Shortly after our anchoring the Griper's people heard the growling of a bear among the ice near them, but the animal did not appear; and this was the only instance of our meeting with a bear during our stay at Melville Island, except that which followed one of our men to the ships soon after our arrival in Winter Harbour. Both crews were sent on shore to pick sorrel, which was here not less abundant than at our old quarters, but it was now almost too old to be palatable, having nearly lost its acidity and juice.
At one A.M. on the 4th, the loose ice was observed to be drifting in upon us, the wind having veered to the eastward of north; and soon after a floe, of not less than five miles in length and a mile and a half across, was found to be approaching the shore at a quick rate. The ships were immediately hauled as near the shore as possible, and preparation made for unshipping the rudders, if necessary. The floe was brought up, however, by the masses of ice aground outside of us, with which it successively came in contact, and the ships remained in perfect security; the floe, as usual after the first violence is over, moved off again to a little distance from the shore.
At noon the heavy floe at the point near us began to quit the land, and at half past one P.M., there being a narrow passage between them, the breadth of which the breeze was constantly increasing, we cast off and stretched to the westward. The channel which opened to us as we proceeded varied in its general breadth from one to two miles; in some places it was not more than half a mile. The wind was variable and squally, but we made great progress, along the land to the S.W.b.W., and the Griper, by keeping up tolerably with the Hecla, in some measure redeemed her character with us. Having arrived off Cape Providence at eleven P.M., the wind became light and baffling, so that we had just got far enough to see that there was a free and open channel beyond the westernmost point visible of Melville Island, when our progress was almost entirely stopped for want of a breeze to enable us to take advantage of it. The anxiety which such a detention occasions in a sea where, without any apparent cause, the ice frequently closes the shore in the most sudden manner, can perhaps only be conceived by those who have experienced it. We remarked, in sailing near the ice this evening, while the wind was blowing a fresh breeze off the land, and therefore directly towards the ice, that it remained constantly calm within three or four hundred yards of the latter; this effect I do not remember to have observed before upon the windward side of any collection of ice, though it invariably happens, in a remarkable degree, to leeward of it. I may here mention, as a striking proof of the accuracy with which astronomical bearings of objects may be taken for marine surveys, that the relative bearing of Capes Providence and Hay, as obtained this evening when the two headlands were opening, differed only one minute from that entered in the surveying-book, and found in the same manner the preceding year.