More than sixty icebergs of very large
dimensions were in sight from the top of the hill, together with a
number of extensive floes to the northeast and southeast, at the
distance of four or five leagues from the land.
While occupied in attending to the soundings, soon after noon, our
astonishment may readily be conceived on seeing from the masthead
a ship, and soon after two others, in the offing, which were soon
ascertained to be whalers, standing in towards the land. They
afterward bore up to the northward along the edge of the ice which
intervened between us, and we lost sight of them at night. It was
now evident that this coast, which had hitherto been considered by
the whalers as wholly inaccessible in so high a latitude, had
become a fishing station, like that on the opposite or Greenland
shore; and the circumstance of our meeting so few whales in Sir
James Lancaster's Sound this season was at once accounted for by
supposing, what, indeed, we afterward found to be the case, that
the fishing-ships had been there before us, and had, for a time,
scared them from that ground.
It was so squally on the morning of the 5th that we could scarcely
carry our double-reefed topsails, while, as we afterward learned
from the fishing-ships, which were in sight at daylight, there was
scarcely a breath of wind at a few leagues' distance from the
land.
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