the coast of America that Franklin knows of, is now nearly south-west of his position, it leads between King William’s and Victoria Land. For, alas! in his chart King William’s Land [see opposite] was represented to be connected with Boothia by a deep bay, called Poet’s Bay. It is true that to the southwest the hopeless looking ice-stream bars his way, and that to the south-east the road looks clear and promising; but then, did not his chart say that there was no channel east of King William’s Land, by which to reach the American shore? There was no alternative, they must enter the pack or ice-stream, and go with it to the south- west.
Had they not already passed over two-hundred out of the three-hundred miles between Cape Walker and Cape Herschel? Were they the men to flinch from a struggle for the remaining hundred miles? That struggle commenced as the winter closed in, and just as King William’s Land was in sight, the Erebus and Terror became beset, and eventually fixed for the winter of 1846-7* in latitude 70° 5" north, and longitude 98° 23" west, about twelve miles due north, of Cape Felix. More dangerous and unpromising winter-quarters could hardly have fallen to their lot, but they were helpless in that ice-stream. Sixteen years previously Sir James Ross had stood upon Cape Felix. He travelled on foot in the early spring of 1830, from Victoria Harbour in the Gulf of
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Boothia, and explored the northern coast of King William’s Land, and standing on the 29th of May, on this very Cape Felix, remarked with astonishment the fearful nature of the oceanic ice, which was pressed upon the shores; and he mentions that in some places the pressure had driven the floes inland, half a mile beyond the highest tide-mark! Such the terrible winter-quarters of those lone barks and their gallant crews; and if that season of monotony and hardship was trying to them in Beechey Island, where they could in some measure change the scene by travelling in one direction or the other, how infinitely more so it must have been with nothing round them, but ice- hummock and floe-piece, with the ships constantly subjected to pressure and ice-nip, and the crews often threatened during the depth of winter with the probability of having their ships swallowed up in an arctic-tempest, when the ice-fields would rear, and crush themselves one against the other under the influence of the awful pressure from the north-west.
The God of storms, who thus lashed the wintry north with his might, shielded however those brave men; and now, inured to the dangers of icy seas, they slept and laboured not less pleasantly because the floes were rocking their wooden homes; and consoled themselves, that they were only then ninety miles from Cape Herschel, and that even a sledge party could reach it next spring (1847), l>efore the navigation would be open.
Thus their second winter passes. King William’s Land shows out here and there from its winter livery; for evaporation serves to denude those barren lands of snow, long before any thaw takes place. May comes in, the unsetting sun in dazzling splendour pours its flood of perpetual light over the broken, shattered blocks of ice, while from the great ice-stream, drops of water form on the black sides of the weather-beaten ships, and icicles hang pendant from the edge of hummocks; yet it is still intensely cold in the shade. Lieutenant Graham Gore, and Mr. F. Des Vaux, mate, both of the Erebus, are about to leave the ships for the land; they have six men with them. Why do all grasp them so fervently by the hand? Why do even the sick come up to
give them a parting cheer? Surely they went