y, they accomplished, by their
servants, "Hearne and Mackenzie,"--the former in 1771, and the latter
in 1789,--the tracing of the Copper-mine and the Mackenzie rivers to
their embouchures into an arctic sea in the 70 deg. parallel of north
latitude; whilst a temporary interest, on the part of Great Britain,
during the reign of George the Third, occasioned two names, dear to
every seaman's recollection, to be associated with the accomplishment
of geographical discovery in the same direction: the one was Nelson,
who served with Captain Phipps, afterwards Lord Mulgrave, in his
attempt to pass over the Pole; and the other, the greatest of English
navigators--Cook, who, in 1776, failed to round the American continent
by coming to the eastward from Behring's Straits.

At the commencement of the current century, our knowledge of the
northern coast of the American continent amounted to a mere fraction.
On the west, Cook had hardly penetrated beyond Behring's Straits; and
on the east, Hudson's and Baffin's Bay formed the limit of our
geographical knowledge; except at two points, where the sea had been
seen by Hearne and Mackenzie.

Shortly after the Peace, one whose genius and ability were only to be
equalled by his perseverance, the late Sir John Barrow, Secretary of
the Admiralty, turned his attention to Arctic discovery, and especially
the north-west passage. He had himself been to Spitzbergen, and as far
north as the 80th parallel of latitude. Combating the prejudiced,
convincing the doubtful, and teaching the ignorant, he awakened
national pride and professional enterprise in a cause in which English
seamen had already won high honours, and Great Britain's glory was
especially involved. What difficulties he mastered, and how well he was
seconded by others, and none more so than by the enlightened First Lord
of the Admiralty, Viscount Melville, Sir John Barrow himself has told,
in the able volumes which imperishably chronicle the deeds of ancient
and modern explorers in Polar regions. Since 1818, with the exception
of Sir John Ross's first voyage, we may have been said to have
constantly added to our knowledge of the north-west.

It was in 1819 that Parry sailed to commence that magnificent series of
discoveries which, since completed by Franklin, Richardson, Beechey,
the Rosses, Back, Simpson, and Rae, have left us, after thirty-five
years of well-spent toil and devotion, in perfect possession of the
geographical feature