SIR JAMES ROSS 11 



May. Here they stayed two months, making magnetic 

 observations, and then proceeded to Hobart. 



Sir John Franklin, the eminent polar explorer, was at 

 that time Governor of Tasmania, and Ross could not 

 have wished for a better one. Interested as Franklin 

 naturally was in the expedition, he afforded it all the 

 help he possibly could. During his stay in Tasmania 

 Ross received information of what had been accom- 

 plished by Wilkes and Dumont d'Urville in the very 

 region which the Admiralty had sent him to explore. 

 The effect of this news was that Ross changed his plans, 

 and decided to proceed along the 170th meridian E., and 

 if possible to reach the Magnetic Pole from the eastward. 



Here was another fortuitous circumstance in the long 

 chain of events. If Ross had not received this intelli- 

 gence, it is quite possible that the epoch-making geo- 

 graphical discoveries associated with his name would 

 have been delayed for many years. 



On November 12, 1840, Sir John Franklin went on 

 board the Erebus to accompany his friend Ross out of 

 port. Strange are the ways of life! There stood 

 Franklin on the deck of the ship which a few years 

 later was to be his deathbed. Little did he suspect, 

 as he sailed out of Hobart through Storm Bay the bay 

 that is now wreathed by the flourishing orchards of 

 Tasmania that he would meet his death in a high 

 northern latitude on board the same vessel, in storms 

 and frost. But so it was. 



