newly-formed ice, they reached Port Bowen, in time to make it their winter quarters.

Here they remained until the 20th of July, 1825, when the voyage was resumed, but under very discouraging circumstances. Great accumulations of ice rendered it almost impossible to advance; the Fury was driven on shore, and abandoned, though most of her stores were saved and piled on the beach; and the Hecla returned to England with a double complement of men and officers. This was the least successful of Parry's voyages, but there is a fact connected with it which deserves to be recorded: it proved that the anxiety and difficulty consequent on the loss of power in the compasses need no longer exist. The placing of a small circular plate of iron in the line of no direction of the ship, and near to the needle, effects a compensation which keeps the latter in working condition. This contrivance is due to Mr. Peter Barlow, of Woolwich, and Parry says, "Never had an invention a more complete and satisfactory triumph; for to the last moment of our operations at sea did the compass indicate the true magnetic direction."

CHAPTER VII.

LYON'S VOYAGE. BEECHEY'S EXPEDITION.-1 FRANKLIN'S SECOND LAND

EMBARKATION.

EXPEDITION.-FORT FRANKLIN.WINTER AT GREAT BEAR LAKE.SEPARATION OF THE PARTY. PROGRESS OF FRANKLIN'S DIVISION.-ATTACK BY ESQUIMAUX.-RETURN TO FORT FRANKLIN. RICHARDSON'S DIVISION. SECOND WINTER AT THE FORT.

CONCURRENTLY with Parry's third voyage, three other expeditions were undertaken, with the two-fold object of making the north-west passage and of completing the survey of the North American coast. The first, by Captain Lyon, in the Griper, was to proceed by Hudson's Strait and Sir Thomas Rowe's Welcome to Repulse Bay; then to cross over Melville Isthmus, and survey the coast of America as far as where Franklin left off, at Point Turnagain. The vessel sailed in June, 1824, but, being totally unfit for the service, except in the quality of strength, she was nearly wrecked on two occasions in the Welcome, and all on board placed in imminent peril of their lives; and at last, Repulse Bay being eighty miles distant, the enterprise was abandoned.

The second expedition, in the Blossom, under the command of Captain Beechey, was despatched in 1825, to sail round Cape Horn, and enter the Polar Sea by Behring's Strait, so as to arrive at Chamisso Island, in Kotzebue Sound, by the 10th of July, 1826, there to wait for the third expedition, under Franklin, of which more presently.

On the 2d of June, having left the Sandwich Islands, he shaped his course for Kamtschatka, and on the 27th was becalmed within six miles of Petropalauski. The best guides to this harbor are a range of high mountains, on one of which, upwards of eleven thousand feet. in height, a volcano is in constant action. It was a serene and beautiful evening when they approached this remote quarter of the world, and all were struck with the magnificence of the mountains capped with perennial snow, and rising in solemn grandeur one above the other. At intervals the volcano emitted dark columns of smoke; and, from a sprinkling of black spots upon the snow to the leeward, it was conjectured there had been a recent eruption.

From Petropalauski, Beechey sailed, on the 1st of July, for Kotzebue's Sound. "We approached," says he, "the strait which separates the two great continents of Asia and America, on one of those beautiful still nights well known to all who have visited the Arctic regions, when the sky is without a cloud, and when the midnight sun, scarcely his own diameter below the horizon, tinges with a bright hue all the northern circle. Our ship, propelled by an increasing breeze, glided rapidly along a smooth sea, startling from her path flocks. of aquatic birds, whose flight, in the deep silence of the scene, could be traced by the ear to a great distance." Having closed in with the American shore some miles northward of Cape Prince of Wales, they were visited by a little Esquimaux squadron belonging to a village situated on a low sandy island.

The natives readily sold everything they possessed, and were cheerful and good-humored, though exceedingly noisy and energetic. Their bows were more slender than those of the islanders to the southward, but made on the same principle, with drift-pine, assisted

with thongs of hide, or pieces of whalebone placed at the back, and neatly bound with small cord. The points of their arrows were of bone, flint, or iron, and their spears headed with the same materials. Their dress was similar to that of the other tribes on the coast. It consisted of a shirt, which reached half-way down the thigh, with long sleeves, and a hood of reindeer-skin, and edged with gray or white fox fur. Besides this they had a jacket of eider-drake skins sewed together, which, when engaged in war, they wore below their other dress, reckoning it a tolerably efficient protection against an arrow or a spear-thrust. In wet weather they threw over the fur dress a shirt made of the entrails of the whale, which, being well saturated with oil and grease, was water-tight; and they also used breeches of deer's hide, and seal-skin boots, to the upper end of which were fixed strings of sea-horse hide. It was their fashion to tie one of these strings round the waist, and attach to it a long tuft of hair, the wing of a bird, or, sometimes, a fox's tail, which, dangling behind as they walked, gave them a ridiculous appearance, and may probably have occasioned the report of the Tschuktschi recorded in Muller, that the people of this country have tails like dogs.

On the 22d of July the ship anchored in Kotzebue's Sound, and, after exploring a deep inlet on its northern shore, which they named Hotham Inlet, proceeded to Chamisso Island, where the Blossom was to await Franklin. A discretionary power had, however, been permitted to Beechey, of employing the period of his stay in surveying the coast, provided this could be done without the risk of missing Franklin. Having, accord ingly, directed the barge to keep in-shore on the lookout for the land party, he sailed to the northward, and, doubling Cape Krusenstern, completed an examination

of the coast by Cape Thomson, Point Hope, Cape Lisburn, Cape Beaufort, and Icy Cape. As there were here strong indications of the ice closing in, and his instructions were positive to keep in open water, if possible, he determined to return to Kotzebue's Sound, whilst he despatched the barge, under his lieutenants, to trace the coast to the north-eastward, as far as they could navigate.

On this service the barge set out, on the 17th of August. She proceeded along the coast, and surveyed one hundred and twenty-six miles of new shore, until stopped by a long, low, projecting tongue of land, to which the name of Point Barrow was given, but without meeting or hearing any tidings of the expected overland party; though it was afterwards ascertained that Point Barrow was distant only one hundred and fortysix miles from the extreme point reached by Franklin.

In the mean time Beechey returned with the Blossom to Kotzebue's Sound. There she remained at the anchorage till October, when it became necessary to depart, to prevent her being frozen in for the winter; and, after a cruise in the Pacific, she shaped her course once more for the rendezvous at Chamisso Island. During the voyage to that point, where they arrived August 27th, 1827, Beechey and his men had repeated interviews with the Esquimaux, whose habits and disposition were in no respect different from those of the natives already described. They found them uniformly friendly, sociable, devotedly fond of tobacco, eager to engage in traffic, and, upon the whole, honest, though disposed to drive a hard bargain. On some occasions they attempted to impose upon their customers, by skins artfully put together, so as to represent an entire fish; but it was difficult to determine whether they intended a serious fraud or only a piece of humor, for