ANNALS 



OF 



PHILOSOPHY. 



MARCH, 1823. 



Article I. 



Memoir on the probable Situation and Prospects of the Expedition 

 wider Capt. Parry. By Henry Edmonston, Esq.* 



(To the Editor of the Annals of Philosophy.) 



SIR, Jan.T, 1823. 



The last ships of the season have long since arrived from 

 Davis's Straits, the year has closed, and time slips on ; yet we 

 hear no tidings of our countrymen, who, twenty months ago, 

 sailed on the expedition for the discovery of a North West 

 Passage. The public mind, seldom long alive to any thing, but 

 lately awakened for a moment to this subject by the return of 

 Capt. Franklin, seems again to have sunk into its usual state of 

 repose. Did our adventurers but know how small a share of 

 the general sympathy and attention their situation engrosses at 

 any given period, it would not much tend to cheer the dulness 

 of their long and dreary polar winter. But though in some mea- 

 sure forgotten by their country, they live in the hopes and fears 

 of kindred and friends left behind, and in the anxieties of those 

 who know how to estimate the magnitude and danger of the 

 enterprise, and to do justice to their heroism and intrepidity. 

 The indifference on the part of the public at large is peculiarly 

 ill-judged, for at no stage in the history of this extraordinary 

 project, since it was first set on foot by Cabot, did it ever 

 possess such an intensity of interest as it does at the present 



• Read before the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. 

 New Series, vol. v. m 



