an. For this
coast was totally unknown at this time. Information was collected from
casual travellers, whale-fishers, and others, with the result that
England equipped two ships for a voyage of discovery to the disputed
regions. These were the _Isabella_ (385 tons) and the _Alexander_ (252
tons), Commander Ross being appointed to one and Lieutenant Parry to
the other.

Parry had served on the coast of North America, and had written a little
treatise on the stars in the Northern Hemisphere. He was thinking of
offering his services for African discovery when he caught sight of
a paragraph in a paper about an expedition for the discovery of the
North-West Passage. He wrote at once that "he was ready for hot or
for cold--Africa or the Polar regions." And he was at once appointed
to the latter. The object of the voyage was clearly set forth. The
young explorers were to discover a passage from Davis Strait along
the northern coast of America and through the Behring Strait into the
Pacific Ocean. Besides this, charts and pictures were to be brought
back, and a special artist was to accompany the expedition. Ross
himself was an artist, and he has delightfully illustrated his own
journals of the expedition. The ships were well supplied with books,
and we find the journals of Mackenzie, Hearne, Vancouver, Cook, and
other old travelling friends taken for reference--thirty Bibles and
sixty Testaments were distributed among the crews. For making friends
with the natives, we find a supply of twenty-four brass kettles, one
hundred and fifty butchers' knives, three hundred and fifty yards of
coloured flannel, one hundred pounds of snuff, one hundred and fifty
pounds of soap, forty umbrellas, and much gin and brandy. The
expedition left on 18th April 1818, and "I believe," says Ross, "there
was not a man who did not indulge after the fashion of a sailor in
feeling that its issue was placed in His hands whose power is most
visible in the Great Deep."

Before June had set in, the two ships were ploughing their way up the
west coast of Greenland in heavy snowstorms. They sailed through Davis
Strait, past the island of Disco into Baffin's undefined bay. Icebergs
stood high out of the water on all sides, and navigation was very
dangerous. Towards the end of July a bay to which Ross gave the name
of Melville Bay, after the first Lord of the Admiralty, was passed.
"Very high mountains of land and ice were seen to the north side of
Melville'