starch, and iron the clothes of the officers, and so forth. For these services Light had been handsomely rewarded by Parry and his officers; but from Sir John Ross he gained nothing beyond his bare wages, which were paid to him, as to the others, by the Admiralty. Being a shrewd fellow, he seems to have calculated on the chances of turning his materials to a good account, by anticipating and forestalling the Captain's own ponderous narrative of the voyage.

We notice Huish's book chiefly because we certainly felt, as we are told very many brother officers of Sir John Ross did, some little surprise that, while a publication of this nature was pouring forth its venom in a series of numbers, he should not have taken a more early opportunity of defending his character, by bringing out his own work, and therein repelling the charges, instead of delaying it for two years nearly;-and because now that it is out, we are equally surprised to find that the gallant Captain is silent-he makes no sign. By what the delay has been occasioned it is not our business to enquire, but we understand it is generally ascribed solely to the lust of lucre.' The opening of a subscription-shop in Regent-street-the sending of a set of fellows, usually called trampers, but who called themselves agents (for particular counties), to knock at every gentleman's door in town and country, not humbly to solicit, but with pertinacious importunity almost to force, subscriptions-the getting up of Vauxhall and panoramic exhibitions, and some other circumstances not worth detailing, would almost seem to sanction this imputation. While we admit that every one has an undoubted right to make the most of his labours, something is also due to situation in life, and to character. The public had more than remunerated Captain Ross for any damage his pocket might have sustained, while his nephew, Commander James Clarke Ross, to whom is owing what little has been done, has been left, unjustly we think, to bear his own losses. This officer, being asked by the Committee of the House of Commons which gave Sir John 5000l.,

'Have you received any tender for the purchase of your own memorandums for the purpose of publication?'-answers- I have received tenders privately for my own papers, but I would not give them up on the offer of a sum of money for that purpose.'-'Have you any objection to state the sum?' I have received two tenders, one of 1500l., the other 1200l.'- Did you accept those tenders ?'—' No; because I felt that any publication from me would interfere with Captain Ross's,'-Report and Evidence, p. 26.

Again he is asked

·

'What took place between you and Captain Ross on the subject of money?' and replies, Nothing specifically; but I never for a moment supposed that I was to receive any pay from a private individual. If

B 2

I had

I had so intended, I must have received it from Mr. Booth, which, as a naval officer, I could not consistently do.'-ibid. p. 24.

The feeling of that highly honourable and excellent officer, Captain Beaufort, is perfectly in accordance with the above, and forms a remarkable contrast with that of Sir John Ross. The Committee say,

'You were yourself employed by his Majesty's Government in a voyage of observation, were you not?-Yes.-You communicated the results of that voyage to the King's Government ?-Immediately.You published the result?-The Admiralty published the charts that arose from the survey; I published a little description myself.-Can you state to the Committee any pecuniary circumstances connected with the result of that voyage?-There were no pecuniary circumstances about it. I certainly received no public money for doing it, and my little narrative I gave to a bookseller, as I did not think that materials acquired in the king's service ought to be sold; at least, I should not have felt comfortable in making money by them.'Ibid. p. 22.

But enough of these not very agreeable matters preliminary. Notwithstanding the bulk of the knight's book, a summary of his voyage need not cost us many pages; for though its duration was long, the incidents were few, and the results are next to nothing. Had he, on his arrival, published a small octavo volume, detailing the toils and sufferings of his band — their cares and anxieties their hopes and disappointments - their domestic economy and mode of employing their time in the long and irksome nights of four successive winters-and their laborious land journeys, the most harassing and fatiguing of all— he might have furnished a powerfully interesting, though painful narrative, which would have been in the hands of every one; but his cumbersome quarto, in the form of a journal, reiterating the same uninteresting kind of objects through 740 huge pages, is enough to set the most resolute reader at defiance. It is whispered about that the Captain has endeavoured to enliven matters by procuring the aid of a practised embroiderer of periods-viz. one Dr. M'Culloch, who has (or had) some little reputation as a writer for the encyclopædias:-this is very probable-there are many signs of patchwork in the performance-but the panni are more gaudy than beautiful, and at best they but make the coarse drugget of the original manufacturer look more dingy.

