barks at their feet, that they might all be spared to welcome back the life-imparting planet, we see these pilgrims to the God of light turn and descend into the darkness and gloom now hanging over the bay of the Erebus and Terror.
The tale of energetic battle with cold privation and festering monotony has been often told: why repeat that the officers and men under Franklin in their first winter within the frozen zone, as nobly bore the one and cheerfully combatted the other? The ruins and traces left behind them all attest it. The observatoiy, with its double embankment of earth and stones, its neat finish, and the lavish expenditure of labour in pavement and pathway: the shooting gallery under the cliff, the seats formed of stones, the remains of pleasant picnics in empty bottles and meat-tins strewed about: the elaborate cairn upon the north point of Beechey — a pyramid eight feet high, and at least six feet long on each side of the base — constructed of old meat-tins filled with gravel: all tell the same tale of manful anxiety for phy- sical employment to distract the mind from suffering and solitude. On board the ships we picture to ourselves the Arctic school and theatre: the scholar and dramatist exerting themselves to kill monotony and amuse or instruct their comrades. There are not wanting traces at Cape Riley to show how earnestly the naturalists Goodsir and Stanley laboured to collect specimens: now was their time to arrange and note upon their labours. There is more than one site still visible of tents in which the magnetical observations were obtained: now was the time to record and compare such observations. And, in addition to the charming novelty of a first winter in the frozen sea, the officers in so scientific an expedition had abundance of employment, in noting the various phenomena which were daily and hourly occurring around them.
But at length darkness and winter pass away, sunlight and spring return; pale faces again recover their natural rosy tint. Only three of the original party of one hundred and thirty-eight souls have succumbed; * the rest, though thinner, are now inured and hardened to all the changes of the Arctic climate, and exhibit no lack of energy or strength. As soon as the temperature will admit of it, parties are despatched from the ships in various directions with sledges and tents: some have scientific objects in view; others are directed to try and procure game for their sickly comrades, or to eke out the store of provisions, now reduced to a two years* stock: and, sad it is to record it, nearly all their preserved meats were those of the miscreant Goldner. Exploratory parties were likewise not wanting; and those who came on their footsteps in after years saw the signs of their lost comrades’ zeal and industry on every side. From Caswell’s Tower, which looks towards Lancaster Sound, to Point Tunis up Wellington Channel, the marks of camping places and the trails of their sledges were frequent. It was sad to remark, from the form of their cooking places, and the deep ruts left by their sledges over the edge of the terraces which abound in the neighbourhood of Beechey Island, how little Franklin’s people were impressed with the importance of rendering their travelling equipment light and portable, both as a means of exploration whilst their ships were imprisoned, and to enable them to escape if their ships were destroyed. The anxiety for their fate, expressed by many in Captain Austin’s expedition, when remarking upon the fearful expenditure of labour which must have been entailed on Franklin’s men in dragging about such sledges as they had evidently had with them, has only been too truly verified. The longest journey made by sledge parties from the Erebus and Terror at Beechey Island, so far
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1, 2. Ships.
8. Store.
4. Graves and Forge.
5. Washing Place.
6. Shooting Gallery.
7. Garden.
8. Cairn.
9. Sledge Marks.
10. Shooting Gallery.
11. Cairns.
12. Shooting Gallery.
as we know, does not exceed twenty miles; whereas three and four hundred miles outward has been recently done by our later Arctic explorers. Franklin’s experience of travelling in the Hudson’s Bay Territory was evidently at fault in the rugged and desert region in which he was now sojourning; and he had no M‘Clintock at his Bide to show him how, by mechanical skill and careful attention to weights and equipment, sledges might be constructed on which men might carry boats, tents, clothing, food, and fuel, and travel with impunity from February to August, and explore, as he himself has done in that time, nearly fourteen hundred miles of ground or frozen sea.
- All the traces alluded to In these articles, aa well aa those
delineated in the accompanying plate, were discovered at and about Beechey Island, in 1850-51, by the expeditions under ( aptain H. Austin. C B., Captain Penny, aud Captain de Haven. The tombstones rec* rded the deaths of two seamen, on January 1st and January 4th, 1846, and that of a marine,
who died on April 3rd of the same year.