precious to me, as it was the work of a mistress. Having folded up my hair, I put on a black wig, which hung down over my shoulders, and Lady Jane blackened my eye-brows; but with this disguise I was by no means so completely metamorphosed as in my beggar's dress. This amiable lady, who could not be at ease on my account till she knew I had proceeded, without accident, some leagues from Edinburgh, where I should be less exposed to meet any persons of my acquaintance than in the neighbourhood of that city, seat her servant, on her saddle-horse, to accompany me the first two leagues, that she might know how I succeeded." pp. 254, 255.

At a public-house where he dined, he was alarmed on meeting a Mr Scott, a banker in Edinburgh, to whom he was known. On the fourth day of his journey, when within two miles of Stamford, he suddenly came up with some covered waggons, from one of which, as he rode past, he heard a voice call out,-" See, see! if there is not a man on horseback who resembles our rebel captain as much as one drop of water resembles another! and I heard my name pronounced at the same time." The waggons were filled with soldiers wounded at Culloden carrying to Chelsea Hospital. After this unexpected recognition he could not sleep at Stamford, but went at full gallop eight miles beyond it. But this effort, as he had that day travelled more than forty miles before, nearly proved fatal to his horse. He, however, soon recovered from his fatigues, was again able to take the road before two o'clock the next morning, and arrived in London on the seventh day after his departure from Edinburgh.

When in London in 1740, he had fallen in love with a lady of rank, eighteen years of age, and of extraordinary beauty. "She was herself ignorant of the perfection of her celestial figure, and the power of her charms. She was the niece of my friend, and an only daughter. Her father was of an ancient English family, the younger branch of which is very illustrious, and bears the title of Duke." During the last six years he had heard nothing of his "adorable Peggy," (no very lady-like name, by the bye,) but his love was una bated. In a suit of new clothes, "with my beautiful embroidered waistcoat," he went in quest of this

paragon, twenty-four hours after his arrival in London. Both the lady and her uncle were at home; they received him with much kindness, and asked him not only to pass the day with them, but to make their house his home while in London. For several weeks he passed the greater part of every day with this object of his devotion; at length he made a declaration of his love, which in due time was favourably received. After a long walk on a fine evening, with "the charmer of his heart," he was told that one of his relations had arrived from Scotland; he went to wait upon him, and was abruptly told that had died a few days after he had left both his mother and his sister Rollo Edinburgh; and that his mother's last words were,

"I now die contented and satisfied, since I know that my poor dear son is safe." This was a heavy affliction to him, and Peggy's uncle, who was ignorant of his connection with the Rebellion, by way of amusing him, proposed to take him "to the house of a friend on Tower-hill, who had promised him a window, from which he could see two rebels beheaded, the Earl of Kilmarnock and Lord Balmerino, two peers of Scotland. I thanked him for his attention; but excused myself, telling him, that he might easily see that I had too feeling a heart to take any pleasure in spectacles of that description. He little imagined that I was as guilty as they, and that there was no difference between us, except what fortune had made in enabling me to escape being taken prisoner."

pp. 291, 292.

He continued to live on chiefly in the society of this young lady, till a message came to him from Lady Jane Douglas, with the information, that she was on her way to the Continent, and would take him along with her. The necessity which this offer imposed on him of separating from Peggy was the only obstacle to his immediate acceptance of it. The opportunity of escape, however, thereby afforded, appeared to her too advantageous to be rejected, and she generously offered to accompany him in men's clothes. Our Chevalier would not, however, hear of the lady, whom he so tenderly loved, exposing herself to such imminent peril as the execution of the resolution she had expressed must have exposed her to; and he said to her that the very tenderness of his affection would never allow him to plunge her

it.

"We were scarcely a musket-shot from the shore, when the captain pointed out to me one of his midshipmen in the boat, of the name of Lockhart, asking me if I knew his family in Scotland. I answered in the negative, telling him that I had never been in any other service than that of Mrs Gray. I was uneasy lest Mr Lockhart should have recognised me from the windows of the tavern, whilst I was disputing with the landlord, and mentioned who I was to the captain; for, as I had been a schoolfellow of his elder brother, and frequently in the house of his father, Mr Lockhart of Carnwath, he might very possibly have known me. He was about eighteen years of age, and had been four years in the navy. His eldest brother, the heir to a considerable estate, had been foolish enough, like so many others, to join the standard of Prince Charles. I suffered cruelly from the thought, that the captain of the frigate had had no other object in view by his civility in offering me his boat, than to get me quietly on board his ship, where he would immediately make me his prisoner. Supposing even young Lockhart not to know that I had been in the army of the Prince, still there was something very mysterious and equivocal in my being disguised in the dress of a servant. It was necessary, however, to submit to my des tiny. Heavens! what an accursed and unlucky star pursued and persecuted me, till

