To return once more to the Arctic researches. Soon after the return of Belcher and McClure to England, decisive intelligence of Franklin and his party was received in England. Dr. Rae, who had been engaged for a year past in a search by land, had met a party of Esquimaux who were in possession of numerous articles which had belonged to Franklin and his men. They stated that in the spring of 1850 they had seen forty white men, near King William's Land, dragging a boat and sledges over the ice. They were thin and short of provisions: their officer was a tall, stout, middle-aged man. Some months later the natives found the corpses of thirty persons upon the mainland, and five dead bodies upon a neighboring island. They described the bodies as mutilated; whence Dr. Rae inferred that the party had been driven to the horrible resource of cannibalism. The presence of the bones and feathers of geese, however, showed that some had survived till the arrival of wild-fowl, about the end of May. Dr. Rae purchased such articles of the natives as would best serve to identify their late possessors. All furnished decisive testimony; but a round silver plate gave peculiarly strong evidence, bearing as it did the following inscription:—"Sir John Franklin, K.C.B." The slight clue thus yielded of his fate was the last which has thus far been obtained; and it will doubtless be the only one till the Arctic seas give up their dead. The expedition of Dr. Kane had, however, already sailed from New York.
It was while these events were transpiring that the keel of the mammoth steam-vessel—known at first as the Great Eastern, and afterwards as the Leviathan—was laid, at Milwall, on the Thames. We refer the reader to the engraving on the opposite page for a view of this "village adrift."
CAPE ALEXANDER: THE ARCTIC GIBRALTAR.
CHAPTER LII.
THE SECOND GRINNELL EXPEDITION—THE ADVANCE IN WINTER QUARTERS—TOTAL DARKNESS—SLEDGE-PARTIES—ADVENTURES—THE FIRST DEATH—TENNYSON'S MONUMENT—HUMBOLDT GLACIER—THE OPEN POLAR SEA—SECOND WINTER—ABANDONMENT OF THE BRIG—THE WATER AGAIN—UPERNAVIK—RESCUE BY CAPTAIN HARTSTENE—DEATH AND SERVICES OF DR. KANE—ATTEMPT TO LAY THE ATLANTIC CABLE—CONCLUSION.
The Government of the United States forwarded to Dr. Kane, in the month of December, 1852, an order "to conduct an expedition to the Arctic Seas in search of Sir John Franklin." The brig Advance was again placed at his disposal by Mr. Grinnell, and manned by eighteen picked men. Dr. Kane's plan was to enter Smith's Sound at the top of Baffin's Bay,—into which, alone of the Arctic explorers, Captain Inglefield had penetrated in August, 1852, in the Isabel,—to reach, if possible, the supposed northerly open sea, where he hoped to find traces of the missing navigators. He sailed from New York on the 30th of May, 1853, touched at Fiskernaes, in Greenland, on the 1st of July, where he engaged the services of Hans Cristian, a native Esquimaux of nineteen years. Through ice and fog the vessel forced her way, and on the 7th of August doubled Cape Alexander, a promontory opposite another named Cape Isabella,—the two being the headlands of Smith's Strait, and styled by Dr. Kane the Arctic Pillars of Hercules.
The vessel closed with the ice again the next day, and was forced into a land-locked cove. Every effort to force her through the floes was tried, without success, and, after undergoing the most appalling treatment from the wind, waves, and ice combined, the brig was warped into winter quarters, in Rensselaer Bay, on the 22d of August, and was frozen in on September 10. There she lies to this hour,—"to her a long resting-place indeed," writes Kane; "for the same ice is around her still." This was in latitude 78° 37' N.,—the most northerly winter quarters ever taken by Christians, except in Spitzbergen, which has the advantage of an insular climate. An observatory was erected, a thermal register kept hourly, and magnetic observations recorded. Parties were sent out to establish provision-depôts to the north, to facilitate researches in the spring. Three depôts or "caches" were made, the most distant being in latitude 79° 12': in this they deposited six hundred and seventy pounds of pemmican and forty of meat-biscuit. These operations were arrested by darkness in November, and the crew prepared to spend one hundred and forty days without the light of the sun. The first number of the Arctic newspaper, "The Ice-Blink," appeared on the 21st. The thermometer fell to 67° below zero. Chloroform froze, and chloric ether became solid. The air had a perceptible pungency upon inspiration: all inhaled it guardedly and with compressed lips. The 22d of December brought with it the midnight of the year: the fingers could not be counted a foot from the eyes. Nothing remained to indicate that the Arctic world had a sun. The men during this their first winter kept up their spirits wonderfully; but most of the dogs died of diseases of the brain brought on by the depressing influences of the darkness.