him to the spot where Sir Edward Parry passed | Bellot Strait commemorates a gallant lieutenant of the winter of 1820-21, where interesting traces of the French navy, who went out with Mr. Kennedy the sojourn were found, after an interval of thirty in the "Prince Albert," and again with Captain years, during which the place had been abandoned Inglefield in the screw-steamer "Isabel," on which to bears, foxes, musk-oxen, reindeer, and ptarmi- occasion he perished by a casualty on the ice, angans. On a mass of sandstone an inscription was other victim to arctic perils. An obelisk to his quite fresh, containing the names of the ships memory stands by Greenwich Hospital. "Hecla" and "Griper," with the date of the visit. The "Fox" left our shores on what seemed to many a hopeless errand, in the year 1857, and speedily reached the lands of which it has been said "The earth is rock-the heaven Dull light distils through frozen skies, I have forgotten the green earth My heart assumes the landscape of mine eyes, The first winter was passed in the pack-ice of Davis's Strait, with which the ship drifted upwards of a thousand miles. Disentangled on the 25th of April, 1858, the small Danish settlement of Holsteinburg, in South Greenland, was visited for such scanty supplies as the place afforded. The kindred settlements of Godhaven and Upernivik, in North Greenland, were next reached. At the former of these, on Disco Island, the centre of an important fishery, the last letters received from Franklin and his crew were written. The latter, in latitude 72° 48′, is the most northerly permanent little town in the world. On starting fairly for the scene of search, but very slow progress was made, owing to the unusual accumulation of ice in the northern part of Baffin's Bay; and the vessel could not have pushed on at all without the aid of steam-power. At Pond's Inlet, gained on the 27th of July, an old Esquimaux woman and boy were met with, who served as guides to their village. The people were most friendly and communicative, but knew nothing of the lost vessels, nor had any tidings of wrecks reached them for the last twenty or thirty years. At Beechy Island, where, it will be recollected, discovery was made by Captain Ommaney, of the Austen expedition, that Franklin had passed the winter of 1845-6, then vanishing from the knowledge of mankind, a handsome marble tablet was landed on the 11th of August, sent out by Lady Franklin for the purpose, bearing an appropriate inscription to the memory of her husband and his crews. The rest of the month, with the greater part of September, was spent in running down Prince Regent's Inlet, and passing through Bellot Strait, the western outlet of which was found to be firmly closed with ice, which had withstood the violence of the autumnal gales, though free water was seen at the distance of a few miles across the barrier. There was no alternative, therefore, but to retire, and look out for winter quarters, owing to the advance of the season. They were found in a snug harbour at the eastern entrance of the strait, which received the name of Port Kennedy, after that of a predecessor in the same waters. But The winter was unusually cold and stormy. scarcely had the sun begun to peep above the horizon, terminating the long darkness, when Captain M'Clintock, accompanied by Mr. Petersen, a Danish gentleman who speaks Esquimaux thoroughly, left the vessel on a short preparatory tour. The party travelled with two sledges drawn by dogs, and started on the 17th of February, 1859, proceeding in a southerly direction towards the magnetic pole. This spot, on the western coast of Boothia, was first reached by Sir James Ross, June 1, 1831, at eight o'clock in the morning, who found the amount of the dip of the magnetic needle to be 89° 59′, only one minute less than 90°, the vertical position, which would have precisely indicated the polar station. It is an unattractive site along the coast, rising into ridges from fifty to sixty feet high, about a mile inland. The wish expressed by the discoverer was natural, that a place so important had possessed more of mark or note; but Nature had erected no monument to denote the spot which she had chosen as the centre of one of her "great and dark powers." A cairn of some magnitude was erected by the adventurers, upon which the British flag was planted, and underneath a canister was buried containing a record of the interesting enterprise. It was fortunate that M'Clintock travelled in this direction, for near Cape Victoria, some miles south of the magnetic pole, he fell in with a party of natives in possession of undoubted relics obtained from Franklin's vessels. They told him that several years ago a ship was crushed by the ice off the northern point of a great island, answering in position to our King William's