returned, and, on examination, was found to be perfectly sound, free from every symptom of dry-rot, and is now, we believe, in the West Indies, With these precautions with regard to seasoning or steeping the timber, and the building of ships under cover, so as to be completely protected from sun and rain, and keeping their frames open for several years while on the stocks; by the unremitting care which is subsequently taken, when in ordinary, to keep them dry, and clean, and thoroughly ventilated, and to have them examined from time to time by the officers of the dockyard, we may venture to repeat the Comptroller's assertion, that at no period of our history had England a navy, either for numbers or efficiency, at all equal to that which we now possess, and that for the first time these 150 years, we have completely got the better of the Dry-Rot.* NOTE. The frequent occurrence of the name of Mr. Joseph Hume in the course of this Article, leads us to mention that our publisher has forwarded to us a somewhat uncourteous letter from that gentleman, complaining of the inaccuracy of certain allegations made in an Article on the Ionian Islands, (Q. R. No. LVII.) The points by which he feels himself aggrieved are these:1. That he never saw the memorial of a few factious Corfiotes sent to the Russian minister, as he is pleased to say we have asserted. 2. That the information which we supposed him to have received from 3. That he never saw the two long paragraphs in the Morning Chroniclė We certainly regret that any inaccuracies or misrepresentations, however trifling, should have escaped us; but however inaccurate some of our statements may have been, as far as they concern Mr. Hume personally, they leave the business at issue between us, just where it was. But to his points of grievance. And, 1st. as to the memorial of the Corfiotes, we never charged him with seeing it; a circumstance of little importance-but we did charge him, and are ready to maintain the charge, with adopting all its calumnies.' 2dly, As to the person from whom he received the information. It is a matter of perfect indifference by whom it was intermediately conveyed to himthe fact remains that it was conveyed, and that he used it as we have de scribed. The warmth with which this simple misnomer is pointed out puts us in mind of the indignant retort of Curl, upon the charge of being tossed in a blanket at Eton. Here, (quoth he,) Scriblerus, thou leezest, for I was not tossed in a blanket, but in a rug! Our object, as might easily be discovered, was not so much to point out the sources of his information as the manner of requiting the kindness of a friend, according to the improved mode of modern whiggism. 3dly. As Mr. Hume gravely asserts that he never saw the scurrilous paragraphs in the Morning Chronicle, which preceded his long studied philippic against Sir Thomas Maitland, we are bound to believe him; and to consider them as one of those happy anticipations with which the speeches of this gentleman have occasionally been conveyed to the public, and which, indeed, have frequently tempted us to suspect that some member of his permanent Board of Inquiry, in affectionate impatience of his patron's fame, had secretly forwarded a portion of the materiel to the favourite journal. Be this as it may, the same 'bold misrepresentations' run through the speech and the paragraphs, which indeed are merely the former in miniature'As I live, Your own eyes, Signor! and the nether lip, As like you as you'd spit it.' 4thly. Upon this point we cry peccavimus.'-Being misinformed as to the name of the ship, in which Mr. Hume took his passage, the mistake as to the time of his residence followed of course-but what then? Whether he remained on one or two of the inferior islands one day or one month is a circumstance that does not in the least affect our charge of misrepresenting the measures of the government and the condition and feeling of the people. On our supposition, Mr. Hume might have been acquitted of collecting his vituperations on the spot, and charitably supposed to have been misled; by his own statement, he deprives us of granting him such an acquittal, and also of finding an apology for his ignorance of the political history of the islands, the moral character of the people, and the beneficial effects which they experienced and acknowledged by the change of their government. Having accused us in no measured terms of being guilty of the gross falsehoods' above enumerated, Mr. Hume is graciously pleased to say he will omit many minor allegations.'