A SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITION. 



553 



immensa quantities of iron, from the violent oscillations of the 

 needle. Upon a second visit to Otdia, one of the Rurick 

 Islands, in 1824, the inhabitants remembered him upon his 

 shouting the syllables Totobu, — their manner of pronouncing 

 his name. They received him with great joy, rushing into the 

 water up to their hips : they then lifted him out of his boat and 

 carried him dry-shod to the shore. 



In 1817, Louis XVIII. sent Captain Freycinet upon the first 

 voyage which, though undertaken for the advancement of science, 

 had neither hydrography nor geography for its object. Its 

 purpose was to determine the form of the globe at the South 

 Pole, the observation of magnetic and atmospheric phenomena, 

 the study of the three kingdoms of nature, and the investigation 

 of the resources and languages of such indigenous people as the 

 vessel should visit. The expedition was conducted with skill ; but 

 its results, being purely scientific, do not require mention here. 



In the winter of 1816, the whalers returning from the Green- 

 land seas to England reported the ice to be clearer than they 

 had ever known it before. The period seemed favorable for a 

 renewal of Arctic exploration ; and in 1818 the Admiralty 

 fitted out two vessels — the Isabella and Alexander — for the 

 purpose. Captain John Ross was sent in the first to discover a 

 northwest passage, and Lieutenant Edward Parry in the second, 

 to penetrate if possible to the Pole. Their instructions required 

 them to examine with especial care the openings at the head 

 of Baffin's Bay. Sailing on the 18th of April, they reached 

 the coast of Greenland on the 17th of June. They saw tribes 

 of Esquimaux who had never seen men of any race but their 

 own, and who felt and testified an indescribable alarm at the 

 sight of the adventurers. It was subsequently proved that 

 what they feared was contagion. Quite at the northern ex- 

 tremity of the bay, Ross observed the phenomenon which has 

 given so romantic, almost legendary, a character to his voyage, 

 « — that of red snow He saw a range of peaks clothed in a 



