by Baffin, Lancaster's, which Sir John Ross,
in that first expedition, failed also to explore.
Like our transatlantic friends at the South
Pole, he laid down a range of clouds as
mountains, and considered the way impervious ; so
he came home. Parry went out next year,
as a lieutenant, in command of his first and
most successful expedition. He sailed up
Lancaster Sound, which was in that year
(1819), unusually clear of ice; and he is the
discoverer whose track we now follow in our
Phantom Ship. The whole ground being
new, he had to name the points of country
right and left of him. The way was broad
and open, due west, a most prosperous
beginning for a north-west passage. If this
continued, he would soon reach Behring Strait.
A broad channel to the right, directed, that is
to say, southward, he entered on the Prince
of Wales's birthday, and so called it the
"Prince Regent's Inlet." After exploring
this for some miles, he turned back to resume
his western course, for still there was a broad
strait leading westward. This second part of
Lancaster Sound, he called after the Secretary
of the Admiralty who had so indefatigably
laboured to promote the expeditions, Barrow's
Strait. Then he came to a channel, turning
to the right or northward, and he named that
Wellington Channel. Then he had on his
right hand ice, islands large and small, and
intervening channels; on the left, ice, and a
cape visible, Cape Walker. At an island,
named after the First Lord of the Admiralty
Melville Island, the great frozen wilderness
barred farther progress. There he wintered.
On the coast of Melville Island they had
passed the latitude of one hundred and ten
degrees, and the men had become entitled to
a royal bounty of five thousand pounds. This
group of islands Parry called North Georgian,
but they are usually called by his own name,
Parry Islands. This was the first European
winter party in the Arctic circle. Its details
are familiar enough. How the men cut in
three days through ice seven inches thick, a
canal two miles and a half long, and so
brought the ships into safe harbour. How
the genius of Parry equalled the occasion;
how there was established a theatre and a
"North Georgian Gazette," to cheer the
tediousness of a night which continued for
two thousand hours. The dreary dazzling
waste in which there was that little patch of
life, the stars, the fog, the moonlight, the
glittering wonder of the northern lights, in
which, as Greenlanders believe, souls of the
wicked dance tormented, are familiar to us.
The she-bear stays at home; but the
he-bear hungers, and looks in vain for a stray
seal or walrus—woe to the unarmed man
who meets him in his hungry mood! Wolves
are abroad, and pretty white arctic foxes.
The reindeer have sought other pasture-ground.
The thermometer runs down to
more than sixty degrees below freezing, a
temperature tolerable in calm weather, but
distressing in a wind. The eye-piece of the
telescope must be protected now with leather,
for the skin is destroyed that comes in
contact with cold metal. The voice at a mile's
distance can be heard distinctly. Happy the
day when first the sun is seen to graze the
edge of the horizon; but summer must come,
and the heat of a constant day must accumulate,
and summer wane, before the ice is
melted. Then the ice cracks, like cannons
over-charged, and moves with a loud grinding
noise. But not yet is escape to be made with
safety. After a detention of ten months, Parry
got free; but, in escaping, narrowly missed
the destruction of both ships, by their being
"nipped " between the mighty mass and the
unyielding shore. What animals are found
on Melville Island, we may judge from the
results of sport during ten months detention.
The island exceeds five thousand miles square,
and yielded to the gun, three musk oxen,
twenty-four deer, sixty-eight hares, fifty-three
geese, fifty-nine ducks, and one hundred
and forty-four ptarmigans, weighing together
three thousand seven hundred and sixty-six
pounds—not quite two ounces of meat per
day to every man. Lichens, stunted grass,
saxifrage, and a feeble willow, are the plants
of Melville Island, but in sheltered nooks
there are found sorrel, poppy, and a yellow
butter-cup. Halos and double suns are very
common consequences of refraction in this
quarter of the world. Franklin returned
from his first and most famous voyage with
his men all safe and sound, except the loss of
a few fingers, frost-bitten. We sail back only
as far as Regent's Inlet, being bound for
Behring Strait. The reputation of Sir John
Ross being clouded by the discontent
expressed against his first expedition, Mr.
Felix Booth, a rich distiller, provided seventeen
thousand pounds to enable his friend to
redeem his credit. Sir John accordingly, in
1829, went out in the "Victory," provided
with steam-machinery that did not answer
well. He was accompanied by Sir James
Ross, his nephew. He it was who, on this
occasion, first surveyed Regent's Inlet, down
which we are now sailing with our Phantom
Ship. The coast on our right hand, westward,
which Parry saw, is called North Somerset,
but farther south, where the inlet widens, the
land is named Boothia Felix. Five years
before this, Parry, in his third voyage, had
attempted to pass down Regent's Inlet, where
among ice and storm, one of his ships, the
"Hecla," had been driven violently ashore,
and of necessity, abandoned. The stores had
been removed, and Sir John was able now to
replenish his own vessel from them. Rounding
a point at the bottom of Prince Regent's
Inlet, we find Felix Harbour, where Sir John
Ross wintered. His nephew made from this
point scientific explorations; discovered a
strait, called after him the Strait of James
Ross, and on the northern shore of this
strait, on the main land of Boothia, planted the