We had now an opportunity of discovering that a long neck of very low land runs out from the southernmost of the Leopold Islands, and another from the shore to the southward of Cape Clarence. These two had every appearance of joining, so as to make a peninsula, instead of an island, of that portion of land which, on account of our distance preventing our seeing the low beach, had in 1819 been considered under the latter character. It is, however, still somewhat doubtful, and the Leopold Isles, therefore, still retain their original designation on the chart. The land here, when closely viewed, assumes a very striking and magnificent character, the strata of limestone, which are numerous and quite horizontally disposed, being much more regular than on the eastern shore of Prince Regent’s Inlet, and retaining nearly their whole perpendicular height of six or seven hundred feet, close to the sea. The south-eastern promontory of the southernmost island is particularly picturesque and beautiful, the heaps of loose _débris_ lying here and there up and down the sides of the cliff giving it the appearance of some huge and impregnable fortress, with immense buttresses of masonry supporting the walls. Near Cape Seppings, and some distance beyond it to the southward, we noticed a narrow stratum of some very white substance, the nature of which we could not at this time conjecture. I may here remark that the whole of Barrow’s Strait, as far as we could see to the N.N.E. of the islands, was entirely free from ice; and from whatever circumstance it may proceed, I do not think that this part of the Polar Sea is at any season very much encumbered with it. It was the general feeling, at this period, among us, that the voyage had but now commenced. The labours of a bad summer, and the tedium of a long winter, were forgotten in a moment when we found ourselves upon ground not hitherto explored, and with every apparent prospect before us of making as rapid a progress as the nature of this navigation will permit towards the final accomplishment of our object.