-Our reply is, that he has not ventured to advance a step beyond the minor ones we have just noticed; and that he has not one word of defence to set up against those charges of abuse which year after year he has been accumulating against the British government in the Ionian Islands, and its late executive Sir Thomas Maitland. But the object of his invective is now no more; and the general feeling of regret which the Ionian people have loudly and openly expressed for his loss evinces the estimation in which he was held, and ought to convince Mr. Hume and his advisers that they knew very well how to distinguish a real from a pretended friend. One word more. If, from what has past, Mr. Hume shall be induced to turn an eye upon himself, and judge of the feelings of others from the spleen which he has evinced at an unimportant error in his own case, we shall feel somewhat consoled for his high displeasure. He, of all men, should be the last to complain of inadvertencies. If the report of his speeches may be trusted, he is involved in a perpetual cloud of error; he lives and breathes, in short, in an atmosphere of mistakes. Has he ever seriously reflected on the number of heart-aches which his fierce credulity has occasioned?-on the many unoffending names which his ill-informed zeal has delivered up to the rude mockery of the daily papers? We trust that he will be able to answer in the affirmativefor we bear Mr. Hume no ill will: on the contrary, we have been pained as often as we have seen him (on his statements being questioned) startled and looking eagerly abroad for facts in support of what he had hastily advanced, till his perplexity has unavoidably reminded the House of the Cavalier in Hall, who lost his wig in a sudden gust of wind:— 'Quick he alights, and quickly hath he sped To overtake his over-running head.' In conclusion, we can only repeat our regret that we should have fallen even into the trifling error to which we adverted. It made nothing for our argument, and was entirely unintentional. To so much of apology we consider Mr. Hume entitled. The main points of our Article, however, stand secure from all contradiction: they never have been, they never will be disproved. ART. ART. XI.-Journal of a Second Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific; performed in the Years 1821-22-23, in His Majesty's Ships Fury and Hecla, under the Orders of Captain W. E. Parry, R. N. F.R.S. Illustrated by numerous Plates. 4to. pp. 570. 1824. FEW EW events have occurred of a public nature, at least since the conclusion of the war, to call forth a more lively and continued interest, more especially among the literary and scientific world, than the late Expedition under Captain Parry; heightened, as it naturally was, by the delay of all intelligence of him and his enterprizing associates: we may, therefore, fairly conclude that, in proportion to the intensity of that interest, will have been the disappointment that the Expedition should, at length, have made its appearance from the north, instead of the south, as was anxiously expected. To affect, on our part, any exemption from this general feeling, would be absurd in the extreme, after having frequently expressed our opinion of the existence of a navigable passage from the northern Atlantic to the Pacific-an opinion not hastily adopted, but deliberately and honestly formed, after a careful examination of the journals of former voyagers, and a due consideration of those facts which bore upon the question; and this opinion, we may now add, is very considerably strengthened by the perusal of the present narrative; whereby we are enabled to see clearly, not only the route by which a north-west passage cannot, but also to fix on that by which it can, and in all human probability will, ultimately be effected. Our disappointment, therefore, is confined solely to the delay of accomplishing what we have very little doubt will, ere long, be done. The name of a North-west Passage is familiar as household words,' but we apprehend that vague and erroneous notions are very generally entertained as to the precise nature of it. Thus we find it very frequently asserted, that the failure of the late expedition was owing to its not being able to reach so far to the northward as the former one, whereas it was hoped that it would not have bad occasion to proceed so high by many degrees as it was compelled to do. It may not be amiss, therefore, to take a hasty glance of what former navigators have done; what progress has been made by the late expeditions; and what still remains to be done for the accomplishment of this desirable object; with this view before them our readers will perceive by what slow degrees, and at how great an expense of money, time and labour, the geographical knowledge of the polar regions has been, and is to be, obtained; which is indeed, and must be, more or less the case with regard to all geographical information that is not merely speculative. It is well known that Columbus, judging from the globular figure of the earth, entertained a strong hope of being able to reach the Indies by sailing to the westward; never suspecting that his progress would be arrested by any such impediment as the intervening continent of America. He therefore named the Caribbee islands, the Indies, as if they were a part of those he went in search of. Succeeding navigators, who embarked on the same enterprize, proceeded along the coast of America, some to the south and others to the north, in the hope that, by passing through some strait, or by rounding its extreme points, they might