LAST VOYAGE OF CAPT. ROSS. 
573 
establish certain commercial relations with a nation of Tartars* 
which did not exist upon the earth, fancied that he had succeeded 
in his enterprise, when he found himself in the middle of China : 
therefore, notwithstanding all the lets, hinderances, impedi¬ 
ments, obstacles and obstructions, which Capt. Ross had to 
surmount, in his journey to the place, which he had in view, 
he arrived in safety at last, with no other perceptible difference 
in him, than about a dozen icicles depending from various parts 
of his garments ; the existence of which could not he imputed 
to any other circumstance than his frequent immersion in those 
pools of water, which a more cautious traveller would have 
avoided. 
The identical spot, where the Esquimaux had been at work, 
was pointed out, both by Commander Ross and Mr. Mc’Diar- 
mid, and the men were immediately ordered to commence the 
operation of discovering the stolen property, and to which Capt. 
Ross declared, that he could establish an indisputable claim. 
Bending over the hole, as the seamen shovelled out the snow, 
intense was the suspense of Capt. Ross, his eyes sparkling with 
the vividness of expectation, as to the nature of the precise 
object, which the next excavation of the spade would perhaps 
produce. That the object belonged to him, either de jure, de 
facto, or de natura, did not, in his opinion, admit of a doubt: 
most strange and extraordinary were then his feelings, when 
one of the seamen drew from under the last layer, the body of 
a child, which had been deposited in its sepulchre of snow—a 
purer and a softer resting place, than the purchased earth oi 
the Christian. Determined, however, as Capt. Ross might 
have previously been to claim the contents of the grave as 
his own, he now felt it to be an act of the most direct neces¬ 
sity imposed upon him, to disavow, in the most positive 
terms, that he had any claim upon the object, which was lying 
on the snow before him, or, that whilst living, it had any claims 
upon him. Of the latter, he stood exonerated by the unanimous 
opinion of all present; and he secretly blamed himself for 
having sacrificed so much of his valuable time, in the elucida¬ 
tion of a mystery, which, after all, turned out to be nothing more 
