ng. According to Captain Penny, this year a floe of ice at
least two years old, filled Wellington strait; but was diminished in
breadth at a subsequent visit. He also saw a boundless open sea from the
_western_ entrance of Wellington strait; but of course the ships could
not reach it, for the floe before mentioned. Following the indications
of the theory, we consider it almost certain that Franklin went to the
westward and not through Wellington channel; that he made but slow
progress until 1850, when finding the sea more open to the northward,
and attributing it more to local influences than to any change in the
season, he considered it a better course to extricate the expedition, by
pushing on towards Behring's straits than to attempt the frozen channels
he had already passed through. But the seasons again getting worse after
1850, he was again arrested in the polar basin by the ice and islands
off the northern coast of America.

Regarding the old and new continents as in reality a connected body of
land, with a polar depression, we may expect that the great range of
American mountains is continued in a straight line, from the mouth of
the McKenzie river, obliquely across the Polar sea, and connects with
the Ural; and that along the axis of the chain, protuberant masses will
emerge above the sea level, constituting an archipelago of islands, from
Nova Zembla to the McKenzie; and that these islands, causing an
accumulation of ice, and arresting its general tendency to the
southward, is the barrier which Sir John Franklin was finally stopped
by, in a situation where he could neither advance nor return. With the
map before us, and the data afforded by former voyages, and guided by
these theoretical views, respecting the prevailing direction of the
winds and the character of the seasons, we should locate Sir John
Franklin near latitude 80d, and longitude 145d, in 1851; and as the
seasons would afterwards become more severe, we may consider that he
has not been since able to change his locality, and dare not desert his
ships.

No mere stranger can feel a deeper interest than the author, in view of
the hard fortunes of these hardy explorers, and he would not lightly
advance such opinions, did he not suppose they were in some degree
reliable. In 1832, he himself crossed the Atlantic, for the purpose of
offering himself to the Geographical Society of London, intending to be
landed as far northward as possible, with a single