LAST VOYAGE OF CAPT. ROSS. 
435 
of the crew, should be brought into the cabin, when a degree of 
selfishness was observed, which could not but tend to lower their 
commander, in the good opinion of the whole of the crew. It was 
this narrow and illiberal mode of action, that Capt. Ross adopted 
towards his men, in all matters, which had any relation to the 
scientific objects of the expedition, that rendered the service, 
in which they were employed, more galling and irksome than it, 
otherwise, would have appeared to them. Although one of the 
petty officers of the vessel was an excellent shot, and more suc¬ 
cessful in his shooting expeditions, than any other of the crew, the 
orders were peremptory, that all the birds, which he shot, were 
to be brought into the cabin; and if any of them would make 
a specimen, it was laid aside, in order to be skinned ; but if it 
was found, that it was not fit for a specimen, so determined w 7 as 
Capt. Ross, that no one but himself should possess a specimen of 
any of the animals or birds common to the country, that, for the 
purpose of so mutilating the animal or bird, as to prevent its 
being employed as a specimen, either a leg or a wing was cut 
off, sometimes even its head, and then the carcass was delivered 
to the man, w ho shot it, he being allowed to have it dressed for 
his dinner. Whatever the men shot, was obliged to be reported 
to the cabin, with the same exactness and punctuality, as the 
slave searching for diamonds, or the labourer in a silver mine : and 
this system of exclusive property, gave rise to many tricks and 
manoeuvres on the part of the crew, by which they got to the 
windward of their captain: and particularly in the case of the 
steward, it was the means of his obtaining many specimens, 
which he would have succeeded in conveying to England, un¬ 
known to Capt. Ross, but for the ultimate abandonment of the 
ship. The plan generally adopted by the shooting parties, and 
especially by Mr. Light, the steward, w r as to bury the game or 
other birds at a small distance from the ship, and then to take 
the first favorable opportunity of conveying them clandestinely 
on board, w'hen the steward, to use bis own words, was obliged 
to be as sly as a mouse, w hilst he was skinning the birds, giving 
the carcasses to some of the crew to make a meal of them. Many 
a sly joke passed in the sailor’s berths, at the expense of Capt.“ 
