been discovered during any excursion from the north side of the island but there is no question of its having been seen in some route from the Bay of Islands along by the Humber river, or from St. George’s Bay by a communication of waters; for in Cook and Lane’s chart, published by Laurie and Whittle, in May, 1791, there is a pond delineated, which, from relative distances and appearances, I have no doubt to be the same on which our unfortunate companions lost their lives.”
We next find this officer employed in surveying the coasts of Newfoundland; and afterwards, commanding the Pike schooner; to which vessel he was first appointed Mar. 26th, 1814; and again, with the rank of commander, April 13th, 1810. He subsequently received the thanks of the inhabitants of Newfoundland, for his exertions and humanity during the calamitous winter of the latter year.
On the 14th Jan. 1818, Captain Buchan was appointed to the Dorothea hired ship, and the command of an expedition which, in consequence of the disappearance of the arctic ice from a very considerable extent of the Greenland seas, it had been resolved to equip, for the discovery of a northern communication between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The orders under which he sailed from England were, to proceed directly north, between Greenland and Spitzbergen, and in the event of meeting with a sea free from land, in which case it was hoped it would also be free from ice, to proceed direct for Behring’s Strait. Another expedition, under Captain John Ross, was at the same time directed to proceed up the middle of Davis’s and Baffin’s Straits to a high northern latitude, and then to stretch across to the westward, in the hope of being able to pass the northern extremity of America, and reach Behring’s Strait by that route, a distance greater than the one laid down for Captain Buchan, by nearly one-third. The Dorothea’s consort on this occasion was the Trent hired brig, commanded by Lieutenant (now Sir John) Franklin.
The interest excited by the equipment of these vessels was of so general a nature, that there is scarcely an individual who is not fully in possession of its purport; but, as no official narrative of the voyage has hitherto been published, the following authentic outline may not prove uninteresting.
