14 
SCENES IN THE PACIFIC. 
lying some hundreds of miles northeast of Lake Superior 
on which Lord Selkirk had founded a colony; that this 
settlement contains about three thousand people, composed 
chiefly of gentlemen and servants, who have retired from 
the Company’s service with their Indian wives and half- 
breed children. They cultivate considerable tracts of land, 
have cattle and horses, schools and churches, a Catholic 
Bishop and a Protestant preacher of the English Church. 
Some years since a Mr. McLeod, from this settlement, went 
to Indiana and purchased a very large drove of sheep for its 
use. But in driving them a thousand miles over the prairies, 
their fleeces became so matted with poisonous burrs, that 
most of them died before reaching their place of destination. 
Mr, Simpson related a few incidents of an exploring ex¬ 
pedition, which the Company had despatched to the northern 
coast of America. The unsatisfactory results of those fitted 
out by the home goverment, under Parry, Franklin, Ross, 
and Back, which had been partially furnished with men and 
means by the Company, led it at length to undertake one 
alone. To this end it despatched, in 1S38, one of its officers, 
accompanied by our friend Simpson’s brother, well furnished 
with men, instruments, and provisions on this hazardous en¬ 
terprise. I have since been informed, that this Mr. Simpson 
was a man of great energy and talent—the one indeed on 
whom the Company relied for the success of the undertaking. 
From his brother I learned only that the unexplored part of 
the coast was surveyed, that the w r aters of Davis’ Strait were 
found to flow with a strong current westward, and enter the 
Pacific through Behring’s Strait; and that Greenland conse¬ 
quently is an island or continent by itself! The Mr. Simpson 
of this expedition is now known to the civilized world to have 
trodden the ices and snows, and breathed the frozen air of 
that horrid shore ; and by so doing to have added these great 
facts to the catalogue of human knowledge ; and having be¬ 
come deranged in consequence of his incredible sufferings, 
to have blown out his own brains on the field of his glorious 
