LAST VOYAGE OF CAPT. BOSS. 
639 
soon revisited by another speculator, in the discovery of the 
North West Passage, to whom his hoards of buried iron would 
be found as useful, as the buried stores of the Fury had been to 
himself. The conviction, however, must have been strongly 
impressed on the mind of Capt. Ross, that, as far as the North 
West Passage was concerned, his iron and other stores ran a 
great chance of resting quietly in their grave, until the general 
conflagration ; and therefore it becomes a difficult task to divine^ 
his motive, in acting upon such a selfish principle, that because 
certain articles had been declared by him, to be of no further 
value to himself, he was determined that they should not be of 
the slightest value to any other person. 
The intention of Capt. Ross was, however, nearly frustrated, 
by the determination, which the earth evinced not to receive 
his iron and other marine stores within its bosom. The labor 
of making the excavation was begun in the beginning of 
January 183*2, and severe indeed did it prove to the men 
employed on it, in fact, it is described as having been the 
most trying and painful task, which they had undergone, during 
the whole of the voyage. Six or seven men, after working at 
the hole with pickaxes and chisels, for three or four days, 
could not succeed in getting more gravel out than would fill a 
bushel measure. In many instances, when the men had left their 
tools at the hole, on returning to it in the morning, they would 
find all their tools buried, and the hole filled up with drift snow. 
At that season of the year, the daylight being of very short 
duration, the men were frequently obliged to leave off work, 
and to return to the ship before they had even recovered their 
tools, or cleared the hole of the snow, which had drifted into it. 
If this employment had been one of necessity, or of common 
expediency, the men would perhaps have not raised a murmur 
in being put to it; but when they questioned themselves as to 
the utility of their daily exposure to an intensity of cold almost 
equal to any, which had been experienced during the whole of 
the voyage, for a purpose of neither individual, nor general 
benefit, they began to consider whether there was not a positive 
line of demarcation between authority and obedience, and 
*26. 41 
