BY WALTER THORNBURY, AUTHOR OF "BRITISH ARTISTS FROM HOGARTH TO TURNER," ETC., ETC. "Thrilling regions of thick-ribbéd ice." Measure for Measure. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1861. The right of Translation is reserved. ICE BOUND. ON the last day of May, 1836, the Stormy Petrel set sail from Hull harbour, on a pretended whaling expedition, but really on a voyage of discovery, in search of the passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific-a favourite dream of our brave old commander, Captain Beaver, who died five years ago last Michaelmas, in the Orkney Islands. We were rigged as a barque, as being most suitable for working through the ice, and requiring the fewest men, and were strengthened with additional timbers, such as Captain VOL. I. B Parry's vessels, the Isabella and Alexander, had adopted. I must not torment my readers with professional jargon, but I may just say, that we carried thirty-six men, and having, besides our mizen-topsail lengthened, our mizenmast, topmast, gaff, and driver-boom, so as to make up, by a large driver and gaff topsail, the same quantity of after-sail as before. We ballasted with coals-about thirty-four chaldron we could stow. We took care to have housing cloths to roof in the deck, to keep out the snow; and the men were supplied with wolf-skin blankets, as well as good suits of warm clothing. I, John Perry, the first-lieutenant, as well as Thomas Sidmouth, the surgeon, and George Siderfin, the astronomer, a Devonshire man. took great pains to make sure that all the anti-scorbutics that we took out should be good, as well as the essence of malt and hops, and the pemmican, so important to Arctic voyagers. As to the azimuth-compasses and dipping needles, Siderfin took care of those; while I took charge of the sailing requisites of the vessel, and of all that was necessary for the health and well-being of the men; for Captain Beaver, though an admirable commander, was rather apt to day-dream, and to indulge in visions of discovery. Well, we started, as I have said, without cheer or "God bless you," for no for no one knew our purpose; and on September the 22nd we made the island of Rono, and Bara on the following morning. On Sunday the 30th we passed "the sunken land of Bus," as it is called in Dawson's chart, and, heaving-to, obtained soundings in one hundred and forty fathoms, in a bottom of very fine white sand. On June the 13th, Sunday, we saw large flocks of Cape hens-a proof of our being off Cape Farewell, as these birds are never seen in any other part of Davis' Straits, or even in Baffin's Bay. On Thursday, the 17th of June, we ob |