CH. XXIII] 
Parry and his School 
207 
number of men working the vessels. Stores and provisions 
were got on board for three years 1 . The main objects of 
the expedition were the advancement of the knowledge of 
geography and navigation, as well as of science generally. 
On the 21st of July, 1819, the Hecla and Griper were 
off Sanderson's Hope, when Parry counted 88 icebergs 
from the crow's-nest. He boldly determined not to creep 
northwards along the land floe of Melville Bay, but to 
force a passage through the middle pack direct for 
Lancaster Sound. An older man would have hesitated. 
But there is no great success without risks, and young 
men take them. The ice was only 80 miles wide in that 
most favourable year, and Parry was at the entrance 
of Lancaster Sound by the 28th July. 
It would be difficult to imagine a more exhilarating 
moment than that when the Croker mountains were 
found to have no existence and the wide channel was 
discovered, leading into an unknown region. The lofty 
cliffs, with their scored sides like pillars and buttresses, 
form a grand portal to the unknown, as Dr Fisher 
described them, "like an immense wall in ruins, rising 
almost perpendicular from the sea." There was a fresh 
breeze, and the Hecla ran quickly up the channel, with 
mast-heads and rigging crowded with officers and men 
eagerly looking westward. 
Then there was some ice obstructing a westward 
course, but a wide channel opened to the south. Parry 
sailed down it for 150 miles, giving it the name of the 
Prince Regent, while the western land was called North 
Somerset, after Parry's own county. A strong ice-blink 
across the channel induced him to turn north again into 
the westward channel. Then a wide open channel was 
discovered to the north and received the name of Welling- 
ton, but that was not the way. Westward Ho ! was the 
cry, with new discoveries and new islands in every watch : 
Cornwallis Island, named after Parry's first naval patron; 
Cape Hotham after one of the Lords who signed his 
1 Much attention was given to the provisioning. There were the 
preserved meats and soups of Donkin and Gamble ; Burkitt's essence 
of malt, hops, and spruce; lemon juice, vinegar, sauerkraut, pickles, and 
herbs as antiscorbutics. Coal was used for ballast, 70 chaldrons in the 
Hecla, 34 in the Griper. The Admiralty supplied warm clothing and wolf- 
skin blankets for the men without any charge. 
