year's expedition. Making their way slowly among the masses of ice with which the inlet was encumbered, on the 17th they found the wide expanse of Barrow's Strait open before them, and navigable, and reached to within twelve miles of Cape York. Pushing on with renewed spirits, alternately rowing and sailing, on the night of the 25th they rested in a good harbour on the eastern shore of Navy Board Inlet. At four on the following morning they were roused from their slumbers by the joyful intelligence of a ship being in sight, and never did men more hurriedly and energetically set out; but the elements conspiring against them, after being baffled by calms and currents, they had the misery to see the ship leave them with a fair breeze, and found it impossible to overtake her, or make themselves seen. A few hours later, however, their despair was relieved by the sight of another vessel which was lying to in a calm. By dint of hard rowing they were this time more fortunate, and soon came up with her; she proved to be the Isabella, of Hull, the very ship in which Ross had made his first Voyage to these seas. Captain Ross was told circumstantially of his own death, &c., two years previously, and he had some difficulty in convincing them that it was really he and his party who now stood before them. So great was the joy with which they were received, that the Isabella manned her yards, and her former commander and his gallant band of adventurers were saluted with three hearty cheers. The scene on board can scarcely be described; each of the crew vied with the other in assisting and comforting the party, and it cannot better be told than in Ross's own words :

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The ludicrous soon took place of all other feelings ; in such a crowd, and such confusion, all serious thought was impossible, while the new buoyancy of our spirits made us abundantly willing to be amused by the scene which now opened. Every man was hungry, and was to be fed; all were ragged, and were to be clothed; there was not one to whom washing was not indispensable, nor one whom his beard did not deprive of all human semblance. All, everything too, was to be done at once: it was washing, dressing, shaving, eating, all intermingled ; it was all the materials of each jumbled together, while in the midst of all there were interminable questions to be asked and answered on both sides; the adventures of the Victory, our own escapes, the politics of England, and the news which was now four years old.

"But all subsided into peace at last. The sick were accommodated, the seamen disposed of, and all was done for us which care and kindness could perform.

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Night at length brought quiet and serious thoughts, and I trust there was not a man among us who did not then express, where it was due, his gratitude for that interposition which had raised us all from a despair which none could now forget, and had brought us from the very borders of a most distant grave, to life and friends and civilization. Long accustomed, however, to a cold bed on the hard snow or the bare rock, few could sleep amid the comfort of our new accommodations. I was myself compelled to leave the bed which had been kindly assigned me, and take my abode in a chair for the night, nor did it fare much better with the rest. It was for time to reconcile us to this sudden and violent change, to break through what had become habit, and to inure us once more to the usages of our former days."

The Isabella remained some time longer to prosecute the fishery, and left Davis Strait on her homeward passage on the 30th of September. On the 12th of October they made the Orkney Islands, and arrived at Hull on the 18th. The bold explorers, who had long been given up as lost, were looked upon as men risen from the grave, and met and escorted by crowds of sympathizers. A public entertainment was given to them by the townspeople, at which the freedom of the town was presented to Captain Ross, and next day he left for London, to report his arrival to the Admiralty, and was honoured by a presentation to the king at Windsor.

The Admiralty liberally rewarded all the parties, except indeed Captain Ross. Commander J. C. Ross was appointed to the guardship at Portsmouth to complete his period of service, and then received his post rank. Mr. Thom, the purser, Mr. M'Diarmid, the surgeon, and the petty officers, were appointed to good situations in the navy. The seamen received the usual double pay given to Arctic explorers, up to the time of leaving their ship, and full pay from that date until their arrival in England. A committee of the House of Commons took up the case of Captain Ross early in the session of 1834, and on their recommendation 5000l. was granted him as a remuneration for his pecuniary outlay and privations.

A baronetcy, on the recommendation of the same committee, was also conferred by his Majesty William IV. on Mr. Felix Booth.

In looking back on the results of this voyage, no impar

tial inquirer can deny to Captain Ross the merit of having effected much good by tracing and surveying the whole of the long western coast of Regent Inlet, proving Boothia to be a peninsula, and setting at rest the probability of any navigable outlet being discovered from this inlet to the Polar Sea. The lakes, rivers, and islands which were examined, proved with sufficient accuracy the correctness of the information furnished to Parry by the Esquimaux.

To Commander James Ross is due the credit of resolving many important scientific questions, such as the combination of light with magnetism, fixing the exact position of the magnetic pole. He was also the only person in the expedition competent to make observations in geology, natural history, and botany. Out of about 700 miles of new land explored, Commander Ross, in the expeditions which he planned and conducted, discovered nearly 500. He had up to this time passed fourteen summers and eight winters in these seas.

The late Sir John Barrow, in his "Narrative of Voyages of Discovery and Research," p. 518, in opposition to Ross's opinion, asserted that Boothia was not joined to the Con tinent, but that they were " completely divided by a navigable strait, ten miles wide and upwards, leading past Back's Estuary, and into the Gulf (of Boothia), of which the proper name is Akkolee, not Boothia; and moreover, that the two seas flow as freely into each other, as Lancaster Sound does into the Polar Sea." This assumption has been since shown to be incorrect. Capt. Ross asserts there is a difference in the level of these two seas.

