FATE OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN EXPEDITION 261 



to Disco, Greenland. The "Erebus" and "Terror" were fitted with 

 every appliance then considered essential to success, though much 

 of the provisions taken proved later to be of a quality detrimental 

 to the success of the expedition. Such was the party and the equip- 

 ment which started out with the warmest anticipations of a glorious 

 and fortunate voyage, only to plunge into the depths of that terrible 

 sea of ice from which no man of the party was ever to return. 



On the 8th of June they left the Orkneys, steering for the 

 extreme point of Greenland known as Cape Farewell; where, 

 indeed, the adventurer does, as it were, bid farewell to the security 

 and liberty of the civilized world. A month later they lay at anchor 

 in the middle of a group of rocky islets on the east side of Baffin 

 Bay. Yet another fortnight, and we may see them with the mind's 

 eye, as some whalers saw them, gallantly struggling with the ice 

 which impeded their progress across the Bay of Baffin to Lancaster 

 Sound. Seven officers manned a boat and dragged her across the 

 ice to visit the whalers. They went on board the "Prince of Wales" 

 of Hull. "All well," they reported, and expressed the blithest, 

 cheeriest confidence in the success of their enterprise. After a 

 hearty hand-grasp, they said good-bye and returned to their ships. 

 On the same evening (July 26th) the ice broke up, the westward 

 route lay open, and the Arctic expedition plowed the waves for 

 Lancaster Sound. Thereafter a cloud descended upon it; it passed 

 into the heart of the grim solitudes of the Polar World, and men 

 heard of it no more. When two years had elapsed without any 

 tidings of the expedition reaching England, the public mind grew 

 seriously alarmed. Expectation deepened into anxiety; anxiety 

 darkened into fear. When the winter of 1848 passed away, and 

 still no tidings came, it was felt that further inaction would be 

 intolerable. Hitherto the great object had been the discovery of 

 the Northwest Passage ; now the thoughts of men were all directed 

 to a search after Franklin and his companions. Strangely enough, 

 Providence had so ordered it that in the search after these "martyrs 

 of Science" the former object was attained. 



