INTRODUCTION. xxxix 



1 Investigator ' in Mercy Bay, of Bank's Land, and 

 Parry's farthest on Melville Island. Though the 

 North-west passage may be said to have been accom- 

 plished jointly by these two distinguished seamen, in 

 this high latitude, as the passage further south was 

 completed by Franklin five years earlier, no ship has 

 ever yet passed from ocean to ocean. The subsequent 

 expeditions in search of Franklin were not able to 

 reach so far west as Parry did from the Atlantic, until 

 a division of Sir Edward Belcher's squadron under 

 Kellett did so in 1852, while Belcher with his own 

 ships penetrated no further than the head of Welling- 

 ton Channel, which we now know Franklin himself 

 did with the ' Erebus ' and ' Terror ' in 1845. But for 

 all this it would be ungenerous as well as unjust to 

 pronounce these enterprises failures. Perfect success 

 has never been achieved in these instances, simply 

 because it is not in the power of man to cope with the 

 forces of nature in those stern inhospitable regions. 

 To say that the accomplishment of the North-west 

 passage will never be realised, or that the attempt to 

 reach the North Pole will never be renewed, would be 

 a bold prophecy. Both are objects worthy of the 

 national enterprise of a maritime people, and it would 

 be safer to predict that both will be attempted, and, it 

 may be, eventually accomplished. The former, like 

 the search for Franklin, was abandoned when but one 

 route remained untried, and that route, east of King 

 William's Land, dearly bought experience would, seem 

 to point out as the one which offers the best hope of 

 success. The Pole must be sought by ship alone, and 

 by the only track which has not yet been found im- 

 possible for steam tp penetrate — by the Sea of Spits- 

 bergen. 



