264 ARCTIC VOYAGES. Chap. VIII. 



ness on the 20th October, where she was paid off 

 at Woolwich on the 2 1st of November. 



This last attempt for the discovery of a north- 

 west passage, it must be admitted, is the least 

 successful of the three that Captain Parry has now 

 made, not merely as to any information regarding 

 the passage, but as to any extension of geographical 

 knowledge or of natural history. Of all the arctic 

 countries visited by him, the two shores of Prince 

 Regent's Inlet are the most naked and barren, 

 the most dreary and desolate, that have been 

 seen — not excepting even Melville Island — not 

 merely desolate of human beings, but almost de- 

 prived also of all animal and. vegetable life; a 

 gloomy, sad, and melancholy land. " We have 

 scarcely," says Parry, " ever visited a coast on 

 which so little of animal life occurs. For days 

 together only one or two seals, a single sea-horse, 

 and now and then a flock of ducks were seen." 

 An exception, however, occurred in the numberless 

 kittiwakes flying about, and some hundreds of white 

 whales sporting about the place where the Fury 

 was abandoned. 



The transient view which was taken of Prince 

 Regent's shores on the first voyage was favour- 

 able enough to impress on the mind of Parry, 

 on the failure of his second voyage, that to get 

 fairly into the Polar Sea " there is no known open- 

 ing which seems to present itself so favourably for 



