320 
LAS! VOYAGE OF CAPT. ROSS. 
with which the monument in Felix Harbour was constructed, for 
the sooner their names are swept from the memory of mankind, 
the sooner will their crimes and atrocities be forgotten. Wren 
has his monument in the edifice which he built, Michael Angelo 
in the celestial figures which breathe upon his canvass, Watt in 
the discovery of the most powerful agent in the world, and the 
Duke of York in a long spiral column of rounded granite, sur¬ 
mounted by something worse than folly. A monument of snow, 
which would gradually melt away and be absorbed by the earth, 
is all that the major part of the puissant and illustrious princes 
of this country, have a right to expect from the people. 
On the return of the sailors from the building of the monu¬ 
ment, they were of course questioned as to what objects of curi¬ 
osity or of note they had seen, in order that they might be duly 
registered in the log-book of the day. We know not whether 
it arose from a latent disposition to mischief, or a desire to turn 
the report into ridicule, but it must have been rather a difficult 
task to have kept the risible faculties under any command, when 
the momentous objects which they had seen were related to 
Capt. Ross. Imprimis, they had seen ten bones of a rein-deer, 
which must have been killed some years ago, a specimen of 
which they had brought with them to be put into the cabinet of 
curiosities. Secondly, they had found a small piece of wood’ 
which, as it was evident that the tree to which it belonged was 
not indigenous, must have been deposited there by human hands 
or conveyed thither by some convulsion of nature. As this was 
a subject worthy of investigation, and might throw some im¬ 
portant light on the natural history of the country, it would have 
been considered by them as an act of great neglect, if they had 
omitted to take possession of it; it was therefore delivered with 
due form into the hands of Capt. Ross. Thirdly, they had seen 
some rocks covered with snow, and some without it, these they 
very properly left behind them. Fourthly, they had seen the 
impression of a bear’s paw on the snow, which being measured 
was found to be 14 inches; minuteness in all points of natural 
history is particularly to be commended, as it is the high road 
by which comparative anatomy arrives at its results. Fifthly, 
