186 THE SEA. 



reindeers he had intended for the same purpose could not be employed at all. The pro- 

 visions taken by Wrangell were rye-biscuit, meat, and portable soup; smoked fish; the- 

 great Russian speciality, tea; spirits; and tobacco. A conical tent of reindeer skin, inside 

 of which a fire was lighted, was part of the outfit. He proceeded on one occasion 

 140 miles, and on another 170 miles, from the land to the margin of the open sea,, 

 having often to cross ridges of broken and hummocky ice sometimes eighty and ninety 

 feet above the general level. At the edge of the frozen field the ice was found to be 

 rotten and unsafe; and on his last journey, when the ice on which he travelled was 

 broken lip by a gale while he was seventy miles from land, nothing but the swiftness 

 of his dogs, who tore over the opening gaps, saved him from destruction. A very- 

 thankful man was Wrangell when he reached terra fir ma once more. 



CHAPTER XX. 



THE MAGNETIC POLE. A LAND JOURNEY TO THE POLAR, SEA. 



Sir John Ross and the Victory -First Steam Vessel employed in the Arctic Discovery of the Magnetic Pole The Britishi 

 Flag waving over it -Franklin and Richardson's Journeys to the Polar Sea The Coppermine River Sea Voyage 

 in Birch-bark Canoes Return Journey Terrible Sufferings Starvation and Utter Exhaustion Deaths by the Way 

 A Brave Feat Relieved at length Journey to the Mouth of the Mackenzie Fracas with the Esquimaux 

 Peace Restored. 



IMMEDIATELY after the return of Parry's expedition in 1827, Sir John Ross submitted 

 to the Admiralty the plans for the voyage of which we are about to speak. Hitherto- 

 all voyages of discovery in the Arctic seas had been made in sailing vessels. Ross- 

 deserves the credit of having been the first to urge the employment of a steam-ship 

 in that service. His proposals were not accepted, and he therefore laid the scheme 

 before a wealthy friend, Mr. Sheriff Booth. At that time the Parliamentary reward of 

 20,000 was still outstanding to the discoverer of a north-west passage, and Mr. Booth 

 declined to embark " in what might be deemed by others a mere mercantile specu- 

 lation." Not long afterwards, the Government reward being withdrawn, Mr. Booth 

 immediately empowered Ross to provide, at his own private expense, all that was 

 necessary for the expedition. A paddle-wheel steamer, the Victory, was purchased. The- 

 ressel was strengthened and many other improvements made. She was provisioned for 

 a thousand days, and was to have been accompanied for some distance by a store-ship. 

 The men on the latter mutinied at Loch Ryan, and the larger part of them imme- 

 diately left the ship, which, to make a long story short, never proceeded on this voyage. 

 Misfortune befell the Victory ; her engines proved a total failure, and at the com- 

 mencement of the voyage were the cause of much anxiety and worry to the commander. 

 It must be remembered that sea- going steamers were then of very recent introduction, 

 while long ocean voyages in steam-ships were almost unthought of. Symington's first 

 river steamer had indeed made her first trip on the Clyde as early as 1788, but the 

 earliest sea-going steamboat of which we have record did not make a trip till 1815. The 

 voyage was only from Glasgow to London. As we have seen, an American steamer crossed 



