394 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



the vast icy masses of the North Siberian shores being held together 

 to the land during winter, that Mr. Peterman has made the novel 

 suggestion, that a winter, or early spring, search should be attempted 

 through a belt of water which is too broad to be affected by congela- 

 tion ; and that this effort should be carried out at a time when this 

 sea is not rendered impassable (as it is in summer) by floating fields 

 of ice, proceeding from the Siberian shore. 



Of one thing, however, all geographers feel well assured, that no 

 practical north-west passage, as suggested by Cook, and contended for 

 by Barrow, can be detected. Every new voyage to the North makes 

 the mystery of these regions more mysterious. The history of these 

 voyages, from Hudson's and Baffin's down to our day, could be truly 

 told so as to present a series of paradoxes. The expeditions worst 

 equipped have made the most remarkable discoveries. The best 

 equipped expeditions have often returned with no accounts to give 

 but those of disappointment. Again, it would hardly be too much to 

 say, that almost every expedition has found land where the best 

 guides in conjecture had made water almost certain, and water where 

 wise men looked for land. 



A single instance is Capt. Sir John Ross's expedition in Prince 

 Regent's Inlet, where he was frozen up for four years, and lost his 

 vessel. He and his nephew, now Capt. Sir James Ross, were 

 together. They had the command of the party. After roughing it 

 for four or five years there, they came home to England with exactly 

 opposite notions of what they had discovered. John was sure there 

 was no strait. James was sure there was. Duels have been fought 



C* 



in England, rising from this question. Sir John Barrow, the most 

 learned man on these subjects in England, as one would have said, 

 took sides with James. He even wrote a book, which he ended by 

 correcting " the erroneous impression founded on the most absurd 

 nonsense from which a conclusion is drawn, that a passage does not 

 exist between Prince Regent's Inlet and the Polar Sea, whiclj has 

 since been proved to be wholly incorrect." He just got this book 

 cleverly published, when Dr. Rae returned from those regions, 

 having proved that John was right and James was wrong ; that the 

 " erroneous impression " was time, and that the " incorrect " demon- 

 stration was a correct one. 



Sir John Ross himself, in this very expedition, had had to sail 

 through a chain of mountains, which he laid down on the charts in 

 his first expedition. 



Inglefield's discoveries in the Isabel, referred to above, are amon" 

 the most remarkable of the whole series. They were made the last 

 summer in a little steamer of only a hundred and fifty tons, in four 

 months' time. They make probable again the idea of the old geogra- 

 phers, that Greenland is a great island, and Baffin's Bay a great chan- 

 nel into the Northern Ocean. 



Indeed, the modern discoveries have, in two or three notable 

 instances, compelled the geographers to enter on their maps again the 

 drawings of the old map-men, which had been omitted because no 

 authority was known for them. 



