Round About the North Pole

by W. J. Gordon

On the 1st of March he reached by sledge the Magnetic Pole and fell in with four of the Boothian Eskimos, who, at the cost of a needle each, built him a snow hut in an hour, in which they all spent the night. "Perhaps," says M'Clintock, "the records of architecture do not furnish another instance of a dwelling-house so cheaply constructed!" Halting at Cape Victoria the Eskimos came up from their village close by with a number of small relics of the lost expedition. Returning to the Fox after a journey of four hundred and twenty statute miles in which the survey of the west coast of Boothia was completed, everything was made ready for three long sledge journeys of two sledges each, the captain taking that for Montreal Island, and giving Hobson the best chance of promotion by sending him round the west coast of King William Land, while Young took the Prince of Wales Land route.

On the east coast of King William Land M'Clintock met with more Eskimos, from whom he obtained relics and obtained information. Pushing on, he reached Montreal Island on the 15th of May, where the only traces of a boat were some scraps of copper and an iron-hoop bolt. A crossing to the mainland on the 18th of May revealed no more; and next day the return journey began. Six days afterwards, walking along a gravel ridge near the beach on the way to Cape Herschel, M'Clintock found the first skeleton, partly exposed, with a few fragments of clothing appearing through the snow, evidently one of the men who, as the old Eskimo woman said, fell down and died as they walked along. Visiting Simpson's cairn at Cape Herschel and meeting with nothing, he went on for about twelve miles, where he caught sight of a small cairn built by Hobson's party at their furthest south, reached six days before, containing a note with the great news that at Point Victory they had found what is now known as the Franklin record.

This record, which has frequently been printed—in a smaller size than the original—was one of the navy bottle-papers with the request in six languages that it should be forwarded to the Admiralty. A pale blue paper, twelve and a half inches by eight, it was filled up in the ordinary way, and then added to round the four margins in the handwriting of Lieutenant Gore, Captain FitzJames, and Captain Crozier, and signed by these and C. F. Des Vœux. It had been first deposited four miles away, so it said, "by the late Commander Gore," in 1847, and next year found by Lieutenant Irving, added to, and removed to the new cairn on the site of Sir James Ross's pillar.

DISCOVERY OF THE CAIRN

Brief as it was, it contained all the authentic information regarding Franklin's voyage up to the time the ships were abandoned. Resuming the return journey along the edge of the strait where the meeting of the Pacific and Atlantic tides keeps the ice drifting down from the north-west almost constantly packed, M'Clintock reached a boat with two skeletons and other relics already visited by Hobson, who had found other cairns and many relics, and, in Back Bay, another record by Gore, also deposited in 1847, but giving no additional news.

Hobson was dragged alongside the Fox, on the 14th of June, so ill with scurvy that he was unable to walk or even stand without assistance. M'Clintock arrived five days later; and on the 27th Allen Young returned after an exploration of three hundred and eighty miles of coast-line, which, added to that discovered by M'Clintock and Hobson, gave a total of eight hundred geographical miles of new coast as the work of the expedition, besides what it had done in clearing up the Franklin mystery.

In 1869 Captain C. F. Hall collected other relics and sufficient information to account for seventy-nine men out of the hundred and five who left the ships. Ten years after that, Schwatka, in his long, careful search of King William Land, discovered the grave of Lieutenant Irving, in which were some fragments of his instruments and the prize medal he won at the Royal Naval College. Near by were many traces indicating that it was the site of the first encampment of the retreating crews after leaving their ships; and down the coast he traced camp after camp, and death after death. Irving's remains were brought away and are buried at Edinburgh. The spot where they were found was Cape Jane Franklin.

More fortunate than Franklin was Captain Roald Amundsen. Leaving Christiania in the Gjöa on the 16th of June, 1903, he crossed the Atlantic and proceeded down Peel Sound, past Bellot Strait, and along the west coast of Boothia, where a fire on the ship did a certain amount of damage, and, struggling thereafter for ten days among shoals and rocks, down James Ross Strait, past Matty Island into Rae Strait, he dropped anchor in Petersen Bay, King William Land. For his base station he required a site in which the inclination was eighty-nine degrees, and at Gjöahaven, in this bay, he found it in 68° 30´ N., 96° W.

Here he arranged his headquarters for his observations on the Magnetic Pole which were kept going night and day for nineteen months; and here he stayed for two winters, moving about in the country around and over into Boothia, where he proved that the Pole was not immovable and stationary, but in all likelihood in continual movement. Leaving the south-eastern corner of King William Land in his little ship he passed through Simpson Strait, linking up with Collinson; and, like him, he was delayed for a winter on the coast of the American mainland. Through Bering Strait he reached San Francisco, where the voyage ended in the sale of the Gjöa. Thus of Amundsen it can be said, without any qualification whatever, that he accomplished the North-West Passage.