DISCOVERY OF ONE OF THE BOATS OF THE FRANKLIN EXPEDITION.
From this point to a spot about midway between Point Victory and Point Herschel nothing of much importance was discovered, and the skeletons as well as relics were deeply embedded in snow. At this midway station, however, the top of a piece of wood projecting out of the snow was seen by Lieutenant Hobson, and on digging round it a boat was discovered. It stood on a very heavy sledge, and within it were a couple of skeletons. The one in the bottom of the stern-sheets was covered with a great quantity of thrown-off clothing; the other, in the bows, seemed to have been that of some poor fellow who had crept there to look out, and in that position fallen into his last sleep. A couple of guns, loaded and ready cocked, stood upright to hand, as it they had been prepared for use against wild animals. Around this boat was another accumulation of cast-off articles; and it was the belief of M’Clintock that the party in charge of her were returning to the ships, as it they discovered their strength unequal to the terrible journey before them. It may be assumed, however, that the stronger portion of the crews still pushed on with another boat, and that some reached Montreal Island and ascended the Great Fish River.
The point, says Sherard Osborn, at which the fatal imprisonment of the Erebus and Terror in 1846 took place, was only ninety miles from the spot reached by Dease and Simpson in their boats in 1838–39, coming from the east. Ninety miles more of open water, and Franklin and his gallant crew would have not only won the prize they sought, but reached their homes to wear their well-earned honours. “It was not to be so. Let us bow in humility and awe to the inscrutable decrees of that Providence who ruled it otherwise. They were to discover the great highway between the Pacific and the Atlantic. It was given them to win for their country a discovery for which she had risked her sons and lavishly spent her wealth through many centuries; but they were to die in accomplishing their last great earthly task: and, still more strange, but for the energy and devotion of the wife of their chief and leader, it would in all probability never have been known that they were indeed the First Discoverers of the North-West Passage.”
We have thought it for the convenience of our readers to set before them an uninterrupted narrative of the exertions made to ascertain the fate of Franklin and his companions by English seamen under English influence; but we must now return to 1853, to chronicle the American expedition under Dr. Kane—which did not, indeed, succeed in its primary object, but made some remarkable additions to our knowledge of the Polar Regions.
Dr. Elisha Kane sailed from Boston in 1853, in command of the Advance, with a crew of seventeen officers and men, to whom two Greenlanders were subsequently added.
On the 7th of August he passed the two great headlands which guard the entrance of Smith Sound,—Cape Isabella and Cape Alexander, discovered and named in the preceding year by Captain Inglefield,—and after a voyage of equal difficulty and danger reached Rensselaer Bay on the east coast of the sound, where he passed the winter. A few extracts from his diary will show under what conditions, and in what circumstances, Kane and his followers passed the long and dreary winter months:—
“October 28th.—The moon has reached her greatest northern declination of about 25° 35’. She is a glorious object; sweeping around the heavens, at the lowest part of her curve, she is still 14° above the horizon. For eight days she has been making her circuit with nearly unvarying brightness. It is one of those sparkling nights that bring back the memory of sleigh-bells and songs, and glad communings of hearts in lands that are far away.
“November 7th.—The darkness is coming on with insidious steadiness, and its advances can only be perceived by comparing one day with its fellow of some time back. We still read the thermometer at noonday without a light, and the black masses of the hills are plain for about five hours, with their glaring patches of snow; but all the rest is darkness. The stars of the sixth magnitude shine out at noonday. Except upon the island of Spitzbergen, which has the advantages of an insular climate, and tempered by ocean-currents, no Christians have wintered in so high a latitude as this. They are Russian sailors who made the encounter there—men inured to hardships and cold. Our darkness has ninety days to run before we shall get back again even to the contested twilight of to-day. Altogether our winter will have been sunless for one hundred and forty days.