Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall sp4.djvu/348

 which we had long been looking with much anxiety and impatience; for, the continuity of land to the northward had always been a source of uneasiness to us, principally from the possibility that it might take a turn to the southward and unite with the coast of America. The appearance of this broad opening, free from ice, and of the land on each side of it, more especially that on the west, leaving scarcely a doubt on our minds of the latter being an island, relieved us from all anxiety on that score; and every one felt that we were now finally disentangled from the land which forms the western side of Baffin’s Bay; and that, in fact, we had actually entered the Polar Sea. Fully impressed with this idea, I ventured to distinguish the magnificent opening through which our passage had been effected from Baffin’s Bay to Wellington Channel, by the name of Barrow’s Strait, after my friend Mr. Barrow, secretary of the admiralty; both as a private testimony of my esteem for that gentleman, and as a public acknowledgment due to him for his zeal and exertions in the promotion of northern discovery. To the land on which Cape Hotham is situated, and which is the easternmost of the group of islands (as we found them to be by subsequent discovery) in the Polar Sea, I gave the name of Cornwallis Island; and an opening, seven miles to the northward of Cape Hotham, was called Barlow Inlet.

“A calm, which prevailed during the night, kept us nearly stationary off Beechey Island till three on the 23d, when a fresh breeze sprung up from the northward, and all sail was made for Cape Hotham, to the southward of which it was now my intention to seek a direct passage towards Behring’s Strait. Wellington Channel was as open and navigable to the utmost extent of our view as any part of the Atlantic; but as it lay at right angles to our course, and there was still an opening at least ten leagues wide to the southward of Cornwallis Island, I could fortunately have no hesitation in deciding which of the two it was our business to pursue. If, however, the sea to the westward, which was our direct course, had been obstructed by ice, and the wind had been favourable, such was the tempting appearance of Wellington Channel, that I should probably have been induced to run through it, as a degree more or less to the northward made little or no difference in the distance we had to run by Icy Cape. It is impossible to conceive any thing more animating than the quick and unobstructed run with which we were favoured, from Beechey