the moment I arrived in Holland! Who could have expected such ah adventure at Harwich? As the boat approached the ship, I began to reckon the minutes which cuffed and in irons. My heart beat dreadwere to elapse before I should be handfully, although I always preserved a calm

which the captain asked me with coolness exterior, and answered a thousand questions and presence of mind, and without being in the least disconcerted; expecting, nevertheless, every moment, that this politeness would cease, that the mask would be dropped, and that the sailors would receive orders to lay hold of me by the neck. Of all my adventures since the battle of Culloden, this caused me the most cruel suffering and agitation. I could not, however, foresee it; nor could I have avoided it, without abandoning the project of escaping to Holland with Lady Jane Douglas. In all my other sinister encounters I had always had some ray of hope of escape, in the possibility of my defending myself, or of my taking to my heels; but here I was caught like a fish in a net. At length, on reaching the ship, the captain, having mounted, invited me on board, to drink a glass to the health of my mistress. I looked on this as the denouement of the piece. would be gone to bed before my arrival in I replied, that I was afraid my mistress

Harwich, and that I had to communicate to her some very important intelligence. He immediately put an end to my sufferings; calling out to the sailors to land me in the town, and not to forget presenting his compliments to Mrs Gray."

pp. 304-306.

Four and twenty hours carried thein from Harwich to Holland. The first plan of our adventurer was to go to his uncles in Russia, and by their interest to get into the Russian service. But the desire of seeing Prince Charles again, whom he had heard had effected his escape to France, made him determine to go to Paris. Here he ferings, and blinded as to the future, continued, forgetful of his past suftill after the Prince was arrested in 1748, and sent out of the kingdom, and soon after sailed for Cape Breton. when he entered the French service, The vessel in which he sailed was in bad condition, and the weather proved stormy, so that a shipwreck was regarded as inevitable during a considerable part of the voyage. The following animated description. shows us what a terrible thing a storm in the Atlantic Ocean is:

"I clambered up on deck to see the state in which we were, but my eyes could scarce

ly bear for a moment the terrific view of the ocean, which formed monstrous waves, like pointed and moving mountains, consisting of several gradations of hills: from their summits rose great spouts of foam,

which assumed all the colours of the rainbow; they were so high that our vessel seemed to be in a valley at the foot of these mountains, every wave threatening us with destruction, and to precipitate us into the bottomless deep. It was a grand majestic spectacle of horror, which might have been beheld with admiration from the land. We were at the mercy of the storm, without sails, as we could carry none; the rolling was truly terrible, and the ship was laid so flat on her side by every wave, that her keel was frequently out of water. The sailors attempted to put up the sail of distress to assist the ship; but it was immediately carried away by the wind, like a sheet of paper." pp. 316, 317.

After several years of military adventure, the Chevalier returned in 1760 to France, and there his narrative closes, with the melancholy reflection, that fortune still " continued to persecute him unceasingly with an invincible obstinacy."

We were unwilling to interrupt the continuity of the narrative, to notice the violence and the inveteracy of the author's prejudices against the Presbyterians of Scotland. He speaks of them as an "accursed race of Calvinists,-hypocrites who cover over their crimes with the veil of religion; fraudulent and dishonest in their dealings; who carry their holy dissimulation so far as to take off their bonnets to say grace when they take even a pinch of snuff; who have God constantly in their mouths and hell in their hearts." Sweeping charges of this kind against numerous bodies of men are never applicable; and it may be safely asserted of the Presbyterians, both before and at the period of the Rebellion, that whatever acerbity and moroseness attached to their character, the charge of insincerity can never be justly brought against them. And it might have occurred to the author of these memoirs, from the intercourse which he himself had with this "accursed race," that they were not altogether the false-hearted miscreants he had been taught to regard them. It was no doubt a grievous disappointment to him to be refused a horse from the farmer at St Andrews, when his feet were bruised and lacerated, and when delay was attended

