ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY.

New Zealander, Volume 9, Issue 777, 24 September 1853, Page 4

ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY.

Seakch tok Sir Johk FnANKUN,

(From the *' Morning Chronicle") A very full meeting of this society was held at the tbentre of the Royal Institution, with Sir J. R. Murchwon (the president) in the chair. The President called upon Commander Inglefield to read the account of his late search in the Arctic regions. Commander Inglefield then gave a detailed account of l.is voyage to the Arctic Regions in search of Sir John Franklin in the screw schooner IsaUl, of 140 tons. After briefly alluding the circumstances under which he had accented the Isabel, from Lady Franklin, and the subscribers leaving him to defray the expenses of her equipment, waires of the crew, &c, he stated that he (tailed from Encland with the intention of examining those parts of Baffin Ba )'. in thp extreme north, which had never hitherto been reached ; but falling in gptting pa far he hoped to be nble to reach Beechey Island, there to make an offer cf bis surplus provisions to .the Government expedition. Should he not succeed in this it was his intention to examine the west coast of Baffin Bay aud Labrador for the crews of the missing vessel*, in case they should have been wrecked, or *d-ou!d "have deserted those vessels, as reported by the Jiexorution to have been seen on an ice floe. The commander made allusion to the season in which he sailed frr m England as beine fir advanced before be started, a- d staled that ho had left thrre months later than the ( Jovemment expedition of last year. Notwithstanding this, he had succeeded in reaching a considerably highpr latitude than had been attained by Ross and Parry in their voyage of 1818, having explored and laid down 600 miles of new coast line, determining also that the entrance into Whale Sound was a great s'rait passing into an open sea, and thus, apparently, defining Greenland an island. On the northern shore of this strait OanHr Tnirleneld discovered several islands (Northumberland Islann. Sir Tl'omas Herbert's Island, and Louis Napoleon's Island), all of which were rapidly swveyed and laid down upon the teg.now exhibited. I paving this sound (as it had hitherto been termed), be Failed northward in the direction of Smith's Sound, and there found a great extent of sea stretching far before him. On the §7th of August, at 2 p.m., he attained the latitude of 78 deg, 35 min. nearly 129 miles farther north than any former voyagers, and within a great sea, the entrance of which was thirty-five miles across, only partially encumbered with icp, and which upon the eastern shore seemed perfectly navigable. Captain Inglefield stated that he bad thus entered the great Polar basin, and declared that he believed he would have been able to have pushtd throuch in the direction of Behring Straits, bad the gale, which fairly blew him out of it, not defied his utmost efforts. The small high-pressure engine with which the Isabel was fitted was only equal to pushing the vessel in calms or high winds. The strong breeze increased to a furious gale of wind and snow, and lasted thirty hours, during which time the ship remained hove to. After i* moderated Captain Inglefield described the perilous situation in which he was suddenly placed by driving into thp lee pack, and exhibited a sketch of the position of bis vessel upon this occasion. After some hours of great exertion be was providentally released, and then, closely examining the western shore, entered Jones' Sound on ibe 30th of Aug. Here he penetrated to long. 84 deg, and found at this point that the coast suddenly trended away to the north-west, whilst the southern shore continued westerly as far ns the eye could reach, but no land could be distinguished at the bottom of the sound nor could any trac-p of the missing ■expedition he discovered. On the Ist Sptemher Commander Inglefield sailed from Jones' Sound with the intention of communicating with the squadron of Sir Edward Blucher ; be reached Beechy Island on the 7th September, and, after depositing his letter bags and receiving other? in return for England, sailed the same day, with a view to commence a more tailed examination of the western shores of Baffin's Bay than former navigators had been able to bestow on the coast. Commander Inglefield was unsuccessful in finding nnv traces of the missing expeditions on those shores, which he explored as far south as the River Clyde, where the ice fixed to the land and stretching nearly across Baffin's Bay, carried him over to the eastern shore, in the neighbourhood of Disco Island, where he encountered a succession