Two years after the return of Franklin from his second overland journey, an expedition was fitted out by a wealthy distiller, Sheriff Felix Booth, and the ship, the _Victory_, provided by him, was placed under the command of Captain John Ross, who had already gained reputation in exploring Baffin's Bay. Captain Ross was ably seconded in his expedition by his nephew, Captain James Ross. Going by Baffin's Bay and through Lancaster Sound, Prince Regent's Inlet led Ross southward between Cockburn Island and Somerset North, into an open sea called after his patron, Gulf of Boothia, on the west side of which he named the newly-discovered land Boothia Felix. He even discovered the land to the west of Boothia, calling it King William Land. His ship became embedded in the ice. After four winters in the Arctic regions he was rescued by a whaler in Barrow Strait. One of the most notable events in this voyage of Ross's was his discovery of the North Magnetic Pole on the west side of Boothia Felix. During his second winter (1831) Captain Ross determined to gratify his ambition to be the discoverer of the point where the magnetic needle stands vertically, as showing the centre of terrestrial magnetism for the northern hemisphere. After four or five days' overland journey, with a trying headwind from the north-west, he reached the sought-for point on June 1st. We deem it only just to state the discovery in the words of the veteran explorer himself:-- "The land at this place is very low near the coast, but it rises into ridges of fifty or sixty feet high about a mile inland. We could have wished that a place so important had possessed more of mark or note. It was scarcely censurable to regret that there was not a mountain to indicate a spot to which so much interest must ever be attached; and I could even have pardoned any one among us who had been so romantic or absurd as to expect that the magnetic pole was an object as conspicuous and mysterious as the fabled mountain of Sinbad, that it was even a mountain of iron, or a magnet as large as Mont Blanc. But Nature had here erected no monument to denote the spot which she had chosen as the centre of one of her great and dark powers; and where we could do little ourselves towards this end, it was our business to submit, and to be content in noting in mathematical numbers and signs, as with things of far more importance in the terrestrial system, what we could ill distinguish in any other manner.