with so much peril; but when he recorded the incident, he should have recollected that the farmer was aware ney on the Sunday, when the appliof no more urgent cause for the jourcation for the horse was made, than the transmission of some papers to an advocate who had been employed by Mrs Spence in the management of a law-suit. Lillie's conduct displayed a great number of the most amiable qualities-sympathy with sufferingactive exertions to relieve it-piety, gratitude, integrity, and many other virtues. The fisherman, Salmon, when he was prevented from going to Leith with our adventurer, came to him and returned the guinea which had been given to him as an inducement to engage in the service. Blythe the skipper at Leith, too, acted towards him with equal humanity and fidelity. These, as far as we recollect, are all the instances in which the Chevalier de Johnstone had to do with the men whom he designates, among many other uncourtly appellations" the holy rabble"-" the refuse of the human race "-" the vermin and the monsters "-whose braius he would have gladly blown out. Language of this description is uttered by the suggestion of party spiritthat malignant demon which, at the unhappy period of the Rebellion, had taken possession of almost every heart in the kingdom, rendering not only the words, but even the actions, of either faction full of threatenings and death. A long period of domestic tranquillity and perfect liberty of conscience in matters of religion have wrought a happy change in this respect. And one man now may differ from another in opinions and modes of worship, without the danger of the charge of want of piety to God or fidelity to man being reciprocally preferred, which, at the period referred to, was unhappily not the case.

REMARKS ON A JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY TO THE ARCTIC REGIONS.

A NORTH-WEST passage to India has now, for several centuries past,

In his Majesty's ships Hecla and Griper, in the years 1819 and 1820. By Alexander Fisher, surgeon, R. N. 8vo. London, 1821.

been most anxiously sought for by the enterprising navigators of Europe, though for a long period all their efforts tended to demonstrate that no such passage existed. The illusion was, however, still cherished; and even after the termination of Cook's voyages, another expedition was fitted out under Vancouver, for the special purpose of examining all the inlets and openings in the west coast of North America, which Cook, being at a distance from the shore, had not sufficiently surveyed, if, haply, any of these inlets might communicate with Hudson's or Baffin's Bay, or any other inland sea on the North American continent. In pursuance of these instructions, every bay and inlet on the American coast was explored, and was found to lead to no ulterior navigation; so that this great question of a north-west passage, by any sea connecting the two great oceans of the Atlantic and Pacific, was considered to be for ever set at rest. The enterprising spirit of modern times has, however, renewed this attempt, and, strange to tell, with every appearance, as far as our experience has yet gone, of ultimate success.

In consequence of some suggestions that, for ought that was yet known, a passage might still exist between the Polar Sea and the Pacific Ocean, and that, in particular, we knew nothing certain as to Baffin's Bay, an expedition was fitted out in 1818 for the further examination of these seas. The result is well known. It being supposed that land was seen to the westward after entering Lancaster Sound, and that this inlet was traced to its termination, the expedition returned. With many, however, who were in that expedition, it seemed a doubtful point whether land had been seen; and, on the other hand, from the great depth of the water, and several other indications, the presumption was considered to be greatly in favour of an open sea to the westward. The present expedition sailed in order to resolve this point; which has been happily accomplished by the discovery of an important inlet in the coast of America. This inlet was traced to the longitude of 112° W. without any appearance of a termination; and there is every reason to believe that it issues in the Pacific Ocean, probably at Behring's

VOL. VIII.

Straits. Of this important expedition no official account has yet been published,-and, to gratify the public curiosity, the present work, which is a journal of the transactions that occurred during the voyage, has made its appearance. It may be remarked, however, that, of such an expedition, it is the result which is chiefly interesting. There is necessarily a sameness in the details of all such expeditions, and if they are not sparingly and skilfully given, they are apt to be tiresome, whatever admiration we may feel for the brave men who, in prosecution merely of scientific objects, defy the horrors and the dangers of perpetual winter in those icy seas. Owing to the dreary uniformity of these countries, there are no materials for an entertaining narrative in the descriptions of its coasts or islands, and in the course of the voyage, with the exception of the scientific observations, there is little else to be related, but the struggling with ice, or the killing of bears, sea-horses, or other animals. We shall endeavour, as shortly as possible, to lay before our readers an abstract of the most important information contained in the present Journal.

