Such was the character of the man who came from school to be the

critic, first of the drama, then of literature and politics; and then

to be a workman in the schools where he had criticized. He brought to

his labours great powers, often left latent, and used only in their

superficial action; a defective perception of the tangible part of

the subject; an imagination active, but overrating its own share

in the business; an impulsive will, checked by an over-scrupulous,

over-conscientious habit of “refining;” a nice taste, and an

overwhelming sympathy with every form and aspect of human enjoyment,

suffering, or aspiration. His public conduct, his devotion to “truth,”

whether in politics or art, won him admiration and illustrious

friendships. In a society of many severed circles he formed one centre,

around which were gathered Lamb, Ollier, Barnes, Mitchell, Shelley,

Keats, Byron, Hazlitt, Blanchard, Forster, Carlyle, and many more,

departed or still living; some of them centres of circles in which

Leigh Hunt was a wanderer, but all of them, in one degree or other,

attesting their substantial value for his character. They influenced

him, he influenced them, and through them the literature and politics

of the century, more largely, perhaps, than any one of them alone. Let

us see, then, what it was that he did.

Even in the _News_ of 1805, when he was barely of age, and when he

wrote with the dashing confidence of a youth wielding the combined

ideas of Sam Johnson and Voltaire, the “damned boy,” as Kemble called

him, established a repute for cultivation, consistency, taste, and

independence; and he originated a style of contemporary criticism

unknown to the newspaper press. In other words, he brought the

standards of criticism which had before been confined to the lecture

of academies or the library, into the daily literature which aids in

shaping men’s judgments as they rise.

We have seen how, under a name borrowed from the Tory party, the

_Examiner_ was established, with little premeditation, a literary

ambition, and the hope of realizing a modest wage for the work done. It

found literature, poetry especially, sunk to the feeblest, tamest, and

most artificial of graces,--the reaction upon the long-felt influence

left by the debauchery of the Stuarts and the vulgarer coarseness

of the early Georges. It found English monarchs and statesmen again

forgetting the great lessons of the British constitution, with the

press slavishly acquiescing. In 1808, an Irish Major had a “case”

against the Horse Guards, of most corrupt and illicit favouritism:

the _Examiner_ published the case, and sustained it. In 1809, a

change of ministry was announced: the _Examiner_ hailed “the crowd of

blessings that might be involved in such a change;” adding, “Of all

monarchs, indeed, since the Revolution, the successor of George the

Third will have the finest opportunity of becoming nobly popular.”

In 1812, on St. Patrick’s day, a loyal band of guests significantly

abstained from paying the usual courtesy to the toast of the Prince

Regent, and coughed down Mr. Sheridan, who tried to speak up for his

royal and forgetful friend. A writer in a morning paper supplied the

omitted homage in a poem more ludicrous for its wretched verse than

for the fulsome strain in which it called the Prince the “Protector

of the Arts,” the “Mæcenas of the Age,” the “Glory of the People,” a

“Great Prince,” attended by Pleasure, Honour, Virtue, Truth, and other

illustrious vassals. The _Examiner_ showed up this folly by simply

turning it into English, and in plain language describing the position

and popular estimate of the Prince. For all these various acts the

_Examiner_ was prosecuted, with various fortunes; but in the last case

it was fined 1,000_l._, and its editor and publisher, the brothers

Leigh and John Hunt, were sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. The

_Examiner_ was no extravagant or violent paper; its writing was pretty

nearly of the standard that would be required now for style, tone,

and sentiment; but what would now be a matter of course in cultivated

style, elevated tone, and independent sentiment, was then supposed to

be not open to writers unprotected by privilege of Parliament. Not that

the paper stood alone. Other writers, both in town and country, vied

with it in independence; it excelled chiefly, perhaps, in the literary

finish which Leigh Hunt imparted to journalism; but it was the more

conspicuous for that finish. Its boldness won it high esteem. Offers

came from “distinguished” quarters, on the one side, to bribe its

silence for the Royal Horse Guards and its peccadilloes; on the other,

to supply the proprietors with subscription, support, and retaliatory

evidence. The _Examiner_ equally declined all encroachments on its

complete independence, which was carried to a pitch of exclusiveness.

This conduct told. The journal was thought dangerous to the régime--it

was prosecuted, and its success was only the greater. The Court ceased

to be what it had been, and the political system changed: the press of

England became generally what the _Examiner_ was.

The _Reflector_ was a quarterly journal, based on the _Examiner_ and

its corps. Its more literary portion in its turn laid the basis for

the _Indicator_, in which Leigh Hunt designed, with due deference,

to revive the essays of the old _Spectator_ and _Tatler_. The grand

distinction was, that in lieu of mere literary recreation, like the

illustrious work of Addison, Steele, and Swift, it more directly

proposed to _indicate_ the sources of pleasurable association and

æsthetical improvement. In the _Reflector_, the _Indicator_, _Tatler_,

and subsequent works of the same class, Leigh Hunt was assisted by

Lamb, Barnes [afterwards editor of the _Times_], Aikin, Mitchell

[Aristophanes], Keats, Shelley, Hazlitt, and Egerton Webbe,--the

last cut short in a career rendered certain by his accomplishments,

his music, his wit, and his extraordinary command of language as an

instrument of thought. As in Robin Hood’s band, each man could beat

his master at some one art, or perhaps more; but none excelled him

in telling short stories, with a simplicity, a pathos, and a force

that had their prototype less in the tales of Steele and Addison,

than in the romantic poets of Italy. Few essayists have equalled,

or approached, Leigh Hunt in the combined versatility, invention,

and finish of his miscellaneous prose writings; and few, indeed,

have brought such varied sympathies to call forth the sympathies

of the reader--and always to good purpose,--in favour of kindness,

of reflection, of natural pleasures, of culture, and of using the

available resources of life. He used to boast that the _Indicator_ laid

the foundation for the “two-penny trash” which assumed a more practical

and widely popular form under Charles Knight’s enterprise. It has had

a host of imitators, but is still special, and keeps its place in the

library.

Of his one novel, _Sir Ralph Esher_, suffice it to say, that he had

desired to make it a sort of historical literary essay,--a species of

unconcealed forgery, after the manner of a more cultivated and critical

Pepys; and that the bookseller persuaded him to make it a novel:--of

his dramatic works,--although he had an ambition to be counted among

British dramatists, and had a discriminating dramatic taste,--that

he combined, with the imperfect grasp of the tangible, a positive

indifference to dramatic literature. The dramatic work which is reputed

to be the most interesting of his compositions in this style, the

_Prince’s Marriage_, is still unacted and unpublished.

But in regard to the veritable British Parnassus, he had solid work

to do, and he did it. Poetry amongst us had sunk to the lowest grade.

Leigh Hunt found the mild Hayley, and the mechanical Darwin, occupying

the field, Pope the accredited model, and he revolted against the

copybook versification, the complacent subserviency and mean moralities

of the muse in possession. He had read earnestly and extensively in

the classics, ancient and English; he carried with him to prison the

_Parnaso Italiano_, a fine collection of Italian poetical writers, in

fifty-two volumes; and he was deeply imbued with the spirit which he

found common to the poetical republic of all ages. He selected the

episode of Paolo and Francesca, whom Dante places in the _Inferno_,

and whose history was diligently hunted up to tell in the _Story of

Rimini_. In it Leigh Hunt insisted on breaking the set cadence for

which Pope was the professed authority, as he broke through the set

morals which had followed in reaction upon the licence of many reigns.

He shocked the world with colloquialisms in the heroic measure, and

with extenuations of the fault committed by the two lovers against

the law matrimonial. The offence, too, was perpetrated by a writer

condemned to prison for bearding the constituted authorities. The

poem and its fate were characteristic of the man and his position in

poetical literature. The work was designed as a picture of Italy, and a

tale of the natural affections rebelling against a tyranny more corrupt

than the licence which it claimed to check. But when he wrote it, the

poet had not been in Italy; and afterwards, with habitual anxiety to be

“right,” he corrected many mistakes in the scenery--such as “the smoke

goes dancing from the cottage trees,” where there are no such cottages

as he imagined, and smoke is no feature in the landscape. He also

restored the true historical conclusion, and instead of a gentlemanly

duel, _comme il faut_, made the tale end in the fierce double murder by

the husband. In its original shape, the _Story of Rimini_ touched many

a heart, and created more sensation for its bolder verse and nature

than others which followed it; in its amended form it gained in truth

to art and fact, and in force of verse and colouring. Leigh Hunt had

not the sustained melody and pulpit morals of the Lake School; but he

gave the example and encouragement to writers of still greater force

and beauty. He vindicated human right against official wrong, and

suffered imprisonment, and denunciation more bitter than that poured on

Shelley, whose political vindications burst forth with such a torrent

of eloquence and imagination in the _Revolt of Islam_. Leigh Hunt

asserted the beauty of natural passion,--but he did it tenderly and

obliquely, himself returning from the slightest taste of passion to

“the domesticities,” half begging pardon for his hardihood, and thus by

implication confessing his naughtiness; and all the while hinting at

the delicate subject of his tale by circumstance, rather than following

it to its full inspirations. The greater part of the _Story of Rimini_

is scene-painting, as if it were told by some bystander in the street,

or some topographical visitor of the place. In the scene where the

lovers so dangerously and fatally fall to reading “Launcelot of the

Lake,”--“_quel giorno non legemmo più avanti_”--the larger portion of

the canto is devoted to a description of the garden. Leigh Hunt does

not, as Keats did, describe the sickening passion that gave the _Lamia_

so ghastly a sense of her own hated form,--nor does he, as in the

_Lamia_, pursue the couple to the place where Love

“Hover’d and buzz’d his wings with fearful roar

Above the lintel of their chamber door.”

If pharisaical critics discovered objectionable “tendencies” in

passages--almost in the _omitted_ passages of his writings--they

could find no such impetuous and sublime argument as that to which

the _Revolt of Islam_ rises in the canto where “the meteor to its far

morass returned;” nor such lines as show that a fair authoress, whose

book has been “the rage” at Mudie’s, had been among the myriads of

Shelley’s readers. But although hesitating himself to plunge into the

impetuous torrent of passion, like the fowl mistrustful of its own

fitness for so stormy waters, Leigh Hunt was the friend, instigator,

and encourager of that rebellion of letters which in the earlier half

of our age produced Keats and Shelley, and the poetical literature of

the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Others improved upon the example, no doubt, and bore away the

“_honores_.” At a late day, Lord John Russell obtained for Leigh

Hunt a royal pension of £200 a year--a most welcome and gratefully

acknowledged compensation of time and money torn from him in early

years.

Leigh Hunt’s miscellaneous poems extend over a great variety of

subjects, from the classic legend of _Hero and Leander_, to the

mediæval fabliau of the _Gentle Armour_, and the satirical critique of

the _Feast of the Poets_. This last was published early in the author’s

maturer career; it is “in his second manner,” and he afterwards revised

many of the dicta on contemporary writers which he placed in the mouth

of the chairman on that festive occasion, Apollo. But it helped to

loosen the trammels of conventionalism in verse. The _Gentle Armour_,

although true to a modern refinement, is also true to the spirit of the

days of chivalry; it relates, in straightforward language, how a knight

who had refused the bidding of his mistress to defend a falsehood--not

her own--is punished by receiving the most feminine of garments as his

cognizance at a tournament; and how, wearing that _alone_, he takes in

his own person a bloody and reproving vengeance for the slight, in the

end winning both fight and lady. The subject was thought “indelicate”

by some who were less refined than the author--some descendants,

perchance, of the proverbial Peeping Tom. The _Hero and Leander_ is

a flowing and vivid recital of the ancient tale. The three works form

good specimens of the spirit as well as execution of Leigh Hunt’s

poetical writings. Of some of his smaller pieces it may be said that

they had become classic in his lifetime--such as the reverential sonnet

“On the Lock of Milton’s Hair” which he possessed; the exquisite

parental tenderness of the lines “To T. L. H., in Sickness;” and the

grandly Christian exaltation of charity in his _Abou-ben-Adhem_.

