refore, to leave behind the greater part
of our baggage and provisions, and to take onward nothing more than was
strictly necessary, lest bad weather or other accidents should be added to
delay, or lest unforeseen circumstances, still more untoward, should
deprive me entirely of the high gratification which I could not but look
to in accomplishing this most-desired object. We commenced, therefore, a
most rapid march, comparatively disencumbered as we now were; and
persevering with all our might, we reached the calculated place at eight
in the morning of the 1st of June. The amount of the dip, as indicated by
my dipping-needle, was 89 deg. 59', being thus within one minute of the
vertical; while the proximity at least of this magnetic pole, if not its
actual existence where we stood, was further confirmed by the total
inaction of the several horizontal needles then in my possession. These
were suspended in the most delicate manner possible, but there was not one
which showed the slightest effort to move from the position in which it
was placed--a fact which even the most moderately-informed of readers must
know to be one which proves that the centre of attraction lies at a very
small horizontal distance, if at any. The land at this place is very low
near the coast, but it rises into ridges of fifty or sixty feet high about
a mile inland. We could have wished that a place so important had
possessed more of mark or note. But nature had here erected no monument to
denote the spot that she had chosen as the centre of one of her great and
dark powers. We had abundance of materials for building in the fragments
of limestone that covered the beach, and we therefore erected a cairn of
some magnitude, under which we buried a canister containing a record of
the interesting fact, only regretting that we had not the means of
constructing a pyramid of more importance, and of strength sufficient to
stand the assaults of time and of the Esquimaux." The latitude of this
spot is 70 deg. 5' 17", and its longitude 96 deg. 46' 45" west. The reader may
remember that during his late arctic voyage in search of Sir John
Franklin, Sir James Ross was extremely anxious to revisit this interesting
locality, which he was at one time not very distant from; but which, as
the places of magnetic intensity are continually changing, he would no
longer have found representing the north magnetic pole. It is not a little
remarkable that during Sir John Ross's v