the world. He has lately made accessible to the general reader the results of his labours in the Mediterranean, condensed in the valuable work which is by this time probably in the hands of most of my present audience. If I add that to such objects as these he has devoted a large expenditure from his private means, exclusive of all Government support, I shall have said much, but shall have left much unsaid which I might allege in vindication, were it needed, of this award of our Founders' Medal. His engagements have not allowed him to receive it in person, but I have the pleasure to place it in the hands of an old friend and intelligent appreciator of his merits, Sir Roderick Murchison, who has kindly undertaken to convey it to its destination. Sir Roderick Murchison replied :— "As a sincere admirer of the achievements of Admiral Smyth, including his successful efforts to advance the best interests of this Society, I am, indeed, proud to have been the individual who, in the terms which have been enunciated, recommended your Lordship and our Council to confer on so eminent a geographer the medal of our Royal founder. "As this distinction has been awarded for researches of the highest order of merit, followed by results of vast utility to mankind, I feel assured that all true physical geographers, whether at home or abroad, will approve a decision which will also, I am certain, afford real gratification to the members of the Royal, Astronomical and Antiquarian Societies, in which our distinguished associate has so long played so conspicuous and honourable a part." The award of the other, our Patrons' Medal, is one which, as I conceive, cannot but obtain here that unanimous concurrence it met with in our Council. It is true that science has long ceased to expect from the discovery of that Arctic communication between the Atlantic and the Pacific, commonly called the North-West passage, those advantages to commerce and navigation, the hope of which stimulated its first explorers. Still I can hardly think it necessary in this Society to defend that spirit of scientific curiosity which has led in our time to the endeavour to solve the great geographical problem of the North; nor can I think it any mean jealousy of other nations, which has made us desire that its solution should be reserved to British enterprise. The honour of its accomplishment has fallen on Captain Robert J. Le M. M'Clure; and it is my belief that no one since the time of Baffin and Barentz, has embarked in the pursuit more worthy to win and wear that honour. I have, indeed, in saying this, no personal acquaintance with that officer, but I know something of the estimation in which he is held by his comrades. This kind of evidence to character should, in my judgment, be accepted with discrimination. I have myself had opportunities of large acquaintance and intercourse with naval men, and I hold it wise and just to attach no weight whatever to anything which may pass current in conversation to the prejudice of any officer. Nothing short of legal evidence can justify unfavourable conclusions. I think it far otherwise when something like common consent, and what I may call gun-room reputation, exists to the advantage of particular men, and with respect to particular qualities attributed to those men. I remember the moment when the account reached this country, of Captain M'Clure's parting with his companion vessel north of Behring Strait. The latest report described him as making straight for the ice, and I know the language which was held at that time in naval circles. It was to this effect:-" That man will not return by the way he is gone, unless at least he should meet with Franklin, or find reasons connected with his rescue for retracing his course; he will return eastward or return no more." Such was the verdict founded on professional knowledge of the man, and has it not been justified? I wish indeed I could use the word 'return' in its complete sense, and that it implied something more and better than the knowledge of his position and assurance of his safety to a certain date, with the reasonable anticipation that we may yet have occasion to give him our geographical welcome upon his personal reappearance among us in health and safety. That satisfaction is as yet denied us. I cannot place in his hands this tribute of our Society: I can but confide it to the care of one whose stern experience in Arctic regions by sea and land enables him peculiarly to appreciate those qualities of skill, courage, and endurance, essential to the achievement of the great exploit which will henceforth be associated with the name of M'Clure. Sir George Back has kindly accepted this office, and from no hands can Captain M'Clure be better pleased to receive this token of our applause and appreciation, than from those of his old commander. Sir George Back replied: 66 My Lord,-It is with no ordinary satisfaction I receive this Medal, which the successful services of the gallant officer have obtained from the Royal Geographical Society: for Captain M'Clure began his Polar career under my orders in H.M.S. Terror,' where more than once, amid great dangers, he evinced by his steady conduct what might be expected of him on any future occasion. 66 Among the many calls for decision in his late remarkable voyage, perhaps in no instance did Captain M'Clure show more judgment, than in taking immediate advantage of the information, accidentally gleaned, of there being a navigable passage through the Aleutian or Fox Islands. 6 "To effect so important an object, every sail was crowded on the Investigator;' and having passed safely through the group, he was enabled to arrive near Cape Barrow at one of those fortunate moments in the Polar Sea, when a lead' through the ice opened out to him the first cheering prospect of advancing along the American coast. "He did not hesitate; and thus encouraged, battled with the frozen element, beset with shoals and treacherous rocks, until he nobly achieved the object of his ambition-the discovery of the North-West Passage. "My Lord, it shall be my care to treasure this proof of the Society's admiration for my gallant friend Captain M'Clure, nor will I fail to inform him of the courteous manner in which your Lordship presented it." Ꭺ Ꭰ Ꭰ Ꭱ Ꭼ Ꮪ Ꮪ TO THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY Delivered at the Anniversary Meeting on the 22nd May, 1854, PRESIDENT. OBITUARY. It has been, as I find, the custom of my predecessors in the chair to preface their annual address by some notice of the losses which our Society has suffered by decease within the year. I am painfully reminded of this duty by the two first names which appear upon the official list before me the names of two brothers, who, the one in the naval, the other in the military service, attained the highest honours and rewards of their professions, and were in their public and private character an honour to Scotland, which gave them birth-Admiral Sir Charles and General Sir Frederick Adam. "Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis." I knew them well, and have seen them both in the prime of life, ornaments of that paternal mansion, Blair Adam, where their distinguished father, the Lord Chief Commissioner Adam, used to collect so much of the intellect and worth of Scotland.