of the Fury and Hecla, where he vainly sought the expected passage. In his third expedition, he sailed down Prince Regent's Inlet as far as latitude 72 deg. 30 min., in longitude 91 deg. west. Franklin, in two subsequent expeditions, traced the line of coast between the Coppermine and McKenzie's rivers and westward from the McKenzie to Cape Back; and Captain Beechy, of the B. R. N., passed through Behring's Strait to 156 deg. 214 sec. west longitude, leaving but 150 miles of coast to be surveyed be-ween Behring's Strait and Point Turnagain. Let the reader refer again to the map, and he will see that of the whole northern coast of America, between Cape Garry, in Prince Regent's Inlet, and Icy Cape, but 650 miles remained to be explored; and of these the line of 150 was known and defined with sufficient accuracy for all commercial and geographical purposes. The land seen by Parry south of Mellville Island, and called by him Banker's Land, that on the western side of Regent's Inlet, called by Captain Ross Boothia Felix, that seen by Franklin, north of Coronation Gulf, is supposed by Captain Ross to be one vast peninsula or continent, and is assuredly either such or a great group of islands. We come now to Ross's recent discoveries, by which he has satisfied himself that it is a peninsula, and that there is no passage from the waters of Hudson's or Baffin's bays through Regent's Inlet or any where else to the south of latitude 74 deg. His nephew, and second in command, however, is of a different opinion. The late expedition of Messrs. Dease and Simpson sets the question at rest, and proves Sir John Ross to have been wholly mistaken. We shall presently abridge it; but first, in justice to the brave and adventurous uncle and nephew, we must give some account of their unparallelled sufferings and exertions. Captain Ross, judging very justly, that the arctic seas could best be navigated by vessels of shallow draught, and not dependent on the wind, proposed to the admiralty to attempt the northwest passage through Regent's Inlet by steam; but his proffer was at once rejected. The unfortunate are not readily trusted. Smarting under unmerited censure, he proposed the scheme to Sheriff Felix Booth, in whose favor we can forgive Ross for naming his discoveries after him, an offensive fashion of man-worship which all the modern explorers have followed, from Ross to Beechy. Why should the Strait of Anian be rebaptized by the name of a beast and a drunkard, "the fourth of the fools and oppressors called George?" If they had called their discoveriesafter themselves, there would have been some sense and justice in it. Mr. Booth, however, deserves to be immortalized, if only for his generous munificence. At first, he refused to aid Ross, because, as parliament had offered a great reward for the projected discovery, it would look like speculation in him to do so; but as soon as that offer was rescinded by government, this princely individual at once advanced his friend twenty thousand pounds, and became responsible for the whole of the expense of the expedition, and left him at liberty to select his own officers and crew. He set sail in the steamship Victory, with a company of twenty-four persons, in May, 1829, fitted forth in the most complete manner possible, with stores for a thousand days. The machinery, however, proved defective. The labor of managing it was excessive. It propelled the boat but three miles an hour at best, and it was of very little service at any time. The crew of a tender to the Victory mutinied, and she was obliged to proceed alone. Seldom has a voyage been commenced under more inauspicious circumstances. The Victory lost her fore-top-mast in a gale, and one of her engineers was dangerously wounded by her engine. Nevertheless, no man's heart failed him; and in the first week of August the ship entered Lancaster Sound. Thus far the climate had proved as mild and auspicious as that of Italy. On entering Regent's Inlet, the compass became useless, from the close vicinity of the magnetic pole. On the twelfth, the ship made the spot where the Fury was wrecked in A. D. 1825. The tent poles erected on that occasion, were still standing, but the wreck was gone. Though four years had elapsed, the stores were in excellent preservation, and had escaped the curiosity of the bears, a circumstance to which the whole party owed their ultimate temporal salvation. A good quantity of the stores was taken on board the Victory; enough to complete her complement for two years and three months. The gunpowder was destroyed, lest it should accidentally do injury to the Esquimaux. The next day, the ship made Cape Garry, hitherto the southern limit of the navigation of Regent's Inlet. On the fifteenth, the Victory was on the shore of Boothia, thirty miles south of Cape Garry; but what avails it to indite the ship's itinerary? The strait was much clearer of ice than could have been expected-whales abounded, so did the usual arctic animals, and the signs of the natives were observed every where. In September, the ice formed, and the weather became tempestuous. By the end of this month, all hope of further progress was at an end; the insurmountable obstructions of nature forbade it, and preparations were made to winter in latitude 70 deg., longitude 92 deg. 40 min., three hundred miles further than any preceding expedition had gone, and within two hundred and eighty miles of Point Turnagain. The guns were taken out, the ship was unrigged, and frozen in for the winter. A magazine was erected on shore, the engine was landed, and the company began to amuse themselves by hunting polar bears, foxes, and seals; spirits were no longer used, divine service was regularly performed, &c., &c.; a school was also opened. It is here justly observed that the temperature of these regions is not, like that of Sweden and Norway, dependent on the latitude. These are the facts from which this inference was drawn: MEAN TEMPERATURE. Oct. 1829, was + 