159 
Account of the Expedition to Bqffinbs Bay. 
cal productions of all the various islands by which it is guard- 
ed. We conceive it, therefore, thoroughly established, that the 
land laid down in Captain Ross’s chart, is formed by the wes- 
tern sides of the same islands ; and though our evidence for this 
reaches no higher than the latitude of 76° SO', yetw^e think 
there is reason to conclude, that the new tribe of Esquimaux 
were the inhabitants of an island, and that the rest of the coast 
of Baffin’s Bay may have been bounded by islands equally 
large and numerous as those upon its eastern shores 
But though the opposite shores of Baffin’s Bay are probably 
formed of archipelagos of islands, like the coasts of Norway 
and Corea, yet we do not think that there is any probability of 
a passage being discovered to the north of Cumberland Straits. 
Another expedition to the same quarter, fitted out in a similar 
manner, could do little more than Captain Ross has accom- 
plished ; and if our Government is desirous of obtaining more 
minute information respecting the Arctic regions, they must send 
small vessels, with officers and men of science on board, who 
will have the resolution of wintering, as Sir Charles Giesecke 
did, among the inhabitants of these desolate regions. 
We must reserve for another occasion, a notice of the scien- 
tihc results of the Arctic Expedition. With the exception of 
a few good measures of the dip and the variation of the needle, 
taken upon ice-bergs, science has received few additions from 
an enterprise, otherwise well planned, and judiciously executed. 
The cause of this is too obvious to require explanation ; and 
it is a mystery yet to be unravelled, and a stain yet to be re- 
moved from the scientific character of Britain, in the eyes of 
foreign nations, that an expedition should have left our shores, 
without a naturalist on board, without even a professional 
draughtsman, and without a man of general science, who could 
observe and record the interesting phenomena which Nature 
might have been expected to present at the limit of her habi- 
table dominions *}*. 
* A very curious example of this is given by Captain Berry, in the case of 
the harbour of Wangeroa in New Zealand, which escaped the penetration of Cap- 
tain Cook, though he was nearly a month in the neighbourhood. See Edinburgh 
Magazine, April 1819, p. 304. 
+ Captain Sabine, who was recommended by the Royal Society to make the 
experiments with the pendulum and other instruments which were sent along with 
the Expedition at the request of that distinguished body, discharged his duty to 
their entire satisfaction, and with an ardour and 2 :eal deserving of the highest praise- 
