Sir George Simpson Receiving a Deputation of Indians.
Meanwhile, in the eastern as well as the western extremity of the Company's domains, agitation and malcontent was being fomented. Certain residents of Red River settlement had forwarded petitions to Earl Grey. Lieutenant-Colonel Crofton, in command of Her Majesty's troops at Fort Garry, was asked to send in a report of the state of affairs at Red River. At a little later period his successor, Major Griffiths, was requested to do the same. Neither had any connection with the Company, and both might therefore be regarded as unbiassed as well as fully informed. Both exonerated the Company from most of the charges brought against them, and as to the remainder, which were preferred on untrustworthy evidence, they professed ignorance. They rendered full credit to the Company "for the manner in which it has of late years exercised its powers."
In the year of the Oregon treaty the Company caused some valuable exploration to be made of its northern coasts. Dr. Rae and his party reached Chesterfield Inlet 13th July, 1846, passed Repulse Bay safely, and conveyed their boats thence into Committee Bay, at the bottom of Boothia Gulf. The Company's expedition wintered at Repulse Bay, and again entering Committee Bay, in April, 1847, by the following month had completed a survey, with the exception of Fury and Hecla Straits, of the entire northern coast of the North American continent.
Fate of the Franklin Expedition.
In the previous year, 1845, Sir John Franklin, who had, since his last travels in Rupert's Land, been Governor of Tasmania, was offered the command of another expedition in search of the north-west passage by the British Government. He embarked in the Erebus and Terror, and his ships were last seen on the 26th of July in Baffin's Bay by a whaler.
Several years passed without tidings of the expedition. In 1850 traces of the missing ships were discovered by Ommaney and Penny, and it was thus ascertained that the first winter had been spent behind Beechy Island. No further news came until the spring of 1854, when an expedition of the Hudson's Bay Company, under Dr. Rae, from Republic Bay, received information from the Esquimaux that four years before about forty white men had been seen dragging a boat over the ice near the north shore of King William's Island. Somewhat later in the same season of 1850, declared the natives, the bodies of the entire party were found at a point a short distance to the north-west of the Great Fish River. To prove their assertion the Esquimaux produced various articles which were known to have belonged to the ill-fated explorer and his party. The Government having previously offered a reward of £10,000 "to any party, or parties who, in the judgment of the Board of Admiralty, shall, by virtue of his or her efforts, first succeed in ascertaining" the fate of the missing expedition, Dr. Rae laid claim to and obtained this reward. Another expedition under Anderson and Stewart went in two canoes, in 1855, down the Great Fish River, and further verified the truth by securing more European articles and clothing from the Esquimaux. It now became clear that a party from the Erebus and Terror had sought to reach, by the Fish River route, the nearest Company's post to the south, and had been arrested by the ice in the channel near that river's mouth. In 1857 Lady Franklin, whose efforts to set at rest the fate of her husband had been most heroic, sent out the yacht Fox, commanded by Captain (afterwards Sir Leopold) McClintock, who had already taken part in three expeditions despatched in search of Franklin. In the following year more relics were obtained, closely followed by the discovery of many skeletons. In a cairn at Point Victory Lieutenant Hobson unearthed the celebrated record kept by two of the explorers, which briefly told the history of the expedition for three years, or up to April 25, 1848. It appeared that Sir John Franklin had perished on the 11th of June, 1847. It is believed that one of the vessels must have been crushed in the ice and the other stranded on the shore of King William's Island, where it lay for years, a mine of wonderful implements and playthings for the Esquimaux.