8° 43t 66 74 47 20 92° 01′ 06′′ 110 48 07 66 69 20 30 81 52 46 Port Bowen, 66 6 50t 51t +9 + 9 79t +10 85t In the course of January, 1830, the explorers made the acquaintance of a party of Esquimaux, who had knowledge of the whites, and who did not differ materially from their congeners described by Captain Parry. We regret that our limits do not allow us to dwell upon this interesting people, and indeed the length to which we have already drawn this paper, warns us to cut it short. Suffice it to say, that the company of the Victory were lost to the world for four years, that they discovered the true position of the magnetic pole to be in the supposed peninsula of Boothia, in latitude 70 deg. 5 min. 17 sec. and longitude 96 deg. 46 min. 45 sec. The dip of the needle was here 89 deg. 59 min., within one minute of vertical, and consequently, within a mile of the pole. The accuracy of science and mathematical instrument makers can go no nigher to perfection. The spot is thus described: "The land at this place is very low near the coast; but rises into ridges fifty or sixty feet high, a mile inland. We wished that a place so important had possessed more of mark or note. It was scarcely censurable to regret that there was not a mountain to indicate a spot to which so much interest must ever be attached, and I could have pardoned any one of us who had been so romantic or absurd as to expect that the magnetic pole was an object as conspicuous as the mountain of Sindbad, or a mountain of iron, or a magnet as big as Mont Blanc. But Nature had erected no monument to denote the spot she had chosen as the centre of one of her great and dark powers." The widest part of the peninsula of Boothia is ascertained to be but fifteen miles wide, of which ten are occupied by water, and a canal might easily be cut through, were its possible navigation for about a month in the year a desideratum. It was supposed by Captain Ross that the level of the sea on one side of the isthmus of Boothia was several feet higher than on the other, and hence he inferred, though erroneously, that there was no passage nigh this point. It is proper to observe here that the overland sur. veys, and the assignment of the pole, were made by Commander James Ross. On May 29th, 1832, all hope of saving the Victory being at an end, and it being impossible to brave another winter in that region, the company left the ship for Fury Beach, which they reached, after incredible hardship and sufferings, on the 1st of July. It was their only chance for life. Here they found three of the shattered boats of the Fury, in which they reached Leopold South Island in September following. Then, the ice bar ring all further progress, they returned to Fury Beach. All our attempts to push through were vain; at length, being forced by want of provisions and the approach of a most severe winter, to return to Fury Beach, where alone there remained wherewith to sustain life; there we arrived on October 7, after a most fatiguing and laborious march, having been obliged to leave our boats at Batty Bay. Our habitation, which consisted in a frame of spars, 32 feet by 16, covered with canvass, was during the month of November enclosed, and the roof covered with snow from four to seven feet thick, which, being saturated with water when the temperature was 15 deg. below zero, immediately took the consistency of ice, and thus we actually became the inhabitants of an iceberg during one of the most severe winters hitherto recorded: our sufferings, aggravated by want of bedding, clothing, and animal food, need not be dwelt upon. Mr. C. Thomas, the carpenter, was the only man who perished at this beach; but three others, besides one who had lost his foot, were reduced to the last stage of debility, and only thirteen of our number were able to carry provisions in seven journeys of sixty-two miles each to Batty Bay. We left Fury Beach on July 8, carrying with us three sick men which were unable to walk, and in six days we reached the boats, where the sick daily recovered. Although the spring was mild, it was not until August 15, that we had any cheering prospect: a gale from the westward having suddenly opened a lane of water along shore, in two days we reached our former position, and from the mountain we had the satisfaction of seeing clear water almost directly across Prince Regent's Inlet, which we crossed on the 17th, and took shelter from a storm twelve miles to the eastward of Cape York. Next day, when the gale abated, we crossed Admiralty Inlet, and were detained six days on the coast by a strong northeast wind. On the 25th we crossed Navy Board Inlet, and on the following morning, to our inexpressible joy, we descried. a ship in the offing becalmed, which proved to be the Isabella, of Hull, the same ship which I commanded in 1816; at noon we reached her, when her enterprising commander, who had in vain searched for us in Prince Regent's Inlet, after giving us three cheers, received us with every demonstration of kindness and hospitality which humanity could dictate.' We have only further to say of Captain Ross, that his government were so far liberal as to reimburse him and his noble friend, Felix Booth, the expenses they had actually incurred, that he received the honor (?) of knighthood, and that all his officers were promoted. This was pretty liberal for a government which appropriated thirty thousand pounds per annum to provide the queen with a plaything; but what was knighthood or title to such men as Booth and the Rosses? Their mortal bodies may crumble to dust; but they can never die. There needs no statue to their memory-they have reared their own--and will never be forgotten while there is a tear in the eye of British pity, or a throb in the breast of the British brave. We leave Captain Ross and his gallant company, with regret that our limits will allow us to bear them company no longer. There is much of interest in the narrative of their perils and sufferings, at which