Graves and skeletons, boats and tents, clothing and camp-gear silently tell the tragic tale of that awful march, which has been traced from Point Victory to Montreal Island through the heroic researches of Hobson and McClintock, of Hall, Schwatka, and Gilder.
No weaklings were they, but as true men they strove with courage and energy to the very end. At least one brave man died on the march, and his skeleton lying on its face verified the truth of the terse tribute of the Eskimo woman who said to McClintock: "They fell down and died as they walked."
One boat's crew perished on the west coast of Adelaide Peninsula, and another entered the mouth of Back River, to die one knows not how or where. The skeleton found farthest to the south is, perchance, that of the last survivor, possibly Surgeon Stanley of the Erebus, as "Mr Stanley" was found carved on a stick found on Montreal Island in 1855.
Of the last survivor, MacGahan, in "Northern Lights," thus surmises: "One sees this man all alone in that terrible world, gazing around him, the sole living thing in that dark, frozen universe. There is no hope for him—none. His clothing is covered with frozen snow, his face is lean and haggard. He takes out his note-book and scrawls, a few lines, as he has done every day. A drowsy torpor is crawling over his senses. It will be sweet to sleep, untroubled by dreams of void and hunger. Through a rift in the clouds glares a red flash of light, like an angry, blood-shot eye. He turns and meets the sinister sunbeams with a steady eye, in which a fiery gleam is reflected, as though bidding defiance. As they glare at each other, this man and this spectre, the curtain is drawn and all is dark."
This we know, that with loyalty and solidarity these heroic men kept fast in their path of daily duty, facing unflinchingly cold and disease, exhaustion and starvation, and, as has been truly said, they thus "forged the last link of the northwest passage with their lives."
Rightly are the loftiest strains of the poet's songs invoked by steadfast fortitude and by the spirit of high endeavor rather than by physical acts of intrinsic value. So for more than a generation, as a reminder of heroic worth, the students of Oxford University have year by year turned into classic latin verse the memorial lines of the poet-laureate. Avoiding mention of the northwest passage, Tennyson raised to Franklin's "memory a monument more lasting than brass" when he penned these enduring lines:
"Not here, not here. The White North has thy bones,
But thou, heroic sailor-soul,
Art sailing on a happier voyage,
Now toward no earthly pole."
THE TIMELY SLEDGE JOURNEY OF BEDFORD PIM
"Huddled on deck, one-half that hardy crew
Lie shrunk and withered in the biting sky,
With filmy stare and lips of livid hue,
And sapless limbs that stiffen as they lie;
While the dire pest-scourge of the frozen zone
Rots through the vein and gnaws the knotted bone."
—Bulwer.