As few men brought their personality more thoroughly into their

writings, so few men, out of the bookworm pale aforesaid, were more

thoroughly saturated with literature. He saw everything through books,

or saw it dimly. Speaking of his return from Italy, he writes:--“I

seemed more at home in England, even with Arcadian idealisms, than I

had been in the land nearer their birthplace; for it was in England

I first found them in books, and with England even my Italian books

were more associated than with Italy itself.” And speaking of the

_Parnaso Italiano_, he goes on:--“This book aided Spenser himself

in filling my English walks with visions of gods and nymphs,--of

enchantresses and magicians; for the reader might be surprised to

know to what a literal extent such was the case.” He used to “envy”

the “household waggon that one meets with in sequestered lanes” for

its wanderings, but was daunted at the bare imagination of “parish

objections” and raffish society; and so he ever recurred to “the

stationary domesticities.” He failed in practical life, because he was

not guided in it by literature. He could only apprehend so much of

it as he found in the cyclopædia. On the other hand, he could render

all that literature could give. His memory was marvellous; and to try

him in history, biography, bibliography, or topography, was to draw

forth an oral “article” on the topic in question. Ask him where was

the Ouse, and he would tell you of all the rivers so called; what were

the books on a given subject, and you had the list; “who was Colonel

O’Kelly?” and you had a sketch of the colonel, of the horse “Eclipse,”

of Epsom, and of horse-racing in general, as distinguished from the

racing of the ancients or the modern riderless races of Italy--where,

as in Florence, may still be seen a specimen of the biga sweeping

round the meta “_fervidis evitata rotis_.” His conversation was an

exhaustless _Curiosities of Literature_. The delighted visitor _read_

his host,--but it was from a talking book, with cordial voice naturally

pitched to every change of subject, animated gesture, sparkling

eyes, and overflowing sympathy. In society Leigh Hunt was ever the

perfect gentleman, not in the fashion, but always the scholar and

the noble-minded man. But his diffidence was disguised, rather than

removed, by his desire to agree with those around him, and to fall in

with the humour of the hour. He was better known to his reader, either

in his books, or, best of all, in his home, where familiarity tested

his unfailing courtesy, daily intercourse brought forth the persevering

goodness of his heart and conscience, and poverty did but fetch out the

thorough-going generosity that not only “_would_ share,” but did share

the last crust.

The Search for Sir John Franklin.

(FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNAL OF AN OFFICER OF THE “FOX”)

The last of the Government expeditions in search of Franklin returned

in 1854, without bringing further intelligence than had been previously

ascertained, namely, that the missing ships had spent their first

winter, 1845-46, at Beechey Island, and had departed thence without

leaving a single record to say whence they came or in what direction

they intended to explore in the following season.

The war with Russia engrossed the public attention, and the Admiralty

determined that nothing more could be done for our missing sailors.

Franklin and his companions were pronounced to be dead, and the search

to be closed. But many Arctic officers and private persons thought

otherwise. By the extraordinary exertions of the previous expeditions

the country to be searched had been reduced to a limited area in which

the ships must be, if above water, and through which the crews must

have travelled when they left their ships. Every other retreat from the

Arctic Seas had been explored, and the Great Fish River alone remained

unexamined.

Later in the same year (1854), Dr. Rae, the celebrated traveller for

the Hudson Bay Company, who was endeavouring to ascertain the northern

extreme of America, brought home intelligence, which he had obtained

from the Esquimaux of Boothia, of forty white people having been seen

upon the west coast of King William Land in the spring of 1850: that

they were travelling southward, and that later in the same year it was

supposed they had all died in the estuary of a large river, which Dr.

Rae conjectured to be the Great Fish River.

In 1855, the Hudson Bay Company, at the request of the Admiralty, sent

an expedition, conducted by Mr. Anderson, to explore the Fish River.

Mr. Anderson returned, having ascertained that a portion of the missing

crews had been on Montreal Island, in the mouth of that river; but Mr.

Anderson, without an interpreter, or the means of going beyond the

island, could only gather the most meagre information by signs from the

Esquimaux, and by a few relics found upon the land. Where the ships had

been left, or what had become of the people, seemed as great a mystery

as ever.

It was then that Lady Franklin (who had already sent out three

expeditions) urged again that the search should be continued, and that

our countrymen should not thus be left to their fate; but although her

appeal was backed by the most competent officers, the season of 1856

passed away without endeavours to clear up the mystery; and determining

that another year should not be lost in vain entreaties, Lady Franklin

once more undertook the responsibilities and the expenses of a final

effort to rescue our long-lost sailors from their perhaps living death

among the Esquimaux, or to follow up their footsteps in their last

journey upon earth, and to give to the world the scientific results of

the expedition for which those gallant men had given up their lives.

[Illustration: DEPARTURE OF EXPLORING PARTIES FROM PORT KENNEDY.]

In the spring of 1857 Lady Franklin commenced preparations for the

contemplated expedition. She was supported by some of the most

distinguished Arctic officers and scientific men, and the friends of

Sir John Franklin, among whom were Sir Roderick Murchison, General

Sabine, Captain Collinson, and many others.

To Captain M‘Clintock was offered the command; and he who had served in

three previous expeditions, and to whom are principally due the results

of the extraordinary journeys over the ice that have been made during

the search for Franklin, cheerfully accepted the appointment, as, in

his own words, being the post of honour.

The next thing was to seek a suitable vessel, and fortunately the _Fox_

was in the market. Built for a yacht of some 180 tons register, with

auxiliary steam-power applied to a lifting screw, the _Fox_ appeared

in every way adapted for the service. She was at once purchased, and

the necessary alterations and fortifying commenced; and such was the

feeling of confidence in Captain M‘Clintock’s sincerity of purpose,

his daring and determination, combined with eminent talent, and every

qualification for command, that numbers sought the honour of serving

with him. The few who were so fortunate as to be selected were soon

appointed in their different capacities, and by the exertions of Lady

Franklin and Captain M‘Clintock everything that could possibly conduce

to the comfort or recreation of the ship’s company was supplied, and

the _Fox_ was ready for sea by the end of June.

We intended first to touch at some of the Danish settlements in

Greenland, to purchase sledge-dogs; then to proceed to Beechey Island,

and there to fill up stores from the depôt left by Sir E. Belcher.

We were next to endeavour to sail down Peel Sound (supposed to be a

strait), but failing by that channel, to try down Regent’s Inlet, and

by the supposed Bellot Straits to reach the neighbourhood of the Great

Fish River; and having in the summer of 1857 and following spring

searched the adjacent country, we should return home either westward by

Behring’s Straits, or by our outward route, according to circumstances.

If we failed to reach King William Land or the Fish River, it was our

intention to winter as near the desired position as possible, and by

means of sledge journeys over the ice, to complete the search in the

following spring. We hoped to finish the work in one year; but in this

we were to be disappointed, as the narrative will show.

We left Aberdeen on July 1, 1857; and after a favourable run across

the Atlantic, we made our first acquaintance with the Arctic Seas when

near the meridian of Cape Farewell, by falling in with the drift-wood

annually brought from Arctic Asia by the great current known as the

Spitzbergen current--the shattered and mangled state of these pine

logs bearing evidence of their long water-and-ice-borne drift. This

great Arctic current brings masses of ice from the Spitzbergen seas,

at seasons completely filling up the fiords, harbours, and indentations

on the south coast of Greenland, and often in a pack extending for 100

miles southward of Cape Farewell. A whole fleet of whale ships were,

in June, 1777, beset in lat. 76° north, and nearly in the meridian of

Spitzbergen, and were drifted southward by the current, until one by

one they were crushed. The last and only surviving ship arrived in

October, in latitude 61°, in Davis’ Straits, and the crew escaped to

the land near Cape Farewell, 116 in number, out of 450 men, who only a

few short months before were looking forward to a happy return to their

homes.

Late in the summer, the weather mild and the nights short, and with

steam-power at command, we had no occasion for much anxiety about this

ice, but determined to push direct for Frederickshaab, and with a fair

wind we steered to pass within sight of Cape Farewell. On the night of

the 13th July, we were becalmed, and on the following day we steamed

slowly to the north-westward, amidst countless numbers of sea-birds.

At daylight the coast of Greenland showed out in all its wild

magnificence. Cape Farewell bore north 45° east, distant twenty-five

miles; but from the peculiar formation of the adjacent land the

actual cape is difficult to distinguish. Hitherto we had not seen the

Spitzbergen ice; and we hoped that we might follow the coast round to

Frederickshaab without obstruction; but in the course of the forenoon

a sudden fall in the temperature of the sea, with a haziness in the

atmosphere to the northward, indicated our approach to ice. Straggling

and water-washed pieces were soon met with, and in the evening the

distant murmur of the sea, as it broke upon the edge of ice-floes,

warned us of our being near to a pack.

We made but little progress during the two following days, the winds

being from the northward, and a dense ice-fog rolling down from the

pack. On the 17th, Frederickshaab bearing N. 28° E., distant fifty

miles, we determined upon endeavouring to push through the pack; and

after being at times completely beset, and with a constant thick fog,

we escaped into the inshore water, with a few slight rubs, having been

carried by the drifting body of ice nearly thirty miles northward of

our port. We sounded upon the Tallert bank; and on the fog lifting,

the great glacier of Frederickshaab was revealed to us, and we bore

away for the harbour, which we reached on the 19th. We had a little

difficulty at first in making out the entrance to Frederickshaab; but a

native kyack coming out to meet us, we were soon escorted in by a fleet

of these small canoes.

We found the natives busily breaking up the wreck of an abandoned

timber ship, which had drifted to their harbour, with a few of the

lower tiers of cargo still in her; and another wreck was said to be

lying upon the Tallert bank--the same wreck, it is said, which Prince

Napoleon had boarded on his homeward passage in the _Atlantic_ the

previous year, and had left a record on her to prove the currents round

Cape Farewell.

The Danish authorities, ever ready to assist vessels entering the

Greenland ports, supplied us with everything in their power, and after

purchasing some cod-fish from the natives, we proceeded on our voyage.

On leaving Frederickshaab, we experienced strong north winds, and had

to beat up between the pack and the land, until off the settlement of

Fiskernaas, on July 23rd. The temperature of the sea then rose from 35°

to 46° Fahrenheit; and seeing no ice, we considered that we were past

the limits of the Spitzbergen stream. Finding that our foretop masthead

was sprung, we ran into Fiskernaas, to repair it. We purchased more

cod-fish at Fiskernaas, at an almost nominal price. These fish are very

plentiful, and the Danish authorities annually collect about 30,000

from the Esquimaux, to be dried, and again served out to them in the

winter, the habits of the natives being so improvident, that they will

not make this provision for themselves. Having made a few magnetic and

other observations, we sailed for Godhaab to procure a passage home for

one of our seamen, who, it was feared, was too ill in health to stand

the rigours of an Arctic winter. We met the Danish schooner coming

out, and the captain kindly received our invalid on board, and took

our letters for home. Outside Godhaab lie the Koku Islands, upon which

Egede first landed in 1721, and commenced recolonizing Greenland. The

mainland here is divided into four fiords, the largest being Godhaab

Fiord (or Baal’s River on old charts), which extends up to the inland

ice, and upon the shores of which are still to be seen many ruins of

the ancient Scandinavians. Upon the Koku Islands we were near leaving

the _Fox_, for in coming out, the wind fell suddenly calm, and the

steam being down, we were drifting with a strong tide fast upon the

rocks, and we only just towed the ship clear with all our boats. We now

steered for Diskoe, and after passing some magnificent icebergs, one

of which we found by measurement to be 270 feet above the sea, we saw

the precipitous cliffs of the island, entered the harbour of Godhavn

at night, and sailed on the following day for the beautiful fiord of

Diskoe, where a smart young Esquimaux, Christian, by name, was received

on board, as dog-driver to the expedition. We had not time to examine

this fine fiord, which has never been explored, and which is thought to

be of great extent; nor had we time to visit the Salmon River; but our

guide brought us a few fish, and with salmon-trout and ptarmigan for

breakfast, and a bouquet of flowers from the ladies of Godhavn upon the

gun-room table, we had no cause to complain of the Arctic regions so

far.

We next steered for the Waigat Straits, intending to take in coals

from the mines there. As we passed Godhavn, the Esquimaux guide seated

himself in his kyack on the deck, and, notwithstanding a rough sea, he

was launched out of the gangway at his own request; a feat wonderful

to us, but evidently not strange to him, as he paddled away to the

shore without further notice. The native kyack is so small and crank,

that the natives cannot get in or out of it alongside a ship; but are

generally pulled up or lowered with it in the bight of two ropes’ ends.

