BRAVE YOUNG PARRY. 



169 



commanded a boat in a successful expedition up the Connecticut river, for which service 

 he received a medal. Three years later he was recalled to England in consequence of the 

 severe illness of his father, who had been seized with a paralytic stroke. His father's 

 illness and his own despair of promotion made this the gloomiest period of our young- 

 hero's life. But dark is the hour before the dawn, and an incident occurred which 

 threw a gleam of hope upon his professional prospects, and proved the forerunner to his 

 future success. At the close of 1817 he wrote to a friend on the subject of an expe- 



THE NOKTH C.U'E. 



dition that was about starting to explore the River Congo. The letter was written, but 

 not posted, when his eye fell on a paragraph in the newspaper relative to an expedition 

 about to be fitted out to the northern regions. He seized the pen, and added, by 

 way of postscript, that, as far as he was concerned, "hot or cold it was all one to him, 

 Africa or the Pole." This letter was shown to Mr. Barrow, the then Secretary of the 

 Admiralty, and in a few days he was appointed to the command of the Alexander, 

 discovery ship, under the orders of Commander John Ross, as recorded in the first voyage 

 of the present series. 



In 1819-20 Parry made a second voyage to the Arctic, this being the first, how- 

 ever, in which he had the chief command. The Hecla and the Griper were the vessels 

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