of gales which he describes as being j the most violent he ever had witnessed; and which, owing to the proximity of the ice and the vast bergs which surrounded the coasts, rendered them doubly dangerous. After several fruitless efforts ' to get into Northumberland Inlet (where the commander intended to winter), he was. at the earnest represents-. tions of his ice masters, forced to relinquish the at«mpt, and bore up for England on the 14th of October, arriving at Peter-head exactly four months from the day he sailed. Captain Inglefield dropped some remarks Upon the search for the missing vessels, and gave it as his opinion that the Government expedition was undouhtly on the right track. Reviewing his geographical discoveries, taking into consideration the strong current which he found setting from the southward in the Polar basin, and through Murchison Strait, he could not but feel sure that he had discovered and entered that Polar basin, and that possibly this strait and Smith Sound are both entrances into that basin ; he urged that the formation of the land and other circumstances to which he briefly induced him to believe that Baffin Bay could no longer be considered as a mere bay, but rather as an arm of communication, and that the Polar Sea might be said to commence from 'Lancaster Sound on the westward, and from Whale Sound on the eastward. He spoke of the animal life which existed in the parts that he had visited, and drew particular attention to the fact that the 6pecics of molusca, viz., the clio-boreals and the sagitti, two of that class upon which the whale principally feeds, were found by the surgeon of the expedition. Dr. Sutherland, to lie more numerous and la;ger in Whale Sound than in any locality he had visited ; and that the sea birds mollys (fnlmar peta) and loons (uria troile) were abundant. Captain Inglefield stated that upon one occasion he sailed through postive shoals of birds, and that as far as the eye could reach, the surface of the water was covered with these creatures, and that they appeared to be so completly gorged as to be apparently unwilling to move as his ship ploughed her way among t'lem. The President congratulated Captain Inglefield on i\m h'gb qualities of seamenship, and extraordinary activity, zeal and endurance he had evinced in the conduct of his expedition. The best proof of his provident care in husbanding his resources was, that he had brought back a store of coals amounting to sixty-six tons in the hold of his vessel. Mr. Petermann inquired if Captain Inglefield had met with any driftwood on the coasts examined by him as there was reason to conclude that one of the characteristicß of the sea of the Polar basin was a great current coming from the nothern shores of Asia, and caused by the efflux of the great Siberian rivers, draining an area of 4,000,000 square miles, which conveyes an immense quantity of driftwood that would naturally be deposited on the Artie coasts of the American side* Captain Inglefield said they had not found driftwood at any point, though passing so close to the shore that he must have observed it had any existed. He doubted the existence of any such current as that spoken of, since on one occasion, having the vessel hove-to for a period of thirty hours, he found he only drifted a single mile to the southward. The Duke of Argyll inquired if Captain Inglefield had any interpreter through whom he could communicate with the Esquimaux, relative to the existence of a Polar basin. Captain Inglefield said that he had been disappointed in his hopes of obtaining an interpreter through the Danish authorities at Disco, but Mr. Abernethy, his mate, and Dr. Sutherland could speak a little of their language, having made several previous voyages to the Polar regions. His impression was that Sir J. Fritnk1m was still to be found, either by the route he had followed, or by that of the sea between Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla, which he bad wished to explore before leaving England, but had been strongly advised on the contrary, from the perils and difficulties attendant on a search conducted in a single ship. His hope was that the Isabel might yet be employed in the examination •f this sea. Sir John Ross thought that the energetic exertions of Captain Inglefield had comple e'y established that l'ranklin never went up Whale or Jones's Sounds, or any other passage at the head of Baffin Bay. It remained, therefore, only to look to the Wellington Channel.

The President in adjourning the meeting, congratulated those present on having heard enough to show that their expectations of the search for Sir. John Franklin being crowned with success were anything but visionary.