Island; but that all her people had landed safely, and gone away to the Great Fish River, where they died. The tribe was well supplied with wood, got from a boat, they said, left by the "starving white men," on the Great River. Excited by this intelligence, the party returned to the "Fox," to prepare to follow up the clue by more extended journeys, but were much exhausted by hard marching, and the terrible temperature, often 71° below the freezing point. "Cold! cold! there is no sun in heaven, But the track of the wolf and the bear; And the snow crunching under his feet." So scanty were the resources of the country, that notwithstanding the efforts of expert sportsmen, through a period of eleven months, only eight reindeer, two bears, eighteen seals, with a few waterfowl and ptarmigans, had been obtained. Though Providence, which tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, enables some land quadrupeds to brave with impunity the rigour of a polar winter, yet vast tracts are utterly solitary, and everywhere the cries of ani mal life are few and far between. This dreariness | Evidence of the truth of the statement was found on the southern shore of King William's Island, some ten miles eastward of Cape Herschel, where a bleached skeleton was met with on the 24th of May, with fragments of European clothing around it. Upon carefully removing the snow, a small leathern pocket-book was discovered, which fell to pieces upon being thawed and dried. It contained a few letters, which, though much decayed, may yet be deciphered, a sixpence, dated 1831, and a half sovereign, dated 1844. There was also the tie of a black silk handkerchief, a scrap of a coloured cotton shirt, and a small clothes brush. Judging from the remains of the dress, the body appeared to be that of a steward, or officer's servant. Benumbed with cold, reduced by hardships, or debilitated by scurvy, the hapless one had staggered to the spot, where he was brought to a final halt by. the overpowering incidents of his position, and fell prostrate in the arins of death, while the wild wind sung his requiem, and the snow storms wove his shroud. led M. Bäer to think, when at a corresponding latitude, of the state of nature on the morning of creation, just before animals were called into existence. In a few weeks, the searching party was ready for long spring journeys, and again the neighbourhood of Capo Victoria was visited. Here two native families were met with, living out upon the ice in snow huts. Counselled by experience, the Esquimaux construct houses of this description for winter dwellings; and they are best adapted to protect them from the tremendous cold. Snow is so perfect a non-conductor of heat, that the burning of a common candle in one of these huts creates a perceptible increase of temperature; and the heat derived from the flame of spirits of wine sufficient to boil a tea-kettle, diffuses an agrecable warmth, in relation at least to the temperature without, which is felt for the rest of the night. From these natives it was gathered that another ship had been seen off King William's Island, and that she drifted ashore on the fall of the same year. Thus the second of Franklin's vessels was accounted for. The party now divided, Captain M'Clintock proceeding in one direction, and Lieutenant Hobson in another, cach with a sledge drawn by four men, and an auxiliary sledge drawn by six dogs. We follow in the first instance the course of the former. Turn we now to Lieutenant Hobson. Upon separating from his commanding officer, he proceeded in the direction of Cape Felix, and fell in with a very large cairn, a short distance to the westward of it. Close adjoining were three small tents, with blankets, old clothes, and other relics of a shooting or a magnetic station. But although the cairn was carefully examined, and the ground around it ransacked, no record was discovered. Two broken bottles were found amongst some stones, which may have contained documents, destroyed or carried away by the Esquimaux. Among the clothing there was a stocking marked W., and the fragment of another marked W. S. Two small cairns were subsequently met with in the neighbourhood, but they yielded nothing of importance. The 6th of May brought with it an interesting revela tion obtained from a large cairn on Point Victory. Lying among some loose stones which had fallen from the top, a small tin case was found, containing a paper inscribed as follows: While marching along the east coast of King William's Island, a snow village was reached on the 8th of May, near Cape Norton, containing about thirty inhabitants. They showed no signs of fear or shyness, though probably they had never scen living white men before. They willingly also communicated all they knew, and bartered their goods, but would have stolen everything