including a View of previous Discoveries. 235 
discoverer’s pranks.” They could not bear that so glorious an 
object should die through the mercenary baseness of its con- 
ductor. They were ready to venture their fortunes, their 
lives, their all, in another attempt ; and they assured him, that 
44 they were no inconsiderable persons.” They proved in fact 
to be the surgeon and clerk of the ship ; and Dobbs, on further 
communing with them, openly proclaimed Middleton as a trai- 
tor, bribed by the Hudson’s Bay Company, who had offered 
him d?5000, before he set out, to stifle the discovery. An em- 
bittered controversy followed. Middleton was strictly examined 
before the Admiralty, and wrote repeated defences of himself ; 
but an unfavourable impression with regard to him remained 
both with Government and the public. 
From the voyage next to be narrated, as well as that of Cap- 
tain Parry, it appears fully ascertained, that Middleton was on 
this occasion most grossly injured. By these navigators all the 
features of the coast were found to have been most accurately 
described by him ; and though his conclusions with regard to 
the origin of the tide in the Welcome, and the impossibility of 
penetrating farther, proved to have been hastily made, they 
were supported by very strong apparent presumptions. He 
appears only, after forming the opinion, to have betrayed ra- 
ther an immoderate anxiety that no farther idea of any such at- 
tempt should be entertained. If indeed it was ascertained 
that he said, at the table of the Governor of Churchhill Fort, 
and in presence of some of his officers, that 44 he would make 
the voyage, and none on board should know whether there was 
a passage or not, and that he would be a better friend to the 
company than ever,” there would be great reason to doubt his 
faith from the first ; but it seems scarcely possible that he could 
have been so imprudent. The officers asserted, however, that 
when some of them doubted his conclusion of the Wager being 
a river, 44 he rated the clerk as a double-tongued rascal, would 
cane the lieutenant, broomstick the master, and lash any others” 
that should throw out such doubts. He is also said to have 
refused to bring home two Indians who were taken on board, 
or to hold any communication with them ; though one of the 
officers, who had gained a smattering of their language, glean- 
ed some notices from them respecting the Coppermine River, 
