510 THE FRANKLIN SEAECff— 1848-51. 



cross the channel to the east side. At eleven p.m. Penny started again, and 

 having advanced six miles farther — in all fifty-one miles from the ships — he 

 encamped on a low flat point, which he named Point Petersen, and took his 

 first night's rest. " At half-past six p.m. (on the 10th)," writes Penny, who 

 had been detained all day, through having met Surgeon Goodsir who had 

 finished a most laborious journey — "we started from Point Petersen, and 

 had a splendid drive, passing a deep bay, which I named after Dr Kane, 

 a highly intelligent medical officer in the American expedition." [In paying 

 this deserved compliment. Penny little imagined that after a year or two Dr 

 Kane would be the conductor of one of the most remarkably exciting, as well 

 as scientifically important. Polar expeditions that ever set sail from any 

 shore.] On the 10th the distance travelled by Penny was about thirty miles. 

 On the route the captain and Petersen sufiered much from pain in the eyes, 

 and a bay which they passed toward the close of the day's journey they 

 named Snowblind Bay. The encampment was made on the north-east 

 point of CornwaUis Island. The point " forms the northern boundary of 

 Wellington Channel on this (the western) side." Penny named it Cape de 

 Haven, " out of compliment to the commander of the American expedition 

 (the 'Advance^ and 'Rescue'), that so nobly came out in search of 

 our lost countrymen." From this cape the land trends away to the west- 

 ward and northward for ten miles, when there is another point. On the 

 11th Penny and Petersen were snowblind and unable to proceed, and on 

 the 12th the sunshine was so bright, and the glare of the snow so powerful, 

 that the travellers could not start till after seven in the evening. Passing 

 round Cape de Haven, Penny pushed on to the point ten miles north-west 

 of it. " At this point," writes Penny, " I ascended a hill about four hundred 

 feet high, fi^om which I could see land stretching from the opposite side of 

 the Wellington Channel northward to a point bearing about north-east, and 

 appearing to be continued north-westward, as if it should join the land on 

 which I stood, which stretched away about north-west. There was, how- 

 ever, a space to the eastward in which the land was lost sight of Here, as 

 well as between the points north-east and north-west, there might be open- 

 ings out of this newly-discovered sea. I came to the resolution of proceeding 

 (over the frozen channel) northward, leaving instructions for Messrs Marshall 

 and Goodsir to continue along the line of coast leading to the north-west- 

 ward." The point from which Penny had this splendid view of a sea that 

 had hitherto had no name among civilised men, he named Point Decision 

 from the circumstance that it was here he had decided upon his subsequent 

 route. Fired by his important discovery. Penny gave orders to proceed, 

 though the time was now about midnight, and a howling, blood-curdling 

 blast laden with snow blew from the north-west right in the teeth of the 

 advancing sledges. Petersen had warned Penny that the dogs could not 



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