“I could have readily gathered quantities—a very great variety of relics of Sir John Franklin’s expedition, for they are now possessed by natives all over the Arctic Regions that I visited or heard of—from Pond’s Bay to Mackenzie River. As it was, I had to be satisfied with taking upon our sledges about 125 pounds total weight of relics from natives about King William’s Land. Some of these I will enumerate: 1. A portion of one side (several planks and ribs fast together) of a boat, clinker-built and copper-fastened. This part of a boat is of the one found near the boat found by M’Clintock’s party. 2. A small oak sledge-runner, reduced from the sledge on which the boat rested. 3. Part of the mast of the Northwest Passage ship. 4. Chronometer-box, with its number, name of the maker, and the Queen’s broad arrow engraved upon it. 5. Two long heavy sheets of copper, three and four inches wide, with countersunk holes for screw-nails. On these sheets, as well as on most everything else that came from the Northwest Passage ship, are numerous stamps of the Queen’s broad arrow. 6. Mahogany writing-desk, elaborately finished and bound in brass. 7. Many pieces of silver-plate, forks, and spoons, bearing crests and initial of the owners. 8. Parts of watches. 9. Knives and very many other things which you, Mr. Grinnell, and others interested in the fate of the Franklin Expedition, will take a sad interest in inspecting on their arrival in the States. One entire skeleton I have brought to the United States.”
Hall, some time after his return, placed the carefully preserved remains in charge of Mr. Brevoort, of Brooklyn, who transferred them to Admiral Inglefield, R. N., to be forwarded to England. Subsequently (by the plug of a tooth) the skeleton was identified as the remains of Lieutenant Veconte, of the Erebus.
The same year that the Erebus and Terror were abandoned, one of them consummated the Great Northwest Passage, having five men aboard. The evidence of the exact number is circumstantial. Everything about this Northwest Passage ship was in complete order. It was found by the Ood-joo-lik natives near O’Reilly Island, latitude 68° 30´ N., longitude 99° W., early in the spring of 1849, frozen in the midst of a floe of only one winter’s formation.
HALL’S RETURN TO THE UNITED STATES
With the unwilling consciousness that he could accomplish nothing further of research in the Frozen Regions, Captain Hall had now to think of a return to the United States; purposing there to collate and publish the result of his protracted Arctic experience, then to make his long meditated voyage to the Pole, and, if possible, afterward revisit King William’s Land.
In regard to his plans he writes:—
“I hope to start next spring with a vessel for Jones’ Sound, and thence toward the North Pole as far as navigation will permit. The following spring, by sledge journey, I will make for the goal of my ambition, the North Pole. I do hope to be able to resume snow-hut and tent encampment very near the Pole by the latter part of 1870, and much nearer, indeed at the very Pole, in the spring following, to wit, in 1871. There is no use in man’s saying, it cannot be done—that the North Pole is beyond our reach. By judicious plans, and by having a carefully selected company, I trust with a Heaven-protecting care to reach it in less time, and with far less mental anxieties, than I have experienced to get to King William’s Land. I have always held to the opinion that whoever would lead the way there should first have years of experience among the wild natives of the North: and this is one of my reasons for submitting to searching so long for the lost ones of Franklin’s Expedition.”
The expression of such purposes, including that of a subsequent return to King William’s Land, is certainly remarkable, as coming from one whose sledge journeys only, during the five years which now closed upon him, exceeded the aggregate of four thousand miles. A willingness “to resume snow-hut and tent” would seem explicable only by supposing that next to the lofty ideas with which his mind enthusiastically invested everything Arctic, was the extreme of a strange fascination with the uncouth life he had been leading. He says himself, at about this same date, that there was nothing in the way of food in which the natives delighted that he did not delight in, and that this may appear strange to some, but was true. He had that day “a grand good feast on the kind of meat he had been longing for—the deer killed last fall; rotten, strong, and stinking, and for these qualities, excellent for Innuits and for the writer.”
Hall, accompanied by his faithful Eskimo friends, Joe, Hannah, and her adopted child Pun-na, returned to New Bedford, Massachusetts, September 26, 1869. When off the lighthouse of Nantucket, Massachusetts, Hannah and her child dropped their native dresses and put on those of a civilized land.
Immediately upon his return to the States, Captain Hall endeavoured to arouse public interest in his long-cherished plan for an expedition to the Pole. By untiring personal efforts and the support of enthusiastic friends, he succeeded in engaging the attention of Congress, which authorized “An Expedition to the North Pole, the only one in the history of the nation.” Fifty thousand dollars was appropriated for expenses and a vessel selected from the navy, which was thoroughly fitted out at an expense of ninety thousand more.