ship about, were silently and secretly carried into effect inten minutes,' and, as it would seem, without the slightest suspicion or knowledge of the officers of the Isabella, who continued to enjoy themselves at dinner, drinking most probably success to the passage of Sir James Lancaster's Sound!' It would have been but courteous in Captain Ross, at all events, to call up Captain Sabine, that he too might have seen the land and barrier of ice, and thus have enjoyed the triumph of having his anticipations realized. Let us, however, examine the statement a little more closely.

The land which Captain Ross so distinctly saw round the bottom of the bay' appeared to be at the distance of eight leagues,' that is to say twenty four geographical, or twenty-eight English miles. On his special chart,' the nearest point is close upon two degrees of longitude, i. e. thirty geographical or thirtyfive English miles; and the two extreme corners, one of which he is pleased to call 'Baffin's Lancaster's Sound,' and the other Barrow's Bay,' are distant, at the least, fifty English miles! Now we should be glad to ask any nautical man, whether, on seeing land from the quarter-deck of a small vessel, at the distance of from twenty-eight to fifty miles, in any weather, but more especially in thick hazy weather, which just cleared up for ten minutes,' he would take upon him to say that such land was continuous? Has it not often happened, we would ask, that openings in the land, forming very wide straits, or inland seas, have been so completely concealed by the locking in of the two head-lands, that ships, though at a very few miles distance, have missed them? How often have the well-known straits of Gibraltar been passed unawares, and at the distance of a few miles, so that navigators found themselves running down the coast of Africa in looking for the entrance! As Captain Ross is familiarly acquainted with the Baltic, we would ask him if a total stranger, in sailing up the Kattigat, could, from appearances, conjecture the existence of either the Great Belt, the Little Belt, or the Sound, even at the distance of ten or twelve miles only from the last of these, though all of them connect it with the Baltic? Who, that was ignorant of the fact, would pretend to say, by looking across the channel from the pier-head of Dover, what inlets, straits, or harbours, might exist on the opposite coast, at the distance of only twenty-four or twentyfive miles? But to bring the matter home to ordinary readers, we may observe that there is not a reach in the Thames that to the eye does not appear to terminate the river; and in many of them, (in the Hope for instance) it is utterly impossible to form a conjecture, at the distance only of two or three miles, what part of the land is intersected by the stream. Would any stranger, on en

tering Plymouth Sound, have the most distant notion of its communicating with the two magnificent sheets of water, the Hamoaze and Catwater? or venture to say that Mount Edgecumbe, the Hoe, and Mount Batten, were not continuous land, though seen at the distance of not more than three miles? Nay, to descend to a still more familiar instance of the utter impossibility of ascertaining the continuity of land seen at a distance, let us suppose, as a parallel case, an entire stranger to be placed in the middle of Pall-Mall; could he, we would ask, by any possibility, discover that, at one end of the street there were two openings, and at the other end one, all of them wider than the street itself? How then can Captain Ross pretend to say what openings there might or might not be at the distance of fifty miles! But those extraordinay powers of vision, which, at that distance, could discover a little driblet of a river falling into Barrow's Bay, may pretend to any thing!

Not satisfied with blocking up Lancaster Sound with Croker's Mountains, and Cape Rosamond-mountains in nubibus, and Cape fly-away-Captain Ross calls in aid a continuity of ice, at the distance of seven miles, extending from one side of the bay to the other, between the nearest cape to the north, which he named after Sir George Warrender, and that to the south, which was named after Viscount Castlereagh.' In his special chart,' however, Cape Warrender is not by many miles the nearest cape to the Isabella; it is Cape Osborn; from which, and not from Cape Warrender, the wall of ice is made to extend. We notice this as no very important mistake, but it marks, in connection with other discrepancies, the loose manner in which matters are treated, the only value of which consists in their accuracy. For instance, on comparing the view of Sir James Lancaster's Sound, as seen from the Isabella at 3 P. M.,' (which, by the way, takes in, what could not possibly be taken in by the eye, one half of the whole circumference of the horizon,) with the special chart,' the points of land in the latter are so misplaced as to be wholly irreconcileable with the former; besides, Cape Castlereagh and Cape Warrender, one about forty, the other thirty miles distant, are represented in the view as close at hand. The conclusion we would draw from these disagreements is, that, neither the 'view' nor the special chart,' was made on the spot, but both awkwardly put together afterwards, to support that which they have actually overthrown.

There is another and a still more important disagreement between the special chart' and the text. This continuity of ice,' which, in the latter, is stated to have been seven miles from the ship, is, in the former, laid down at fourteen miles. Seven or

8 2

fourteen,

fourteen, however, Captain Ross asserts that he saw it-extending from one side of the bay to the other;' that is to say, according to the special chart,' he saw it at the distance of twenty English miles from the ship to Cape Osborn, and forty miles from the ship to Cape Castlereagh. We have too great a respect for Captain Ross to doubt his word, though we may be permitted to doubt his strength of sight; we shall not therefore assert positively that he did not see it: but, where there is an absolute physical impossibility, we may venture to say, without offence, that he could not see it. This is a point easily settled. The usual thickness of a floe, or field of ice, is (as we have already observed) from one to three feet above the surface of the sea, but we will give him six feet. Now every midshipman knows from his Hamilton Moore,' that an object of six feet above the surface can be seen barely nine miles, the height of the eye being twenty feet; from the same elevation of the eye, an object, to be seen at the distance of forty miles, would require to be more than a thousand feet above the surface. We submit, therefore, that we are warranted in saying, that Captain Ross could not see this ice, unless he can prove that it extended in a wall of a thousand feet high.

