Weekly national intelligencer., 1854-04-08
NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER.
NOTES ON NEW BOOKS.

| NOTES ON NEW BOOKS.
THE UNITED STATES GRINNELL EXPEDITION i,
Search Of Sir JOHN FRANKLIN. Personal Narrative
BY ELISHA KENT KANE, D., U. s. Navy. New York
| Harper & Brothers, 1854.
| The region known on our maps as the Arctic
Ocean, and enclosed between the northern bounda
ries of Asia, Europe, and America, embraces an
About this tract there hangs an air of mystery and
romance which has long allured the adventurous
research of the explorer and pqued the curiosity Of
the common mind The imagination always seeks
as the scene of its reYels the domain of the un-
known, and tho poets have complained that the
march of geographical discovery, by proaning their
most secluded haunts, has driven from the face of
the earth " the Ineligible forms" and the fair
humanities" which live no longer in the faith of
reason. But the Arctic regions still remain as the
Wonderland of the fancy; land in which Nature
has inscribed tablets of everlasting ice record
of secrets more inscrutable than any which the old
Father of History sought to decpher on the eternal
obelisks of Memphis; land of stranger sights,
beasts and birds, than any which so charmed the
early Greeks in the story of their earliest chroni
cler. The very facts of science became invested
with wild and weird interest in this mysterious
region the vicissitude Of day and night of winter
and summer, is here strangely smplifed; here lies
the invisible centre of motion on the earth surface,
the ideal axis of our globes diurnal rotation.
Within these precincts, too, the brilliant aurora
displays its faryke coruscations, for here is stu
ated the North Magnetic Pole, spot upon which
Sir James Clark Ross was the first to stand, though
Prof. Hansteen had by his mathematics already
defined it, just as LeVerrer more recently was able
to locate by his calculus the stars in the armament
before as yet their light had entered the telescope
of the observer And here again the isothermal
lines which belt our globe converge to that unseen
and as yet undefucd spot which may be called the
northern pole of maximum cold This, then, is
surely no vulgar region in the estimation of the
of science. It's physical features, the formation
of its cebergs the great tidal movement of its ice
pack, its mighty fauna and its meagre fora are
objects Of equal scientific interest and Importance
But of these interesting objects has been the pro-
curing of all the labor and suffering which the pa
irons and martyrs of science have expended in the eypo
ration of this wild and nhosptable region The great
problem Of the Northwest Passage has been that to the
solution Of which high the rolls of British fame
have bent all their energies and applied all their skill
The search for this passage first seriously attempt
ed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The illastrieus
Frobisher after tits said fifteen years solicitation
ceoded in obtaining from the British Admiralty the means
of equpppg two miserable barques, of only twenty
tons eacb in which to prosecute his discoveries in this
direction. In these a cockeshels this bold and hardy
mariner braved the rgors of Polar winter in 1876, and
amid Arctic storms and ice kept year after year
beating about the entrance Of Hudsons Bay, entauged
in channels perpetuay filed with foes and hummocks
that barred his entrance into that sen.
Soon after this failure OF Frobisber new expedition
was equipped for the purpose of renewing the search
and discovering the land Of gold" which was believed
80 skirt the Arctic waters Some gtterng mineral earth
which has been brought from the far North the basis
Of this golden vision. The explorers need not say
far from discovering the desired passage us the
fancied FL Dorado.
In 1886 the search was renewed by Capt. Davis who
employed for this purpose by company Of London
merchants. Davis penetrated for the first time the
broad strait which still bears his namo, and in his third
voyage succeeded in reaching its widest expanse, where
he beheld open sea stretching towards the west but
upon whose icy waters he was unable to pursue hi,
course.
Next in this history Of Arctic navigation we with
the honored of Hcndrick Hudson. This hardy
engaged first seek the passage by the aon
the north Of ASIA snd failing in ths returned to th
old route by the wcs following in the path Of his
cessful predecessors. He doomed to be the mos
unfortunate Of them all for after having for the FRS
imc entered that inland which still perpeuate
his name, he thrust from his ship by her mutnou
and left to perish in solitary exile the roxer
shores Of the bay he had discovered.
| To Hudson succeeded Sir Thomas Button who in IN,
following year entered the bay wsch his illustrous bu
i'll fated predecessor had opened. Sir Thomas pushed
his wsy directly the bread bosom Of this water