608 
LAST VOYAGE OF CAPT. ROSS. 
difference, he may wave his hat, and give her three parting 
cheers—yet there is still a melancholy feeling at the heart ; 
and the eye will keep fixed upon her, until she gradually 
dwindles away to a point, and the next moment she is lost to 
the sight for ever. 
It was not without some feelings akin to those, which we 
have been describing, that the sailors of the Victory began the 
operation of making an excavation on land, for the purpose of 
burying all the iron and other stores belonging to the Victory, 
and the avowed aim of this act was, to prevent the articles from 
falling into the hands of the natives. 
We cannot positively affirm, that Capt. Ross ever read the 
fable of the dog in the manger : but it appears to our capacity, 
as if his conduct, in this instance, was a striking exemplification 
of it. The iron and other articles, intended to be buried, would 
certainly have proved no trifling acquisition to the natives; and 
as Capt. Ross had rejected them as wholly useless to himself, 
and, by adopting the plan of burying them, had resigned all 
further interest in them—where, we are inclined to ask, 
would have been the loss or the injury to Capt. Ross, if, instead 
of burying them, he had divided them amongst the natives, and 
thereby perhaps have conferred a lasting, and it may also be 
added, the last benefit, which he, or any other European, would 
perhaps ever have it in their power to confer upon a race of 
people, with whom it is probable no further communication will 
be held, for ages and centuries to come. Upon the same principle, 
Capt. Ross buried the stores of the Victory, from a fear of 
their falling into the hands of the natives, why did he not 
attempt to bury the Victory also, or at least to scuttle her, or in 
case the water was too shallow for that purpose, to set fire to her, 
for, to the natives, the nails and timber of the Victory would be, 
by far, a more valuable prize, than all the articles which were 
destined to be buried, and there to be consumed with rust, 
unless some Paul Pry of one of the tribes were to pop upon the 
spot, and drag from the bowels of the earth, their precious 
contents. It is not to be supposed that the faintest idea re 
volved in the brain of Capt. Ro^s, that the Victory w T ould be 
