Peel Sound proved impracticable, so M’Clintock determined to make for Bellot Strait, through which no ship had yet sailed, and the very existence of which was disputed by many. All doubts upon the latter point were soon set at rest, but the violent currents which raced through the strait, bearing with them vast masses of ice that threatened the ship with instant destruction whenever she attempted to force a passage through, made it impossible for M’Clintock to reach the western ocean, and, after several gallant attempts, he was obliged to resign himself to the inevitable, and to make preparations for spending the winter in an indentation on the north side of the strait, which he named Port Kennedy.
The winter passed without misadventure, and on February 17 M’Clintock set out on a preliminary expedition, with a view to gleaning such information as he could from the Boothian natives. To his disappointment the coast seemed completely deserted, and he was thinking of turning back when he came upon four Eskimos, members of a tribe which was established in a snow village not far off. From these men he obtained some tidings of the fate of the missing explorers, though they could not add very much to what he already knew. A number of white men, they said, had been starved to death on an island near a river. None of them had seen the men, but both they and their friends had articles in their possession which had once belonged to the whites. Having engaged these natives to build him a snow-hut for the munificent remuneration of a needle apiece, he sent them back to tell their friends that he was willing to purchase any relics that they possessed at a good price. On the following day the whole community, from the oldest man to the youngest baby, put in an appearance, bringing with them numbers of spoons, forks, buttons, and knives, which M’Clintock immediately acquired. He then set out on the return journey to the ship, reaching Port Kennedy on March 14. During his absence of twenty-five days he had covered about four hundred and twenty miles, and had completed the discovery of the coast-line of continental America.
Immediately after his return he despatched Young, who had been depositing a store of provisions on Prince of Wales’ Land, on a trip to Fury Beach, with instructions to bring back a supply of sugar from the stores left there by Parry. He found an immense stock of provisions of all kinds, most of them in a marvellous state of preservation. In addition to 1200 lbs. of sugar, he brought back a couple of tins of “carrots plain” and “carrots with gravy,” which had lain on the shore for thirty-four years and were still in excellent condition.
By the beginning of April everything was in readiness for the extended sledge journeys. M’Clintock arranged that the operations should be conducted by three different parties, led by himself, Hobson, and Young. Each party was to consist of four men drawing one sledge and six dogs drawing the second sledge, besides the officer in charge and the dog-driver. He was, of course, a past master of the art of arranging sledging expeditions, and so carefully had he disposed his depots of provisions, and so skilfully had he adjusted the travelling equipment of the parties, that he expected that each of them would be able to absent itself from the ship for seventy or eighty days without any difficulty whatever.
M’Clintock and Hobson started off on their journeys on April 2. For a while their routes coincided, and, by hoisting their tents as sails, and so taking advantage of a favourable breeze, they made excellent progress. It was not until they were well on their way down the coast of Boothia that they fell in with natives, and from these they learnt that two ships had been seen some years before off King William Land. One of them had sunk in deep water, but the other had been forced ashore by the ice, where she was still supposed to remain, though much broken. It was from the latter ship, according to their story, that they had obtained most of their wood.
On April 28 they reached Cape Victoria, on the south-west Coast of Boothia Felix. Here they were to separate, and all credit must be given to M’Clintock for his generosity to his junior officer. Though he knew that, if relics were to be found at all, it would be on the west coast of King William Land, he sent off Hobson to explore that district, reserving the far less promising east coast for himself. Hobson’s instructions were to cross to Cape Felix, the most northern point of King William Land, and then to search the whole of the west coast for the missing ship or any relics or records that might be deposited there. Should his search prove unsuccessful, he was to cross to Victoria Land, and to complete the exploration of that coast from Collinson’s farthest point. In the meanwhile, M’Clintock himself meant to push southward down the east coast of King William’s Land in the direction of the Great Fish River.
The results were exactly as we have indicated. M’Clintock examined the whole of the east coast and the estuary of the Great Fish River with the utmost care, but, with the exception of an occasional relic obtained from the natives, his search was fruitless. He accordingly crossed the strait on May 24, and proceeded to link up his own explorations with those of Hobson. On the following day his patience was at last rewarded, for, while slowly walking along a gravel ridge near the beach, which the winds kept unusually bare of snow, he came upon a skeleton partly exposed. From the clothing that lay near by he gathered that the victim must have been a steward or officer’s servant, who, selecting the bare ridge-top as affording less tiresome walking, had fallen on his face in the position in which his skeleton was found. It may here be said that an old woman with whom M’Clintock communicated on his outward journey had told him that the unfortunate explorers had “fallen down and died as they walked along.” Of the melancholy truth of her words this discovery afforded a terrible confirmation.
At Cape Herschel M’Clintock found the cairn erected by Simpson, and this he demolished in the hope that the missing explorers might have left some record there, but he found nothing. Twelve miles further on he learnt that that for which he had been searching so diligently had been discovered, for he came upon a second cairn of more recent construction—the cairn which marked the end of Hobson’s brilliantly successful journey. In penetrating thus far Hobson had passed the point at which the Erebus and Terror had been abandoned, and had found the first, and, indeed, the only important record of the journey which it fell to the lot of a white man to discover.
The record, which was enclosed in a tin box and found beside a tumbled cairn, was brief enough, but it contained the whole history of the ill-fated expedition. It consisted merely of one of those printed Government forms which were supplied to all discovery ships. These forms were intended to be filled up with intimations of discoveries, accident or distress, and then to be enclosed in a bottle and thrown into the sea or else buried under a cairn. A note at the head, written in several different languages, requested the finder to forward the paper to the Secretary of the Admiralty, or, if more convenient, to hand it over to the nearest British consul, with an intimation concerning the time and place at which it had been found. It was on one of these that Franklin’s officers had made their last communication to the world. The contents of the document ran as follows:—
“H.M. ships Erebus and Terror,
Wintered in the ice in lat. 70° 5´ N., long. 98° 23´ W.
28th of May 1847.