600 
LAST VOYAGE OF CAPT. ROSS. 
nuscript before us; and certainly it must be admitted, that we 
are warranted in drawing* the conclusion, that the last voyage 
of Capt. Ross has been distinguished by a character, which is 
wholly foreign to that, which has been impressed upon every 
previous voyage of discovery, namely, that the crew of the ship 
should be kept in actual ignorance of the principal discoveries 
that were made, until their return to their native country. It is 
perhaps, no irrational conjecture, that some suspicion was lurk¬ 
ing in the breast of Capt. Ross, that his crew would have, been 
disposed to laugh at the circumstance of his taking formal pos¬ 
session of a tract of barren ground, of which the bear and fox 
have held the fee simple from the time, they emigrated from 
Eden, and therefore he took upon himself individually, as the re¬ 
presentative of his Britannic majesty, the distinguished office, of 
annexing so valuable a territory to his dominions, not doubting 
but his title would be as good and indisputable, as if it had 
been established in the presence of a host of witnesses. 
Capt Ross, according to our authority, stands nearly in the 
same predicament respecting the magnetic pole, for in the 
manuscript before us, we read, “ the magnetic pole was found 
by Commander Ross, both in the first spring, and in the second, 
viz. 1830, 1831, but none of us knew anything about it, until 
we came home ; for instance, 1 knew nothing of it, until I saw 
Commander Ross at the panorama, when he told me it was 
about 132 miles to the westward of the ship, which must be 
inland. Capt. Ross knows nothing about the magnetic pole 
During the progress of this work, we have had the charge 
brought against us of having wielded the satiric thong too 
severely upon Capt. Ross, and that actuated by some spirit of 
partiality, we have withheld from him that merit, which others 
have been so much disposed to award him. We profess our 
willingness to appear at any Dar, which the most ardent ad¬ 
mirers of Capt. Ross may select, and then and there to prove, 
that we have *• nothing extenuated, nor set down aught in 
malice;” but that we have been guided by a determined spirit 
to expose the facts, as they have been represented to us, and 
which have reached us from those quarters, where no motive 