As we approached the Waigat, thousands of eider ducks covered the

water, and we shot many of the younger ones, but the old birds were

too crafty for us, and kept out of range. We now never lost an

opportunity of adding to our stock of fresh provisions, which already

began to make a show in the rigging, where we could feast our eyes

upon salmon, eider ducks, looms, cod-fish, ptarmigan, and seal beef,

besides two old goats, that we had purchased at Frederickshaab. We

entered the Waigat on August 3rd, on a beautiful day; and for wild

and desolate grandeur, I suppose these straits have no equal--lofty,

rugged mountains here abruptly facing the sea, or there presenting

a sloping moss-covered declivity--mountain torrents, and the small

streams, which, leaping over the very summits, at an elevation of 3,000

to 4,000 feet, appear from beneath like threads of spun glass. In some

places may be seen the foot of a glacier high up a ravine, as if there

arrested in its course, or not yet grown sufficiently to fill up the

valley, and bring its blight down to the sea; in other places beautiful

valleys, green and grass-clothed, where the hare and ptarmigan love

to pass their short summer with their young broods. The sea itself is

scarcely less picturesque than the land; for thousands of icebergs, of

every size and fantastic form, cast off from the ice-streams of the

mainland, sail continually in these beautiful straits.

We found the coal mine without difficulty, the seams of coal cropping

out of the cliffs under which we anchored. It was a very exposed

position, and the ground hard; the only safe way to lie would be by

making fast to a piece of grounded ice, if one can be found, as anchors

will not hold.

In the early spring the ice-foot forms a natural wharf, and the coals

may be collected, and at high water the boats can go alongside to

receive the sacks. Now that steam has been introduced into the whale

fishery, these coal mines must sooner or later become much frequented,

and it is to be hoped that so valuable a resource will be taken

advantage of. If moorings could be laid down, and natives from the

opposite settlement of Atenadluk employed to collect coals in readiness

for embarkation, a ship might readily fill up in a few hours.

We had scarcely completed our coaling, when the weather began to

threaten, the barometer fell, and shortly after noon it blew almost

a gale from the southward. Our anchors soon began to jump over the

ground, and the drift ice to set in. Steam was immediately got ready,

and we ran through the straits to the north-westward. Passing the

magnificent headland of Swarten Huk, we touched at the settlement

of Proven to purchase dogs and seal-beef, and then bore away for

Upernavik, steering close along the coast, and intending to attack the

breeding-place of looms, at Saunderson’s Hope; but a strong south-west

wind and high sea prevented our sending in the boats. Arrived off

Upernavik, we obtained more dogs, and having left our last letters

for home, we bore away, on the afternoon of August 6, to try to cross

Baffin’s Bay.

We were now fairly away from the civilized world, and all that we could

look forward to, or hope for, was a speedy passage through the middle

pack of Baffin’s Bay, a satisfactory finish of the work before us on

the other side, and a return the following year to England. We had

a fine ship and a fine crew, all eager to commence the more active

duties of sledge travelling; and, indeed, on looking at our thirty

large and ravenous dogs that crowded our decks, we could not but think

that our sledge parties would solve, in the following spring, the

extraordinary mystery of Franklin’s fate. How these hopes were to be

disappointed that year the sequel will show. It is well for us that we

cannot know what the morrow may bring forth. During August 7 and 8, we

steered out due west from Upernavik to try to cross in that parallel

of latitude; but on the evening of the latter day, the keenness of the

air, the ice-blink ahead, and the fast increasing number of bergs,

prepared us for seeing the Middle Pack. In the evening and during that

night we passed streams of loose sailing ice, and on the morning of the

8th further progress was stopped by impenetrable floes. This was in

lat. 72° 40′ north, long. 59° 50′ west.

Getting clear of the loose ice in the pack edge, we steered to the

northward, to look for an opening in any place where we could attempt a

passage. The ice, however, presented an impenetrable line, and having

reached, on August 12, latitude 75° 10′ north, longitude 58° west, we

made fast to an iceberg aground under the glacier. It was a lovely

evening; the sky bright and clear, and the thermometer standing at 36°

in the shade. Seals were playing about the ship, and we added to our

stock of beef. But a dreary prospect rather damped our pleasure. The

ice extended in one unbroken mass right into the land, and pressed

hard upon the very coast; not a drop of water could be seen from the

masthead, in the direction in which we desired to go. The southerly

winds, before which we had been running, appeared to have driven the

whole pack into the head of Melville Bay. The season was passing away,

and without an early change to wind and a continuance of it from the

northward, we were almost without a hope.

In the evening we visited the glacier, but the _débris_ of shattered

ice, and the innumerable bergs and floe pieces, prevented our getting

close to its base. It was a beautifully calm night; not a sound to be

heard, save the crashing of some enormous mass rent from the face of

the glacier, or distant rumbling of the vast inland ice, as it moved

slowly down towards the sea. Far away over the continent, nothing

but the surface of glacier could be seen, excepting here or there a

mountain peak, showing up through the ice; and the bright glare of the

ice-blink shot up into the sky, giving a yellow tinge to the otherwise

deep blue vault of heaven. Flights of ducks winged their way to the

southward, reminding us that it was the season when those desolate

regions were deserted, and that we should be left alone. Our distant

ship was lying so surrounded with huge and lofty bergs, that only her

masthead could be seen through an opening; and a low melancholy howling

(such as an Esquimaux dog alone knows how to make) occasionally broke

upon the ear--for our dogs had all gone up to the very top of a lofty

berg, and were thus expressing their home-sick longings, and, perhaps,

a foreboding of the unhappy fate that awaited many of them.

We lay secured to the iceberg until the 16th August, when the wind

changed to the north-eastward, and the floes began to move off the

land and to separate. Now or never were we to get through; for to

lose this opportunity would have shut us out from crossing that year,

and have left us no other resource than to return to Greenland for the

winter. M‘Clintock was not the man to turn back from his work, but

would rather risk everything than leave a chance of our thus passing

an inactive winter. The _Fox_ was therefore steered into a promising

lead or lane of water, and all sail made to the breeze. We were in high

spirits, and talked of getting into the west water on the morrow. But

at night a dense fog came on, the wind shifted to the southward, and

the floes again began to close upon and around us. There was no help

for us--we were beset, and it appeared hopelessly so; for the season

was fast passing away, and the new ice beginning to form. On the 17th

the wind increased, and the weather was dark and dreary. We struggled

on for a few ship’s lengths by the power of steam and canvas, and at

night we unshipped the rudder, and lifted the screw, in anticipation of

a squeeze.

During the three weeks following we lay in this position, endeavouring,

by every means, to move the ship towards any visible pool or lane of

water. Once only did our hopes revive. On September 7, the wind had

again been from the north-westward; the ice had slackened, and we made

a final and desperate attempt to reach some water seen to the northward

of us. We were blasting with gunpowder, heaving, and warping during the

whole day, but at night the floes again closed. We had not now even a

retreat; the tinker had come round, as the seamen say, and soldered

us in; and from that time until the 17th of April, 1858, we never

moved, excepting at the mercy of the ice, and drifted by the winds and

currents. We had lost all command over the ship, and were freezing in

the moving pack.

Preparations for the winter were now made in earnest. We had thirty

large dogs to feed besides ourselves, and we lost no opportunity of

shooting seals. The sea-birds had all left for the southward; and the

bears, which occasionally came to look at the ship, we could not chase,

from the yet broken state of the ice. Provisions were got up upon deck,

sledges and travelling equipages prepared, boats’ crews told off, and

every arrangement made by the Captain in the event of our being turned

out of the ship. As the winter advanced, the ship was housed over with

canvas, and covered with snow; and we had made up our minds for a

winter in the pack and a drift--whither? This we could not tell, but we

argued from the known constant set to the southward, out of Baffin’s

Sea and Davis’ Straits, that if our little ship survived through the

winter, we should be released in the southern part of Davis’ Straits

during the following summer.

We were then in latitude 75° 24′ north, longitude 64° 31′ west, and

westward of us could be seen a formidable line of grounded bergs,

towards which, by our observations, we were driving. Our next eight

months were passed in a manner that would be neither interesting to

read nor to relate; but a few extracts from a private journal will show

our mode of life.

_Sept. 16._--We passed the grounded bergs last night, after

considerable anxiety, for we feared we might be driven against them.

We saw the floes opening and tearing up as sod before the plough; and

had we come in contact with them, the ship must have been instantly

destroyed. We are out all day long, by the sides of the water-pools,

with our rifles, and shoot the seals in the head when they come up to

breathe; they are now getting fat, and do not sink so readily as in the

summer.

_Oct. 17._--We obtained good observations, and found that we have

drifted north-west 65 miles, since the 15th inst. It has been blowing

hard from the south-eastward, and we consider that we have thus been

carried helplessly along by the effect of a single gale.

_Nov. 2._--A bear came to look at the ship at night, and our dogs soon

chased him on to some thin ice, through which he broke. All hands

turned out to see the sport, and notwithstanding the intense cold many

of the people did not wait to put on their extra clothes. The bear was

dispatched with our rifles, after making some resistance, and maiming

several of the dogs. We have not seen the sun to-day; he has now taken

his final departure from these latitudes. It is getting almost too

dark to shoot seals, and we employ ourselves with such astronomical

observations as are necessary to fix our position, and to calculate

our drift, with observations upon the thermometer, barometer, and

meteorology generally.

_Nov. 28._--After a zigzag drift out to the westward, until the 24th

inst., into latitude 75° 1′ N., longitude 70° W., we have commenced

a southern drift, and we trust now to progress gradually out of the

straits, until released in the spring. We have had considerable

commotion and ruptures in the ice-floes lately, but fortunately the

nips have not come too close to us. We ascend the masthead, to the

crow’s-nest, every morning, to look out for water, for our dogs are

getting ravenous, and we want food for them.

_December 4._--Poor Scott died last night, and was buried through the

floe this evening, all hands drawing his earthly remains upon a sledge,

and the officers walking by the side. It was a bitterly cold night,

the temperature 35° below zero, with a fresh wind, and the beautiful

paraselene (ominous of a coming gale) lighting us on our way. The ice

has been more quiet lately, and we are becoming more reconciled to our

imprisonment.

A reading, writing, and navigation school has commenced, and our

Captain loses no opportunity of attending to the amusement and

recreation of the men, so necessary in this dreary life. Besides the

ordinary duties of cleaning the ship, the men are exercised in building

snow houses, and preparing travelling equipage.

_December 21._--The winter solstice. We have about half an hour’s

partial daylight, by which the type of _The Times_ newspaper may be

just distinguished on a board facing the south, where, near noon, a

slight glimmer of light is refracted above the horizon, while in the

zenith and northward the stars are shining brilliantly. In the absence

of _light and shade_ we cannot see to walk over the ice, for the

hummocks can scarcely be distinguished from the floe; all presents a

uniform level surface, and, in walking, one constantly falls into the

fissures, or runs full butt against the blocks of ice. We must now,

therefore, be content with an hour or two’s tramp alongside, or on

our snow-covered deck under housing; and, during the remainder of the

day, we sit below in our little cabin, which has now crystallized by

the breath condensing and freezing on the bulkheads, and we endeavour

to read and talk away the time. But our subjects of conversation

are miserably worn out; our stories are old and oft-repeated; we

start impossible theories, and we bet upon the results of our new

observations as to our progress, as we unconsciously drift and drift

before the gale. At night we retire to our beds, thankful that another

day has passed; a deathlike stillness reigns around, broken only by

the ravings of some sleep-talker, the tramp of the watch upon deck, a

passing bear causing a general rousing of our dogs, or a simultaneous

rush of these poor ravenous creatures at our cherished stores of

seal-beef in the shrouds; and, as we listen to the distant groaning and

sighing of the ice, we thank God that we have still a home in these

terrible wastes.

_December 28._--During Divine service yesterday, the wind increased,

and towards the afternoon we had a gale from the north-westward,

attended with an unusual rise of temperature; to-day the gale

continues, with a warm wind from the N.N.W.

