Light winds detained us very much, but, being at length favoured by a breeze, we carried all sail to the northwest, the ice very gradually leading us towards the Leopold Isles. Having arrived off the northernmost on the morning of the 22nd, it was vexatious, however curious, to observe the exact coincidence of the present position of the ice with that which it occupied a little later in the year 1819. The whole body of it seemed to cling to the western shore, as if held there by some strong attraction, forbidding, for the present, any access to it. After running all night, with light and variable winds, through loose and scattered ice, we suddenly found ourselves, on the clearing up of a thick fog through which we had been sailing on the morning of the 24th, within one third of a mile of Cape Seppings, the land just appearing above the fog in time to save us from danger, the soundings being thirty-eight fathoms, on a rocky bottom. The Fury being apprized by guns of our situation, both ships were hauled off the land, and the fog soon after dispersing, we had the satisfaction to perceive that the late gale had blown the ice off the land, leaving us a fine navigable channel from one to two miles wide, as far as we could see from the masthead along the shore. We were able to avail ourselves of this but slowly, however, in consequence of a light southerly breeze still blowing against us. 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. 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.