on a very scanty allowance, we could not reckon on provisions for more than ten days.'-p. 417.

On Victory Point our travellers erected a cairn of stones, six feet high, in which was inclosed a canister containing a brief account of the proceedings of the expedition since its departure from England, but, without the remotest hope that this little history would ever meet the eye of any European.

Yet,' says the Commander, we should have gone about our work with something like hope, if not confidence, had we then known that we were reputed as lost men, if even still alive, and that our ancient and tried friend Back was about to seek for us, and to restore us once more to society and home. And it is not impossible that the course of his present investigations from Cape Turnagain eastward may lead him to this very spot-that he may find the record and proof of our own "turn-again." We have known what it is for the wanderer in these solitudes to alight upon such traces of friends and of home, and can almost envy him the imagined happiness; while we shall rejoice to hear that he has done that in which we failed, and perhaps not less than if we had ourselves succeeded in completing this long pursued and perilous work.'-p. 419.

It may be added that Victory Point lies in lat. 69° 37′ 49′′, and long. 98° 40′ 49"; and that a distant point seen, and named Point Franklin, as nearly as could be determined, from an estimated distance and bearings, was in lat. 69° 31′ 13′′, and long. 99° 17′ 58′′; so that the difference of latitude between Point Franklin and the general line of the coast of America is barely one degree.

Towards the end of June, while the ship was preparing for sea, in prosecution of further discovery, Sir John Ross went, with a party of his people and some natives, to a river about fifteen miles from the ship, on a fishing excursion, in which he appears to have been more successful in purchasing than in catching salmon. For a large knife, an Esquimaux gave him, out of one of their frozen pits, two hundred and twenty fish, averaging five pounds each, and therefore producing a ton weight of salmon. The natives take them by a spear with two divergent barbs of bone or ivory. But they now learned for the first time the use of the net, and were fully aware of its superior value, particularly when they afterwards saw so many thousands, as we have already mentioned, taken at a single draught. The seamen having taught them the art of making this instrument, there is no doubt their numerous skins when split into strips or threads will effectually serve the purpose, and that these poor people will thus have to thank our countrymen for an inexhaustible supply of this species of food.

It was not till the 19th of August that any attempt could be made to get the ship out of the ice, and even then it was found impossible to move her. The third week in August,' says Captain

Ross,

Ross, found us where we had been since May in prospect, since September in place; the ice was still close.' But an open lane of water had frequently been visible at a little distance from the shore. In the four months thus lost-we might say eleven months -we have very little doubt that the Victory, had she not been impounded in ice, might have found sufficient lanes of water' to have carried her down to the bottom of Regent's Inlet, and back again to Barrow's Strait. The time she was shut up in the ice, as Captain Ross observes, was long enough to have enabled her to circumnavigate the globe. We only wonder he did not avoid this imprisonment by keeping away from the shore and trusting his ship to the ice, in the hope and, we may add, certainty, of meeting with these lanes of water.' The temperature, however, of the month of August was particularly promising; the highest and lowest being 58 and 33°, and the mean 40° 8.

From the 1st to the 17th of September, the time was chiefly spent in futile attempts to get the ship released, but on the afternoon of the latter day they succeeded in warping her out into clear water, and getting her once more under sail:

Under sail!-we scarcely knew how we felt, or whether we quite believed it. He must be a seaman to feel that the vessel which bounds beneath him, which listens to and obeys the smallest movement of his hand, which seems to move but under his will, is "a thing of life," a mind conforming to his wishes: not an inert body, the sport of winds and waves. But what seaman could feel this as we did, when this creature, which used to carry us buoyantly over the ocean, had been during an entire year immovable as the ice and the rocks around it, helpless, disobedient, dead? Thus freed at last, we advanced about three miles; but then, finding a ridge of ice, we were obliged to make fast near the point which was at that distance to the north of us. The thermometer at midnight was 30°.'-pp. 470, 471.

Their hopes of making progress, at so late a period of the year, were soon at an end; the sea became covered with ice of the worst kind, and new ice was forming; the weather was most tempestuous, and the thermometer fell to 5°. They were not yet, moreover, in a secure harbour. The whole of October was employed in the severe labour of cutting away the ice: thus they one day gained an advance of sixteen feet, on another fifty, another forty; and after a month's incessant toil, the amount of their progress was no more than 850 feet. Here they were doomed to pass another winter, and as much of the following summer as would expire before favourable circumstances might contribute to their liberation; here they once more commenced housing the ship, building the embankments, and levelling the hummocks of ice near them; and here they resumed their former devices for passing the long dreary winter, which appeared to have set in already with great severity.

In

In April, 1831, the Captain and Commander set off, each on an expedition towards the isthmus; the principal object of the former being, apparently, that of ascertaining the altitude of the land above the level of the western sea. The Commander proceeded along the western coast towards the northward, having a much more important object in view-that of ascertaining, as nearly as the nature of the operation and the accuracy of his dipping-needle would admit, the exact position of the north magnetic pole :

The place of the observatory,' says Commander Ross,' was as near to the magnetic pole as the limited means which I possessed enabled me to determine. The amount of the dip, as indicated by my dipping needle, was 89° 59', being thus within one minute of the vertical; while the proximity at least of this pole, if not its actual existence where we stood, was further confirmed by the action, or rather by the total inaction, of the several horizontal needles then in my possession. These were suspended in the most delicate manner possible, but there was not one which showed the slightest effort to move from the position in which it was placed: a fact, which even the most moderately informed of readers must now know to be one which proves that the centre of attraction lies at a very small horizontal distance, if at any.'-pp. 556, 557.

