When Captain Franklin left England to proceed on this expedition he had to undergo a severe struggle between his feelings of affection and a sense of duty. His wife (he has been married twice) was then lying at the point of death, and indeed died the day after he left England. But with heroic fortitude she urged his departure at the very day appointed, entreating him, as he valued her peace and his own glory, not to delay a moment on her account. His feelings, therefore, may be inferred, but not described, when he had to elevate on Garry Island a silk flag, which she had made and given him as a parting gift, with the instruction that he was only to hoist it on reaching the Polar Sea.

BEECHEY'S VOYAGE.-1826-28.

H. M. SLOOP Blossom, 26, Captain F. W. Beechey, sailed from Spithead on the 19th of May, 1825, and her instructions directed her, after surveying some of the islands in the Pacific, to be in Behring's Straits by the summer or autumn of 1826, and contingently in that of 1827.

It is foreign to my purpose here to allude to those parts of her voyage anterior to her arrival in the Straits.

On the 28th of June the Blossom came to an anchor off the town of Petropolowski, where she fell in with the Russian ship of war Modeste, under the commano of Baron Wrangel, so well known for his enterprise ir the hazardous expedition by sledges over the ice to the northward of Cape Shelatskoi, or Errinos.

Captain Beechey here found dispatches informing him of the return of Parry's expedition. Being bese by currents and other difficulties, it was not till the 5th of July that the Blossom got clear of the harbor, and made the best of her way to Kotzebue Sound, reaching the appointed rendezvous at Chamiso Island on the 25th. After landing and burying a barrel of flour upon Puffin Rock, the most unfrequented spot about the island, the Blossom occupied the time in surveying and examining

the neighboring coasts to the northeast. On the 30th she took her departure from the island, erecting posts or land-marks, and burying dispatches at Cape Krusenstern, near a cape which he named after Franklin, near Icy Cape.

The ship returned to the rendezvous on the evening of the 28th of August. The barrel of flour had been dug up and appropriated by the natives.

On the first visit of one of these parties, they constructed a chart of the coast upon the sand, of which, however, Captain Beechey at first took very little notice. "They, however, renewed their labor, and performed their work upon the sandy beach in a very ingenious and intelligible manner. The coast line was first marked out with a stick, and the distances regulated by the day's journey. The hills and ranges of mountains were next shown by elevations of sand or stone, and the islands represented by heaps of pebbles, their proportions being duly attended to. As the work proceeded, some of the bystanders occasionally suggested alterations, and Captain Beechey moved one of the Diomede Islands, which was misplaced. This was at first objected to by the hydrographer, but one of the party recollecting that the islands were seen in one from Cape Prince of Wales, confirmed its new position and made the mistake quite evident to the others, who were much surprised that Captain Beechey should have ary knowledge of the subject. When the mountains and islands were erected, the villages and fishing-stations were marked by a number of sticks placed upright, in imitation of those which are put up on the coast wherever these people fix their abode. In time, a complete hydrographical plan was drawn from Cape Derby to Cape Krusenstern.

This ingenuity and accuracy of description on the part of the Esquimaux is worthy of particular remark, and has been verified by almost all the Arctic explorers.

The barge which had been dispatched to the eastward, under charge of Mr. Elson, reached to latitude 71° 23' 31" N., and longitude 156° 21' 31" W., where

she was stopped by the ice which was Lached to the shore. The farthest tongue of land they reached was named Point Barrow, and is about 12 miles northeast of Icy Cape, being only about 150 160 miles from Franklin's discoveries west of the Mckenzie river.