“The Danish settlers at Upernavik, in North Greenland, are at times

startled by a similar sudden rise of temperature. During the depth of

winter, when all nature has been long frozen, and the sound of falling

water almost forgotten, rain will fall in torrents; and as rain in

such a climate is attended with every discomfort, this is looked upon

as a most unwelcome phenomenon. It is called the _Warm South-east

Wind_. Now, if the Greenlanders at Upernavik are astonished at a warm

_South-east Wind_, how much rather must the seamen, frozen up in the

pack, be astonished at a warm _North-west Wind_. Various theories

have been started to account for this phenomenon; but it appears most

probable that a rotatory gale passes over the place, and that the rise

in temperature is due to the direction from which the whole _mass of

air_ may come, viz. from the southward, and not to the direction of

_wind_ at the time.”

Let us now return to the narrative, for our days were now becoming

mere repetitions of each other. We saw no change, nor did we hope for

any until the spring. Gale followed gale; and an occasional alarm of a

disruption in the ice, a bear or seal hunt, formed our only excitement;

indeed, we sometimes hoped for some crisis, were it only to break

the dreadful monotony of our lives. Our walks abroad afforded us no

recreation; on the contrary, it was really a trying task to spin out

the time necessary for exercise. Talk of a dull turnpike-road at home!

Are not the larks singing and the farm boys whistling? But with us

what a contrast! Our walks were without an object; one had literally

nothing to see or hear; turn north, south, east, or west, still snow

and hummocks. You see a little black mark waving in the air: walk to

it--it is a crack in a hummock. You think a berg is close to you; go to

it--still a hummock, refracted through the gloom. The only thing to do

is to walk to windward, so as to be certain of returning safe and not

frostbitten, to pick out a smooth place, and form imaginary patterns

with your footprints. Philosophers would bid us think and reflect; but

if philosophers were shut up with us amid the silence and darkness of

an Arctic winter, they would probably do as we did--endeavour to get

away from their thoughts.

By the 29th of January, we had drifted into latitude 72° 46′ north,

longitude 62° west, and by the aid of refraction we saw the sun for the

first time since November 2. We ought indeed to have greeted him on a

meridian far westward of our present position, but it had been out of

power to do more this year, and we could only hope for more success in

the next. The weather had now become intensely cold, the mercury was

frozen, and the spirit thermometer registered 46° below zero. We had

great difficulty in clearing our bed-places of ice, and our blankets

froze nightly to the ship’s side; but we had the sun to shine upon us,

and that made amends for all. What a different world was now before our

eyes! Even in those dreary regions where nothing moves, and no sounds

are heard save the rustling of the snowdrift, the effects of the bright

sun are so exhilarating that a walk was now quite enjoyable. If any

one doubt how necessary light is for our existence, just let him shut

himself up for three months in the coal-cellar, with an underground

passage into the ice-house, where he may go for a change of air, and

see if he will be in as good health and spirits at the end of the

experiment as before. At all events, he will have obtained the best

idea one can form at home of an Arctic winter in a small vessel, save

that the temperature of the Arctic ice-house is -40°, instead of +32°,

as at home; only 72° difference!

On the 14th of February some of us walked out to where the ice was

opening to the northward, and saw a solitary dovekie in winter plumage.

These beautiful little birds appear to winter on the ice. The water,

appearing deep black from the long absence of any relief from the

eternal snow, was rippled by a strong wind, and the little waves, so

small as to be compared to those of the Serpentine at home, sending

forth to us a new, and, consequently, joyous sound, induced us to

linger long by the side of the small lake--so long, that we were only

reminded, by our faces beginning to freeze, that we were at least three

miles from the ship, a gale blowing with thick snow-drift--besides no

chance of getting anything for the pot.

A memorable day was the 26th of February, when we opened the skylight

and let in daylight below, where we had been living for four months by

the light of our solitary dips. The change was indeed wonderful, and

at first uncomfortable, for it exposed the manner in which we had been

content to live. With proper clothing you may laugh at the climate,

if not exposed too long without food. It is not the cold outside that

is to be feared, but the damp, and plague-engendering state of things

below. This can only be guarded against by having good fires and plenty

of light.

Towards the latter end of March, the ice was getting very unquiet,

and we had frequent disruptions close to the ship. On the night of

the 25th of March, a wide fissure, which had been opening and closing

during the previous fortnight, closed with such force as to pile up

tons and tons of ice within forty yards of the ship, and shattered our

old floe in a line with our deck. The nipping continued, and on the

following night a huge block was hurled within thirty yards from us.

Another such a night and the little _Fox_ would have been knocked into

lucifer matches, and we should have been turned out upon the floe.

April was ushered in with a continuance of heavy northerly gales; we

were constantly struggling with the ice. We were three times adrift,

and expecting to see our ship destroyed; and on the night of the

5th, the floes opened, and as their edges again came together, they

threatened to tear everything up. We were on deck throughout the night;

our boats and dogs were cut off from us, but with great exertion we

managed to save the dogs, although we nearly lost some of our men who

went in search of them. We that night secured the ship by the bower

chains, and we afterwards had a few days’ quiet. On the 10th we saw the

mountain peaks about Cape Dyer, on the west side of Davis’ Straits, the

first land seen since the previous October. We had drifted into lat.

66° 5′ N., and long. 58° 41′ W.; and we hoped that after passing Cape

Walsingham, the pack would open out.

On April 17, in a heavy storm, a general breaking-up of the ice took

place, and we were turned completely out of our winter dock, and into

an apparently open sea. A scene of wild confusion ensued; the floes

were driving against each other in all directions, and the whole ocean

of ice appeared in commotion, while a blinding snow-drift distorted

and magnified every surrounding object. Our first care was to save our

dogs; but as an Esquimaux dog always expects either a thrashing or to

be put in harness when approached by a man, and the poor creatures were

terror-stricken with the storm, they ran wildly about over the ice, and

many of them were obliged to be abandoned to their fate, after sharing

the perils of the winter with us. On board the ship, preparations were

made to get her under command; for we were driving down upon the lee,

and into loose ice, where our men could not have rejoined us with the

boats. We shipped the rudder, and soon got some canvas upon the vessel,

and having got the men and boats safely on board, we steered to the

eastward, and really thought that we were released. A dark water-sky

hung over the eastern horizon, and we thought that we were not far

from the open ocean. But we had not proceeded more than some seventeen

miles, when at midnight we came to a stoppage. It was fearfully dark

and cold, and with the greatest difficulty we cleared the masses of

ice. The water space in which we worked the ship became gradually less

and less; we flew from side to side of this fast decreasing lake, until

at last we had not room to stay the vessel. By 4 A.M. we were again

beset.

We now commenced a second drift with the pack, which took us down

to latitude 64° north, and longitude 57° west, on the 25th April,

when, towards midnight, a swell entered into the pack, and gradually

increased, until the ice commenced churning up around the vessel, and

dashing against her sides. These violent shocks continued throughout

the morning, and really seemed as if they would soon destroy the ship.

However, by the power of steam, we got the vessel’s head towards

the swell, and with a strong fair wind, we commenced pushing out.

After many narrow escapes from contact with the icebergs, we were

by night in comparatively open water. We were free! and steered a

course for the settlement of Holsteinborg, in Greenland, to recruit,

and to prepare for another attempt. What a change on the following

morning! Not a piece of ice could be seen, save a few distant bergs.

We once more had our little vessel dancing under us upon the waters,

innumerable sea-birds flew around us, and the very sea, in contrast

to its late frozen surface, appeared alive with seals and whales. All

nature seemed alive, and we felt as if we had risen from the dead! In

the evening, the snow-covered peaks of Sukkertoppen were seen, and

on the 28th of April, we moored in Holsteinborg harbour. Our anchors

had not been down, nor had our feet touched the land since the 3rd

of August. Ice-bound and imprisoned, we had drifted upwards of 1,200

miles. Need it be added how thankful we were to that kind Providence

who had watched over us, and under Him to our gallant Captain, to whose

unremitting attentions to our comforts and safety we owed our health

and deliverance!

The winter in Greenland had been very severe, and the country was still

snow-covered, and without an indication of spring. The natives were

scarcely aroused from their winter’s sleep, and all our expectations of

venison and ptarmigan feasts soon vanished. Very few reindeer had yet

been taken, the season not commencing before July, when the hunters go

up the fiords and kill them by thousands for the sake of their skins

alone, leaving their carcasses to be devoured by the wolves.

Our men, however, were bent upon enjoying themselves, and as Jack’s

wants are few, with the aid of a couple of fiddlers and some bottles

of grog, they kept up one continuous ball--patronized by all the fair

Esquimaux damsels--in the dance-house on shore. The whole population

had turned out to meet us. We were entertained by the kind-hearted

dames upon stockfish and seal-beef, and such luxuries as they could

afford, with a hearty welcome to their neat and cleanly houses; and we

in our turn endeavoured to do the hospitalities on board the _Fox_ with

pickled pork and preserved cabbage. It was new life to us, who had been

confined so long in our little den, thus to mingle with these friendly

people. Never was sympathy more needed. We arrived hungry and unshaven,

our faces begrimed with oil-smoke, our clothes in tatters; the good

women of Holsteinborg worked and washed for us, repaired our sadly

disreputable wardrobes, danced for us, sang to us, and parted from us

with tears and a few little presents by way of _souvenirs_, as if we

could ever forget them. We wrote a few hasty letters, hoping that they

would reach home in the autumn, and sailed once more upon our voyage.

We wished to call at Godhavn for another Esquimaux and some more

dogs, besides a few stores, of which we stood in need; so, sailing up

the coast, we arrived off the harbour on the night of May 10, but an

impenetrable stream of loose ice blockaded the entrance. It was a wild

night, and snowing heavily; sea, air, ice islands and icebergs seemed

all mingled in one common haze. We endeavoured to haul off the land,

and near midnight we narrowly escaped destruction upon an island,

which, seen suddenly on the lee-beam, was at first taken for a berg. We

all thought our ship must be dashed upon the rocks, and we were only

saved by the presence of mind and seamanship of our Captain, who never

left the deck, and wore the ship within a few yards of the shore. We

anchored next day at the Whale-fish Islands, and fell in there with

the _Jane_ and _Heroine_ whalers, whose captains gave us a true Scotch

welcome, and ransacked their ships to find some little comforts for

us. We again tasted the roast beef of old England. From the islands,

we crossed to Godhavn, where finding the harbour still full of ice, we

hauled into a rocky creek outside, a perfect little dock just capable

of holding the ship, but exposed to southerly winds.

By the 25th of May we were prepared for another and final attempt to

accomplish our mission, and to try our fortunes in the ice. We were

certainly sobered down considerably by our late severe lesson; but

although less confident in our own powers, a steady determination

to do our best prevailed throughout the ship. Passing again through

the Waigat, we stopped at the coal-deposits to fill up with fuel,

and we shot a few ptarmigan while thus detained. We next stopped at

Saunderson’s Hope, “the Cape where the fowls do breed,” but it was yet

too early for eggs, and as the looms had no young to protect, they

flew away in thousands at every discharge of a gun; we got but few of

these, in our opinion, delicious birds. On the 31st, we made fast to an

iceberg off Upernavik, to await the breaking up of the ice in Melville

Bay. When we were in these latitudes the previous year, all things

living were migrating southward, but now constant flights of sea-birds

streamed northward, night and day, towards their breeding-places and

feeding-grounds, and by sitting on the rocky points, and shooting them

as they passed, we could generally make a fair bag. We were now almost

subsisting on eider ducks and looms.

On June the 6th, we commenced our ice-struggles in Melville Bay,

endeavouring, according to the usual mode of navigation, to push up,

between the main pack and the ice still attached to the land, on all

occasions when the winds moved the pack out, and left a space or lane

of water. While thus following up the coast, on the 7th, we ran upon a

reef of sunken and unknown rocks, and, on the tide falling, we lay over

in such a manner as to threaten to fill upon the water again rising. We

succeeded, however, in heaving off without damage.

After many escapes from being squeezed by the ice closing upon the

land, and after three weeks of intense labour, we reached Cape York

on June 26th. We there communicated with the natives who had so much

assisted Dr. Kane, when he wintered in Smith Sound. These poor

creatures live upon the flesh of the bear, seal, and walrus, which they

kill upon the ice with bone spears. They are, perhaps, the only people

in the world living upon a sea-coast without boats of any kind, and are

so completely isolated, that, previous to their being first visited in

1818, they considered themselves to be the only people in the world.

Dr. Kane left among them a Greenland Esquimaux, “Hans,” with his canoe.

