day, with great distinctness at the distance of two miles at least. We found musket-balls the most certain and expeditious way of despatching them after they had been once struck with the harpoon, the thickness of their skin being such that whale-lances generally bend without penetrating it. One of these creatures being accidentally touched by one of the oars in Lieutenant Nias's boat, took hold of it between its flippers, and, forcibly twisting it out of the man's hand, snapped it in two. They produced us very little oil, the blubber being thin and poor at this season, but were welcomed in a way that had not been anticipated; for some quarters of this "marine beef," as Captain Cook has called it, being hung up for steaks, the meat was not only eaten, but eagerly sought after on this and every other occasion throughout the voyage, by all those among us who could overcome the prejudice arising chiefly from the dark colour of the flesh. In no other respect that I could ever discover, is the meat of the walrus, when fresh-killed, in the slightest degree unpalatable. The heart and liver are indeed excellent. After an unobstructed night's run, during which we met with no ice except in some loose "streams," the water became so much shoaler as to make it necessary to proceed with greater caution. About this time, also, a great deal of high land came in sight to the northward and eastward, which, on the first inspection of the Esquimaux charts, we took to be the large portion of land called _Ke=iyuk-tar-ruoke_,[001] between which and the continent the promised strait lay that was to lead us to the westward. So far all was satisfactory; but, after sailing a few miles farther, it is impossible to describe our disappointment and mortification in perceiving an unbroken sheet of ice extending completely across the supposed passage from one land to the other. This consisted of a floe so level and continuous, that a single glance was sufficient to assure us of the disagreeable fact, that it was the ice formed in its present situation during the winter, and still firmly attached to the land on every side. It was certain, from its continuous appearance for some miles that we ran along its edge, that it had suffered no disruption this season, which circumstance involved the necessity of our awaiting that operation, which nature seemed scarcely yet to have commenced in this neighbourhood, before we could hope to sail round the northeastern point of the American continent.