THE FOX’S VOYAGE UNDER M’CLINTOCK
On May 7, 1859, M’Clintock writes:—
“To avoid snow-blindness, we commenced night marching. Crossing over from Malty Island towards the King William Land shore, we continued our march southward until midnight, when we had the good fortune to arrive at an inhabited snow-village. We found here ten or twelve huts and thirty or forty natives of King William Island; I do not think any of them had ever seen white people alive before, but they evidently knew us to be friends. We halted at a little distance, and pitched our tent, the better to secure small articles from being stolen whilst we bartered with them.
“I purchased from them six pieces of silver plate, bearing the crests or initials of Franklin, Crozier, Fairholme, and McDonald; they also sold us bows and arrows of English woods, uniform and other buttons, and offered us a heavy sledge made of two short stout pieces of curved wood, which no mere boat could have furnished them with, but this, of course, we could not take away; the silver spoons and forks were readily sold for four needles each.
“Having obtained all the relics they possessed,” continues M’Clintock, “I purchased some seal’s flesh, blubber, frozen venison, dried and frozen salmon, and sold some of my puppies. They told us it was five days’ journey to the wreck, one day up the inlet still in sight, and four days overland; this would carry them to the western coast of King William Land; they added that but little now remained of the wreck which was accessible, their countrymen having carried almost everything away. In answer to an inquiry, they said she was without masts; the question gave rise to some laughter amongst them, and they spoke to each other about fire, from which Peterson thought they had burnt the masts through close to the deck in order to get them down.
“There had been many books, they said, but all have long ago been destroyed by the weather; the ship was forced on shore in the fall of the year by the ice. She had not been visited during the past winter, and an old woman and a boy were shown to us who were the last to visit the wreck; they said they had been at it during the winter of 1857-1858. Peterson questioned the woman closely, and she seemed anxious to give all the information in her power. She said many of the white men dropped by the way as they went to the Great River; that some were buried and some were not; they did not themselves witness this; but discovered their bodies during the winter following.
“We could not arrive at any approximation of the numbers of the white men nor of the years elapsed since they were lost. This was all the information we could obtain.”
Visiting the shore along which the retreating crews must have marched, he came shortly after midnight May 24, when slowly walking along a gravel ridge near the beach which the winds kept partially bare of snow, upon a human skeleton, partly exposed, with here and there a few fragments of clothing appearing through the snow. “The skeleton—now perfectly bleached—was lying upon its face, the limbs and smaller bones either dissevered or gnawed away by small animals.”
“A most careful examination of the spot,” writes M’Clintock, “was, of course, made, the snow removed, and every scrap of clothing gathered up. A pocket-book afforded strong grounds of hope that some information might be subsequently obtained respecting the unfortunate owner and the calamitous march of the lost crews, but at the time it was frozen hard. The substance of that which we gleaned upon the spot may thus be summed up:—
“This victim was a young man slightly built, and perhaps above the common height; the dress appeared to be that of a steward or officer’s servant, the loose bow-knot in which his neck-handkerchief was tied not being used by seamen or officers. In every particular the dress confirmed our conjectures as to his rank or office in the late expedition,—the blue jacket with slashed sleeves and braided edging, and the pilot-cloth great-coat with plain covered buttons. We found, also, a clothes-brush near, and a horn pocket-comb. This poor man seems to have selected the bare ridge top, as affording the least tiresome walking, and to have fallen upon his face in the position in which we found him. It was a melancholy truth that the old woman spoke when she said ‘they fell down and died as they walked along.’”