They told us that Hans was married, and was well, but that they had

eaten the boat, besides many of their dogs, when hungry, during the

last winter. We invited them on board, and they saw all our treasures

of wood and iron; but they appeared to covet more than all, our dogs,

and a few light pieces of wood, fit for spear-handles. We sent them

away rejoicing over a few presents of long knives and needles, and they

continued to dance and brandish the knives over their heads until we

were out of sight.

Passing Cape Dudley Diggs, we landed at a breeding-place of rotges

(little auks); the birds were sitting in myriads upon the ledges of the

cliffs, and we shot a great many; but our time was too precious to wait

long, even for fresh food, and so we bore away. We were considerably

baffled with ice-floes in crossing over towards Lancaster Sound, and we

did not reach that side until July 12.

Near Cape Horsburgh we found a small and enterprising family of

natives, who had crossed over to this barren land from Pond’s Bay,

two years previously, in search of better hunting ground. These poor

people could give us no information of the missing ships; so we merely

stopped to give them a few presents; we then steered for Pond’s Bay,

from whence we had heard rumours of wrecks and wreck-wood being in

the possession of the natives. In crossing Lancaster Sound, we were

completely beset in the pack, and were even threatened with another

drift out to sea like that of last year; we fortunately escaped,

however, from the grip of the ice, after being carried for seven days

in a helpless state, and as far as Cape Bathurst, before we could

regain command over our ship.

At the entrance to Pond’s Bay, we found an old woman and a boy living

in a skin tent, their tribe being some twenty-five miles up the inlet,

at a village on the north side. This village, called Kapawroktolik,

could not be reached by land, on account of the precipitous cliffs

facing the sea. The inlet was, however, yet full of ice, and Captain

M‘Clintock endeavoured to reach the natives by sledge. In the meantime,

we on board were employed in collecting sea-birds from the neighbouring

breeding cliffs of Cape Grahame Moore. We also frequently visited the

land to collect cochlearia, or scurvy-grass, which grew luxuriantly

about the old Esquimaux encampments. A trade was commenced with the

old lady on shore; for we found that, concealed among the stones, she

had a number of narwhales’ horns, teeth, and blades of whalebone, of

which she would only produce one at a time, by way of enhancing the

value by its apparent scarcity. Around her tent were snares set in all

directions for catching birds, and she had a large quantity of putrid

blubber lying _en cache_, which was her principal food and fuel. The

boy brought us a hare, which he had shot with his bow and arrow.

Captain M‘Clintock having failed to reach the village, owing to the ice

being all adrift in the inlet, he determined to take the ship there if

possible, and to take the old woman as pilot.

We ran alongside her tent, which she soon packed up with all her

worldly riches, and came on board thoroughly drenched with the rain,

which had poured in torrents all day. Our people managed to rig her out

in some dry clothes; the poor boy was made snug in the engine room,

and the old lady voluntarily took her station as pilot upon the deck

throughout the night, and was very anxious to point out the beauties of

her country, and the “pleasant sleeping places.”

We could only get within eight miles of the village, owing to there

being fast ice in the inlet; so, securing the ship to it, the Captain

and Hobson started over the ice. On board the ship we hoped to have a

quiet Sunday, but a number of right-whales playing round the vessel,

and pushing their backs under the ice, constantly broke away the rotten

edge to which we lay. We were thus kept constantly beating up again to

it; and in the evening, about six or seven miles of the ice coming away

in one floe, and turning round upon us, we were forced upon the south

shore of the inlet, and momentarily expected being driven upon the

rocks; but after blasting the ice with gunpowder for nearly two hours,

in order to gain every inch, we got clear just as we were touching the

ground.

The next morning (August 2) the Captain and party returned. They had

a most interesting trip, and described the village as situated in a

most romantic spot, close upon the shore, at the foot of a deep valley

filled with a glacier, which completely overhung the settlement, and

threw jets of water almost to the tents. The natives were delighted

to see them, and, in answer to the inquiries through the interpreter

(Mr. Petersen), they said that two old wrecks were lying four days’

journey southward of Cape Bowen--probably in Scot’s Inlet. These two

ships came on shore together many years ago. They also confirmed an

account from our lady pilot of an old wreck lying to the northward in

Lancaster Sound, one day’s journey from Cape Hay, or, as they call it,

Appak (breeding-place of birds). The wood in their possession was now

accounted for, as also their great anxiety to procure saws, which they

always asked for in barter. These wrecks were not those we sought, and

we had no occasion to delay our voyage by looking at them. The natives

drew a rough chart of the interior of this unknown country. They

especially pointed out the salmon rivers, and the hunting and sleeping

places, and gave a few general ideas of the profile of the land, and

the main directions of the different channels which intersect it;

describing North Devon as an island, and showing a water communication

with Igloolik, where Parry wintered. We had now set at rest all rumours

of Franklin’s ships being in the neighbourhood of Pond’s Bay; and

having made a few observations for the survey of the place, we departed

for Beechey Island, regretting that the whaleships had not been with us

to profit by the number of fish we had seen. As we entered Lancaster

Sound, five huge bears sat watching a dead whale; they sat upon

different pieces of ice, apparently taking turns to feed, and evidently

afraid of each other. We shot a couple of them, but one escaped over

the ice after a long chase, although desperately wounded.

The next morning (August 7) the wind increased to a perfect storm from

the eastward; the fog was, as seamen say, as thick as pease-soup; we

could see nothing; and compasses being here useless, we had to trust to

our luck rather than good guidance for keeping in the fairway. We saw

very little ice, but the sea ran so high upon the 8th, that we thought

it prudent to lie-to for some hours. On the 10th, a herd of walrus

was seen off Cape Felfoot, upon a piece of sailing ice, and lying so

close as to completely cover it. The ship was run close alongside, and

several were shot, but we did not succeed in getting one; for, unless

instantaneously killed, they always wriggle off the ice and sink.

The only practical method of getting a walrus is with a gun-harpoon

from a boat; as yet we had shot only one during our voyage. Steering

round Cape Hurd in a thick fog, we struck on an unknown shoal, but

soon backed off again, and let go the anchor, as we could not see our

position. About midnight the fog lifted, and we proceeded. A large

bear was seen swimming round a point, and was shot; and shortly after,

one of the men fell overboard: he was picked up rather exhausted with

his cold bath, and perhaps a little alarmed at bathing in company

with polar bears. We anchored next day off Cape Riley, where the

_Bredalbane_ was lost, after Captain Inglefield had landed some of her

stores and coals. We found that the bears had been amusing themselves

with the provisions, and had eaten out the bilges between the hoops of

many of the casks. They evidently had a particular relish for chocolate

and salt pork (we hoped they liked it), and had taken the greatest

trouble to throw everything about. We visited the stores at Beechey;

they had been stored and housed with extreme care. A violent gale had

passed over the place, for the door of the house was blown in and the

entrance full of snow, but nothing was damaged excepting some biscuit.

We also visited the graves, so often described, yet ever interesting,

of the poor fellows who died in Franklin’s first winter quarters, and

whose comrades we were now seeking.

Our coaling from Cape Riley was completed by the 15th, and we were glad

to leave that exposed and dangerous place. We had been considerably

troubled with drift ice, and on the 13th we drove half across the bay,

with both anchors down, and had to moor to a piece of ice grounded

close to the ship. We crossed to the house at Beechey, and there landed

a handsome tombstone (sent out by Lady Franklin), in memorial of Sir

John Franklin and his companions. It was placed close to the monument

erected by their shipmates to the memory of poor Bellot and those who

had died in the previous searching expeditions. Taking in such stores

as were actually necessary, and having repaired the house, we crossed

over to Cape Hotham for a boat (left there by Penny), to replace one of

ours which had been crushed by the ice. Wellington Channel appeared to

be clear of ice, and a jumping sea, from the southward, gave us promise

of clear water in that direction. On the 17th, we were sailing down

Peel Sound with a fresh wind, and carrying every rag of canvas. Passing

Limestone Island and Cape Granite, we began to think that we should go

right through, for as yet no ice could be seen ahead; but the southern

sky looked bright and icy, while, in contrast, a dark gloom hung over

the waters we had left in the northward. Still we sailed on merrily,

and were already talking of passing the winter near the Fish River, and

returning the following year by Behring’s Straits, when “Ice ahead!”

was reported from the crow’s-nest; and there it certainly was, a long

low white barrier, of that peculiar concave form always indicating

fast-ice. The Straits had not broken up this season, and we could not

pass that way. We were bitterly disappointed, but not disheartened,

for we had yet another chance of getting to our longed-for destination

by way of Bellot Straits. Not an hour was to be lost; the season was

passing away; and thither our captain determined to go at once. We

reluctantly ran out of this promising channel, and sailed close along

the north shores of Somerset, without seeing any ice of consequence.

The night of the 18th set in dark and squally, but in the absence of

ice we were quite at our ease. We steamed close under the magnificent

castellated cliffs of Cape Clarence, and entered Leopold Harbour to

land a boat, in the event of our having to abandon our ship and fall

back this way.

We found Regent’s Inlet clear, excepting a few streams of loose ice,

through which we easily sailed. We passed Elwin and Batty Bays, and

everything, as an old quartermaster expressed it, looked “werry

prosperious.” Poor fellow! he knew that every mile sailed in the right

direction would save him a hard pull at the sledge ropes.

On the 20th, we passed close to Fury Beach, where the _Fury_ was lost

in 1825; but the pace was too good to stop to visit even this most

interesting spot. We came on with a fair wind and clear water to the

latitude of Bellot Straits. Our excitement now became intense. The

existence of the strait had been disputed, and upon it depended all

our hopes. Running into Brentford Bay, we thought we saw ice streaming

out, as if through some channel from the westward, but as yet we could

see no opening; and being unable to get farther that night, we anchored

in a little nook discovered on the north side of the bay. A look-out

was set upon the highest hill, to watch the movements of the ice, and

on the next day we made our first attempt to sail through. We started

with a strong western tide, and under both steam and canvas, and,

after proceeding about three miles, we were delighted to find that

a passage really existed; but we had not got half way through when,

the tide changing, a furious current came from the westward, bringing

down upon us such masses of ice that we were carried helplessly away,

and were nearly dashed upon huge pieces of grounded ice and reefs of

rocks, over which the floes were running, and would have immediately

capsized the little _Fox_ had she touched. This current ran at least

seven knots an hour, and was more like a bore in the Hooghly than any

ordinary tide. Struggling clear, after some considerable anxiety, and

carried out of the straits, we reluctantly went back to the anchorage

we had left. Night and day we now earnestly watched Bellot Straits, but

they remained choked with the ice, which apparently drove backwards and

forwards with the stream. We made another desperate attempt on the 25th

August, and hung on, at imminent risk, in a small indentation about

two-thirds through, and close under the precipitous cliffs. We were

soon driven out of this again by the ice; yet so determined was our

Captain to get through, that he then thought of pushing the ship into

the pack, and driving with it into the western sea. We found, however,

that the western entrance must be blocked, for the ice did not move

fast in that direction. We could now do nothing but wait a change; and

to employ the time, we sailed down the east coast of Boothia for some

forty miles, to land a depôt of provisions, in case we should require,

in the following winter, to communicate with the natives about Port

Elizabeth. Navigation was now very cold and dreary work: we struggled

back to Bellot Straits against strong north winds, sleet, and snow, and

without compass, chart, or celestial objects to guide us. The Captain

next went away in a boat, determining, when stopped, to travel over

land to the western sea to examine the actual state of things there;

and Young was sent to the southward for five days with boat and sledge,

to ascertain if another passage existed where a promising break in the

land had been seen.

The Captain returned to the ship on the 31st, bringing with him a fine

fat buck; he had reached Cape Bird by water and land, and brought us

a favourable report of Victoria Straits. Our hopes of getting through

were again raised. Young returned unsuccessful from the south; no other

strait existed, but only an inlet, extending some six miles in, and a

chain of lakes thence into the interior to the south-westward. Young

saw only one deer, but many bears were roaming about the coast.

