422

Narrative of an Expedition in H. M. S. Terror.

by

gotten in the shower that follows, to cool the atmosphere and fertilise the ground.

The Colonel. “ Narrative of an Expedition in H. M. S. Terror,” Captain Back.—The naval enterprise of our country has been for some years directed with extraordinary zeal to the north coast of the great American continent. The expense, the waste of time, the hazard of life, and the unprofitableness of the discovery-if discovery is ever to be made-have been eagerly alleged on the subject: with those objectors I cannot agree. It belongs to the naval honour of England, that she should not suffer any nation of Europe to go before her in naval activity. That honour, like all her honours, must be paid for. The only true question must be the probability of the discovery, and its use when it shall have been made.

The Barrister. The question in neither case can be answered beforehand. The probability of discovery in an utterly unknown region must be beyond calculation, and so must the use. The Polar Seas are as capricious as a woman, and melt and freeze alternately, stand fixed and fluctuate, without any cause that it is possible to ascertain. One ship may sail for a month without obstruction, the next that follows in the same track may be stopped within the first half-hour by a barrier of ice that seems to have been growing up since the creation ; and, as to the uses, the land may be a mountain of gold or a mountain of flint, a stratum of coal or a desert of sandstone, a volcano or a swamp; but this must be all a secret until you are on the spot. The land must be reached before either naturalist or geologist can catalogue a pebble, or pin an insect to his paper ; can make it the basis of a new theory of the earth, or of a new memoir to the Royal Society.

The Rector. The same species of objection may be offered to every enterprise of man. They all cost money, and occupy time; some hazard life, and all hazard the possibility of failure. If Science were to be thus coy, she would never woo anything, and, therefore, never win anything. It is the duty of a great country, like England, to regard knowledge as the first of possessions ; it is the duty of an opulent nation to be regardless of expenditure which is repaid by knowledge; and it is the duty of a nation, which assumes the lead of Europe, to show that it is worthy of taking that lead by its superiority in wisdom, manliness and virtue.

The Doctor. The favourite objection to Polar discovery has been, that, if we were to round the northern limit of America to-morrow, it might be impassable the day after, and for ever; and that under no circumstances can it form a regular track for the merchant-ships of England. Yet, how can we be assured that such a conjecture is true? Who is to limit the inventions of man, or the faculties of Nature ? Steam has already defied time and tide in the temperate zone; why may not some invention, as applicable to the ice as steam is to the wave, sweep vessels across the Pole, with as much ease as boilers and paddle-wheels now carry them across the Equator? Why may not the time come when the mineralogy of the Pole will both attract commerce and furnish the Narrative of an Expedition in H. M. S. Terror.

423

If they

means of reaching itself by Thames wherries? Why may not some mineral be discovered as attractive as the magnet, or as explosive as pulvis fulminans, and manageable as steam, with ten times its power ? If any chemist will supply potassium for the experiment, we might go to the Pole burning or boiling the ice every league of the way before our keel.

The chemists have already given us concentrated cold, why may we not expect them to discover concentrated fire ? can give us at this moment as much of the essence of frost in a wineglass as would congeal a hogshead of claret, a fact which is every day displayed at every itinerant lecture, is fire to be so much more unmanageable, that we can never condense enough of it to thaw an iceberg ? The thing will be done yet, and we shall have parties of pleasure to the Pole; Hudson's Bay itself but a larger and more crooked Serpentine river, and the Arctic Circle but a half-way house. With this chance before us, who is to despise discoveries, because they have not turnpikes and tollhouses already at every half mile ?

The Rector. This expedition originated with the Geographical Society. Its purpose was to complete the coast-line between Regent's Inlet and Point Turnagain. H. M. S. Terror was commissioned for the purpose, and put under the command of Captain Back. Everything that could be necessary for a winter's campaign, at the Pole, was provided in the greatest abundance. Three thousand pounds' weight of pennucasi, or pounded venison, mixed with pimento and other spices, preserved meats, and soups without number, cloth boots, with cork inside soles, bearskin blankets, fur caps, and clothing of all kinds, with a vast quantity of every other food and condiment. In addition to all this, was what may be called their campaign equipment: anti-mildewed tents, oil-cloth floorings, rifles, fowling-pieces, ammunition, &c. &c. Besides all those, nearly fifty instruments for observation, telescopes, compasses, &c. &c., of the most perfect description, and supplied by the Admiralty. The outfit of this vessel itself is a curious evidence of the arts of man in our age: it would certainly have astonished our ancestors.