The origin of the expedition appears to be this:—A certain wealthy distiller, of the name of Mr. Felix Booth (now a baronet), being examined before the Committee of the House of Commons, thus deposes: I had known Captain Ross for some years, and I undertook it (the expedition) for the credit of the country, and to serve Captain Ross, thinking that he was slighted in his former ex

pedition,

pedition, and on account of ill-natured reports which were circulated anonymously against him.' He might have said unanimously. But Sir Felix seems to think that whatever is published anonymously cannot be true. God help us Reviewers if that were the case! We certainly are among those who published anonymously unfavourable reports, but not ill-natured nor unfaithful ones, on Captain Ross's former voyage;-we stated our opinions frankly and strongly-but they were fully corroborated in every particular by facts established on the subsequent voyage of Captain Parry.

The Victory, fitted as a steamer-the very worst description of vessel to navigate among ice-and with engines, in the present case, the most miserable that can be imagined-sailed from Woolwich on the 23rd of May, 1829. A second vessel, named the John, was taken up to carry stores and provisions, to fish by the way, and bring away some of the stores of the Fury, so as to compensate to the liberal fitter out of this expedition for such additional expense as might thus be incurred,'-so that there was, after all, a spice of traffic in the voyage. The two vessels were to meet at Loch Ryan. When the Victory was off the Mull of Galloway, the principal stoker got his arm entangled in the machinery, and the bone was so splintered, as well as fractured, that amputation was necessary; but the surgeon had not joined; and Ross was under the necessity of doing the best he could for the unfortunate sufferer. On the meeting of the two ships, the crew of the John mutinied and refused to accompany the Victory. Three men, however, of the mutineers entered for the latter, and having procured an Irish labourer as a fire-stoker, she proceeded alone on her voyage.

On the 23d of July the party reached the Danish settlement of Holsteinborg, in Davis's Strait, where they purchased some stores from a wrecked vessel, and the governor made them a present of six Esquimaux dogs, which proved to be of essential use in dragging the sledges. All things being ready, they stood to the northward along the coast of Baffin's Bay; and having reached the latitude of 74° 14′ on the 3d of August, ran across, and on the 5th reached the entrance of Lancaster Sound. On the 11th of August they steered direct for the south (west) side of Prince Regent's Inlet; and having passed Elwin and Batty Bays, saw the spot where the Fury was wrecked, and the poles of the tents standing, but could not discern the ship: she had gone to pieces, or to the bottom. The Victory was moored in a good ice harbour, within a quarter of a mile of the spot where the Fury's stores were landed. Here the coast was almost lined with coal. One tent was nearly entire, but had evidently been visited by bears.

'Where the preserved meats and vegetables had been deposited, we

found

found every thing entire. The canisters had been piled up in two heaps; but though quite exposed to all the chances of the climate for four years, they had not suffered in the slightest degree. There had been no water to rust them, and the security of the joinings had prevented the bears from smelling their contents. Had they known what was within, not much of this provision would have come to our share; and they would have had more reason than we to be thankful for Mr. Donkin's patent.'-p. 108.

The piles of canisters were so large and numerous, that all they could possibly stow appeared scarcely to diminish the heaps; of these they took as much as they could, together with whatever they wanted of wine, spirits, bread, flour, cocoa, sugar, lime-juice, &c.-all being in excellent condition; they uncasked, moreover, ten tons of coals; the gunpowder in patent cases was perfectly dry-and of this what they did not take they destroyed, by Sir E. Parry's request, as it appears, to prevent its falling into the hands of the Esquimaux.

