does not very often occur in the Polar regions, and which is
therefore hailed with pleasure as an indication of an open sea. At
five P.M. the swell increased considerably, and, as the wind
freshened up from the northeast, the ice gradually disappeared; so
that by six o'clock we were sailing in an open sea, perfectly free
from obstruction of any kind.

We now seemed all at once to have got into the headquarters of the
whales. They were so numerous that I directed the number to be
counted during each watch, and no less than eighty-two are
mentioned in this day's log. Mr. Allison, the Greenland master,
considered them generally as large ones, and remarked that a fleet
of whalers might easily have obtained a cargo here in a few days.
In the afternoon the wind broke us of from the N.N.W., which
obliged us to cast off the Griper, and we carried all sail ahead
to make the land. We saw it at half past five P.M., being the high
land about Possession Bay, and at the same time several streams of
loose but heavy ice came in sight, which a fresh breeze was
drifting fast to the southeastward.

The wind increased to a fresh breeze on the morning of the 31st,
which prevented our making much way to the westward. We stood in
towards Cape Byam Martin, and sounded in eighty fathoms on a rocky
bottom, at the distance of two miles in an east direction from it.
We soon after discovered the flagstaff which had been erected on
Possession Mount on the former expedition; an object which, though
insignificant in itself, called up every person immediately on
deck to look at and to greet it as an old acquaintance.

The land immediately at the hack of Possession Bay rises in a