of the huts, the whole encampment appeared to have been deserted for several years. Very recent traces of the reindeer and musk-ox were seen in many places; and a head of the latter, with several reindeers' horns, was brought on board. A few patches of snow remained in sheltered situations; the ravines, however, which were numerous, bore the signs of recent and considerable floods, and their bottoms were swampy, and covered with very luxuriant moss and other vegetation, the character of which differed very little from that of the land at the bottom of Possession Bay. The dip of the magnetic needle was 88° 25' 58", and the variation was now found to have changed from 128° 58' west, in the longitude of 91° 48', where our last observations on shore had been made, to 165° 50' 09" east, at our present station; so that we had, in sailing over the space included between those two meridians, crossed immediately to the northward of the magnetic pole and had undoubtedly passed over one of those spots upon the globe where the needle would have been found to vary 180°, or, in other words, where its north pole would have pointed due south. The wind became very light from the eastward, and the weather continued so foggy that nothing could be done during the night but to stand off-and-on, by the soundings, between the ice and the land. On the 29th, after a few hours of clear weather, the fog came on again as thick as before; fortunately, however, we had previously been enabled to take notice of several pieces of ice, by steering for each of which in succession we came to the edge of a floe, along which our course was to be pursued to the westward. As long as we had this guidance, we advanced with great confidence; but as soon as we came to the end of the floe, which then turned off to the southward, the circumstances under which we were sailing were perhaps such as have never occurred since the early days of navigation. To the northward was the land; the ice, as we supposed, to the southward; the compasses useless; and the sun completely obscured by a fog so thick, that the Griper could only now and then be seen at a cable's length astern. We had literally, therefore, no mode, of regulating our course but by once more trusting to the steadiness of the wind; and it was not a little amusing, as well as novel, to see the quartermaster conning the ship by looking at the dogvane.