LAST VOYAGE OF CAPT. ROSS. 
103 
that he should fail a second time. Deeply indeed did he feel 
the stigma, which had been cast upon his character, and certainly 
it must be admitted, that he was incessantly persecuted by the 
malignity, as well as the ignorance of a host of pseudo critics, 
philosophers and men “ learned in science,” who did not hesitate 
in the most unblushing maimer, and without the slightest regard 
to the already too deeply wounded feelings of Capt. Ross, to 
promulgate their opinion, that even if a north west passage did 
actually exist, he was not exactly the man to find it out; in 
which most strange and impertinent opinion, no one could 
possibly differ from them more than Capt. Ross himself. In the 
thermometer of public estimation the gallant captain stood, like his 
thermometer in Lancaster Sound, twenty degrees below Zero ; 
and with the Admiralty, as our gallic neighbours would term it, 
he stood en mauvaise odeur, so that although he expressed his 
thorough conviction that the discovery of the north west passage 
was yet to be accomplished, yet the heads of that department, 
either from a gross fatuity, or a stupid inability, properly and 
justly to appreciate the merits of Capt. Ross, did not seem in the 
least disposed to furnish him with the opportunity of verifying his 
conviction, arising perhaps from their having privately a convic¬ 
tion of their own, that the conviction of Capt. Ross was not founded 
on truth; in vain he urged that he was not the first individual on 
record, who had returned from a voyage or a journey, and had 
reported the discovery of an object, which although it might 
have been actually in existence at the period of its discovery f 
was not to be found on the following day; and by way of il¬ 
lustrating this part of his defence, he quoted the very apposite 
affair of a certain renowned general, who being asked by his in¬ 
quisitive monarch, if he had discovered any thing between 
Windsor and London, most sagaciously replied, that he had 
discovered a great fog on Hounslow Heath, which certainly was 
not to be found on his return to Windsor on the following day. 
Despite however of this powerful argument, the Lords of the 
Admiralty remained enshrined in their official sullenness ; in the 
opinion of Capt. Ross, a degree of torpor had come over them 
truly alarming to the country, and he now began to perceive 