On the 6th September we made another dash at the straits, and this time

succeeded in reaching a rocky islet, two miles outside the western

entrance; but a barrier of fast ice, over which we could see a dark

_water-sky_, here stopped us. Moored to the ice, we employed ourselves

in killing seals, hunting for bears, and making preparations for

travelling. Young was sent to an island eight miles to the south-west,

to look around; and on ascending the land, he was astonished to see

water as far as the visible horizon to the southward in Victoria

Straits. While sitting down, taking some angles with the sextant, he

luckily turned round just in time to see a large bear crawling up the

rocks to give him a pat on the head. He seized his rifle and shot him

through the body, but the beast struggled down and died out of reach,

in the water, and thus a good depôt of beef was lost. Hobson, who, for

some days, had been employed carrying provisions on to this island,

started on the 25th with a party of seven men and two dog-sledges to

carry depôts as far as possible to the southward, and the Captain

placed a boat on the islet close to the ship, in case we should have to

leave for winter quarters before Hobson’s return.

The winter now set in rapidly, new ice was fast increasing, and the

weather very severe; all navigation was at an end, and the barrier

outside of us had never moved. We had now no hopes of getting further,

and as no harbour existed where we were, we had nothing for it but to

seek our winter home in Bellot Straits, and finish our work in the

following winter and spring. So leaving Hobson to find his way to

us, we ran back through Bellot Straits towards a harbour that we had

discovered and named Port Kennedy. The straits were already covered

with scum, and almost unnavigable, but we reached the harbour at

midnight on the 27th, and ran the ship as far as possible into the

new ice which now filled it. The _Fox_ had done her work until the

following summer. No opportunity was now lost of procuring fresh food.

The deer were migrating southward and a few were shot as they passed.

But the hunting was very precarious; the deer were travelling, and did

not stop much to feed; there was no cover whatever, and stalking over

the rugged hills and snow-filled valleys was most laborious. A few

ptarmigan and hares were also shot, but we were altogether disappointed

in the resources of the country. We had, however, a fair stock of bear

and seal flesh for our dogs and ourselves to begin upon.

On the 6th October Hobson returned, having reached some fifty miles

down the west coast of Boothia, but was there stopped by the yet

broken-up state of the ice. Finding that we had left Cape Bird, and

that Bellot Straits were impassable for the boat, he travelled back to

the ship over the mountains. The people were now clearing out the ship,

landing all superfluous stores, and building magnetic observatories of

snow and ice, besides hunting for the pot. We once more buried the ship

with snow.

On the 24th, Hobson again started for the south-westward, to follow

up his last track, and to endeavour to push his depôts further on. He

returned to the ship on November 6, having experienced most severe

weather, and great dangers from the unquiet state of the ice. When

encamped near the shore, in latitude 70° 21′, the ice broke suddenly

away from the land and drifted out to sea before the gale, carrying

them off with it. They were perched upon a small floe piece, and a wide

crack separated the two tents. Dense snow-drift heightened the darkness

of the night, and they could not possibly tell in which direction they

were driving. The next morning they found themselves fifteen miles from

where they had pitched the previous evening. By the mercy of Providence

a calm succeeded, and they escaped to the land over the ice which

immediately formed. So thin was this new ice, that they momentarily

expected to break through. By great exertion Hobson saved the depôt;

and finding it impossible to do any more, he landed the provisions

and returned to the ship. Our autumn travelling was now brought to a

close. A depôt of provisions was to have been carried by Young across

Victoria Straits, but this was given up as evidently impracticable.

We sat down for the winter, praying that we might be spared to finish

our work in the spring. The whole ship’s company marched in funeral

procession to the shore on the 10th November, bearing upon a sledge

the mortal remains of poor Mr. Bland (our chief engineer), who was

found dead in his bed on the 7th. The burial service having been read,

he was deposited in his frozen tomb, on which the wild flowers will

never grow, and over which his relations can never mourn. We were all

on board almost as one family, and any one taken from us was missed

as one from the fireside at home. It was long before this sorrowful

feeling throughout the ship could be shaken off. On the 14th the sun

disappeared, and we were left in darkness; our skylights had long

been covered over with snow, and by the light of our solitary dip we

tried to pass the weary hours by reading, sleeping, and smoking. We

were frozen in, in a fine harbour, surrounded by lofty granite hills,

and on these were occasionally found a few ptarmigan, hares, and wild

foxes; whenever the weather permitted, or we could at all see our

way, we wandered over these dreary hills in search of a fresh mess.

We varied our exercise with excursions on the ice in search of bears.

But although exercise was so necessary for our existence, yet from the

winds drawing through the straits and down our harbour as through a

funnel, there were many days, and even weeks, when we could scarcely

leave the ship. The men set fox-traps in all directions, and Mr.

Petersen set seal-nets under the ice. The nets were not successful, but

the traps gave an object for a walk. Magnetic observations were carried

on throughout the winter;--the reading of one instrument, placed in a

snow-house some 200 yards from the ship, being registered every hour

night and day. On some of the wild winter nights, there was some risk

in going even that distance from the ship. Christmas and New Year’s

days were spent with such rejoicing as in our situation we could make,

and we entered upon the year 1859 with good health and spirits. Our

dogs, upon which so much depended, were also in first-rate condition,

and not one of them had died.

The sun returned to us on January 26th; the daylight soon began to

increase; and by February 10th, we were all ready to start upon our

first winter journey. Bad weather detained us until the 17th, when

Captain M‘Clintock and Young both left the ship; the Captain, with only

two companions, Mr. Petersen (interpreter) and Thompson as dog-driver,

to travel down the west coast of Boothia, to endeavour to obtain

information, preparatory to the long spring journeys, from some natives

supposed to live near the magnetic pole. Young was to cross Victoria

Straits with a depôt of provisions, to enable him in the spring to

search the coast of Prince of Wales Land, wherever it might trend. He

returned on March 5.

The Captain’s party hove in sight on the 14th, and we all ran out to

meet him. He had found a tribe of natives at Cape Victoria, near the

magnetic pole, and from them he learnt that some years ago a large ship

was crushed by the ice, off the north-west coast of King William Land;

that the people had come to the land, and had travelled down that coast

to the estuary of the Great Fish River where they had died upon an

island (Montreal Island); the natives had spears, bows and arrows, and

other implements made of wood, besides a quantity of silver spoons and

forks, which they said they had procured on the island (more probably

by barter from other tribes). It was now evident that we were on the

right track, and with this important information Captain M‘Clintock

returned to the ship.

Our winter travelling was thus ended, fortunately without any mishap.

Those only who know what it is to be exposed to a temperature of frozen

mercury accompanied with wind, can form any idea of the discomforts of

dragging a sledge over the ice, upon an unknown track, day after day,

and for eight or ten consecutive hours, without a meal or drink, the

hands and face constantly frostbitten, and your very boots full of ice;

to be attacked with snow blindness; to encamp and start in the dark,

and spend sixteen hours upon the snow, in a brown-holland tent, or the

hastily erected snow-house, listening to the wind, the snow-drift, and

the howling of the dogs outside, and trying to wrap the frozen blanket

closer round the shivering frame. The exhaustion to the system is so

great, and the thirst so intense, that the evening pannikin of tea and

the allowanced pound of pemmican would not be given up were it possible

to receive the whole world in exchange; and woe to the unlucky cook if

he capsized the kettle!

On the 18th March, Young again started for Fury Beach, distant

seventy-five miles, to get some of the sugar left there by Parry in

1825, and now considered necessary for the health of our men by the

surgeon. This journey occupied until the 28th, one sledge having broken

down, and the whole weight--about 1200 lbs.--having to be worked back

piecemeal with one sledge, by a sort of fox-and-goose calculation. Dr.

Walker, who had also volunteered to go down for the provisions left

on the east coast in the autumn, and now not required there, returned

about the same time. With the information already obtained, and which

only accounted for one ship, Captain M‘Clintock saw no reason for

changing the original plan of search, viz., that he should trace the

Montreal Island and round King William Land; that Hobson should cross

from the magnetic pole to Collinson’s farthest on Victoria Land, and

follow up that coast; and that Young should cross Victoria Straits

and connect the coast of Prince of Wales Land with either Collinson’s

farthest on Victoria Island or Osborne’s farthest on the west coast of

Prince of Wales Land, according as he might discover the land to trend.

Young was also to connect the coast with Browne’s farthest in Peel

Sound, and explore the coast of North Somerset from Sir James Ross’s

farthest (Four River Bay) to Bellot Straits. This would complete the

examination of the whole unexplored country.

The travelling parties were each to consist of four men drawing one

sledge, and six dogs with a second sledge, besides the officer in

charge, and the dog-driver. By the aid of depôts, already carried out,

and from the extreme care with which Captain M‘Clintock had prepared

the travelling equipment, and had reduced every ounce of unnecessary

weight, we expected to be able to be absent from the ship, and without

any other resource, for periods of from seventy to eighty days, and if

necessary even longer. The Captain and Hobson both started on the 2nd

April, and Young got away upon the 7th. The _Fox_ was left in charge

of Dr. Walker (surgeon), and three or four invalids, who were unfit for

the fatigues of travelling.

Although we all felt much excited at the real commencement of our

active work, and interested in these departures, this was perhaps the

most painful period of our voyage. We had hitherto acted in concert,

and all the dangers of our voyage had been shared together. We were now

to be separated, and for three months to travel in detached parties

over the ice, without an opportunity of hearing of each other until

our return. It was like the breaking up of a happy family, and our

only consolation lay in the hope that when we again met it would be

to rejoice over the discovery of the lost ships. Nothing of interest

occurred on board during our absence; but one of the invalids, poor

Blackwell, had been getting gradually worse, and died of scurvy on June

14, the very day on which Hobson returned.

The Captain and Hobson travelled together as far as Cape Victoria.

There they learnt the additional news that another ship had drifted

on shore on the west coast of King William Land in the autumn of the

same year in which the first ship was crushed. Captain M‘Clintock, now

knowing that both ships had been seen off that coast, and that on it

the traces must be found, most generously resigned to Hobson the first

opportunity of searching there, instead of crossing to Victoria Land,

as originally intended. Captain M‘Clintock then went down the east side

towards the Fish River. Near Cape Norton, he found a tribe of some

thirty or forty natives, who appeared much pleased to meet the strange

white people. They answered readily any inquiries, and concealed

nothing. They produced silver spoons and forks, and other relics from

the lost ships, and readily bartered them for knives or needles. They

were acquainted with the wreck, which they said was over the land

(on the south-west coast), and for years they had collected wood and

valuables from it, but they had not visited it for a long time. They

had seen Franklin’s people on their march southward, but had not

molested them. They said that they had seen one human skeleton in the

ship. Proceeding on his route, Captain M‘Clintock next found a native

family at Point Booth, near the south-east extreme of King William

Land; these natives gave him the additional information that the

remains of some of the lost people would be found on Montreal Island.

Having searched Montreal Island and main land in the neighbourhood

without finding other traces than a few pieces of copper and iron, and

now having connected the search from the north with Anderson’s from the

south, Captain M‘Clintock proceeded to examine the shores of Dease and

Simpson Straits, and the southern shore of King William Land.

Near Cape Herschel, the Captain’s party found a human skeleton upon the

beach as the man had fallen down and died, with his face to the ground;

and a pocket-book, containing letters in German which have not yet been

deciphered, was found close by.

The large cairn, originally built by Simpson, at Cape Herschel, had

been pulled down, probably by the natives, and if any record or

document had ever been placed therein by Franklin’s people, they were

now lost, for none could be found within or around the cairn. Passing

Cape Herschel, Captain M‘Clintock travelled along the hitherto unknown

shore, and discovered it to extend out as far as the meridian of 100°

West. There all traces of the natives ceased,[31] and it appeared as

if they had not for many years lived or hunted beyond that point which

was named Cape Crozier (after Captain Crozier, Franklin’s second in

command).

The land then trended to the north-eastward, and about twenty miles

from Cape Crozier, M‘Clintock found a boat, which had only a few

days previously been examined by Hobson from the north, and in it a

note left by Hobson to say that he had discovered the records of the

_Erebus_ and _Terror_, and after travelling nearly to Cape Herschel

without finding further traces, had returned towards the _Fox_. Captain

M‘Clintock, from the south, had now connected his discoveries with

those of Lieutenant Hobson, to whose very successful journey we will

now turn.

