48 DISCOVBBT OF THE NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 



navigator, however accustomed to these dangers. His ves- 

 sel, several times beset by ice, was at length so firmly 

 locked in, that M'Clure, seeing no hope of release, decided 

 upon sending thirty of his crew to make their way home- 

 wards ; some by way of North America, up the Mackenzie 

 River, and the others by Cape Spencer, Beechey Island; 

 while he himself, with the remainder of the officers and 

 crew% would stay by the ship, spend a fourth winter in those 

 dreary regions, and then, if not relieved, endeavor to retreat 

 upon Lancaster Sound. Such was the arrangement, w^hen 

 an incident occurred that thrilled their hearts with joy. 

 The captain and his first lieutenant were walking near the 

 ship conversing, when they perceived a figure rapidly ap- 

 proaching them from the rough ice at the entrance of the 

 bay. When about a hundred yards from them, he shouted 

 and gesticulated, but without enabling them to guess who 

 he might be. At length he approached, and to their aston- 

 ishment thus announced himself: "I am Lieutenant Pym, 

 late of the * Herald,' and now in the * Resolute.' Captain 

 Kellett is in her at Denby Island." Lieutenant Pym had 

 come from Melville Island, in consequence of one of Captain 

 Kellett's parties having discovered an inscription left by 

 M'Clure on Parry's famous sandstone rock in Winter Harbor. 



The ship was abandoned, and the commander and his 

 crew, released from a very perilous position, returned to 

 England in 1854. Although he was obliged to leave his 

 ship blocked in mountains of ice, and had to walk and sledge 

 over hundreds of miles of ice, to reach other ships w^hich 

 had entered the frozen regions in the opposite direction, 

 still, he had water under him all the way, and was thus the 

 first commander of a vessel who really solved the problem 

 of the famous North-west Passage. 



The Arctic and Antarctic Circles are the boundaries 

 which separate the frigid and temperate zones. At the 

 poles themselves there is only one day of six months, during 