Captain Ross, we understand, complains of imperfect vision; this should naturally have increased his anxiety to correct or confirm his own observations by the testimony of his officers, especially by that of his first lieutenant, or of Mr. Bushnan who draws his charts and views of the land-and to corroborate those doubtful circumstances which crushed the hopes that this 'magnificent inlet,' as Captain Sabine calls it, had inspired; and which its position, magnitude, and enormous depth, together with the high temperature of the water, and the total absence of ice as far as the ships had ascended, were so well calculated to cherish. But there is another reason why Captain Ross should have been desirous of the testimony of his officers to the existence of those mountains and that wall of ice which put an end to all their expectations. It appears from his own account, that the impression made on the eye, by viewing objects at a distance in those high latitudes, was exceedingly fallacious: this, surely, ought to have inspired a high degree of caution, and to have made Captain Ross particularly suspicious of appearances in the present instance.*

The

The following extract and sketch from Mr. Parry's private journal of the two luckless days in Sir James Lancaster's Sound have been sent to us by a friend of that officer. 30th August. The inlet we saw last night answers the description of Sir James Lancaster's Sound very well, as far as a tolerably accurate latitude goes, but we have not yet seen the bottom of it; all on board are very anxious, and the crow's nest has been

frequently

'The objects on the horizon,' he says, were often most wonderfully raised by the powers of refraction, while others, at a short distance from them, were as much sunk; these objects were continually varying in shape; the ice had sometimes the appearance of an immense wall on the horizon, [the thousand feet wall, for instance,] with here and there a space resembling a breach in it; icebergs, and even small frequently visited this afternoon. The swell comes from the N. W. (compass-that is S. S. W. true,) and continues just as it does in the ocean. It is impossible to remark this circumstance, without feeling a hope that it may be caused by this inlet being a passage into a sea to the westward of it. Here Baffin's " hope of a passage began to be less every day more than another;" here, on the contrary, mine begins to be strong. The swell continues from about N. W. At eight, I set the land, from the crow's nest, very clearly as the sun was getting down. Temperature of air 34°, of the water 36°.

31st August. At noon, temperature of air 37°, of water 36o. Is this continuance of increased temperature of the sea to be considered as a good omen for us, or is it merely to be attributed to the total absence of all ice? We are, of course, disposed to incline to the former of these opinions. We continued to run with all the sail we could press upon the ship, the Isabella having shortened sail for us to come up. I never wished so much that the Alexander was a better sailer; for this inlet looks more and more promising. At one P. M. the weather being more clear for a few minutes, we saw something like a piece of high land N. by W. (compass). At three, the Isabella tacked bearing from us N. E. (compass) distant three or four miles. At 3. 40. we tacked, having joined the Commodore. Temperature of air 3540, of the water 36°.'

The following extract is from Mr. Fisher's journal.

Not any ice was to be seen in any direction; and at seven o'clock, the weather being remarkably fine and clear, land was not to be discerned between N, 21° W. and N. 44° E. At this time our distance from the northern land was estimated at seven or eight leagues, and from the southern six or seven leagues; but, alas! the sanguine hopes and high expectations excited by this promising appearance of things were but of short duration, for about three o'clock in the afternoon, the Isabella tacked, very much to our surprize indeed, as we could not see any thing like land at the bottom of the inlet, nor was the weather well calculated at the time for seeing any object at a great distance, it being somewhat hazy. When she tacked, the Isabella was about three or four miles (not eight) a head of us.'-Voyage of Discovery, &c. Q 3

pieces

pieces of ice, had often the appearance of trees, and while, on one side, we had the resemblance of a forest near us, the pieces of ice, on the other side, were so greatly lengthened as to look like low islands.'

We think we can perceive, and are not greatly surprized at it, a sort of growing suspicion in the mind of Captain Ross that public expectation has been disappointed at the result of his voyage, and particularly at the unsatisfactory manner in which he quitted Sir James Lancaster's Sound. We shall give his justification in his own words, and then make such comments on it as the case seems to require.

'As I have given a particular chart of the bay or inlet which was explored between the 29th of August and the 1st of September, by the Expedition under my command, and as there will be found on the preceding pages copies of the meteorological logs of the two ships, which were supplied and corrected by the Hydrographer of the Admiralty, from the official documents which were lodged in his office, on the arrival of the ships, it must be unnecessary for me to recapitulate the facts which I have already stated, as by referring to these authenticated documents, they will be seen by inspection. But it may not be amiss to point out the parts in my official Instructions which are printed in the beginning of this work, wherein I am directed to pay particular attention to the currents, and to be guided by them; and also to the part which recommends me to look for the north-east point of America; or, in other words, the north-west passage, about the seventy-second degree of latitude. As it was fully proved that no current existed in this inlet, which we had just explored, or to the northward of it, it naturally followed that I should have supposed myself still to the northward of the current, which had been so confidently asserted to exist; and that, therefore, this inlet was not the place to persevere in forcing a passage, but that there was reason to expect it would be found further south. My orders "to stand well to the north,” had already been fully obeyed, and no current had been found; and if "a current of some force" did exist, as from the "best authorities” we had reason to believe was the fact, it could be no where but to the southward of this latitude. As, in my Instructions, I am also directed" to leave the ice about the 15th or 20th of September, or at latest the 1st of October," I had only one month left for my operations, in which month the nights are long, and, according to a fair calculation, not more than two days clear weather out of seven could be expected. It may, therefore, with propriety be stated, that I had only eight days remaining to explore the remainder of Baffin's Bay, a distance of above four hundred miles. Of this space nearly two hundred miles had never been examined; & range, including the supposed place of the discontinuity of the continent, and that to which my attention had been particularly called, and where the imaginary current, which was to be my guide, was to be expected. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to add, that under these circumstances I was anxious to proceed to the spot where it must be evident I had the best chance of success. Yet my anxiety, on the other hand,

to