had not their movements been closely watched. Many relics of our unfortunate countrymen were purchased from them; among others some silver spoons and forks, which were identified by the crests and markings as the property of Sir John Franklin, Lieutenants Fairholm, and Le Vescomte. These all belonged to the "Erebus." There was also a silver medal obtained by Assistant-Surgeon Mr. A. Macdonald, as a prize for superior attainments, at a medical examination in Edinburgh, April, 1838. He belonged to the "Terror." Of this gentleman we remarked in this journal, in 1854, that his name, written on a scrap of paper, probably the fragment by deaths in the expedition has been to this date 9 officers and of a letter, found on Beechy Island in 1850, was the Alas! this dropping by the way was no wilful fiction or imaginative dream, but a terrible reality. : "25th April, 1848. H. M. Ships 'Erebus' and 'Terror' were doserted on the 22nd April, 5 leagues N.N.W of this, (Point Vietory,) having been beset since 12th Sept. 1816. The officers and crews, consisting of 105 souls, under the command of Captain F. R. M. Crozier, landed here in lat. 69° 37′ 42′′ N. long, 98° 4′ 15′′ W. Sir John Franklin died on the 11th June, 1817, and the total loss 15 men. "F. R. Crozier, "Captain and Senior Officer. "James Fitzjames, Captain, H.M.S. 'Erebus,' "Start on to-morrow, 26th, for Back's Fish River." A second record was found a few miles to the southward, but it contained no additional information, being of earlier date, deposited by a party from the ice-beset ships. It is affecting to remember, that in about a fortnight after the "All well" of the paper was written, Franklin was no more. "H. M. Ships 'Erebus' and 'Terror.' "Whoever finds this paper is requested to forward it to the Secretary of the Admiralty, London, with a note of the time and place at which it was found; or, if more convenient, to deliver it for that purpose to the British Consul at the nearest port. (The same in French, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, and German.) "Party, consisting of two oflicers and six men, left the ships on Monday, 24th May, 1847. "G. M. Gore, Licut. "Chas. F. Des Voeux, Mate." Overcome of their fate, beyond the general result. in the grapple with unrelenting frigidity; starved, emaciated, exhausted, they dropped by the way, one after another, till the last man perished. But some seventy miles from the starting-point a boat was discovered, mounted on a sledge, apparently intended for the ascent of the river. In it were It thus appears that, after having been beleaguer- two human skeletons, with a considerable quantity ed by the ice from September 12, 1846, through the of clothing. One of the skeletons lay in the after whole of 1847, to April 22, 1848, upwards of part of the vessel, under a pile of clothing; the nineteen months, the ships were deliberately aban-other was in the bow, and had been much disturbed, doned by their crews, hopeless of their being extricated. After the desertion, according to native reports, one vessel was crushed and sunk, while the other was forced ashore, where she became an almost inexhaustible mine of wealth to the Esquimaux. The scene of the disaster was indicated with remarkable precision, some years ago, by Captain Richards, R.N., an officer well acquainted with the mazy channels and frozen shores of the northern waters. "Both sides of Peel Channel," he wrote, "as high as King William's Island and Gateshead Island, must be explored. If the ships, or their wrecks, are not found there and I think they will be-continue the search up both sides of King William's Island to Montreal Island, at the embouchure of the Great Fish River." It was a capital error, on the part of Franklin, that, after breaking up from his first winter quarters, for a bold dash into Prince Regent's Inlet, he raised no monument on either shore to indicate his route. He must have passed through it in the early summur of 1846, and the very first expedition sent out in search of him, under Sir James Ross, was there in 1848-9, wintering on the western side of the entrance. Had a solitary cairn been erected, it would have been found by his exploring parties, and have put navigators upon the true track, though perhaps not in time to reach any of the lost wanderers while alive, and prevent starvation from executing its stern office. At the landing-place of the mariners, a large quantity of clothing and stores lay strewed about, as if here every article was thrown away which could possibly be dispensed with-pickaxes, shovels, boats, cooking utensils, ironwork, ropes, blocks, canvas, oars, a small medicine chest, and a sextant, engraved Frederick Hornby, R.N." He was a lieutenant and first mate on board the "Terror." Possibly, unconscious how far their strength had been reduced, till tried