The Doctor. Yet with all this zeal, and with all this precaution, some important things were left undone. In the first place, the crew are complained of by Captain Back as unfortunately selected, most of them being raw sailors, easily disheartened, and kept in order with difficulty. In the next, the vessel had scarcely sailed when it was discovered that she might be much more useful rigged as a barque,-a discovery which ought to have been made before she left Chatham, especially after about ten years' experience in Polar voyages; and, thirdly, she was encumbered with a new-fashioned stove, which seems to have constantly failed throughout the voyage, and must have been an intolerable nuisance, as it branched out into an iron pipe, 240 feet long, running round the ship and the cabins, requiring a forcing-pump to fill the tube with water, a furnace built in brick to heat it, and expansion-tubes and other contrivances to hinder the whole from bursting. Even the commencement of the voyage was attended with a circumstance which John Bull must everywhere account ill luck, a reduction of the crew to two-thirds allowance; which, since the ship was victualled for eighteen months, and was ordered to return within three, and on no account to stay beyond twelve, was a species of economy which it is not very easy to understand.

The Barrister. The voyage was a succession of labours to break through the ice, which probably no other sailors than the English could have sustained. The phenomena of the ice are now tolerably well known, but the force and fury with which the masses are flung upon each other, the currents and eddies, the sudden growth and the sudden dissolution, baffle the navigator as much as ever. In the midst of calms, tempests burst out, as much more terrible than those of southern climates, as the earthquake is than the thunder-storm. While all seems a solid continent of ice, and, as far as the eye can reach, all is a glittering surface as clear, and almost as hard, as crystal; a sudden roar is heard, the mighty mass heaves to the horizon, the solid expanse bursts up in a thousand wild shapes, and all rushes and crushes together. No ship, unless she were of solid iron, could withstand the shock, and the only escape of the Terror on several occasions was hy her being tossed up like a ship of cork on the surface of the ice, instead of being squeezed between two of its promontories, in which case she would have been flattened like a sheet of lead under the hammer. However, by those struggles the ship was so shattered that she was on the point of being left behind; it was found impossible to proceed, and in August, 1837, her head was turned to England. Even to England she was not enabled to come, but put into Loch Swilly, in Ireland, in a sinking state. Shipwrights from Chatham were sent to repair her, and, by their help, and with the assistance of a Government steamer, the shattered vessel finally reached the Thames. The volume is illustrated with a chart of the ship's course, and several sketches of her various perils in the ice, very beautifully executed. It is altogether a clever and striking volume.

The Colonel. “Travels in the Western Caucasus,” by Edmund Spencer. This author writes with a spirit and ease which might give interest to an inferior subject. But the Circassian war, the habits of a brave people infamously invaded, their bold resistance to the most powerful sovereign of the continent, their fortunate success in this noble conflict, and even what may perhaps be termed the interference of more than fortune, in the destruction of their enemies by the elements, make Circassia at this moment a scene equally interesting to the patriot, the soldier, and the man.

The Rector. The conduct of the Russian Emperor is utterly unaccountable, except on the supposition that he is maddened by the frenzy of ambition, or that he is following the policy of his father Paul, to follow his fate. With the largest territory of any sovereign on earth, with a territory still so unpeopled that every effort should be made to increase the population, and, with the strongest necessity for external peace, from the palpable murmurs of internal discord, Nicholas is at once criminally craving for more territory, cruelly wasting his best troops at the rate of twenty or thirty thousand a-year, and harassing his people, exhausting his finances, and exciting the slow jealousies of Europe--and all to bury in their own blood a race of mountaineers who

have for these half-dozen centuries been so totally harmless to him and Eurore as to have been almost totally forgotten.

The Barrister. This sanguinary spirit has already had its warnings, and may have more before long. A tempest unexampled in devastation, a few months since, almost wholly buried in the Black Sea the blockading squadron of the Emperor, and, by an equally direct and singular contingency, threw into the hands of the people such quantities of iron, gunpowder, and other materials of war from the stranded ships, that the Circassians were enabled to recommence their campaign with fresh vigour. But the power of Russia is immense, and her perseverance must finally exhaust the loose energies of a poor though a gallant people; unable to conquer them in the field, she rests her hope of conquest on famishing them in their mountains, and is gradually raising fortresses along the coast to shut them within an iron boundary, and starve them into submission and slavery. In this plan of desperate ambition and useless slaughter, she has already roused the wrath of all Europe against her, and may speedily rouse its vengeance,

The Doctor. Mr. Spencer's description of the interior pictures some portions of it as of remarkable beauty. This may he well admitted, when we remember the mountainous nature of its chief part, and that both plain and mountain are in one of the loveliest climates of the globe. In passing towards Mingrelia to the river Tzehenesstzquali, he says that nothing could be more delightfully romantic. The river itself alternately bursting through rocks of vast elevation and winding through fairy valleys, filled with the products of the garden and the field; the hill-sides sheeted with the myrtle, olive, oleander, and pomegranate; the valleys glowing with the grape, the fig, and a variety of other fruits and plants, and all in the highest beauty and profusion.

