On approaching the floes, however, we found such a quantity
of bay-ice, the formation of which upon the surface had been
favoured by the late calm weather, that the Hecla was soon stopped
altogether; a circumstance which gave us, as usual, much trouble
in extricating ourselves from it, but not very material as
regarded our farther progress to the southward, the floes being
found to stretch quite close in to the land, leaving no passage
whatever between them. The compasses now traversed very freely,
and were made use of for the purposes of navigation in the
ordinary way.
The fog continued so thick on the 16th as to oblige us to keep the
ships fast to the floe. In the afternoon the deep-sea clamms were
sent down to the bottom with two thousand and ten fathoms of line,
which were fifty-eight minutes in running out, during which time
no perceptible check could be observed, nor even any alteration in
the velocity with which the line ran out. In hauling it in again,
however, which occupied both ships' companies above an hour and a
half, we found such a quantity of the line covered with mud as to
prove that the whole depth of water was only eight hundred and
nine fathoms, the rest of the line having continued to run out by
its own weight, after the instrument had struck the ground.
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