Rae succeeded in purchasing about sixty articles from the Eskimos. The most important, which left no doubt of their having come from Franklin's squadron, were twenty-one pieces of silver for the table, which were marked with five different crests and with the initials of seven officers of the expedition, including Sir John Franklin.
The natives thought that some of the explorers lived until the coming of wild fowl, in May, 1850, as shots were heard and fish bones with feathers of geese were later seen near the last encampment.
Although Rae had completed his survey only in part, he wisely decided that he had, as he records, "A higher duty to attend to, that duty being to communicate with as little loss of time as possible the melancholy tidings which I had heard, and thereby save the risk of more valuable lives being jeopardized in a fruitless search in a direction where there was not the slightest prospect of obtaining any information."
As may be imagined, Rae's definite reports stirred deeply the hearts and minds of the civilized world, which for seven long years had vainly striven to rend the veil of mystery that surrounded the fate of Franklin and his men.
The silver and other articles brought back by Dr. Rae were placed in the Painted Hall of Greenwich Hospital, among the many historic relics of the royal navy. Even to-day these relics attract the attention and excite the admiration of countless visitors. And well they may, not alone as memorials of the deeds in peace of the naval heroes of England, but also as evidences of the modest courage, the stanch endurance, and heroic efforts of a Scotch doctor, John Rae, through whose arduous labors they were placed in this temple of fame.
SONNTAG'S FATAL SLEDGE JOURNEY
"Death cut him down before his prime,
At manhood's open portal."
—Pomeroy.
The remarkable series of physical observations of Kane's expedition, the most valuable scientific contribution of any single arctic party in that generation, was almost entirely due to the scientific training and personal devotion of his astronomer, August Sonntag. While the nature of his duties lay in the observatory, his adventurous spirit sought field service whenever practicable. As shown in "Kane's Rescue of His Freezing Shipmates," Sonntag's prudence kept him from freezing in that terrible winter sledging, while his energy in the long journey for aid contributed to the final rescue of the disabled party.
When Dr. I. I. Hayes outfitted his expedition of 1860 in the United States, the glamour of the arctic seas was still on Sonntag, who for service therewith resigned his fine position as associate director of the Dudley Observatory at Albany. Of his expeditionary force Hayes wrote that he "lacked men. My only well-instructed associate was Mr. Sonntag."