The Barrister. The landscape, too, exhibits as much grandeur as fertility. The Elberous, the king of Circassian mountains, towers magnificently in the horizon, while a succession of lofty peaks, some of them not inferior to Mont Blanc, shoot up in striking shapes, and fill the eye at once with the lovely and the sublime.

The Rector. This is the land of tradition, and a tradition which mingle3 the solemnity of Scripture with the wildness of Oriental imagination. One of the mountains, a mighty Alp upon a ridge of Alps, is called by some of the tribes the Zeresti-zub (Mountain of Christ), where it is believed that he once resided in a splendid palace in the interior of the mountain--the palace superb beyond description, and contaiving treasures worthy of all its gold and crystal--the tent of Abraham, the fiery chariot of Elijah, and the cradle of the Son of Man. The Suoni tribes believe that the Elberous is the abode of some mighty master of spirits, surrounded by his ministering demons, and ready to execute his countless mischiefs on mankind.

The Colonel. It is not difficult to conceive the reason why Russia has hitherto been able to make so little impression on the interior. The whole is described as one of the most inaccessible countries of Asia; a whole succession of deep and intricate defiles, mountain-paths carried through the most rugged glens, cataracts intersecting the valleys in all directions, vast extents of tangled forests and brushwood, through wbich the ordinary traveller is compelled to make his way with the axe; torrents breaking from the hills, at all times difficult to pass, but in winter desperate; and, to defend these natural fortifications, a brave people, who handle the musket and rifle well, who hate the Russians, and wisely prefer the rude poverty of their mountain life to all the gilding of the Russian chain.

The Rector. Wild as the manners of the East are, there is a perpetual romance in them which gives their biographies, adventures, and even their barbarisms, a perpetual interest. Mr. Spencer supplies us with some instances which would figure in the most fantastic fairy-tale. It is to be only regretted that he has not given us more, for he tells his story remarkably well

. His brief narrative of the rise and progress of the old Seraskier Pacha, or commander-in-chief, is a capital example at once of the interest of his subjects and the skill of his narrative.

The Colonel. Cosrew, the late Seraskier, has long held a powerful influence in Turkish affairs; and in that empire, where everything, good and evil, is extraordinary, is one of the most extraordinary of men or things. He began his career, like many who have risen to eminence in Constantinople, as a shepherd of the Caucasus ; a circumstance which may have added to the strong Turkish ardour in the mountain cause. There he was taken prisoner by a hostile tribe, and sold to the Ottomans. Fortunately coming into the household of the well-known Kutchuk, the high admiral, he had such opportunities of displaying ability, that he was raised through successive dignities to the rank of Pacha of Egypt. But there fortune was against him; the revolt of Mehemet Ali, its present daring chief, drove him from his pachalic. The sultan acknowledged his talents, and, instead of pursuing the usual mode of punishing him for his ill fortune, gave him the important pachalic of Bosnia. His career was now fixed. Kutchuk died, and Cosrew was made Capitan Pacha, and Governor of the Islands of Greece. Here fortune was once more against him, and in another age he would have been welcomed with the bowstring; but the Sultan has exhibited the splendid novelty of a Turkish sovereign who knows how to distinguish between the work of inevitable circumstances and of crime. Cosrew was received once again into confidence, and repaid it by adhering to the Sultan in that most formidable crisis of his fate, the destruction of the Janizaries. He was appointed Seraskier Pacha, and more than once, in that rank, saved the capital and the empire from convulsion. At nearly eighty years old, but with his natural vigour scarcely enfeebled, and his eye still clear, he gave up his office to Halil Pacha, like himself a mountaineer of the Caucasus, and like himself a slave, and even purchased into his own household. His influence obtained a higher triumph still, for, through it, the Sultau gave Halil the hand of his daughter.

The Barrister. “Crotchets in the Air," by John Poole. We are prepared to expect pleasantries from the author of “ Paul Pry," " Simpson and Co.," and a crowd of other facetiæ, which have long been popular