Parting from the Captain at Cape Victoria, Hobson crossed to Cape

Felix, and near that point he found a cairn, around which were

quantities of clothing, blankets, and other indications of Franklin’s

people having visited that spot, and probably formed a depôt there, in

the event of their abandoning their ships. Anxiously searching among

these interesting relics without finding any record, Hobson continued

along the shore to Cape Victoria, where, on May 6, he discovered a

large cairn, and in it the first authentic account ever obtained of the

history of the lost expedition. It was to the following effect:--That

the _Erebus_ and _Terror_ had ascended Wellington Channel to latitude

77° north, and had returned west of Cornwallis Island to Beechey

Island, where they spent their first winter, 1845-46. Sailing thence

in the following season, they were beset, on September 12, 1846, in

latitude 70° 5′ north, longitude 98° 23′ west. _Sir John Franklin died

on June 11, 1847_; and on the 22nd of April, 1848, having, up to that

date, lost by death nine officers and fifteen men, both ships were

abandoned in the ice, five leagues north north-west of Point Victory.

The survivors, 106 in number, had landed, under the command of Captain

Crozier, on the 25th April, at Point Victory, and would start on the

morrow (April 26) for the Great Fish River. Another record was also

found, stating that previously, on the 24th May, 1847, Lieutenant

Grahame Gore and Mr. Charles DesVœux, mate, had landed from the ship,

with a party of six men. The record did not state for what reason they

had landed; but from the number who finally abandoned the ships, this

party must have returned on board, and it is probable that they merely

landed to examine the coast.

Quantities of clothing, cooking, and working implements were scattered

about near Point Victory, and a sextant, on which was engraved the

name of Frederick Hornby, was found among the _débris_. Collecting a

few of the most interesting of these relics to take with him upon his

return, Hobson then pushed on to the southward, and when near Cape

Crozier he discovered the boat above mentioned, by a small stanchion

just showing up above the snow. Clearing away the snow, he found in

the bottom of the boat two human skeletons, one of which was under a

heap of clothing. There were also watches, chronometers, silver spoons,

money, &c., besides a number of Bibles, prayer and other religious

books; and although one of the Bibles was underlined in almost every

verse, yet not a single writing was found to throw further light upon

the history of the retreating parties. There were two guns, one barrel

of each being loaded and cocked, as if these poor fellows had been

anxiously longing for a passing bear or fox to save them from starving;

for nothing edible was found, save some chocolate and tea, neither of

which could support life in such a climate. Lieutenant Hobson, having

searched the coast beyond Cape Crozier, returned to the ship on June

14, in a very exhausted state. He had been suffering severely from

scurvy, and was so reduced in strength that he could not stand. He had

been for more than forty days upon his sledge, carried in and out of

the tent by his brave companions, and his sufferings must have been

beyond description. Throughout his journey he had only killed one bear

and a few ptarmigan.

Captain M‘Clintock returned on board the _Fox_ on June 19, having been

absent eighty days. He brought with him a number of relics, and had

minutely examined every cairn and the whole coast of King William.

He supposes that the wreck of the ship, unless upon some off-lying

island, has been run over by the ice, and has disappeared; as he saw

nothing of it. He made most valuable discoveries in geography, and

surveyed the coast from Bellot Straits to the magnetic pole, besides

having travelled completely round King William Island, and filled up

its unknown coasts. Besides his other instruments, he carried with him

a dip circle, weighing 40 lbs., with which he also made most valuable

observations.

Young had crossed Victoria Straits (now Franklin Straits), discovered

M‘Clintock Channel, and proved Prince of Wales Land to be an island;

having reached the point which Captain Sherard Osborn came to from the

north. Owing to the very heavy character of the ice, he had failed

in crossing M‘Clintock Channel, and returned to the ship on June 8,

for a day or two’s rest. He had again started, on June 10, to recross

Victoria Straits, and to complete the search to the northward upon

Prince of Wales Land, and the unknown land of North Somerset, and was

now absent; and although the ice was fast breaking up, and the floes

already knee-deep with water, Captain M‘Clintock, notwithstanding

his late severe journey, fearing that something might be wrong, most

kindly started immediately, with only one man and a dog-sledge, to

look for him. He found Young perched up out of the water upon the

top of the islet, off Cape Bird, and they returned together to the

ship on June 28. We were now all on board, and once more together. We

were in fair health, although some of us were a little touched with

scurvy. We passed our time in shooting, eating, and sleeping, and then

eating again: our craving for fresh food, or, as the sailors call it,

blood-meat, was excessive; seal and bear flesh, foxes, gulls, or

ducks, went indiscriminately into the pot. We rejoiced whenever we got

a fresh mess of any sort.

The summer burst upon us; water was pouring down all the ravines,

and flooding the ice in the harbour, and with extreme satisfaction

we saw the snow houses and ice hummocks fast melting away in the now

never-setting sun. A joyous feeling existed throughout the ship, for

our work was done, and we had only to look forward to an early release,

and a return to our families and homes.

Over and over again we told our adventures, and we never tired of

listening to the one all-absorbing, though melancholy subject, of the

discovery of the fate of Sir John Franklin and his companions.

We had been prepared by the report brought from the Esquimaux in

February to find that all hopes of survivors were at an end, and that

the expedition had met with some fatal and overwhelming casualty; but

we were scarcely prepared to know, nor could we even have realized the

manner, in which they spent their last days upon earth, so fearful a

sojourn must it have been. Beset and surrounded with wastes of snow

and ice, they passed two more terrible winters drifting slowly to the

southward at the rate of one mile in the month, hoping each summer

that the ice would open, and determined not to abandon their ships

until every hope was gone. In nineteen months they had only moved some

eighteen miles, their provisions daily lessening, and their strength

fast failing. They had at last left their ships for the Fish River at

least two months before the river could break up and allow them to

proceed, and in the then imperfect knowledge of ice travelling they

could not have carried with them more than forty days’ provisions.

Exhausted by scurvy and starvation, “they dropped as they walked

along,”[32] and those few who reached Montreal Island must all have

perished there; and but for their having travelled over the frozen sea

we should have found the remains of these gallant men as they fell by

the way, and but for the land being covered deeply with snow, more

relics of those who had struggled to the beach to die would have been

seen. They all perished, and, in dying in the cause of their country,

their dearest consolation must have been to feel that Englishmen would

not rest until they had followed up their footsteps, and had given to

the world what they could not then give--the grand result of their

dreadful voyage--_their Discovery of the North-West Passage_. They had

sailed down Peel and Victoria Straits, now appropriately named Franklin

Straits, and the poor human skeletons lying upon the shores of the

waters in which Dease and Simpson had sailed from the westward bore

melancholy evidence of their success.

* * * * *

By the middle of July the dark blue stream rolled again through Bellot

Straits, but yet not a drop of water could be seen in Regent Inlet. Our

ship was refitted, the stores all on board, and we were quite prepared

for sea. Our engineers were both lost to us, but the Captain soon got

the engines into working order, and determined to drive them himself,

for without steam we could reckon upon nothing.

[Illustration:

A CHART

showing the

TRACKS OF THE YACHT FOX

despatched by Lady Franklin

under the command of

CAPT’N. M‘CLINTOCK, R.N.

in search of

H.M. SHIPS EREBUS & TERROR

1857 to 1859.

]

July passed away, and during the first week in August we could still

see one unbroken surface of ice in Regent Inlet; from the highest

hill not a spoonful of water could be made out. We were getting

rather anxious, for had we been detained another winter, we must have

abandoned the ship in the following spring and trusted to our fortunes

over the ice. However, a gale of wind on the 7th and 8th of August

caused some disruption in the inlet, for on the morning of the 9th a

report came down from the hills that a lead of water was seen under the

land to the northward. Steam was immediately made, and pushing close

past the islands, we were enabled to work up the coast in a narrow lane

of water between it and the pack.

We reached the north side of Creswell Bay on the following day, but,

the wind changing, we saw the pack setting rapidly in upon the land,

and it had already closed upon Fury Beach. Our only chance was now

to seek a grounded mass of ice, and to hang on to it. We were indeed

glad to get a little rest, and especially for our captain, who had not

left the engines for twenty-four hours. But we lay in a most exposed

position on an open coast without an indentation, the pack closing in

rapidly before the wind and threatening us with the same fate as befell

the _Fury_ when she was driven on the shore about seven miles from our

present position. Hanging on to this piece of ice with every hawser,

we saw it gradually melting and breaking away, and at spring tides it

began to float. On the 15th the gale shifted to the westward, and blew

off the land; we watched the ice gradually easing off, and directly

that we had room, we cast off under storm-sails, and succeeded in

getting out of Regent Inlet and into Lancaster Sound on the following

day. We entered Godhavn, in Greenland, on the night of August 26, and

not having heard from our friends for more than two years, we did

not even wait for daylight for our expected letters. The authorities

on shore kindly sent all they had for us at once to the ship, and I

suppose that letters from home were never opened with more anxiety.

Having a few repairs to do, especially to our rudder, which, with

the spare one, had been smashed by the ice, we remained a day or two

to patch it up for the passage home. Then leaving Godhavn on the 1st

September, although the nights were extremely dark, and the weather

stormy, with many bergs drifting about, we passed down Davis Strait

without incident, and, rounding Cape Farewell on the 13th, we ran

across the Atlantic with strong, fair winds. Captain M‘Clintock landed

at the Isle of Wight on the 20th, and on the 23rd the _Fox_ entered the

docks at Blackwall.

Our happy cruise was at an end, and by the mercy of Providence we were

permitted to land again in England.

FOOTNOTES:

[31] The wanderings of the Esquimaux may be traced by the circles of

stones by which they keep down their skin summer tents.

[32] Esquimaux report.

The First Morning of 1860.

One evening mid the summer flown

Has stamp’d my memory more than any;

It pass’d us by among the many,

And yet it stands there, all alone.

We sate without our open’d room,

While fell the eve’s transparent shade;

The out-door world, all warmth and bloom,

To us a summer parlour made.

The garden’s cultivated grace,

The luxury of neatness round,

The careless amplitude of space,

The silence, and the casual sound,

Told of a state thro’ many years

Serenely safe in doing well;

And while we sate, there struck our ears

The summons of the evening bell.

It call’d to food, it call’d to rest,

The many whom the rich man’s dome

Had gathered in its ample breast,

To them and him alike a home.

That very hour, was thund’ring o’er

A neighbouring land, the tramp of War,

Which stalked along the lovely shore,

Its shapes to blast, its sounds to mar.

And ’gainst our own, the reflux wave

Had pushed its harsh in-flooding swell:

The clouds which there a tempest gave,

In shadow on our own land fell.

The pang my bosom rudely beat--

What if that fate our own had been?

What if or victory or defeat

Had wrapp’d us in its woe, and sin?

What if it still our fate should be?

And the safe hours, enjoy’d like this,

Amid our home-scenes safe and free,

Should be the passing year of bliss?

The new one on the lecturn lies,

Its leaves the turning hand await;

Those fresh unopen’d leaves comprise

Th’ unread, but written words of Fate.

O God! what are they? if they be

The bloody words of ruffian war,

Grant us success!--but rather far

Avert the scourge of victory!

Too dear the price! Ah! human forms

Of guardian husbands, cherish’d sons

Once children, hid from smallest harms

Of mind and body, cherish’d ones!

Shall ye stand up, the gallant mark

Of the brute shot, and iron rod,

And man’s frame, exquisite in work,

Be treated like earth’s common clod?

Shall England’s polish’d glory, pure

In freedom, wisdom, high estate,

Her open Bible, and her poor

Becoming one with rich and great,--

Shall these high things be but the aim

Of envious men, in rough affray,

To try against the noble frame

Their brutal skill to rob and slay?

Forbid it Thou, who to the strong,

And wise, hast might and counsel lent;

And lead’st them danger’s path along,

Audacious, firm, and confident.

Forbid it, Thou, who to the weak

Permittest to be strong in pray’r;

From Whom we wives and mothers seek

Peace to endow the new-born year.

V.

Roundabout Papers.--No. I.

ON A LAZY IDLE BOY.

[Illustration]

I had occasion to pass a week in the autumn in the little old town of

Coire or Chur, in the Grisons, where lies buried that very ancient

British king, saint, and martyr, Lucius,[33] who founded the Church of

St. Peter, which stands opposite the house No. 65, Cornhill. Few people

note the church now-a-days, and fewer ever heard of the saint. In the

cathedral at Chur, his statue appears surrounded by other sainted

persons of his family. With tight red breeches, a Roman habit, a curly

brown beard, and a neat little gilt crown and sceptre, he stands, a

very comely and cheerful image: and, from what I may call his peculiar

position with regard to No. 65, Cornhill, I beheld this figure of St.