by the toils and privations of the march, the band of 105 gallant fellows set out for the Great Fish River. This stream, broken by numerous falls, flows through a north-easterly part of the American continent, a most desolate and difficult country, and enters a gulf of the Arctic Ocean. It was first explored by Sir George Back, in 1834, when engaged in the search for Sir John Ross. The distance by sledge route, from the position where the ships were abandoned to its mouth, off which lies Montreal Island, is about 220 geographical miles. Whether any of the party struggled on so far as to reach it, none can say. We would fain follow the tramp of the dauntless band over the blinding snow, but cannot; nor Is anything known respecting the circumstances as if by animals. Two double-barrelled guns stood upright against the boat's side, precisely as they were placed eleven years before. Que barrel in each was loaded and cocked, and there was abundance of ammunition. The boat likewise contained tea, chocolate, and tobacco, watches and silver plate, a small prayer-book, the cover of a book of family prayers, a small Bible, interlined in many places and with numerous references written in the margin, a New Testament in the French language, and a book of Christian melodies, inscribed within the cover to "G. G." We dwell with mournful pleasure upon the possession of articles of this kind, as showing that, unutterably sorrowful as was the earthly fate of the owners, they had a sure guide with them to a "better country, that is, a heavenly:" and we may hope that, while forlorn, friendless, and helpless, lying in an open boat, exposed to the biting blast and pelting storm, they were chcered in the dark hour of their last agony by "The lamp that can illuminate the grave." The initials G. G. are those of Graham Gore, first lieutenant on board the Erebus," who was out with Sir James Ross in the Antarctic expedition. In the last letter sent home by his superior, Captain Fitzjames, written to a lady, he described him as "a man of great stability of character, a very good officer, plays dreadfully well upon the flute, has the sweetest of tempers, and is altogether a capital fellow.” The fate of Franklin having been ascertained, and, by inference, that of his comrades, there was no end to be gained, worth the effort, in visiting the few relics of the wreck, if any remained upon the beach; and Captain M'Clintock wisely returned to his ship, which had all the while lain at Port Kennedy. From thence he started on the homeward voyage, in August, and reached England on the 21st of September, to startle the nation with his tidings. We now close a very mournful tale, doubtless the last of the kind which we shall have to record. If, as a maritime nation, we must occasionally lose highly accomplished naval officers and experienced seamen, let it be on the broad commercial highway of the ocean, not in the region where its waters solidify, and nature offers obstacles to progress too strong for man to overcome; or where, if any advance rewards the indomitable hardihood of the navigator, there is no purpose of science, commerce, or humanity answered by it. We cannot afford to sacrifice such men as those who went out in the "Erebus" and "Terror," or even a single life, in attempts to thread the mazes of an in- | quays of Liverpool and the factories of Manchester. hospitable archipelago, where the many-coloured But it is best to let bygones be bygones, for the auroras may be bright and beautiful aloft, but folly is not likely to be repeated. For this last where, below, no cereals will ever flourish, no civil- eruise we are bound to be thankful. As a tribute ized population be planted, and only the hardiest of respect to the dead, it has been crowned with animals can live, whose cries occasionally mingle complete success; and it was but just to inquire with the report of the icebergs, as they split with concerning their bones. Long will it be rememthe roar of a thousand cannon, and send off from bered with admiration, as the effort of an illustrious their reeling bases the sounding swell to the wife, Lady Franklin, who, when governments were neighbouring strand. Had the money expended cold, collected the remains of her fortune, after a upon north-western expeditions to dreary solitudes large previous expenditure, and devoted them to been devoted to such missions as those in which the task of either rescuing her husband, or solving Livingstone is engaged, the benighted millions the problem of his doom. We know the result; of interior Africa would long ago have been fa- and to poets it may now be left to celebrate the miliar with "the sound of the church-going bell;" wild romance of the modern Odyssey, and sing the and its cotton might have found its way to the praises of the Penelope of England. |