FATE OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN EXPEDITION 269 



and relics found were all deeply embedded in snow. At the half- 

 way point just spoken of, however, Lieutenant Hobson, in his 

 search, caught sight of a piece of wood projecting from the snow; 

 and on digging round it exhumed a boat, standing on a very heavy 

 sledge. Within it were two skeletons: one, lying in the bottom of 

 the stern-sheets, and covered with a quantity of clothing; the other, 

 half-erect in the bows, as if the poor fellow had crept there to look 

 out, and in that position had yielded to the slumber which knows no 

 waking. A couple of guns, loaded and ready cocked, stood close at 

 hand, apparently prepared for use against wild animals. Around 

 this boat was found another accumulation of cast-off articles; and 

 McClintock conjectured that the party who had dragged the sledge 

 thus far were returning to the ships, having discovered themselves 

 unequal to the terrors of the journey they had undertaken. This 

 is possible ; but we can hardly doubt that the stronger portion of the 

 crews pushed forward with another boat, and that some reached 

 Montreal Island and ascended Great Fish River. The record left 

 by them in the cairn which Lieutenant Gore had erected tells their 

 story to this point, ending with, "Start to-morrow, April 26th, for 

 Back's Fish River." 



In 1854, Dr. Rae, in his overland expedition, fell in with some 

 Eskimos who spoke of having seen forty men dragging a boat near 

 the Fish River, under the leadership of a tall, stout, middle-aged 

 man; a description fairly agreeing with the appearance of Captain 

 Fitzjames. Sherard Osborn is of opinion, therefore, that the 

 strongest of the survivors, under Fitzjames, pushed on to perish in 

 the dreary wildernesses of the Hudson Bay territory (for relics have 

 been found on the Fish River, fifty miles above Montreal Island) ; 

 and that the weak, if ever they reached the ships again, did so only 

 in time to see them wrecked by the breaking up of the ice in the 

 autumn of 1848. We know from the Eskimos that one ship sank; 

 and that the other, on board of which was one dead person, "a tall, 

 large-boned man," was driven ashore. These wrecks, however, 



