On my 'hobby room' (aka spare bedroom) wall is a splendid large map of Northern Canada at a scale of 1:4 000 000. It is available to freely download as a high resolution pdf and jpg file from the Natural Resources Canada website. A UK printer provided the paper copy. I sometimes wonder what the explorers of the region in the 19th century would have given for a map like this. It would have saved a great deal of painstaking mapping often in appalling conditions but would have provided little indication of what they were searching for—the fabled North West Passage. A navigable route would have provided a shorter route to Asia and the Far East for trade.

Inspecting the map (below), the straight wide channel entered by Lancaster Sound seems a good first approach. But building up a knowledge of the channels that are either permanently or seasonally ice blocked required painstaking investigations by many explorers and that route was found not to be navigable. Amundsen followed the yellow route which looks circuitous on the map but by hugging the shoreline in a shallow draft converted herring boat it was at times an ice free route but took three years after overwintering. This route would be unsuitable for commercial use but an irony of global warming is that the most direct route may become more practical as is the case for the North East Passage.

Heavily resized crop of the Natural Resources Canada 'Northern Canada' map with author's annotations. The red route seems the most direct NW passage but not navigable at the time.
Amundsen followed the yellow route, hugging the shoreline in a shallow draft converted herring boat.
Part of a whole work reproduced as stated on the site's Terms and Conditions. "The reproduction is a copy of an official work that is published by the Government of Canada and the reproduction has not been produced in affiliation with, or with the endorsement of the Government of Canada".

I'm easily pleased and chuffed when two apparent disparate interests occasionally meet. This was the case when idly browsing eBay UK I spotted a Dancer microphotograph slide depicting 'The Arctic Council discussing the Plan of Search for Sir John Franklin'. The demise of Franklin's last expedition is one of the enduring tales of Arctic exploration and was recently in the news when both ships were located on the seabed (HMS Terror in 2016 and HMS Erebus in 2014). The prices fetched span a wide price range from under £10 for The Lord's Prayer to over £100 for the Moon. Fortunately this subject did not attract strong interest and a few tenners secured.

The microphotograph is ca. 1.8 x 1.0 mm wide  and very fine grained, the close up with a 40X and 2X Optovar starts to show the grain. It would require oil immersion and higher mag to measure grain size but avoid oiling up slides of this type. This is currently the only microphotograph in my collection. Brian Bracegirdle's and James B. Mc Cormick splendid book 'The Microscopic Photographs of J. B. Dancer' Science Heritage Lltd, 1993  is a splendid complement or alternative to acquiring many at some cost.  



The Dancer slides are well labelled and each subject numbered, no. 15 in this case.



Zeiss 4X planapo. Sir John Franklin's portrait is on the wall far left. Many of the great and the good of past and present exploration of the time are present.

 



Zeiss 40/0.75 Neofluar with 2X Optovar.

Comments to the author David Walker are welcomed.

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