At half past two on the morning of the 22d, the night signal was made to weigh, and we began to heave at our cables; but such was the difficulty of raising our anchor and of hauling in our hawsers, owing to the stiffness of the ropes from frost and the quantity of ice which had accumulated about them, that it was five o'clock before the ships were under way. Our rudder, also, was so choked by the ice which had formed about it, that it could not be moved till a boat had been hauled under the stern, and the ice beaten and cut away from it. We ran along to the eastward without any obstruction, in a channel about five miles wide, till we were within four or five miles of Cape Hearne, where the bay-ice, in unbroken sheets of about one third of an inch in thickness, began to offer considerable impediment to our progress. We at length, however, struck soundings with twenty-nine fathoms of line, and at eight P.M. anchored in nine fathoms, on a muddy bottom, a little to the eastward of our situation on the 5th. In going to the westward we passed a shoal and open bay, immediately adjacent to the harbour which we were now about to examine, and soon after came to a reef of rocks, in some parts nearly dry, extending, about three quarters of a mile to the southward of a low point on the southeastern side of the harbour. On rounding the reef, on which a quantity of heavy ice was lying aground, we found that a continuous floe, four or five inches in thickness, was formed over the whole harbour, which in every other respect appeared to be fit for our purpose; and that it would be necessary to cut a canal of two miles in length through the ice, in order to get the ships into a secure situation for the winter. We sounded the channel into the harbour about three quarters of a mile, by making holes in the ice and dropping the lead through, and found the depth from five to six fathoms. The ships weighed at six A.M. on the 24th. the wind being still at north, and the weather moderate and fine. As soon as the Hecla was under sail, I went ahead in a boat to sound, and to select an anchorage for the ships. Near the southwestern point of this harbour there is a remarkable block of sandstone, somewhat resembling the roof of a house, on which the ships names were subsequently engraved by Mr. Fisher. This stone is very conspicuous in coming from the eastward, and, when kept open to the southward of the grounded ice at the end of the reef, forms a good landing mark for the channel into the harbour. Off the end of the reef the water deepened to six fathoms, and the Hecla's anchor was dropped in eight fathoms, half a mile within the reef, and close to the edge of the ice through which the canal was to be cut. The Griper arrived soon after, and by half past eight A.M. both ships were secured in the proper position for commencing the intended operations.