348 MM. C. Borgen and R. Copeland's Short Account of the 



as a discoverer, which since 1818 had been frequently and vio- 

 lently attacked. In this he and his nephew, Sir James Clarke 

 Ross, who has since become so famous by his antarctic voyages, 

 most perfectly succeeded. 



The expedition sailed from London in a paddle-steamer (the 

 f Victory ') of 150 tons, with a crew of twenty-three persons, 

 officers and men. The engine soon proved to be quite useless ; 

 and after a stoker had unfortunately lost his arm by means of 

 it, and some unsuccessful attempts to employ it had been made, 

 it was given up and finally disembarked at Fury Point (where 

 Parry lost his ship) . The unfortunate stoker had been left be- 

 hind on the coast of Scotland and replaced by another. 



Ross sailed through Lancaster Sound into Prince-Regent 

 Inlet and wintered in Felix Harbour in 69° 58' 42" N. lat. and 

 92° 1' 7" W. long. On landing the engine, he took some pro- 

 visions from the store left by Parry at Fury Point, so that at the 

 beginning of the winter he was completely provisioned for two 

 years and ten months. In arranging the ship for the winter, 

 Parry's precautions and experiences served in general as a guide ; 

 but Ross introduced the essential improvements of covering the 

 whole deck with snow, and establishing condensers for the pur- 

 pose of keeping the space between decks dry. The latter were 

 large metallic vessels turned upside down over openings of several 

 inches in diameter made in the ceilings of the cabins. They were 

 covered with snow, and the moist vapours arising from the space 

 below were condensed in these cold cupolas, so as to prevent all 

 moisture below the deck ; the ice collected in them was removed 

 weekly, when it amounted on an average to 500 or 600 pounds. 



For the entertainment of his little crew a school was esta- 

 blished, and otherwise the time was passed as in Parry's expedi- 

 tion. By frequent journeys in the summers of 1830 and 1831, 

 James Clarke Ross investigated the two coasts of Boothia Felix, 

 and ascertained that this land was connected with the American 

 continent by the Isthmus of Boothia. On one of these journeys 

 he reached the magnetic pole. Frequent intercourse with the 

 Eskimos, who here again displayed great knowledge of their 

 native country, gave him information of a large open water still 

 further to the west (Victoria Strait) — just as Parry, when on the 

 other side of the Melville peninsula, had heard much of the 

 Gulf of Boothia, which was now cleared up by Ross. The na- 

 tives even mentioned to him the subsequently discovered Bellot 

 Strait which unites Prince-Regent Inlet with Franklin's (Peel's) 

 Strait*; but when he examined the place described by them, the 

 strait, which was concealed by several islands lying in front of 

 it, escaped his observation, and he regarded the indentation of 

 * Op. cit. pp. 299 & 338. 



