262 FATE OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN EXPEDITION 



An expedition in search of the missing heroes was despatched 

 under Sir James Ross; and another under Sir John Richardson: 

 both added to the stores of geographical knowledge, but nothing 

 more. These had worked from the eastward; Captains Moore and 

 Kellett worked from the westward, entering Bering Strait, and 

 actually reaching, by their boats, the mouth of Mackenzie River. 

 In the spring of 1849, tne British Government offered a reward of 

 20,000 to any private explorers, of any nation, who should discover 

 and succor the wanderers ; and Lady Franklin, out of her own 

 resources, organized several relieving parties. So it happened that, 

 in 1850, no fewer than twelve vessels, led by Ross, Rae, McClure, 

 Osborne, Collinson, Penny, Austin, Ommaney, Forsyth and De 

 Haven, besides boat and sledge companies, plunged deep into the 

 far northern wilderness to trace the footprints of the lost. 



The Admiralty orders to Franklin had been, to pass through 

 Lancaster Sound into Barrow Strait; thence to Cape Walker; and 

 from Cape Walker, by such course as he might find convenient, to 

 Bering Strait. The general opinion was, that he had got to the 

 west of Melville Island, and then been caught by the ice among the 

 numerous islands lying in that part of the Arctic Sea. And it was 

 supposed that he would be engaged in an effort to cross the ice, and 

 reach either one of the Hudson Bay settlements, or some whaling- 

 station. 



In August of the year named the first traces of the missing 

 party were found. These consisted of scraps of rope and canvas, a 

 long-handled rake, the ground plan of a tent, etc., found by Captain 

 Penny on Beechey Island. In conjunction with Lieutenant De 

 Haven, of the American Grinnell expedition, he now undertook a 

 careful search in the vicinity of Wellington Channel, with the result 

 that they found a carefully built pyramidal cairn. It was con- 

 structed of meat-cans which were filled with gravel and sand and 

 arranged to taper upwards from the base to the summit, where was 

 fixed the remnant of a broken boarding-pike. But no record could 