* Sir C. Adam served as a midshipman in Lord Howe's action, and subsequently in independent command distinguished himself by the capture of an enemy's frigate in the East Indies. In the Mediterranean his fine frigate, the 'Resistance,' and the active part she took in all the operations on the coasts of Italy and Sicily in the years 1809-10, will never be forgotten by his contemporaries by sea or land. He died in the enjoyment of the Governorship of Greenwich Hospital, a retirement coveted by the brave, See Lockhart's Memoirs of Sir Walter Scott. and which none but officers of long and distinguished service obtain. General Sir Frederick Adam rose rapidly by service and merit to the higher ranks of his profession, and after long service in Holland, Sicily, the Bay of Naples, and the Peninsula, in command of a brigade of the Light Division, took a conspicuous share in the famous closing struggle of Waterloo. I remember that when the father of one of our Associates now present, Lord Colchester, as Speaker, conveyed the thanks of the House of Commons to that army and its chief, he wound up an eloquent passage of his address by an allusion to the brave brigades of Byng, Maitland, and Adam. Sir Frederick Adam was subsequently employed for several years in the office of Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands. Of these two brothers I may say," they were lovely in their lives, and in their deaths they were not divided." The shock produced by the sudden decease of the younger, Sir Frederick, was, I believe, mainly the cause of the illness which carried his brother to the grave. The late Captain Francis Price Blackwood, R.N., entered Her Majesty's Navy in 1821, from which date we trace him actively employed till the year 1838, when the Admiralty rewarded him with his Post-rank. In 1841, Her Majesty's Government having determined to assign the true positions and exact limits of the Great Barrier Reef, which stretches along the North-Eastern shores of Australia, and to mark the most eligible openings through which vessels might pass in comparative safety on their homeward voyages, he was selected to carry out this arduous duty; and for this purpose, therefore, in November of that year, he was appointed to the command of Her Majesty's ships Fly and Bramble. The results of this expedition, however briefly sketched, show a highly important and valuable addition to hydrography, and sufficiently prove the zeal and talent with which that great work was so successfully carried out, enabling us to connect the mass of detached work previously done by Cook, Flinders, Bligh, King, Stokes, and other navigators. In the four years he was thus employed, more than 1000 miles of sea in length, and 170 in breadth, were surveyed and charted-from Sandy Cape, on the Eastern coast of Australia, as far as lat. 21°, including the Capricorn Group of Islands, the widely-spread mass of Swain Reefs, and the broad passages between them, a tract of 200 miles in length and 100 in breadth; the survey of the coast of the mainland and the adjacent sea, from West Hill to the northern part of Whitsunday Passage, a distance of 100 miles; the outer line of the Great Barrier Reef, from lat. 16° 40' to its Northern limits in lat. 9° 20′, a distance of nearly 500 miles; the survey of Endeavour Strait and of all the Eastern portion of Torres Strait, from Cape York to the Coast of New Guinea, with more than 140 miles of the latter coast, together with the numerous off-lying dangers and wide-spread banks of shoal soundings, and the mouths of the numerous rivers and freshwater channels which intersect those shores in every direction. To carry out the chief object of the expedition, however, was to determine the most advantageous channel for vessels to pass through the Barrier Chain; and I may well close this outline of his services in Australia by pointing to the tower he raised on Raine's barren Islet for this purpose. With only the additional assistance of 20 artificers and a small cutter under the command of Lieut. Ince-with no anchorage or shelter near, and surrounded by dangerous reefs-no other materials than the coral rock of the island for the tower—the shells gathered from the reefs at low water for lime, the beams of wood required for the building from a neighbouring wreck-he raised a tower beacon, 70 feet in height, 30 feet in diameter, with stone walls of 5 feet in thickness. This beacon there remains, and is a faithful witness to the skill and perseverance of the architect who raised it, and whose untimely end this Society deplores. But besides the ardour with which in all cases he performed his professional duties, he lost no opportunity of pursuing his taste for science, and even constructed a small observatory in order to study with more effect every branch of practical astronomy, which it might be possible to enlist in aid of navigation and geography. Guided by the same activity of mind and body, in 1851 he obtained a few weeks' leave of absence, and proceeded to Helsingborg, in Sweden, to observe the approaching eclipse of the sun, which, from the singular appearances that had taken place at a former total eclipse, had aroused the attention of the philosophic world. Helsingborg was on the outer limit of the space where the moon would wholly obscure the sun: the weather was satisfactory, his instruments had been well chosen, and he succeeded in observing the extraordinary projections of flåme from the limb of the sun, which had so much excited the curiosity of astronomers; and his modest but accurate account of that phenomenon was found worthy of being published in the Memoirs of the Astronomical Society. Had it pleased Providence to prolong his life, he would doubtless have rendered eminent services to his country; and sorrow. for his private worth is heightened by regret that his early loss has removed an ornament from the profession, in which he had already justified an hereditary title to distinction. VOL. XXIV. |