BUCHAN AND FRANKLIN. 83 



bay. Hereupon, it is said, all hopes were renounced, 

 even by the most sanguine, and Captain Ross sailed on- 

 ward merely for the purpose of making some magneti- 

 cal observations. 



At three o'clock, the sky having cleared, the com- 

 mander himself went on deck, when he states that he 

 distinctly saw across the bottom of the bay a chain of 

 mountains, continuous, and connected with those which 

 formed its opposite shores. The weather then becom- 

 ing unsettled, he made the signal to steer the vessels 

 out of Lancaster Sound. 



On regaining the entrance of this great channel, Cap- 

 tain Ross continued to steer southward along the west- 

 ern shore, without seeing any entrance which afforded 

 equal promise. Cumberland Strait alone was similar in 

 magnitude ; but, as it could lead only into the higher 

 latitudes of Hudson's Bay, it afforded little chance of a 

 passage into the Arctic Sea. After surveying, there- 

 fore, some of these shores, he returned home early in 

 October. The captain arrived in England under the 

 most decided conviction that Baffin's observations had 

 been perfectly correct, and that Lancaster Sound was a 

 bay, affording no entrance into any western sea. If 

 even any strait existed between the mountains, it must, 

 he conceived, be forever innavigable, on account of the 

 ice with which it is filled. 



The Dorothea and Trent, commanded by Captain 

 Buchan and Lieut, (afterwards Sir John) Franklin, com- 

 prised the expedition destined for the pole. Franklin, 

 in regard to whose fate so much public interest was in 

 subsequent years excited, entered the navy in early life 

 as midshipman of the Porpoise, one of the ships em- 

 ployed by Captain Flinders on the survey of the coasts 

 fif Australia, and was wrecked in her. Next in the 

 Polyphemus, as midshipman and master's mate, from 



