Further, on their return journey they crossed to the southern shore of King William Land and traced its coast for nearly sixty miles, discovering and naming Cape Herschel, south-eastward of which, in Simpson Strait, M'Clintock found the remains of one of Franklin's men. They thus linked up with what was to be the route of the Franklin expedition and were the first to find the North-West Passage for the command of which the territory was given by Charles II to the Hudson's Bay Company.
CHAPTER IX
THE PARRY ISLANDS
John Rae—Wollaston Land and Victoria Strait—Overlaps Franklin's route—M'Clure discovers Prince of Wales Strait—The North-West Passage—Banks Land—M'Clure rescued by Bedford Pim—Collinson's remarkable voyage—In Beaufort Sea—Reaches Banks Strait—Voyage to Cambridge Bay—On Franklin's route—The North-West Passage sailed by Amundsen along the track of the Enterprise—Sir John Barrow—Parry's first voyage—Penetrates Lancaster Sound and discovers the Parry Islands—Stopped by ice in Banks Strait—The search for Franklin—Sir John Ross—De Haven—Penny—Austin—Ommanney—Osborn—Belcher—Kellett—M'Clintock—Drift of the Resolute—Sledge work—Sverdrup's discoveries during his four years in the north.
The second to complete a north-west passage by linking up with Franklin's voyage was Dr. John Rae, an Orkneyman by birth, as energetic as Thomas Simpson and evidently not inferior to him in stamina, for in his Arctic journeys he walked a distance equal to that of the circumference of the earth. In 1846 he had surveyed the Committee Bay district between Boothia and the Melville Peninsula, reaching it from Repulse Bay, and in 1848 and 1849 he had been associated with Richardson in searching for Franklin along the coast from the Mackenzie eastwards. Next year, while in charge of the Mackenzie district, he was again requested to lead a Franklin search expedition, and, starting from Fort Confidence on the 25th of April, was on the sea by the 1st of May. Crossing over to Wollaston Land, and making westward along the coast on the 22nd of May, he rounded Cape Baring, just above the seventieth parallel. Crossing to its continuation, Victoria Land, on a second journey, he travelled eastward, and, going up Victoria Strait, rounded Pelly Point, also just above the seventieth parallel, on the 12th of July, thus practically completing the survey of the southern half of what Collinson was to prove is one large island.
Off Pelly Point, it afterwards appeared, the Erebus and Terror were beset in the ice in September, 1846, and fifty miles to the south-east they had been abandoned in April, 1848; but the only relic found by Rae on this occasion was the doubtful one—picked up in Parker Bay—of the butt-end of a flagstaff on which was nailed a piece of white line by two copper tacks, all three bearing the Government mark. This was the first to be found of anything that could be thought to be a trace of the missing ships, a sort of promise of what he was to meet with four years later; and it is worth noting that, had he not failed in getting across the strait to King William Land, Rae would in 1850 have probably discovered Franklin's fate.
His farthest in these parts was passed in May, 1853, by Captain Richard Collinson, in his sledge journey to Gateshead Island from H.M.S. Enterprise, then wintering in Cambridge Bay. The Enterprise and Investigator had been placed under Collinson's command and sent by way of Cape Horn to search for Franklin from the west, the instructions being that the ships should not part company; but regardless of this, Commander Robert Le Mesurier M'Clure, of the Investigator, happening to get through Bering Strait first, declined to wait for his commanding officer, went off on an expedition on his own account and, by a sledge journey, joined Parry's track when in search of the North-West Passage.
Steering north-east from Franklin Bay, M'Clure reached the south of Parry's Banks Land and followed the coast north-eastwards, discovering Prince of Wales Strait and making his way rather more than half-way up, until, near Princess Royal Island in 72° 50´, he was caught in the ice and imprisoned for the winter. On Trafalgar Day, 1850, M'Clure left the Investigator on a sledge journey up the strait, and at sunrise on the 26th of October, from Mount Observation in 73° 30´, a hill six hundred feet above the sea, he looked over Banks Strait and Melville Sound, and saw the coast of Banks Land terminating about twelve miles further on and thence trending to the north-west, while Wollaston Land, as it proved to be, turned eastward on the other side at Peel Point. That evening Banks Strait was reached at Cape Lord John Russell, and the North-West Passage by Prince of Wales Strait clearly demonstrated. The spot was not bare of vegetation, and there were many traces of animals, for, fortunately for M'Clure, there was no scarcity of game during his three winterings in Banks Land—reindeer in herds, musk oxen occasionally, hares in troops, ducks in plenty, ptarmigan almost as numerous, and bears, wolves, and foxes to feed on them; for instance, the weights of three items in the bag, 1945 lb. of musk ox, 7716 lb. of deer, and 1017 lb. of hare, show fairly good shooting.
Enclosing a record of the visit in a cairn, M'Clure returned to the ship, from which in the spring three sledge parties were sent out—Cresswell's to the north-west finding that Banks Land was an island, Wynniatt's to the north-east reaching Reynolds Point on the north of Wollaston Land, and Haswell's down Wollaston Land to within forty miles of where Rae turned back about a week later—this being the only attempt at searching for Franklin that the expedition undertook after sighting Nelson Head. Released in July, the Investigator retreated down the strait and attempted to circumnavigate Banks Land, finding to the west a coast as precipitous as a wall, the water deep—fifteen fathoms close in, with the yardarms almost touching the cliffs on one hand and the lofty ice on the other—and the pack drawing forty feet of water, rising in rolling hills a hundred feet from base to summit. On shore the hills were as remarkable. Many of them were peaked and isolated by precipitous gorges, about three hundred feet deep. And all the way up them were numbers of fallen trees, in many places in layers, some protruding twelve or fourteen feet, one of these trunks measuring nineteen inches in diameter. Says M'Clure: "I entered a ravine some miles inland, and found the north side of it, for a depth of forty feet from the surface, composed of one mass of wood similar to what I had before seen. The whole depth of the ravine was about two hundred feet. The ground around the wood or trees was formed of sand and shingle; some of the wood was petrified, the remainder very rotten and worthless even for burning." And this forest bed is on the shore of the Beaufort Sea in 74° north latitude, a similar one being in Prince Patrick Island, on the other side of Banks Strait.
After one or two narrow escapes the Investigator entered her last home at the Bay of Mercy, well within the strait, near Cape Hamilton, the most prominent of the three capes discovered from the Dundas Peninsula by Parry's lieutenant, Beechey, thirty-one years before. The winter passed, and on the 11th of April M'Clure left the ship on a sledge journey across to Parry's old quarters at Winter Harbour, which were reached on the 28th, to find nothing but a notice of M'Clintock's having been there in the previous June. Noticing Parry's inscription rock, M'Clure judiciously left on it a statement that the Investigator was in want of relief at Mercy Bay. But all through that year no news from the outside came to Banks Land, and matters became serious owing to the appearance of scurvy, notwithstanding the abundance of fresh meat, for even in January a herd of reindeer trotted by.