DIFFICULTIES. 245 



certain proof that, after the ice broke up, no man or 

 boat could travel over such an expanse of loose pack 

 as intervened between the 'Resolute' and the land, and 

 therefore, that she must remain to the chances of release 

 in September, or later; with what probability of success, 

 the ice which bound Leopold Island on the 27th of Au- 

 gust will best satisfy Arctic navigators, especially when 

 they hioiv that the first winter warning had been de- 

 monstrated in Wellington Channel, and that to the ima- 

 ginations of some, who perhaps talk most of these mat- 

 ters, it was endeavoured to excite my apprehension that 

 we should not clear Lancaster Sound or Baffin's Bay 

 that season. 



Another yet more important question has not been 

 raised, and for this simple reason, I required no excuse 

 for obedience to the known intent of my Instructions. 

 I did not call for the evidence of the hiciliest authorities 



/ 



to raise a doubt before a military tribunal as to their 

 powers, and the Investigation was merely what I was 

 instructed to consider as " compliance with the custom of 

 the Service." 



But with the public, which may be misled by the as- 

 sumption that one of the vessels could have been left as a 

 depot at Beechey Island, I will venture to remark, that 

 officers who have been long accustomed to command in- 

 dependently, know full well all the difficulties they must 

 be prepared to encounter, and they too often discover 

 that men who volunteer headlong never give to the world 

 the insuperable difficulties which they know must render 

 any accordance to their wishes impossible, and entailing 

 on the Commander of an Expedition alone all the cen- 

 sure of accordance to their volunteer. 