The expedition, consisting of the two vessels, the Hecla of 400 tons, and the Griper, a much smaller vessel, well equipped with all necessary stores, and rendered as strong as wood and iron could make them, set sail from Deptford on the 4th May, and, without any accident, reached the entrance of Lancaster's Sound by the 30th July. They were now soon to determine the question which occasioned so much discussion since their last expedition, namely, whether there is land to westward in this inlet, or whether it is an open sea. Extreme anxiety prevailed among all those engaged in the expedition, to ascertain this interesting point. They were detained, however, for some days with contrary winds; but on the 2d August, they proceeded into the strait with a fair wind and clear weather, and many visits were made, according to our author, to the top of the mast, to look for Croker's Mountain. On the 4th August, having had fair winds, they found themselves at noon in lon. 86 56 W. which is 3 degrees to the westward of the land supposed to have been seen last season in these straits, so that this

3 N

important point was at length for ever set at rest. Their course was stopt on the 5th, by a body of ice which extended from an island to the middle of the strait, in a compact body, for thirty miles to the north shore. It was resolved, in place of waiting in actively for an opening in this vast mass of ice, to proceed to the southward and westward, for the purpose of ascertaining the state of the sea in that quarter. Here they were, in like manner, stopt by the same ob stacle, and were detained till the 20th, during which time they amused themselves with attacking the sea animals with which they were constantly surrounded, namely, whales, sea-unicorns, seals, &c. A narrow channel having been discovered between the ice and the land, it was immediately entered; but they were still detained for some days by light winds. On the 23d, however, they had a fine run to the westward, being on that day, at noon, in 95 degrees W. lon.; and on the 24th, they were in 98 degrees W. lon. They saw several islands in their progress, on some of which they landed, and found the marks of various animals, such as rein-deer and musk oxen.

They set forward again on the 27th, with occasional detentions from the foggy weather. On the 1st of September, when it cleared, they found themselves running along land to the northward, which was afterwards determined to be an island, to which they gave the appellation of Melville Island. Most of the islands which they met with since the 24th were to the north, no land having been seen to the southward. They landed on this island, where they saw two reindeer; but they took fright before they came within gun-shot of them. They made several observations in this island. The dip or vertical inclination of the magnetic needle was found to be greater at this place than at any other, being 88 degrees 45 minutes lon. On the 4th September they crossed the meridian of 110 degrees W. Lon. having thus accomplished the first part of the discovery of the North West Passage, which entitled them to the reward of L. 5000 appointed by Parliament to the first ship that reached that longitude beyond the Arctic circle. They continued their course to the westward,

though greatly retarded by the ice, which they found very closely packed, and by which they were occasionally in danger of being jammed; and by the 16th they had got about two and a half degrees farther westward, when they were stopped by the ice. By the 18th, they found that the winter was fairly setting in, for it froze so hard during the night, that the ships were regularly beset in the bay-ice, and the new ice was so strong from the effect of one night's frost, that the boats could not get through it. It was, therefore, resolved, as the place where they lay was one of the worst that could be chosen, to return for the purpose of seeking some safe harbour for the winter sojourn of the ships. Having a fine breeze from the westward, they made great way; but no sooner did the breeze fall off, than their progress was stopt by the bayice, and all their efforts to cut a passage through it were in vain. Here they were exposed to the most imminent peril, and were indebted more to accident than to any other cause for their fortunate escape. An immense mass of ice was observed to be moving westward with considerable velocity, and at the same time closing in with the land, from which the ships were not a quarter of a mile distant. Fortunately for our adventurers, there happened to be a pile of heavy pieces of ice aground, so that when the mass of ice from the sea arrived, this pile received the shock of it. The Journal observes, "The collision was certainly tremendous; for immense masses of the floe were broken off, and piled up on the top of what was already aground, from which most of them fell, or slided back again on the floe, and this operation continued for some time, until at length the force of the floe, which was at first going at the rate of two miles per hour, was almost entirely spent. It is unnecessary to observe, that, had the ships mock just mentioned, their destruction been caught between the floe and the humwould have been inevitable." p. 130.

In this concussion of the ice, the Griper lost an anchor, and the best part of a chain cable, by the edge of the floe touching it as it passed. On the 22d September they got under weigh, and were much assisted by a fresh gale of north-west wind; but were greatly obstructed in their progress by the new ice, and without a