Everything was carefully collected and brought back to the ship, which was reached on 19th June. Two months later the little Fox was free from ice and McClintock reached London towards the end of September, to make known his great discovery.
The rest of the story is well known. Most of us know the interesting collection of Franklin relics in the United Service Institution in London, and the monument in Waterloo Place to "the great navigator and his brave companions who sacrificed their lives in completing the discovery of the North-West Passage."
It was acknowledged "that to Sir John Franklin is due the priority of discovery of the North-West Passage—that last link to forge which he sacrificed his life."
And on the marble monument in Westminster Abbey, Tennyson, a nephew of Sir John Franklin, wrote his well-known lines—
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"Not here, the white north hath thy bones, and thou, Heroic Sailor Soul, Art passing on thy happier voyage now Towards no earthly pole." |
CHAPTER LXII
DAVID LIVINGSTONE
"I shall open up a path to the interior or perish."