SIXTY YEARS OF GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERY. 677 
direction if this Association were to appoint a committee to 
co-operate with the Antarctic Committees in Melbourne and 
London, and address the several Australasian Governments upon 
the subject. 
The polar work of the last sixty years has been of surpassing 
interest and of immense importance. In other parts of the world, 
the ceaseless activity and zeal of her subjects has also rendered 
Her Majesty’s reign a memorable epoch in the record of human 
progress. On the Asiatic continent one generation after another 
of British surveyors and British explorers has pushed forward our 
knowledge, and the work is now approximating completion. 
The trigonometrical survey of India is the grandest monument 
of the Queen’s reign on the Asiatic continent. When Her Majesty 
ascended the throne Colonel Everest was succeeded by General 
Walker, who has since completed the principal triangulation of 
India. This great work presents a record which forms one of the 
proudest pages in the history of British domination in the East. 
‘© We look back,” says a recent writer, “with pride and admira- 
tion upon the Asiatic labours of the Queen’s geographical sub- 
jects.” The geological and natural history survey of Canada, 
under the late directorship of A. R. C. Selwyn, formerly head of 
the Geological Survey Department of Victoria, is second in 
importance to that of the trigonometrical survey of India. 
Arctic exploration has always been viewed with interest and 
often with enthusiasm, but never have the romance and tragedy 
of exploration held so sustained a hold upon the world as during 
the fifteen years which followed the departure of Sir John Franklin 
in 1845. In that year the “Erebus” and “ Terror,” just returned 
from the Antarctic, sailed to complete the survey of the Arctic 
coast of America, and achieve the North-west Passage, ‘‘ the vain 
dream of the merchants of the sixteenth century.” 
Towards the end of the summer of that year (i845) they were 
seen by a whaler in Melville Bay, and this was the last direct 
news of that illfated expedition. In 1848 Sir James Clarke 
Ross started on the first search expedition, and during the next 
few years ship after ship went out through Lancaster Sound on 
the east and Behring Strait on the west, while land parties, 
under the guidance of the Hudson’s Bay Company, whose officers 
were exploring the Arctic coast of America. 
The Arctic Archipelago was very fully explored in this way. 
In 1850 no less than fifteen vessels were prosecuting the search 
for the missmg Franklin Expedition, and in that year Captain 
McClure, who went out by way of Behring Strait in the “ Inves- 
tigator,” discovered the North-west Passage, but he found the ice 
conditions so severe that he had to abandon his ship and return 
by one of the vessels pursuing the Franklin search from the 
eastward. 
