POSTSCRIPT. 425 



from neither post nor cairn marking the limit of its journey 

 having been seen. If the same expanse of open water was 

 visible, in 1846, from Baillie Hamilton's Island, which 

 Captain Penny saw in 1851, we may readily conceive 

 the efforts that would be made to carry the Erebus and 

 Terror into it by any practicable extent of ice sawing, 

 particularly if Barrow's Strait remained closed. The age 

 of a floe of ice filling a strait does not indicate with cer- 

 tainty the length of time that the strait has been blocked 

 up, for drift ice, loaded with the remains of several years' 

 snow, may be carried into a narrow passage, so as to shut 

 it up, and as suddenly removed again on a favourable 

 concurrence of winds and tides. One navigator, there- 

 fore, may be able to sail, as Sir W. E. Parry did, nearly 

 quite through that northern archipelago in one season, 

 while his successors may find impassable barriers thrown 

 across the path which he pursued, and new avenues opened. 

 It would be unsafe, therefore, to argue that Wellington 

 Strait is always closed, because it was choked by a floe of 

 some age in 1850 and 1851. 



By the efforts of the searching parties, which have just 

 returned, combined with those of preceding years, all the 

 accessible parts of the continental coast of America have 

 been explored, and both sides of Barrow's Strait, to the 

 fui'ther side of Melville Island, and the land beyond Cape 

 Walker. Land has also been traced, though only by dis- 

 tant view, round the bottom of Jones's Sound. This has 

 narrowed the lines of search to two distinct points — that 

 is, to the south west of Cape Walker, which, from its being 

 the direction in which Sir John was instructed to go, seemed 

 to be especially the one in which he was to be sought ; and 

 the newly-found channel opening out to the westward from 

 Wellington Strait. It is greatly to be desired that this one 

 may be pursued by new efforts. 



