Wood's voyage appears to have closed the list of north-eastern attempts, which have never been renewed except by the Russians in modern times.

In the year 1719 the Hudson's Bay Company were solicited by Mr. James Knight, the governor of their factory at Nelson's River, to fit out an expedition for the purpose of discovering a rich mine of native copper, which was represented by the Esquimaux to exist in the northern part of Hudson's Bay. His request at first met with very little attention, until he threatened to cause an enquiry to take place into the legality of their charter, when, seeing he was bent on his purpose, they were compelled, in order to ensure his silence, to grant his request. A ship and a sloop, called the Albany and Discovery, were accordingly fitted out, the first commanded by Captain George Barlow and the other by Captain David Vaughan; Mr. Knight, however, having the sole direction of the expedition, of the successful issue of which he seems to have been pretty confident, as he had large chests made, bound with iron, to hold the treasures he expected to find, but the whole company met with a most untimely end, and it was nearly fifty years before their remains were found, on Marble Island, near Chesterfield Inlet, by some boats employed in the whale fishery. Hearne, in his "Journey from Prince of Wales's Fort, in Hudson's Bay, to the shores of the Northern Ocean," gives the account of the disaster as he received it from the lips of an old Esquimaux, who had met with them several times on returning from his fishing excursions, from which it would appear, that, in getting into the harbour, one of the vessels received so much damage as to induce them to commence building upon the long boat. In the second winter, sickness and famine had reduced their number from about fifty to twenty; the summer of 1721 came, and only five of the twenty remained; three of these shortly after died, in consequence of

eating in a raw state the blubber and scal's flesh which they obtained from the natives. The two who survived frequently went to the top of an adjacent rock, earnestly looking in every direction for relief, whence they would return, and, sitting down close together, weep bitterly. At last one of the two sunk under this misery, and the life of his companion also departed whilst attempting to dig his grave.

It was at first thought that Knight had succeeded in making the long-desired passage, and would return by the South Sea, but after two years had passed away, and no tidings of them had reached home, the Hudson's Bay Company felt it their duty to send out a small vessel, named the Whalebone, commanded by Captain John Scroggs; but his head seems to have been turned by anticipations of discovering the rich copper mine, for we hear nothing in his meagre narrative of the unfortunate sufferers he was sent to relieve, though he must have sailed past the scene of their misery in his progress up Sir Thomas Roe's Welcome, and, for aught we know to the contrary, not without having been observed, for the two last survivors of the company had most probably not yet met their fate.

Captain Scroggs had received from the Indians further accounts of this copper mine, which, together with the great rise of tide (thirty feet) observed, appeared to a gentleman of the name of Dobbs to be such strong arguments in favour of another northwestern attempt, that he never ceased soliciting the Hudson's Bay Company, until they agreed to send out two small vessels, which they accordingly did, under the command of Captain Christopher Middleton, but the result of the voyage was never published. Whatever it may have been, however, it does not seem that it was at all satisfactory to Mr. Dobbs, who straightway accused the company of intentionally preventing the discovery, and other misdemeanors,

the detail of which it is not worth while to enter into. He also commenced a correspondence with Captain Middleton, which appears to have had the effect of confirming him in his opinion; and he at length prevailed on the Lords of the Admiralty to grant two vessels towards the renewal of the attempt. They were called the Furnace and the Discovery, and were commanded by Captain Middleton and Mr. William Moor. The ships left England in 1741, and passed the winter at the Hudson's Bay Company's factory in Churchill River, from which place they departed on the 1st of July, 1742, and standing along the coast to the northward, on the 3rd reached an island in 63° N., which they took to be the Brook Cobham of Fox. Proceeding up the Welcome, in latitude 65° 10', Middleton named a cape after his "worthy friend," Cape Dobbs; and at the same time beheld a large opening, six or eight miles in width, to the N. W., for which he steered, and in which he was detained by the ice for three weeks. This inlet or river was named after Sir Charles Wager. They got clear of the ice on the 3rd of August, and pushing their way north, on the 5th entered another inlet in latitude 66° 14', into which he sailed until the next day, when he beheld the land rise to bar his progress, forming the head of a deep bay. He now lost no time in retracing his course, being fearful lest he should get embayed in the ice; and on again reaching the entrance, he bestowed on the place the name of Repulse Bay. Here Middleton's journal is very confused: he says that he ascended a high hill, and looking towards the east, saw a frozen strait, eighteen or twenty leagues long, and six or seven broad, with very high land on both sides of it, but quite frozen over from side to side, and which he supposed to lead towards the Cape Comfort of Baffin, and the Lord Weston's Portland of Fox. Finding no probability of a passage in this direction, they bore up for home.

