5'32" Our
longitude by chronometers at this time was 19 deg. 34' E., Little Table
Island bearing S. 26 deg. E. (true), distant six or seven leagues, and
Walden Island S. 4 deg. E.[019] The depth of water was ninety-seven
fathoms, on a bottom of greenish mud; and the temperature at ninety-five
fathoms, by Six's thermometer, was 29.8 deg., that at the surface being
31 deg., and of the air 28 deg. All that could here be seen to the
northward was loose drift-ice. To the northeast it was particularly
open, and I have no doubt that we might have gone many miles farther in
that direction, had it not been a much more important object to keep the
ship free than to push her to the northward.
We now stood back again to the southward, in order again to examine the
coast wherever we could approach it; but found, on the 15th, that none
of the land was at all accessible, the wind having got round to the
W.N.W., and loaded all the shores with drift-ice.
Walden Island being the first part clear of the loose ice, we stretched
in for it on the 16th, and, when within two miles, observed that about
half that space was occupied by land-ice, even on its northwestern side,
which was the only accessible one, the rest being wholly enclosed by it.
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