The wind suddenly changing to southwest, the compact body of ice began to drift with the current to the northeast at the rate of three and a half miles an hour, and Mr. Elson, finding it difficult to avoid large floating masses of ice, was obliged to come to an anchor to prevent being driven back. "It was not long before he was so closely beset in the ice, that no clear water could be seen in any direction from the hills, and the ice continuing to press against the shore, his vessel was driven upon the beach, and there left upon her broadside in a most helpss condition; and to add to his cheerless prospect he disposition of the natives, whom he found to increase in numbers as he advanced to the northward, was of a very doubtful character. At Point Barrow, where they were very numerous, their overbearing behavior, and the thefts they openly practiced, left no doubt of what would be the fate of his little crew, in the event of their falling into their power. They were in this dilemma several days, during which every endeavor was made to extricate the vessel but without effect, and Mr. Elson contemplated sinking her secretly in a lake that was near, to prevent her falling into the hands of the Esquimaux, and then making his way along the coast in a baidar, which he had no doubt he should be able to purchase from the natives. At length, however, a change of wind loosened the ice, and after considerable labor and trial, in which the personal strength of the officers was united to that of the seamen, Mr. Elson, with his shipmates, fortunately succeeded in effecting their escape.

Captain Beechey was very anxious to remain in Kotzebue Sound until the end of October, the period named in his instructions, but the rapid approach of winter, the danger of being locked up, having only five weeks' provisions left, and the nearest point at

which he could replenish being some 2000 miles distant, induced his officers to concur with him in the necessity of leaving at once. A barrel of flour and other articles were buried on the sandy point of Chamiso, for Franklin, which it was hoped would escape the prying eyes of the natives.

After a cruise to California, the Sandwich Islands, Loochoo, the Bonin Islands, &c., the Blossom returned to Chamiso Island on the 5th of July, 1827. They found the flour and dispatches they had left the previous year unmolested. Lieut. Belcher was dispatched in the barge to explore the coast to the northward, and the ship followed her as soon as the wind permitted. On the 9th of September, when standing in for the northern shore of Kotzebue Sound, the ship drifting with the current took the ground on a sand-bank near Hotham Inlet, but the wind moderating, as the tide rose she went off the shoal apparently without injury.

After this narrow escape from shipwreck they beat up to Chamiso Island, which they reached on the 10th of September. Not finding the barge returned as expected, the coast was scanned, and a signal of distress found flying on the southwest point of Choris Peninsula, and two men waving a white cloth to attract notice. On landing, it was found that this party were the crew of the barge, which had been wrecked in Kotzebue Sound, and three of the men were also lost.

On the 29th a collision took place with the natives, which resulted in three of the seamen and four of the marines being wounded by arrows, and one of the natives killed by the return fire.

After leaving advices for Franklin, as before, the Blossom finally left Chamiso on the 6th of October. In a haze and strong wind she ran between the land and a shoal, and a passage had to be forced through breakers at the imminent danger of the ship's striking. The Blossom then made the best of her way home, reaching England in the first week of October, 1828.

PARRY'S FOURTH, OR POLAR VOYAGE, 1827.

IN 1826, Capt. Parry, who had only returned from his last voyage in the close of the preceding year, was much struck by the suggestions of Mr. Scoresby, in a paper read before the Wernerian Society, in which he sketched out a plan for reaching the highest latitudes of the Polar Sea, north of Spitzbergen, by means of sledge boats drawn over the smooth fields of ice which were known to prevail in those regions. Col. Beaufoy, F. R. S., had also suggested this idea some years previously. Comparing these with a similar plan originally proposed by Captain Franklin, and which was placed in his hands by Mr. Barrow, the Secretary of the Admiralty, Capt. Parry laid his modified views of the feasibility of the project, and his willingness to undertake it, before Lord Melville, the First Lord of the Admiralty, who, after consulting with the President and Council of the Royal Society, was pleased to sanction the attempt; accordingly, his old ship, the Hecla, was fitted out for the voyage to Spitzbergen, the following officers, (all of whom had been with Parry before,) and crew being appointed to her:

Hecla.

Captain W. E. Parry.

Lieutenants-J. C. Ross, Henry Foster, E. J. Bird, F. R. M. Crozier.

Purser - James Halse.

Surgeon-C. J. Beverley.

On the 4th of April, 1827, the outfit and preparations being completed, the Hecla left the Nore for the coast of Norway, touching at Hammerfest, to embark eight reindeer, and some moss (Cenomyce rangiferiha) sufficient for their support; the consumption being about 4 lbs. per day, but they can go without food for several days. A tremendous gale of wind, experienced off Hakluyt's Headland, and the quantity of ice with which the ship was in consequence beset, detained the voyagers for nearly a month, but on the 18th of June,