Since the time when we first entered Sir James Lancaster's Sound,
the sluggishness of the compasses, as well as the amount of their
irregularity produced by the attraction of the ship's iron, had
been found very rapidly, though uniformly, to increase as we
proceeded to the westward; so much, indeed, that, for the last two
days, we had been under the necessity of giving up altogether the
usual observations for determining the variation of the needle on
board the ships. This irregularity became more and more obvious as
we now advanced to the southward, which rendered it not improbable
that we were making a very near approach to the magnetic pole. For
the purposes of navigation, therefore, the compasses were from
this time no longer consulted; and in a few days afterward, the
binnacles were removed as useless lumber from the deck to the
carpenter's storeroom, where they remained during the rest of the
season.
A dark sky to the southwest had given us hopes of finding a
westerly passage to the south of the ice along which we were now
sailing; more especially as the inlet began to widen considerably
as we advanced in that direction: but at three A.M. on the morning
of the 8th, we perceived that the ice ran close in with a point of
land bearing S.
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