November 5, 18*9.3 THE SEARCH FOR SIR JOHN FRANKLIN.
make his way to Lancaster Sound. Repulsed in
one quarter, we see him doubling back to another,
the tiny Fox struggling with a sea of ice-fields and
icebergs — stout hearts and strong hands carrying
her and her company through many a hair*
breadth escape. The middle-ice, however, is
too strong for them. In an unlucky hour they
are imprisoned, ice surrounds them, water even
in holes becomes daily less, winter sweeps down
from her dreary home, and all that vast sea of
broken ioe becomes frozen together. They are
beset for the winter, and must go with the ice
wherever it pleases. Twenty-five men in a tiny
craft drifting throughout that long dark winter,
in the midst of a slow-marching pack, which ever
rolls from the Pole to the Equator, was a strange
and solemn spectacle. The calm and modest en-
durance of their six months1 trial, as told by the
gallant leader, is a thing to make one proud that
such as they are our countrymen.
Late in April, 1858, the Fox may again be seen; she has approached the open sea; a furious storm arises, sending huge rollers under the ice, which heaves and rears on all sides. A battle for life commences between the stout yacht and the charging floes. Under sail and steam, she works out against all obstacles, and, thanks to a taper bow, escapes the destruction which would infallibly have overtaken a vessel of bluffer build. The sea is sighted, and eventually entered; all on board the Fox are well, all in good spirits, one of the com- pany has alone perished by an accident. Fortune ever smiles upon the resolute, and the middle-ice no longer barred the road to Lancaster Sound; by the end of July the Fox had reached its entrance. The hardy whaling-men of Aberdeen and Hull, who had just returned to their fishing-ground from home, cheered the little craft on with many a hearty “God speed ye! 11 and shared with those on board the Fox their luxuries of frozen fresh beef and vegetables. Beyond the haunts of whale fishermen, and beyond those even of the still hardier Esquimaux, the Fox must press on. Beechey Island is reached, and from the depdt of provisions left there by government expeditions, the now diminished stock of the schooner is re- plenished, and, favoured by an extraordinarily open season. Captain M‘Clintock was able to reach Cape Walker and pass down Peel Strait towards King William’s Land until brought up, on August 17th, by fixed ice, at a point twenty-five miles within its entrance. Baffled, but not disheartened, Captain M‘Clintock bethought himself of the route suggested by Lady Franklin, by way of Prince Regent’s Inlet and Bellot Strait, and with that decision which, combined with sound judgment, forms the most valuable qualification of an Arctic navigator, he immediately retraced his steps, and by the 20th, or three days later, was at the eastern entrance of Bellot Strait, watching for a chance to push through it into the western sea around King William’s Land.
The scene in that strait was enough to daunt men less accustomed to such dangers. On either hand precipitous walls of granite, topped by mountains ever covered with snow, whilst to and fro, in the space between them, the ioe was grinding and churning with great violence under the influence of a fierce tide. Like a terrier at a rat-hole, the Btaunch Fox waited for an oppor- tunity to run the gauntlet through this strait. This perseverance was partially rewarded, for on the 6th September they were able to reach its western entrance, though again to be brought up by a belt of fixed ice which stretched across the path, and was held together by a group of islands named after Sir Roderick Murchison. The winter of 1858-59 now set in, and, much to the chagrin of those on board the Fox, all hope of reaching the western sea had to be abandoned, although separated from them only by an ice-field six miles wide. An unusually cold and stormy winter had now to be endured by men debilitated by a previous winter in the packed ice of Baffin’s Bay; and the resources of Boothia Felix yielded them in fresh food only eight reindeer, two bears, and eighteen seals. Against these priva- tions, however, there was a feeling of perfect con- fidence that the returning spring would enable them to march to King William’s Land, and solve the mystery.
On February 17th, Captain MHDlintock and Captain Young left the Fox to establish advanced depots of provision for the summer sledge parties, a necessary measure which Lieutenant Hobson had been nearly lost in attempting to accomplish in the previous autumn. MUlintock went south towards the Magnetic Pole, and Young westerly for Prince of Wales’s Land. On the 15th March they both returned to the Fox, somewhat cut up by the intense cold and privation, but the cheers which rang through the little craft told that a clue had indeed been obtained to the fate of the Erebus and Terror. M ‘Clin took had met forty-five Esqui- maux, and during a sojourn of four days amongst them had learnt that “several years ago a ship was crushed by the ice off the north shore of King William’s Land; that her people landed and went away to the Great Fish River, where they died.” These natives had a quantity of wood from a boat left by the “starving white men ” on the Great River. The impatience of all on board the Fox to start with their sledges to the west- ward may be easily understood. The Esquimaux mentioning only one ship as having been sunk, gave rise to the hope that the other vessel would be found, and obliged Captain MK^lintock to detach a party under Captain Young towards Prince of Wales’s Land, whilst he and Lieutenant Hudson went south for King William’s Land and the Fish River.
On the 2nd of April the three officers left the ship with a man-sledge and a dog-sledge to each. Of Captain Young we may say that he made a most successful and lengthy journey, connecting the unexplored coast-lines of all the land to the northward and westward, and correcting its posi- tion, but without finding a single cairn or record left by Franklin. Captain M*Clintock and Hob- son went together as far as the Magnetic Pole, and, before parting company, gathered from some natives that the second vessel, hitherto unac- counted for, had been drifted on shore by the ice in the fall of the same year that the other ship was crushed. Captain M ‘Clin took undertook to go
down the east-side of King William’s Land direct