Standing along the coast to the southward, they passed Cape Garry; and here commenced the new discoveries of Captain Ross along the coast of Boothia Felix,-for such is the name he bestows, in honour of his worthy, though not wise patron, the distiller, on the same land which Captain Parry had twice visited. But indeed from Cape Garry to the southward, the whole coast, in his chart, is covered with names,-assigned to every point, harbour, islet, and inlet:-some of them are not a little comical; they are so crowded, that we took them at first for a list of the knight's numerous and generous subscribers;' and they may be so,-for none of them appear in the text. Their progress along this Terra Incognita was slow, impeded as it was by large masses and floes of ice, and contrary winds, their miserable engines being an incumbrance rather than of any use, helping them only about a mile an hour, so that they had frequently to make fast to an iceberg, and take their chance of the direction in which it might drag them. This kind of navigation was continued almost daily, and the little vessel was frequently in the most imminent peril of being squeezed between masses of ice.

'More than I among us had witnessed similar scenes, and, in some manner or other, we had been extricated: but, with all this, we could not but feel astonishment, as well as gratitude, at our having escaped here without material damage. For readers, it is unfortunate that no description can convey an idea of a scene of this nature: and, as to pencil, it cannot represent motion or noise. And to those who have not seen a northern ocean in winter-who have not seen it, I should say, in a winter's storm-the term ice, exciting but the recollection of what they only know at rest, in an inland lake or canal, conveys no ideas of what it is the fate of an arctic navigator to witness and to feel. But let them remember that ice is stone; a floating rock in the

stream,

stream, a promontory or an island when aground, not less solid than if it were a land of granite. Then let them imagine, if they can, these mountains of crystal hurled through a narrow strait by a rapid tide; meeting, as mountains in motion would meet, with the noise of thunder, breaking from each other's precipices huge fragments, or rending each other asunder, till, losing their former equilibrium, they fall over headlong, lifting the sea around in breakers, and whirling it in eddies; while the flatter fields of ice forced against these masses, or against the rocks, by the wind and the stream, rise out of the sea till they fall back on themselves, adding to the indescribable commotion and noise which attend these occurrences.'-pp. 151-152.

Gales of wind, snow-storms, and innumerable ice-bergs, continued to harass them till the end of September, when the Victory was finally beset in Felix Harbour, where she was destined to remain close shut up for a long and dreary winter. This passage, of about 150 miles to the southward of Cape Garry, seems at last to have convinced Ross-which, indeed, the experience of Parry, and the loss of the Fury, were well calculated to do—of the imminent and unceasing danger of attempting to navigate along the shore of a frozen strait. The better and, in all respects, the safer way, is undoubtedly to avoid the shore, and, where open water fails, to let the pack or floe surround the ship, with which she will drift along safely enough according as the wind may blow, whether in her direct course or not. This was the plan pursued by the early Dutch whale-fishing ships, in the Greenland seas-their masters knowing that, as the wind might blow from the northward or the southward, they would be beset or liberated, but in either case perfectly safe. Had Parry done this when off Melville Island, as we are satisfied he would now do, if employed on such a service, the probability is, that the first northerly wind would have carried his ships down with the pack towards the north coast of America-and then the passage was accomplished.

For eight successive days not a hope of being extricated from the ice having presented itself, there remained no longer any doubt of their having reached their winter's home.

• Our conviction was indeed absolute; for there was now not an atom of clear water to be seen anywhere; and excepting the occasional dark point of a protruding rock, nothing but one dazzling and monotonous, dull, and wearisome extent of snow was visible, all round the horizon in the direction of the land. It was indeed a dull prospect."

The first step, therefore, to be taken, was to lighten the ship, to throw overboard the accursed steam-engine,' as it is called, and to make such arrangements and regulations for the long winter, as appeared to be necessary for their convenience and comfort, and which do not in general much differ from those devised on former occasions by Parry. No time was lost in roofing the ship over, and surrounding