Though disappointed, Mr. Arthur Dobbs did not at first attach any blame to Captain Middleton; on the contrary, he expressed himself as well satisfied; but some little time after, receiving an anonymous communication, stating that Middleton had made numerous false statements, particularly with reference to the frozen strait-he caused enquiries to be made, and examined the officers of the ships himself most minutely. The result was a long complant, made to the Lords of the Admiralty, in which he accused Middleton of receiving 5000l. from the Hudson's Bay Company, as a bribe not to go the voyage, or to search for it in some other direction to that intimated; at any rate, to draw off the projectors from the right ground; which was referred by their Lordships' to Captain Middleton for explanation.

Captain Middleton replied to these charges by a pamphlet, in which he printed numerous letters, &c., and alleged that Mr. Dobbs's animosity was in consequence of his not allowing certain articles, which had been clandestinely conveyed on board one of the vessels, to be bartered away to the natives at a great profit, to the manifest injury of the interests of the Hudson's Bay Company, of which company he was an old servant. Mr. Dobbs again returned to the charge, by his "Remarks upon Captain Middleton's Defence, wherein his conduct during the late voyage is impartially examined; his neglect and omissions in that affair fully proved; the falsities and evasions in his defence exposed; the errors of his charts laid open; and his account of currents, straits, and rivers, confuted, &c." This elicited a "Reply" from Captain Middleton; and shortly after another, entitled "Forgery Detected, in which he endeavoured to prove that Mr. Dobbs had been most shamefully imposed on, by some designing individual, with certain forged documents. These two pamphlets brought out other two from Mr. Dobbs, denying that he had either

forged, or been imposed upon by forged papers;— but, notwithstanding these mutual recriminations extend over nine hundred pages of print, the truth of the matter appears never to have been ascertained; although the Act of Parliament' which shortly after passed, offering a reward of 20,000l. to the discoverers of a N. W. passage, and the new expedition which was immediately set on foot, is tantamount to an expressed opinion that Captain Middleton was in the wrong. The vessels selected for the voyage were the Dobbs Galley, of one hundred and eighty tons, William Moor, captain, and the California, of one hundred and forty tons, Francis Smith, captain; they sailed on the 20th May, 1746. Having wintered in a small river near Fort York, from whence they sailed on the 24th of June, the ships stood to the northward, and entered Wager Strait with great hopes, from the set of the tide, of finding they had not misnamed it; when, one hundred and fifty miles from the entrance, whilst the water was as salt as the Atlantic, and everyting wore a promising aspect, the depth suddenly shoaled, and from no bottom with one hundred and forty fathoms of line, the inlet terminated in two unnavigable rivers, one of which was observed to take its rise in a large lake to the southwest. Nothing of any moment was done to the northward, to examine the frozen strait of Middleton; and somewhat early it was determined to bear up for England, where the ships arrived on the 4th of October.3

Notwithstanding Mr. Ellis says that the last expedition returned with clearer and fuller proofs of the existence of the passage, it does not appear that anything was done in the same quarter for nearly thirty years afterwards.

2 18th of Geo. II., cap. 17; 3 "A Voyage to Hudson's in the years 1746 and 1747."

and 16th Geo. III., cap, 6.—(Repealed). Bay by the Dobbs Galley, and California, Published by Whitridge in 1748.