shake the earth, and from which we can only escape scathless by a position and a force which will compel respect for our rights, and protect our neutrality, if it be possible to maintain this position in a contest waged for the destruction of civil and religious liberty. The narrative of the American expedition cannot fail to enlist the sympathies of the country more earnestly in behalf of those

"Whose march is on the mountain wave,
Whose home is on the deep,"

and kindle generous emotions in all hearts. We hope it may find a place in every habitation throughout the length and breadth of our extended country.

1

THE PROGRESS

OF

ARCTIC DISCOVERY

IN THE

NINETEENTH CENTURY.

If we examine a map of Northern, or Arctic, America, showing what was known of the countries around the North Pole in the commencement of the present century, we shall find that all within the Arctic circle was a complete blank. Mr. Hearne had, indeed, seen the Arctic Sea in the year 1771; and Mr. Mackenzie had traced the river which now bears his name to its junction with the sea; but not a single line of the coast from Icy Cape to Baffin's Bay was known. The eastern and western shores of Greenland, to about 75° latitude, were tolerably well defined, from the visits of whaling vessels; Hudson's Bay and Strait were partially known; but Baffin's Bay, according to the statement of Mr. Baffin, in 1616, was bounded by land on the west, running parallel with the 90th meridian of longitude, or across what is now known to us as Barrow's Strait, and probably this relation led to the subsequently formed hasty opinion of Captain Sir John Ross, as to his visionary Croker Mountains, of which I shall have occasion to speak hereafter.

As early as the year 1527, the idea of a passage to the East Indies by the North Pole was suggested by a