The latitude of this spot is 70° 5' 17", and its longitude 96° 46' 45" W. It was presumed, on their leaving England, that the magnetic pole was in latitude 70°, and longitude 98° 30′; neither of them very distant from the places assigned to it by Parry and Franklin, by intersections of the bearings of the needles, taken on meridians east and west of the pole.

The Commander observes

'It has been seen, that, as far as our instruments can be trusted, we had placed ourselves within one minute of the magnetic pole, but had not fixed upon the precise spot; presuming that this precise point could be determined by such instruments as it is now within the power of mechanics to construct. The scientific reader has been long aware of this: if popular conversation gives to this voyage the credit of having placed its flag on the very point, on the summit of that mysterious pole which it perhaps views as a visible and tangible reality, it can now correct itself as it may please; but in such a case, while a little laxity is of no moment, the very nonsense of the belief gives an interest to the subject which the sober truth could not have done. To determine that point with greater or with absolute precision (if indeed such precision be attainable), it would be necessary to have the co-operation of different observers, at different distances, and in different directions, from the calculated place; while, to obtain all the interesting results which these must be expected to furnish, such labours should also be carried on for a considerable time. What these several expectations are, I need not here say, since the subject is in this view somewhat too abstruse for popular readers; though I may

barely

barely allude to the diurnal and annual motions of the needle, and to the variations in the place of the pole itself, with the consequent deductions that might be made as to the future in this respect: all of them being of the highest importance in the theory of magnetism.'pp. 558, 559.

The party having proceeded to the northward as far as Cape Nicholas of the chart, the coast beyond this point was seen stretching out due north, to the distance of ten or twelve miles farther; and the Commander concluded that it preserved, in all probability, the same direction as far as the Cape Walker of Parry, in lat. 74° 15'. At this Cape there is a great inlet, leading, no doubt, to that western sea' which washes the western shore of the Boothian Peninsula, and which, in all probability, extends down to the northern coast of America. This trending of the coast to the northward, however, with the recorded opinion of the Commander, on the probability of its stretching north up to Cape Walker, goes for nothing with Sir John Ross. With that perversion of mind which seems to have become habitual, instead of drawing a dotted line on his chart from the Commander's farthest north' to Cape Walker, as it stands printed in the text, he draws a gratuitous and unbroken dotted line in the direction of about N.W. by W., which, if continued, would strike the western end of Banks' Land,' about twenty degrees of longitude beyond Cape Walker. But there is cunning in all this: Sir John saw clearly that this opening, with Garnier's, Cunningham's, and some others seen by Parry, would infallibly lead down to the coast of America, and that such a route would render the accomplishment of the North-West Passage almost a certainty-a result that would be wormwood to our Knight, who, with a determination too apparent throughout the work, is disposed to give to his nephew as little merit as he possibly can, and to suppress everything that tends to the probability of a North-West Passage.

It may well be supposed how slowly the time moved on while shut up, for the second year, during so many months. About the middle of August, 1831, the Captain says,

'We were weary for want of occupation, for want of variety, for want of the means of mental exertion, for want of thought, and (why should I not say it?) for want of society. To-day was as yesterday— and as was to-day, so would be to-morrow: while if there was no variety, as no hope of better, is it wonderful that even the visits of barbarians were welcome; or can anything more strongly show the nature of our pleasures than the confession that these were delightful -even as the society of London might be amid the business of London? .... When the winter has once in reality set in, our minds become made up on the subject; like the dormouse (though we may not sleep, which would be the most desirable condition by much), we

wrap

wrap ourselves up in a sort of furry contentment, since better cannot be, and wait for the times to come: it was a far other thing, to be ever awake, waiting to rise and become active, yet ever to find that all nature was still asleep, and that we had nothing more to do than to wish, and groan, and-hope as we best might.'-pp. 589-591.

We are not surprised that the eternal appearance of ice and snow should have disgusted Captain Ross

'When snow was our decks, snow our awnings, snow our observatories, snow our larders, snow our salt; and, when all the other uses of snow should be at last of no more avail, our coffins and our graves were to be graves and coffins of snow-Is this not more than enough of snow than suffices for admiration? Is it not worse, that during ten of the months in a year the ground is snow, and ice, and "slush;" that during the whole year its tormenting, chilling, odious presence is ever before the eye? Who more than I has admired the glaciers of the extreme north; who more has loved to contemplate the icebergs sailing from the Pole before the tide and the gale, floating along the ocean, through calm and through storm, like castles and towers and mountains, gorgeous in colouring, and magnificent, if often capricious, in form?—and have I too not sought amid the crashing, and the splitting, and the thundering roarings of a sea of moving mountains, for the sublime, and felt that nature could do no more? In all this there has been beauty, horror, danger, everything that could excite; they would have excited a poet even to the verge of madness. But to see, to have seen, ice and snow, to have felt snow and ice for ever, and nothing for ever but snow and ice, during all the months of a year to have seen and felt but uninterrupted and unceasing ice and snow during all the months of four years-this it is that has made the sight of those most chilling and wearisome objects an evil which is still one in recollection, as if the remembrance would never cease.' -p. 603.

6

The ship was loose on the 28th of August, and crept to the northward, on their intended return, about four miles in three days. Up to the end of September, their chance of liberation became less every day-the prospect was a dismal one, as it suggested the idea that the ship would never be extricated, and that they would be compelled to abandon her, with all that was on board. When we first moved,' says Captain Ross, from our late harbour, every man looked forward to his three years' wages, his return to England, and his meeting with friends and family; the depression of their spirits was now proportionate.' They contrived, however, we are told, to keep up their spirits—they had made some progress, though it was but a few miles, on their return-they had still before them the Fury's remaining store of provisions, and the Fury's boats to carry them into Davis's Strait, even should they be obliged to abandon the ship.

VOL. LIV. NO. CVII.

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