Ootomr 22, 18M.] THE LAST VOYAGE OF SIB JOHN FRANKLIN. 341
remarkable that a hundred mil*** of ice have just
been passed through behind them. The great
entrance of Lancaster his Sound breaks out of
the clouds to the westward. Capes Warrender
and Hay frown grimly over the angry sea, backed
by lofty mountain ranges, whose dark precipices,
streaked with snow, look as if they were formed
of steel and inlaid with silver.
“On, on! to the westward I” is the cry. Why need to stop and erect cairns, and deposit records of their progress. Do they not intend to pass into the Pacific next year? Have not they ordered their letters to be directed to Petro- paulskoi and the Sandwich Isles? Why lose one precious hour at the threshold of their labour?
The ice is again seen: it extends along the southern side of Barrow’s Straits, and is streaming out into Baffin’s Bay; the ships haul in for the coast of North Devon. The scene changes con- siderably from what ur explorers have seen in Greenland. No glaciers stretch from the interior, and launch their long, projecting tongues into the sea: no icy cliffs reflect there the colours of the emerald and turquoise: Arctic vegetation, wretched as it is, does not gladden the eyesight in even the most favoured spots. They have passed from a region of primary rock into one of magnesian lime- stone. Greenland is paradise, in an Arctic point of view, to the land they have now reached: it is desolation’s abiding place; yet not deficient in the picturesque. The tall and escarped cliffs are cut by action of frost and thaws into buttresses and abutments, which, combined with broken castellated summits, give a Gothic-like aspect to the shores of North Devon. Valleys and plains are passed, all of one uniform dull colour; they oonsist simply of barren limestone. The barren- ness of the land is, however, somewhat compen- sated for by the plentiful abundance of animal life upon the water. The seal, the whale, and the walrus abound; whilst wild fowl in large flocks feed in the calm spots under beetling cliffs or in shallow lakes, which can be looked down upon from the mast-head.
It is not far to the entrance of Wellington Channel: they reach Beechey Island, and mark the value of the bay within it as a wintering-place, and its central position with respect to the chan- nels leading towards Cape Walker, Melville Island or Regent’s Inlet. Ice again impedes their pro- gress. Their first instructions from the Admiralty were to try to the south-west from Cape Walker. They cannot now advance in that direction, for it is a hopeless block of heavy floes; but Wellington Channel is open, and smiles and sparkles in blue and sunlit waves, as if luring them to the north-west. Why not try a north- about passage round the Parry Islands? urges Fitjames. Franklin agrees with him that any- thing is better than delay, and at any rate they determine to explore it, and ascertain whither it led. Away they press northward, until what we know as Grinnel Land rises a-head, and they have to turn more to the west. From Wellington Channel they pass between Baillie Hamilton Island and the striking cliffs of Cape Majendie.
Eager eyes are straining from the mast-head; is it a mere bay, or is it a strait they are sailing
through? “Water, water! — large water!” replies
the ice-master from his eyry to the anxious
queries of the veteran leader. Away, away they
press — every studding sail alow and aloft — the old
ships never went so fast before— no, not on that
gieat day in their history when they were the
first to sail along the Victoria continent of the
Southern Pole. From 744° to 77° north latitude
they pushed up this noble strait, but not, as they
hoped, to reach an open or navigable sea, but to
find as we found in 1852— a wide expanse of
water perfectly choked up with ice, extending
from the head of Wellington Channel far to the
westward for hundreds of miles. Baffled but not
beaten, the prows of the stout ships are again
turned southward, and aided by a greater share of
success than has fallen to the lot of those who
have come after Sir John Franklin in those same
quarters, the gallant Erebus and Terror sailed down
a channel which is thus proved to exist between
Cornwallis and Bathurst Islands and entered Bar-
row’s Straits at a point nearly due north of Cape
Walker, in which direction Franklin was now
constrained to alone look for a route whereby to
reach the sea off the coast of North America.
It was well known that this southern course was that of his predilection; founded on his judg- ment and experience. There are many in England who can recollect him pointing on his chart to the western entrance of Simpson’s Strait and the adjoining coast of North America, and saying i —
“If I can but get down there my work is done; thence it’s all plain sailing to the westward.”
Franklin might well say this, since he and Richardson had explored nearly all that coast of Arctic America towards Behring’s Straits.
The fortnight, however, which had been spent in Wellington Channel, was the short period of navigation common to the ice-choked seas within Lancaster Sound. September and an Arctic autumn broke upon them. Who that has ever navigated those seas can ever forget the excite- ment and danger of the autumn struggle with ice, snow-storm, and lee-shores. We see those lonely barks in the heart of a region which appears only to have been intended to test man’s hardihood, and to show him that, after all, he is but a poor weak creature. Channels surround them in all directions, down and up which, let the wind blow from any quarter, an avalanche of broken floes and ugly packed ice rolls down, and threatens to engulph all that impedes its way, checked alone by the isles which strew Barrow’s Straits and serve, like the teeth of a harrow, to rip up and destroy the vast floes which are launched against them. Around each island, as well as along the adjacent coasts, and especially at projecting capes and headlands, mountains of floe-pieces are piled mass on top of mass, as if the frozen sea would invade the frozen land. The Erebus and Terror, under the skilful hands of their noble ships’ companies, flit to and fro; seek shelter first under one point, and then another. Franklin, Fitzjames, and Crozier, are battling to get into Peel Channel, between Capes Walker and Bunny. The nights are getting rapidly longer, the temperature often
falls fifteen degrees below freezing point, the