It was now decided to abandon the Investigator, immovably fixed as she was in the ice. Her colors were hoisted on the 3d of June, and she was left alone in Mercy Bay. The officers and crew arrived on board the Resolute on the 17th. McClure sent Lieutenant Gurney Cresswell, with despatches for the Admiralty, by sledges, down to Beechey Island, where he found a Government vessel and at once sailed for England. Though he had not made the Northwest Passage, he had at least crossed the American continent within the Arctic Circle; and this had yet been done by no mortal man.
Kellett and McClure remained for many months in the Resolute and Intrepid, beset in the ice. They received instructions from Belcher, in April, 1854, to abandon their ships. The latter were placed in a condition to be occupied by any Arctic searching-party,—the furnaces of the steamer being left ready to be lighted. Sir Edward Belcher had also been compelled to abandon his vessels, the Assistance and Pioneer: the four crews met at Beechey Island, and embarked on board their storeship, the North Star, which had been laid up for two years. They arrived in England late September. The reader will at once recognise the Resolute as the ship which was found in Baffin's Bay, in 1855, by Captain Buddington, of the New London whaler George Henry. She had forced her way, unaided by man, through twelve hundred miles of Arctic ice. The incidents of her arrival at New London, of the abandonment to the American sailors of all claim upon her by the British Government, of her purchase by the United States Congress from her new owners, her re-equipment at the Brooklyn Navy-Yard, and her restoration to the English Navy by Captain Hartstene, U.S.N., are still fresh in the mind of all.
JAPANESE VESSEL.
In the year 1853, an expedition sent by the United States under Commodore Perry ventured into waters never before ploughed by vessels of a Christian nation. On the 8th of July, the precipitous southern coast of Niphon—the largest island of the Japanese group—loomed up through the fog. The American steamers entered the Bay of Jeddo, eight miles wide at the mouth but spreading to a width of twelve beyond. They were now land-bound, with the shores of an empire almost fabulous enclosing them on every side. Though peremptorily forbidden to anchor, though surrounded by myriads of boats filled with men eager for a conflict, though menaced by forts which seemed formidable till examined through the glass, the fleet kept on, and finally, by dint of persistence and several salutary displays of power, the commodore, having at his disposal the national steamers Susquehanna, Mississippi, and Powhatan, the frigate Saratoga, and the ships Macedonian, Vandalia, Lexington, and Southampton, wrung from the sullen monopolists a treaty opening to American trade the port of Simoda, in Niphon, and that of Hakodadi, in Jesso. It now remains for the Americans to lead the Japanese, by judicious and honorable treatment, to experience and acknowledge the benefits of commerce and intercourse with the nations of Christendom.
THE LEVIATHAN.