succeed in reaching the great Indian ocean. To the southward, Magelhaens accomplished his object by passing through the strait which deservedly bears his name. But in vain did the two Cabotas, first employed by Spain, and then by England-the three Cortereals by Portugal-and Aubert and Cartier by the French-endeavour to discover any opening in the northern coast that held out the least hope of a passage in that quarter. There still prevailed, however, among the cosmographers and merchants of London, a very strong idea that America was to be passed somewhere on the north-west; and with the view of discovering such a passage, and under the immediate countenance of Queen Elizabeth, Martin Frobisher was despatched no less than three several times in search of it. Though in these expeditions he had made but little progress, yet as he had not been stopped by any natural barrier, the feeling of the nation was decidedly in favour of sending out that excellent navigator, John Davis, upon the same enterprize, who, also in three voyages, extended very considerably our knowledge of the Arctic regions, by pushing his discoveries much farther to the northward in these parts than any preceding navigator, and advancing up the strait that bears his name. After him, Hall made no less than four voyages on the part of the King of Denmark, but without adding much to preceding discoveries. Henry Hudson, by keeping more to the westward, first penetrated through the strait that bears his name, near which he was inhumanly murdered. Sir Thomas Button, whose instructions were signed by James I. followed next, passed through Hudson's Strait, and reached the main land of America, in lat. 60° 40′ to which, on finding no passage, he gave the name of Hopes checked. This was in 1612, just thirty-six years after the first voyage of Frobisher; so very slowly did discoveries proceed. Bylot and Baffin made several additions to Arctic geography, chiefly among the islands, but never reached so far west as to the coast of America. They, however, in their last voyage, circumnavigated that deep bay named after Baffin, but left all the great openings in the surrounding land unexamined, just as a later navigator did, who was sent out on an expedition of discovery. Notwith Notwithstanding the failure of all the attempts hitherto made, several learned and well-informed men, such as Sir John Brooke, Sir Thomas Roe, Sir John Wolstenholme, and the mathematician Mr. Henry Briggs, were still of opinion that a passage did somewhere exist round the American continent; and at the urgent solicitation of Captain Luke Fox, who quaintly calls himself the Northwest Fox, they prevailed on King Charles I. to appropriate one of his pinnaces for the purpose of northern discovery. Fox tells us that, on taking leave, he received from the King'a mappe of all his predecessors' discoveries, His Majesty's instructions, with a letter to the Emperour of Japan;' and he departed in high spirits, and with sanguine expectations of success. He was, undoubtedly, one of the shrewdest of northern discoverers, and the first who pursued the right track for reaching the north-east point of America, which was, in fact, the very point aimed at by every expedition that had preceded him. Having cleared Hudson's Strait, he stood boldly up that wide channel between the coast of America and Cumberland Island, (more probably a cluster of islands,) to a point in lat. 66° 50′ which he named Fox's Farthest; but when the 25th of September arrived, he began to think he had made but a scurvie voyage of it,' and that the best thing he could do was to bear up for home, where he arrived on the 31st of October, not having lost one man nor boy, nor any manner of tackling, having beene forth neere six moneths, all glory be to God.' Honour also might have been to Fox, had he gone up the western instead of the eastern side of the channel, or crossed it from his farthest;' as in that case he would, in all probability, have discovered, what Captain Parry has now done, the north-east point of America. After Fox, no further attempts were made on the western coast of America, until the unfortunate voyage of Knight, Barlow, Vaughan and Scroggs, in 1719, on the part of the Hudson's Bay Company, and from their settlements; the only result of which was the discovery and examination of Chesterfield Inlet. Middleton, in 1742, entered Wager river, and after that proceeded up the Welcome as far as Repulse Bay, in lat. 66° 30'; which is the highest point on the coast of America that had been reached by any of the expeditions for the discovery of a north-west passage, since the days of Frobisher, more than 166 years before. Captains Moor and Smith were sent out in 1746, chiefly, it would seem, to refute Middleton's account of Repulse Bay and his frozen strait; but they got no farther than Wager River: and this was the last attempt for the discovery of a north-west passage from the side of the Atlantic. We have, in former Numbers of our Journal, stated the grounds upon which Captain Ross was sent in search of a passage up Baffin's |