Lucius with more interest than I should have bestowed upon personages

who, hierarchically, are, I daresay, his superiors.

The pretty little city stands, so to speak, at the end of the world--of

the world of to-day, the world of rapid motion, and rushing railways,

and the commerce and intercourse of men. From the northern gate, the

iron road stretches away to Zürich, to Basel, to Paris, to home. From

the old southern barriers, before which a little river rushes, and

around which stretch the crumbling battlements of the ancient town,

the road bears the slow diligence or lagging vetturino by the shallow

Rhine, through the awful gorges of the Via Mala, and presently over the

Splügen to the shores of Como.

I have seldom seen a place more quaint, pretty, calm, and pastoral,

than this remote little Chur. What need have the inhabitants for walls

and ramparts, except to build summer-houses, to trail vines, and hang

clothes to dry? No enemies approach the great mouldering gates: only

at morn and even, the cows come lowing past them, the village maidens

chatter merrily round the fountains, and babble like the ever-voluble

stream that flows under the old walls. The schoolboys, with book and

satchel, in smart uniforms, march up to the gymnasium, and return

thence at their stated time. There is one coffee-house in the town, and

I see one old gentleman goes to it. There are shops with no customers

seemingly, and the lazy tradesmen look out of their little windows at

the single stranger sauntering by. There is a stall with baskets of

queer little black grapes and apples, and a pretty brisk trade with

half a dozen urchins standing round. But, beyond this, there is scarce

any talk or movement in the street. There’s nobody at the book-shop.

“If you will have the goodness to come again in an hour,” says the

banker, with his mouthful of dinner at one o’clock, “you can have the

money.” There is nobody at the hotel, save the good landlady, the kind

waiters, the brisk young cook who ministers to you. Nobody is in the

Protestant church--(oh! strange sight, the two confessions are here

at peace!)--nobody in the Catholic church: until the sacristan, from

his snug abode in the cathedral close, espies the traveller eyeing

the monsters and pillars before the old shark-toothed arch of his

cathedral, and comes out (with a view to remuneration possibly) and

opens the gate, and shows you the venerable church, and the queer old

relics in the sacristy, and the ancient vestments (a black velvet cope,

amongst other robes, as fresh as yesterday, and presented by that

notorious “pervert,” Henry of Navarre and France), and the statue of

St. Lucius, who built St. Peter’s Church, opposite No. 65, Cornhill.

What a quiet, kind, quaint, pleasant, pretty old town! Has it been

asleep these hundreds and hundreds of years, and is the brisk young

Prince of the Sidereal Realms in his screaming car drawn by his

snorting steel elephant coming to waken it? Time was when there must

have been life and bustle and commerce here. Those vast, venerable

walls were not made to keep out cows, but men-at-arms led by fierce

captains, who prowled about the gates, and robbed the traders us they

passed in and out with their bales, their goods, their pack-horses, and

their wains. Is the place so dead that even the clergy of the different

denominations can’t quarrel? Why, seven or eight, or a dozen, or

fifteen hundred years ago (they haven’t the register, over the way, up

to that remote period. I daresay it was burnt in the fire of London)--a

dozen hundred years ago, when there was some life in the town, St.

Lucius was stoned here on account of theological differences, after

founding our church in Cornhill.

There was a sweet pretty river walk we used to take in the evening,

and mark the mountains round glooming with a deeper purple; the shades

creeping up the golden walls; the river brawling, the cattle calling,

the maids and chatterboxes round the fountains babbling and bawling;

and several times in the course of our sober walks, we overtook a lazy

slouching boy, or hobbledehoy, with a rusty coat, and trousers not

too long, and big feet trailing lazily one after the other, and large

lazy hands dawdling from out the tight sleeves, and in the lazy hands

a little book, which my lad held up to his face, and which I daresay

so charmed and ravished him, that he was blind to the beautiful sights

around him; unmindful, I would venture to lay any wager, of the lessons

he had to learn for to-morrow; forgetful of mother waiting supper, and

father preparing a scolding;--absorbed utterly and entirely in his book.

What was it that so fascinated the young student, as he stood by the

river shore? Not the _Pons Asinorum_. What book so delighted him, and

blinded him to all the rest of the world, so that he did not care to

see the apple-woman with her fruit, or (more tempting still to sons of

Eve) the pretty girls with their apple cheeks, who laughed and prattled

round the fountain? What was the book? Do you suppose it was Livy, or

the Greek grammar? No; it was a NOVEL that you were reading, you lazy,

not very clean, good-for-nothing, sensible boy! It was D’Artagnan

locking up General Monk in a box, or almost succeeding in keeping

Charles the First’s head on. It was the prisoner of the Château d’If

cutting himself out of the sack fifty feet under water (I mention the

novels I like best myself--novels without love or talking, or any of

that sort of nonsense, but containing plenty of fighting, escaping,

robbery, and rescuing)--cutting himself out of the sack, and swimming

to the Island of Montecristo. O Dumas! O thou brave, kind, gallant

old Alexandre! I hereby offer thee homage, and give thee thanks for

many pleasant hours. I have read thee (being sick in bed) for thirteen

hours of a happy day, and had the ladies of the house fighting for the

volumes. Be assured that lazy boy was reading Dumas (or I will go so

far as to let the reader here pronounce the eulogium, or insert the

name of his favourite author); and as for the anger, or it may be, the

reverberations of his schoolmaster, or the remonstrances of his father,

or the tender pleadings of his mother that he should not let the supper

grow cold--I don’t believe the scapegrace cared one fig. No! Figs are

sweet, but fictions are sweeter.

Have you ever seen a score of white-bearded, white-robed warriors, or

grave seniors of the city, seated at the gate of Jaffa or Beyrout,

and listening to the story-teller reciting his marvels out of _Antar_

or the _Arabian Nights_? I was once present when a young gentleman at

table put a tart away from him, and said to his neighbour, the Younger

Son (with rather a fatuous air), “I never eat sweets.”

“Not eat sweets! and do you know why?” says T.

“Because I am past that kind of thing,” says the young gentleman.

“Because you are a glutton and a sot!” cries the elder (and Juvenis

winces a little). “All people who have natural, healthy appetites,

love sweets; all children, all women, all Eastern people, whose tastes

are not corrupted by gluttony and strong drink.” And a plateful of

raspberries and cream disappeared before the philosopher.

You take the allegory? Novels are sweets. All people with healthy

literary appetites love them--almost all women;--a vast number of

clever, hard-headed men. Why, one of the most learned physicians in

England said to me only yesterday, “I have just read _So-and-So_ for

the second time” (naming one of Jones’s exquisite fictions). Judges,

bishops, chancellors, mathematicians are notorious novel readers; as

well as young boys and sweet girls, and their kind, tender mothers. Who

has not read about Eldon, and how he cried over novels every night when

he was not at whist?

As for that lazy naughty boy at Chur, I doubt whether _he_ will like

novels when he is thirty years of age. He is taking too great a glut

of them now. He is eating jelly until he will be sick. He will know

most plots by the time he is twenty, so that _he_ will never be

surprised when the Stranger turns out to be the rightful earl,--when

the old waterman, throwing off his beggarly gabardine, shows his

stars and the collars of his various orders, and clasping Antonia to

his bosom, proves himself to be the prince, her long-lost father. He

will recognize the novelists’ same characters, though they appear in

red-heeled pumps and _ailes-de-pigeon_, or the garb of the nineteenth

century. He will get weary of sweets, as boys of private schools grow

(or used to grow, for I have done growing some little time myself, and

the practice may have ended too)--as private schoolboys used to grow

tired of the pudding before their mutton at dinner.

And pray what is the moral of this apologue? The moral I take to be

this: the appetite for novels extending to the end of the world;--far

away in the frozen deep, the sailors reading them to one another during

the endless night;--far away under the Syrian stars, the solemn sheikhs

and elders hearkening to the poet as he recites his tales;--far away

in the Indian camps, where the soldiers listen to ----’s tales, or

----’s, after the hot day’s march;--far away in little Chur yonder,

where the lazy boy pores over the fond volume, and drinks it in with

all his eyes;--the demand being what we know it is, the merchant

must supply it, as he will supply saddles and pale ale for Bombay or

Calcutta.

But as surely as the cadet drinks too much pale ale, it will disagree

with him; and so surely, dear youth, will too much novels cloy on

thee. I wonder, do novel writers themselves read many novels? If you

go into Gunter’s, you don’t see those charming young ladies (to whom

I present my most respectful compliments) eating tarts and ices, but

at the proper evening-tide they have good plain wholesome tea and

bread-and-butter. Can anybody tell me does the author of the _Tale

of two Cities_ read novels? does the author of the _Tower of London_

devour romances? does the dashing _Harry Lorrequer_ delight in _Plain

or Ringlets_ or _Sponge’s Sporting Tour_? Does the veteran, from

whose flowing pen we had the books which delighted our young days,

_Darnley_, and _Richelieu_, and _Delorme_[34] relish the works of

Alexandre the Great, and thrill over the _Three Musqueteers_? Does

the accomplished author of the _Caxtons_ read the other tales in

_Blackwood_? (For example, that ghost-story printed last August, and

which for my part, though I read it in the public reading-room at the

Pavilion Hotel at Folkestone, I protest frightened me so that I scarce

dared look over my shoulder.) Does _Uncle Tom_ admire _Adam Bede_; and

does the author of the _Vicar of Wrexhill_ laugh over the _Warden_ and

the _Three Clerks_? Dear youth of ingenuous countenance and ingenuous

pudor! I make no doubt that the eminent parties above named all partake

of novels in moderation--eat jellies--but mainly nourish themselves

upon wholesome roast and boiled.

Here, dear youth aforesaid! our CORNHILL MAGAZINE owners strive to

provide thee with facts as well as fiction; and though it does not

become them to brag of their Ordinary, at least they invite thee to a

table where thou shall sit in good company. That story of the _Fox_ was

written by one of the gallant seamen who sought for poor Franklin under

the awful Arctic Night: that account of China is told by the man of all

the empire most likely to know of what he speaks: those pages regarding

Volunteers come from an honoured hand that has borne the sword in a

hundred famous fields, and pointed the British guns in the greatest

siege in the world.

Shall we point out others? We are fellow-travellers, and shall make

acquaintance as the voyage proceeds. In the Atlantic steamers, on the

first day out (and on high and holidays subsequently), the jellies

set down on table are richly ornamented; _medioque in fonte leporum_

rise the American and British flags nobly emblazoned in tin. As the

passengers remark this pleasing phenomenon, the Captain no doubt

improves the occasion by expressing a hope, to his right and left,

that the flag of Mr. Bull and his younger Brother may always float

side by side in friendly emulation. Novels having been previously

compared to jellies--here are two (one perhaps not entirely saccharine,

and flavoured with an _amari aliquid_ very distasteful to some

palates)--two novels under two flags, the one that ancient ensign

which has hung before the well-known booth of _Vanity Fair_; the other

that fresh and handsome standard which has lately been hoisted on

_Barchester Towers_. Pray, sir, or madam, to which dish will you be

helped?

So have I seen my friends Captain Lang and Captain Comstock press their

guests to partake of the fare on that memorable “First day out,” when

there is no man, I think, who sits down but asks a blessing on his

voyage, and the good ship dips over the bar, and bounds away into the

blue water.

FOOTNOTES:

[33] Stow quotes the inscription, still extant, “from the table fast

chained in St. Peter’s Church, Cornhill;” and says “he was after

some chronicle buried at London, and after some chronicle buried at

Glowcester”--but oh! these incorrect chroniclers! when Alban Butler, in

the _Lives of the Saints_, v. xii., and Murray’s _Handbook_, and the

Sacristan at Chur, all say Lucius was killed there, and I saw his tomb

with my own eyes!

[34] By the way, what a strange fate is that which has befallen the

veteran novelist! He is her Majesty’s Consul-General in Venice, the

only city in Europe where the famous “Two Cavaliers” cannot by any

possibility be seen riding together.

Transcriber’s Notes

The following changes have been made:

A table of contents has been added for the convenience of the reader.

Some illustrations have been moved outside the enclosing paragraphs.

Changed +dorekie+ to +dovekie+ in “saw a solitary dovekie in winter

plumage” on page 105.