After
travelling one hundred miles on foot, he and his companions embarked on a
river, running westward, which conveyed them to an inlet of the Pacific
Ocean.
Here he observed the rise and fall of the tide, and saw porpoises
and sea otters. The claim of the discovery of the Frozen Ocean by a
north-west route, to which Mr. M'Kenzie lays claim, has been questioned, as
well as Mr. Hearne's claim. It has been remarked, that he might have
ascertained beyond a doubt whether he had actually reached the sea, by
simply dipping his finger into the water, and ascertaining whether it was
salt or not. The account he gives of the rise of the tides at the mouth of
Mackenzie River serves also to render it very doubtful whether he had
reached the ocean; this rise he does not estimate greater than sixteen or
eighteen inches. On the whole, we may conclude, that if Mr. Hearne actually
traced the Coppermine River to its entrance into the sea, or Mr. M'Kenzie
the river that bears his name, they have not been sufficiently explicit in
their proofs that such was really the case.
At the time when the British government sent out Captain Cooke on his last
voyage of discovery, Lieutenant Pickersgill was also sent out by them, to
examine the western parts of Baffin's Bay, but he never entered the bay.
Government were equally unfortunate in their choice of Lieutenant Young,
who was sent with the same object the following year: he reached no farther
than the seventy-second degree of latitude; and instead of sailing along
the western side of the bay, which is generally free from ice, he clung to
the eastern side, to which the ice is always firmly attached. Indeed, if
Dr. Douglas's character of him was just, he was ill fitted for the
enterprize on which he was sent; for his talents, he observes, were more
adapted to contribute to the glory of a victory, as commander of a
line-of-battle ship, than to add to geographical discoveries by
encountering mountains of ice, and exploring unknown coasts.
Notwithstanding the unsuccessful issue of all these attempts to discover a
north-west passage, the existence and practicability of it still were
cherished by many geographers, who had particularly studied the subject.
Indeed, nothing had resulted from any of the numerous voyages to the
Hudson's or Baffin's Bay, which in the smallest degree rendered the
existence of such a passage unlikely. Among those scientific men who
cherished the idea of such a passage with the most enthusiasm and
confidence, and who brought to the investigation the most extensive and
minute knowledge of all that had been done, was Mr. Dalrymple, hydrographer
to the Admiralty. "He had long been of opinion, that not only Greenland,
but all the land seen by Baffin on the northern and eastern sides of the
great bay bearing his name, was composed of clusters of islands, and that a
passage through the _Fretum Davis_, round the northern extremity of
Cumberland Island, led directly to the North Sea, from the seventy to the
seventy-first degree of latitude." This opinion of Mr. Dalrymple was
grounded, in part at least, on the authority of an old globe, one of the
first constructed in Britain, preserved in the library of the Inner Temple:
this globe contains all the discoveries of our early navigators. Davis
refers to it; and Hackluyt, in his edition of 1589, describes it "as a very
large and most exact terrestrial globe, collected and reformed according to
the newest, secretest, and latest discoveries, both Spanish, Portugal, and
English, composed by Mr. Emmeric Molyneaux, of Lambeth, a rare gentleman in
his profession, being therein for diverse years greatly supported by the
purse and liberality of the worshipful merchant Mr. William Sanderson."
Mr. Dalrymple prevailed on the Hudson's Bay Company to send out Mr. Duncan,
a master in the navy, who had displayed considerable talent on a voyage to
Nootka Sound. This gentleman was very sanguine of success, and very zealous
in the cause in which he was employed. But this attempt also was
unsuccessful: Mr. Duncan, after a considerable lapse of time, reaching no
farther than Chesterfield Inlet.
The attention of scientific men, and of the public at large, was called
again to this important problem in the geography of the northern seas, by
some elaborate and well informed articles in the Quarterly Review, which
are generally supposed to be written by Mr. Barrow, the under secretary of
the Admiralty, who also published an abstract of voyages to the Northern
Ocean.
The British government, influenced by a very laudable love of science, and
perhaps regarding the discovery of a north-west passage as of the same
importance to commerce as the reviewer evidently did, resolved to send an
expedition for the purpose of attempting the discovery. Accordingly, on the
8th of April 1818, two ships, the Isabella and Alexander, well fitted by
their construction, as well as strengthened and prepared in every possible
manner for such a voyage, sailed from the Thames. Captain Ross had the
principal command. It is not our design here to follow them during their
voyage to their destination: suffice it to say, that on the 18th of August,
exactly four months after they sailed from the Thames, the ships passed
Cape Dudley Digges, the latitude of which they found to agree nearly with
that assigned to it by Baffin, thus affording another proof of the accuracy
of that old navigator, whose alleged discoveries have been latterly
attempted to be wrested from him, or rather been utterly denied. The same
day they passed an inlet, to which Baffin had given the name of
Wolstenholme Sound. Captain Ross, in his account of his voyage, says it was
completely blocked up with ice; but in the view taken of it, and published
by him, there is a deep and wide opening, completely free from ice.
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