1742. CHRISTOPHER MIDDLETON. 285 



of having taken a bribe of o£'5,000 from his old 

 employers not to make any discoveries. He de- 

 nies the bribe, but seems to admit that he might 

 have said to some of the Company before he left 

 England, that he would discover the north-west 

 passage and yet that none of those who were with 

 him should be the wiser for it. The dispute ran 

 very high, and several of Middleton's officers 

 took part against him, swearing that he had mis- 

 represented facts, and tampered with them to con- 

 ceal the truth. Added to all which, Dobbs accused 

 him of not only having slighted examining the 

 material parts of the coast, and the direction and 

 height of the tide, where, by all former accounts, 

 there was the greatest probability of a passage; 

 but that " he even avoided the coast, and passed 

 great part in the night, and has given false ac- 

 counts of the course of the tides, and has made 

 an imaginary frozen strait, in order to bring a 

 tide of flood through it, to support the false facts 

 he has laid down in his journal, and published in. 

 his chart of the course of the tide, from thence to 

 conclude that there is no passage," ^c.*" — and he. 

 adds, '' that his whole conduct, from his going to 

 Churchill until his return to England, and even 

 since his return, makes it plainly appear, that he 

 intended to serve the Company at the public exr 



• 



* Account of the Countries adjoining to Hudson's Bay, by 

 Arthur Dobbs, Esq. p. 78. • 