we cannot even glance. We must also try to pay a slight tribute of justice to Messrs. Dease and Simpson, and to the Hudson's Bay Company. "Where in the annals of discovery," asks the London Athenæum, "are to be found such touching examples of enterprise, fortitude, and perseverance, as are offered to us in the narratives of Hearne, Franklin, and Parry, not to say any thing of Captain Ross's last voyage?" The writer might have asked, in addition, what combination of individuals since the creation of the world, ever rendered so much service to science, to their country, and to mankind, as the Hudson's Bay Company? What do we know of two-thirds of an entire continent, that is not derived directly or indirectly from their exertions, their patronage? They have now rendered almost the last possible benefit of the kind. In June last, these gentlemen descended the Coppermine river, in pursuance of Governor Simpson's instructions. They explored Richardson's river, discovered in 1838, which discharges itself into the sea in latitude 67 deg. 53 min. 57 sec., longitude 115 deg. 56 min. Here, as every where else in America which the foot of man has ever yet pressed, were found the all-enduring Esquimaux. In the first week of the following month, the ice opened, they reached Coronation Gulf, the eastern limit of Franklin's discoveries, and found it free from ice. Here may properly be said to begin the region now first made known to the civilized world. Cape Alexander is situated in latitude 68 deg. 56 sec., longitude 106 deg. 40 min.; and thence to another remarkable point in latitude 68 deg. 33 min., longitude 98 deg. 10 sec., the coast is one great bay, indented by many smaller bays, with long projecting peninsulas, like those on the western shore of Scotland, and studded, or rather choked, by islands innumerable. Thus it appears that the route of the surveyors was intricate, and their duties harassing, though not dangerous; for the islands protected them from the seaward ice, and the weather was clear. Their most serious detention was at a jutting cape called White Bear Point, in latitude 68 deg. 7 sec., longitude 103 deg. 36 min. Vestiges of the everlasting Esquimaux appeared wherever the voyagers landed, and they appeared to exist in single families or in very small parties. In June they travel inland to the chase of the caribou, and return to the islands for seals when the winter sets in. In no material respect do they seem to differ from their compatriots, as described by Ross, Franklin, and Parry. A much larger river than the Coppermine falls into the sea in latitude 68 deg. 2 min., longitude 104 deg. 15 min., and is much frequented by reindeer and musk oxen. This will probably be one day soon the location of a trading post. "Finding the coast tending northerly from the bottom of the great bay," says the despatch of the adventurers, we expected to be carried round Cape Felix of Captain James Ross; but on the 10th of August, at the point already given, we suddenly opened a strait running in to the southward of east, where the rapid rush of the tide scarcely left a doubt of the existence of an open sea leading to the mouth of Back's Great Fish River. This strait is ten miles wide at either extremity, but contracts to three in the centre. Even that narrow channel is much encroached on by high shingle islands; but there is deep water in the middle throughout. "The 12th of August was signalized by the most terrific storm we ever witnessed in these regions. Next day it blew roughly from the westward, but we ran southeast, passed Point Richardson and Point Ogle of Sir George Back, till the night and the gale drove us ashore beyond Point Pechell. The storm lasted till the 16th, when we directed our course to Montreal Island. On its northern side our people found a deposit made by some of Sir George Back's party. It contained two bags of pemican and a quantity of cocoa and chocolate, besides a tin vasculum, and two or three other articles, of which we took possession, as memorials of our having breakfasted on the spot where the tent of our gallant, though less successful, precursor stood that very day five years before. "The duty we had, in 1836, undertaken, was thus fully accomplished; and the length and difficulty of the route back to the Coppermine would have justified our return. We had all suffered from want of fuel and deprivation of food, and prospects grew more cheerless as the cold weather stole on; but having already ascertained the separation of Boothia from the continent, on the western side of Great Fish River, we determined not to desist till we had settled its relation on the eastern side also. A fog which came on dispersed towards evening, and unfolded a full view of the shores of the estuary. Far to the south, Victoria Headland stood forth so clearly defined, that we instantly recognised it by Sir George Back's drawing. Cape Beaufort we seemed to touch, and with the telescope we were able to discern a continuous line of high land as far round as northeast, about two points more northerly than Cape Hay, the extreme eastern point seen by Sir George Back. "The traverse to the furthest visible land occupied six hours' labor at the oar, and the sun was rising on the 17th when we scaled the Rocky Cape, to which our course had been directed. It stands in latitude 68 deg. 3 min. 56 sec. N., longitude 94 deg. 35 min. W. The azimuth compass settled exactly in the true meridian, and agreed with two others, placed on the ground. From our proximity to the magnetic pole, the compass had latterly been of little use; but this was of the less consequence, as the astronomical observations were very frequent. The dip of the needle, which at Thunder Cove (12th August) was 89 deg. 29 min. 35 sec., had here decreased to 89 deg. 16 min. 40 sec. N. This bold promontory, where we lay wind bound till the 19th, was named Cape Britannia. On the rock that sheltered our encampment from the sea, and is the most conspicuous object |