SHOUT ON WESTERN BOTANY. 113 



Mississippi Valley, and constitutes, therefore, a memorable 

 epoch in the annals of Western Science. We proceed, 

 however, with the investigation now immediately before us — 

 the progress of botanical discovery. 



The British government having failed to effect the long 

 cherished object of discovering a North- Western passage 

 by sea to the Pacific ocean, although successive naval expe- 

 ditions, liberally outfitted and ably conducted by Captains 

 Ross, Parry, Lyon, and Beechey, had each made most ener- 

 getic and daring efforts to accomplish it, determined upon 

 other plans of exploration, by which this long-sought and 

 anxiously desired channel might still be found. 



Among these none seemed so feasible, or so full of pro- 

 mise, as that of sending an expedition over-land from Hud- 

 son's Bay to the Arctic Ocean, and the investigation of its 

 coast quite across the Continent. With this view two seve- 

 ral expeditions under the command of Capt. Sir John 

 Franklin, of the Royal Navy, were successively despatched 

 on this new and venturous project. And although they 

 also failed to effect the main object of government, yet as 

 they contributed greatly towards a knowledge of the Natural 

 History, and especially the Botany and Zoology of the 

 Arctic and North Western portions of our continent, a brief 

 notice of each will not be deemed irrelevant to the inquiry 

 before us. 



The first of these overhand eocpeditionSf under the command 

 of Capt. Franklin, accompanied by Dr John Richardson, as 

 surgeon and naturalist, disembarked at York Factory on 

 Hudson's Bay, in August, 1819 ; and notwithstanding the 

 long detention, occasioned by an intervening winter of nine 

 months' duration, by the end of the second season they had 

 penetrated northward to the Polar Sea. Here winter, 

 arrayed in all the horrors of an arctic climate, overtook 

 the party early in September. They suffered dreadfully 

 from cold and famine, to a degree indeed unparalleled in the 

 annals of human misery ; most of the party perished, and the 

 survivors were on the \eTge of the grave, when the Indians 

 Joiirn. of Bot. Vol. III. No. 19, Dec. 1840. g 



