[704] 
APPENDIX. 
OFFICIAL AND OTHER PAPERS. 
THE SELECT COMMITTEE appointed to enquire into the 
circumstances of the Expedition to the Arctic Seas, com - 
manded by Captain John Ross, of the Royal Navy, with a 
view to ascertain whether any and what Reward may be due 
for the Services rendered on that occasion, and to report their 
Observations thereupon to The House; together with the 
Minutes of Evidence taken before them :—Have enquired into 
the matters referred to them, and agreed to the following 
REPORT 
Your Committee have not felt themselves either called upon 
by their order of reference or competent to give an opinion on 
the precise merits or extent of the discoveries made during the 
expedition commanded by Capt. John Ross, whether in a geo¬ 
graphical or scientific point of view ; they have therefore con¬ 
fined themselves to such a general investigation into the facts, 
as may suffice for a decision on the main question committed to 
their hands, whether any reward should be allotted from the 
public purse, and to whom that reward is due. 
In the course of this inquiry they find that, in the year 1827 
Capt. Ross, stimulated by the desire of securing to this country 
the honour of settling the long-agitated question of a North 
West Passage, proposed first to his majesty’s government, and, 
on their declining to undertake it, to his friend, Mr. Felix 
Booth, to fit out an expedition for that purpose : that in the 
following year Mr. Booth, finding that the Act, by which a Par¬ 
liamentary reward was held out for the discovery of a North 
West Passage, had been repealed, and that no suspicion of 
interested motives could any longer rest upon the undertaking. 
