when we were about Wellington Channel; that that sea was _not_
blocked with ice in 1850, as we had ignorantly supposed; and that as
assuredly as it was proved that Sir John Franklin had not gone to Cape
Walker, nor disobeyed his orders by going to Melville Island, so
certain did it now become that up Wellington Channel he had steered to
that open sea, which, whether limited or encircling the Pole, it was
his object to enter. It was water and an open sea that Franklin wanted
to achieve the North-west Passage; and there it was before him. Can any
one suppose him, accuse him, capable of hesitating to enter it?

Those who will not admit this, have recourse to two infallible Arctic
solutions for the dilemma in which they are placed; it must be either
an impenetrable barrier of ice in Wellington Channel, or the ships must
have been beset in the pack, and have perished, without God's
providence helping them, as it has helped all others similarly placed,
without leaving a single survivor or a vestige of any description. No
such wholesale calamity is on record.

[Headnote: _CHANCES OF FUTURE SUCCESS._]

Let us inquire into this barrier of ice in Wellington Channel. Twice
had Parry seen the channel, in 1819 and 1820; he saw no barrier then.
We reached it in the fall of 1850, after a very backward and severe
summer, with winter fast closing in upon us. We saw long flights of
birds retreating from their summer breeding-places somewhere beyond the
broad fields of ice that lay athwart its channel. We wondered at the
numerous shoals of white whale passing, from some unknown northern
region, southward to more genial climes. We talked of fixed ice, yet in
one day twelve miles of it came away, and nearly beset us amongst its
fragments. We heard Captain Penny's report that there was water to be
seen north of the remaining belt, of about ten miles in width. We were
like deaf adders; we were obstinate, and went into winter quarters
under Griffith's Island, believing that nothing more could be done,
because a barrier of fixed ice extended across Wellington Channel! We
were miserably mistaken.

The expedition under Lieutenant De Haven was then drifting slowly over
the place where we, in our ignorance, had placed fixed ice in our
charts; and to them likewise the wisdom of an all-merciful Providence
revealed the fact of a northern sea of open water, that they might be
additional witnesses in the hour of need. We cannot do better than read
t