THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE. 



587 



who had not since been heard of. As the interest of Sir 

 Edward Belcher's expedition centres entirely in the junction 

 effected by Kellett with McClure, we revert to the adventures 

 of the latter explorer, now distinguished as the discoverer of 

 the Northwest Passage. 



Collinson and McClure sailed in the Enterprise and Investi- 

 gator for Behring's Strait via Cape Horn on the 20th of 

 January, 1850. They arrived at the strait in July. The 

 Enterprise, being foiled in her efforts to get through the ice, 

 turned about and wintered at Hong-Kong. McClure, in the 

 Investigator, kept gallantly on through the strait, and, during 

 the month of August, advanced to the southeast, into the heart 

 of the Polar Sea, along a coast never yet visited by a ship, and 

 on the 21st of August arrived at the mouth of Mackenzie River, 

 discovered by Mackenzie in his land-expedition in 1789 to 

 determine the northern coast-line of America. He had now 

 passed the region visited and surveyed in former years by 

 Franklin, Back, Rae, and others, in overland explorations, and 

 on the 6th of September arrived at a point considerably to the 

 east of any land marked upon the charts. He now began to 

 name the islands, headlands, and indentations. On the 9th, 

 the ship was found to be but sixty miles to the west of the spot 

 to which Parry, sailing westward, had carried his ship in 1820. 

 Could he but sail these sixty miles his name would be immortal. 

 " I cannot," he writes, u describe my anxious feelings. Can it 

 be possible that this water communicates with Barrow's Straits 

 and shall prove to be the long-sought Northwest Passage ? 

 Can it be that so humble a creature as I am will be permitted 

 to perform what has baffled the talented and wise for hundreds 

 of years?" On the 17th, the Investigator reached the longi^ 

 tude of 117° 10' west, — thirty miles from the waters in which 

 Parry wintered with the Hecla and Griper in a harbor of Mel- 

 ville Island. Alas ! the vessel went no farther east : the ice 

 drifted perceptibly to the west, and it was fated that these 



