus particular in stating our soundings on this day, as they are the commencement of constant labour at the leads, and also as a proof of the careless manner in which the old charts of the coast of Southampton Island have hitherto been marked; for it is in them laid down as a bold precipitous shore, having from 90 to 130 fathoms off it, while on almost every part which we coasted, our hand-leads were going at from four to ten miles from the beach, which in no one place could be appoached within a mile by any ship. On the 27th, the wind failing, we anchored in 20 fathoms. A native was seen coming off to us, and as he approached, we observed that instead of a canoe he was seated on three inflated seal skins, connected most ingeniously by blown intestines, so that his vessel was extremely buoyant. He was astride upon one skin, while another of a larger size was secured on either side of it, so that he was placed in a kind of hollow. His legs, well furnished with seal-skin boots, were immersed nearly to the knee in water, and he rowed with a very slender soot-stained paddle of whale’s bone, which was secured to his float by a thong. From their total want of iron, and
