crew.

ship's head right into the ice, which was accordingly done by both vessels, and they plunged into the "unbroken line of furious breakers in which immense pieces of ice were heaving and subsiding with the waves, and dashing together with a violence which nothing apparently but a solid body could withstand, occasioning such a noise that it was with the greatest difficulty we could make our orders heard by the "Each person instinctively secured his own hold, and with his eyes fixed upon the masts, awaited in breathless anxiety the moment of concussion. It soon arrived;-the brig, cutting her way through the light ice, came in violent contact with the main body. In an instant we all lost our footing, the masts bent with the impetus, and the cracking timbers from below bespoke a pressure which was calculated to awaken our serious apprehensions. Her motion was so great that the ship's bell, which in the heaviest gale of wind had never struck of itself, now tolled so continually that it was ordered to be muffled, for the purpose of escaping the unpleasant association it was calculated to produce."

At length providentially the gale abated, and the ships were got into an open sea, but the Dorothea was in such a dreadful state that it was with the utmost difficulty she was kept afloat until they reached Fair Haven, where she was repaired, and the two vessels then set sail for home. Lieutenant Franklin requested that he might be allowed to remain out to make another trial, but Captain Buchan, very properly under the circumstances of the case, refused to accede to his desire. On the 30th August they put to sea, and on the 22nd October arrived in the Thames.

CHAPTER XV.

Expedition commanded by Captains Parry and Liddon-Penetrate to the North Georgian Group-Winter Quarters-Theatricals-Ship Newspaper-School-Re-appearance of SunClose of Theatre -Hunting Excursions-Voyage resumed— Discouragement-Return Home.

THE Voyage of Captain John Ross to Baffin's Bay, and his imperfect examination of its shores, from various causes, was not, as may be imagined, considered by its anxious projectors as sufficient proof of the non-existence of the long-sought passage. A new expedition was therefore decided on, the command of which was entrusted to Lieutenant, now Captain, Parry.

The ships appointed were the Hecla, a bomb of three hundred and seventy-five tons, well adapted for stowage, with a crew of fifty-eight men; and the Griper, a twelve-gun brig of one hundred and eighty tons, and a complement of thirty-six men, commanded by Lieutenant Matthew Liddon.

The vessels, provisioned for two years, sailed from the Thames on the 8th May, 1819, and arrived in the middle of Davis Straits on the 18th June, where they fell in with the usual formidable barrier of ice. When Parry had attained the latitude of 73° he saw that his only chance to reach the western shore was to put the ships into the detached pieces and floes of ice, and trust to incessant heaving and warping to attain

his object; and he accordingly pursued this course, until the 30th July, when he arrived off Possession Bay, the southern entrance of Lancaster Sound, just one month earlier than Ross in 1818.

The line here went down to the depth of sixty and seventy fathom, which was a favourable omen, but a tantalizing wind from the west caused them to make but slow progress. On the 31st they landed at a spot they had visited the previous year, where they found the flag-staff still standing, and the foot-prints as fresh as if made but a few days before; another favourable sign, inasmuch as it proved that very little snow had fallen since their visit.

An easterly wind, which soon encreased to a fresh gale, and a press of sail, carried them gallantly up this magnificent sound, while their almost breathless anxiety may be more easily imagined than described. Report after report was made from the mast-heads, which were crowded with officers, "and an unconcerned observer, if any could have been unconcerned on such an occasion, would have been amused by the eagerness with which they were received."

In this state of anxious suspense they continued standing on until they had attained the west longitude of 83° 12', placing nearly a hundred miles between them and the entrance of the sound; and transforming Ross's insuperable Croker range into a splendid bay, which now bears the same honoured name. At this point the strait, to which the name of Sir John Barrow was given, still maintained a breadth of thirteen leagues; and the sea before them appearing as free from ice as any part of the Atlantic, they began to flatter themselves that they had fairly entered the Polar Sea; some indeed, more sanguine than the rest, commenced calculating the bearing and distance of Icy Cape, when they fell in with a small island, from which a barrier of ice extended to the northern

shore of the strait; and Parry, finding that it was useless to hope to penetrate through this obstacle for the present, stood to the southward in order to examine an inlet which he had observed. He found it to be about thirty miles broad, and the western shore much encumbered with ice, but standing over to the eastern he was enabled to proceed along it to the south for about a hundred and twenty miles, during which time the compass gradually became so sluggish as scarcely to be of the slightest use; when, as its width appeared to be increasing, and their hopes of a passage were rising in proportion, they suddenly perceived a floe of ice stretch away to the southward, beyond which there was neither land nor water visible.

The latitude attained was 71° 53′ 30′′, longitude 90° 03′ 45′′, and Captain Parry says that he saw no reason" to doubt the practicability of ships penetrating much farther to the south by watching the occasional openings in the ice," and thought it highly probable that the inlet would be found to communicate with Hudson's Bay; but he determined not to waste time here, but to return at once to the great western opening, which however, owing to baffling winds and heavy fogs, he did not regain until the 19th August. To this inlet he gave the name of the Prince Regent, having entered it on the 12th August, his Royal Highness's birthday. His extreme point of view he named Cape Kater, and to a bay and fine harbour on the eastern shore he gave the name of Port Bowen.

On reaching the entrance they found the ice still thickly concentrated round Prince Leopold Island, but a few showers of rain and snow worked such a striking change in the course of a few days, that "it was almost impossible to believe it to be the same sea which but a day or two before had been completely covered with floes to the utmost extent of view."

Eagerly resuming their progress, on the evening of the 22nd, after naming several bays and headlands on the northern shore, the ships arrived off the mouth of a noble-looking strait, more than eight leagues in width, and as seen from the mast-heads on a beautifully clear evening, apparently perfectly clear from land and ice; a matter of great comfort to them as the continuity of the land to the northward was beginning to give them considerable uneasiness, for fear that it might take a turn to the southward and unite with the coast of America. "To this noble channel," says Parry, "I gave the name of Wellington, after his Grace the Master-General of the Ordnance."

Although this grand opening offered many advantages for exploration, Parry preferred to hold on his present westerly course up Barrow's Strait, though he made but slow progress, on account of the detached floes of ice, the danger from which was considerably heightened by foggy weather.

Cornwallis, Griffith, Lowther, Bathurst, and Byam Martin islands, were successively named and passed. On the latter island the remains of Esquimaux habitations were found in four different places, besides numerous traces of the reindeer and musk-ox. The valleys were covered with a luxuriant moss, similar to some noticed in the ravines of Possession Bay.

On the 4th September, the expedition crossed the meridian of 110° west from Greenwich, in the latitude of 74° 44′ 20′′, by which the crews became entitled to the reward of five thousand pounds, granted by an order in council, grounded on an act of parliament' to such of his Majesty's subjects as should penetrate thus far to the westward, within the Artic Circle. To do

1 58 Geo. III., cap. 20, “An act for more effectually discovering the Longitude at Sea, and encouraging attempts to find a Northern Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and to approach the Northern Pole." Repealed.