ILLNESS OF HOBSON.
At one of our depôts lately visited, a note left by Hobson informed me of his being six days in advance of me, and also of his own serious illness; for many days past he had been unable to walk, and was consequently conveyed upon the sledge; his men were hastening home with all their strength and speed, in order to get him under the Doctor's care. We also were doing our best to push on, lest the bursting out of melting snow from the various ravines should render the ice impassable.
On the 15th the snow upon the ice everywhere yielded to the effects of increased temperature; I was, indeed, most thankful at its having remained firm so long. To make any progress at all after this date was of course a very great labor, requiring the utmost efforts of both the men and the dogs; nor was the freezing mixture through which we trudged by any means agreeable; we were often more than knee-deep in it.
We succeeded in reaching False Strait on the morning of the 18th June, and pitched our tent just as heavy rain began to descend; it lasted throughout the greater part of the day. After travelling a few miles upon the Long Lake, further progress was found to be quite impossible, and we were obliged to haul our sledges up off the flooded ice, and commence a march of 16 or 17 miles overland for the ship. The poor dogs were so tired and sore-footed, that we could not induce them to follow us; they remained about the sledges. After a very fatiguing scramble across the hills and through the snow valleys we were refreshed with a sight of our poor dear lonely little 'Fox,' and arrived on board in time for a late breakfast on the 19th June.
NAVIGABLE N.W. PASSAGE.
With respect to a navigable North-West Passage, and to the probability of our having been able last season to make any considerable advance to the southward, had the barrier of ice across the western outlet of Bellot Strait permitted us to reach the open water beyond, I think, judging from what I have since seen of the ice in the Franklin Strait, that the chances were greatly in favor of our reaching Cape Herschel, on the S. side of King William's Land, by passing (as I intended to do) eastward of that island.
From Bellot Strait to Cape Victoria we found a mixture of old and new ice, showing the exact proportion of pack and of clear water at the setting in of winter. Once to the southward of the Tasmania Group, I think our chief difficulty would have been overcome; and south of Cape Victoria I doubt whether any further obstruction would have been experienced, as but little, if any, ice remained. The natives told us the ice went away, and left a clear sea every year. As our discoveries show the Victoria Strait to be but little more than 20 miles wide, the ice pressed southward through so narrow a space could hardly have prevented our crossing to Victoria Land, and Cambridge Bay, the wintering place reached by Collinson, from the west.
No one who sees that portion of Victoria Strait which lies between King William's Island and Victoria Land, as we saw it, could doubt of there being but one way of getting a ship through it, that way being the extremely hazardous one of drift through in the pack.
The wide channel between Prince of Wales' Land and Victoria Land admits a vast and continuous stream of very heavy ocean formed ice from the N.W., which presses upon the western face of King William's Island, and chokes up Victoria Strait in the manner I have just described. I do not think the North-West Passage could ever be sailed through by passing westward—that is, to windward—of King William's Island.
If the season was so favorable for navigation as to open the northern part of this western sea[27] (as, for instance, in 1846, when Sir J. Franklin sailed down it), I think but comparatively little difficulty would be experienced in the more southern portion of it until Victoria Strait was reached. Had Sir John Franklin known that a channel existed eastward of King William's Land (so named by Sir John Ross), I do not think he would have risked the besetment of his ships in such very heavy ice to the westward of it; but had he attempted the north-west passage by the eastern route, he would probably have carried his ships safely through to Behring Strait. But Franklin was furnished with charts which indicated no passage to the eastward of King William's Land, and made that land (since discovered by Rae to be an island) a peninsula attached to the continent of North America; and he consequently had but one course open to him, and that the one he adopted.