I may here fitly take a review of Capt. Ross's services. He entered the navy in 1790; served fifteen years as a midshipman, seven as a lieutenant, and seven as a commander, and was posted on the 7th of December, 1818, and appointed to the command of the first Arctic expedition of this century. On his return he received many marks of favour from continental sovereigns, was knighted, and made a Companion of the Bath on the 24th of December, 1834; made a Commander of the Sword of Sweden, a Knight of the Second Class of St. Anne of Prussia (in diamonds), Second Class of the Legion of Honour, and of the Red Eagle of Prussia, and of Leopold of Belgium. Received the royal premium from the Geographical Society of London, in 1833, for his discoveries in the Arctic regions; also gold medals from the Geographical Society of Paris, and the Royal Societies of Sweden, Austria, and Denmark The freedom of the cities of London, Liverpool, an

Bristol; six gold snuff-boxes from Russia, Holland, Denmark, Austria, London, and Baden; a sword valued at 100 guineas from the Patriotic Fund, for his sufferings, having been wounded thirteen times in three different actions during the war; and one of the value of 2007. from the King of Sweden, for service in the Baltic and the White Sea. On the 8th of March, 1839, he was appointed to the lucrative post of British consul at Stockholm, which he held for six years.

CAPTAIN BACK S LAND JOURNEY, 1833-1835.

FOUR years having elapsed without any tidings being received of Capt. Ross and his crew, it began to be generally feared in England that they had been added to the number of former sufferers, in the prosecution of their arduous undertaking.

Dr. Richardson, who had himself undergone such frightful perils in the Arctic regions with Franklin, was the first to call public attention to the subject, in a letter to the Geographical Society, in which he suggested a project for relieving them, if still alive and to be found; and at the same time volunteered his services to the Colonial Secretary of the day, to conduct an exploring party.

Although the expedition of Captain Ross was not undertaken under the auspices of the Government, it became a national concern to ascertain the ultimate fate of it, and to make some effort for the relief of the party, whose home at that time might be the boisterous sea, or whose shelter the snow hut or the floating iceberg. Dr. Richardson proposed to proceed from Hudson's Bay, in a north-west direction to Coronation Gulf, where he was to commence his search in an easterly direction. Passing to the north, along the eastern side of this gulf, he would arrive at Point Turnagain, the eastern point of his own former discovery. Having accomplished this, he would continue his search towards the eastward until he reached Melville Island, thus perfecting geographical discovery in that quarter, and a continued coast line might be laid down from the Fury and Hecla Strait to Beechey Point, leaving only the small space between Franklin's discovery and that of the Blossom unexplored. The proposal was favourably received; but owing to the political state of the country at that time, the offer was not accepted.

A meeting was held in November, 1832, at the rooms of the Horticultural Society, in Regent-street, to obtain funds,

and arrange for fitting out a private relief expedition, as the Admiralty and the Government were unable to do this officially, in consequence of Capt. Ross's expedition not being a public one. Sir George Cockburn took the chair, and justly observed that those officers who devoted their time to the service of science, and braved in its pursuit the dangers of unknown and ungenial climates, demanded the sympathy and assistance of all. Great Britain had taken the lead in geographical discovery, and there was not one in this country who did not feel pride and honour in the fame she had attained by the expeditions of Parry and Franklin; but if we wished to create future Parrys and Franklins, if we wished to encourage British enterprise and courage, we must prove that the officer who is out of sight of his countrymen is not forgotten; that there is consideration for his sufferings, and appreciation of his spirit. This reflection will cheer him in the hour of trial, and will permit him, when surrounded by dangers and privations, to indulge in hope, the greatest blessing of man. Capt. George Back, R.N., who was in Italy when the subject was first mooted, hastened to England, and offered to lead the party, and his services were accepted. A subscription was entered into to defray the necessary expenses, and upwards of 6000l. was raised; of this sum, at the recom mendation of Lord Goderich, the then secretary of state, the Treasury contributed 20007.

After an interview with the king at Brighton, to which he was specially summoned, Capt. Back made preparations for his journey, and laid down his plan of operations. In order to facilitate his views, and to give him greater control over his men, special instructions and authority were issued by the Colonial Office, and the Hudson's Bay Company granted him a commission in their service, and placed every assistance at his disposal throughout their territory in North America.

Everything being definitively arranged, Capt. Back, accompanied by Dr. Richard King as surgeon and natu ralist, with three men who had been on the expedition with Franklin, left Liverpool on the 17th of Feb. 1833, in one of the New York packet ships, and arrived in America after a stormy passage of thirty-five days. He proceeded on to Montreal, where he had great difficulty in preventing two of the men from leaving him, as their hearts began to fail them at the prospect of the severe journey, with its attendant difficulties, which they had to encounter.

Four volunteers from the Royal Artillery corps here