FRANKLIN'S LAST VOYAGE. 255 



about ten miles of the Fury and Hecla Straits. " Our 

 journey/ 7 says Dr. Rae, " hitherto had been the most 

 fatiguing I had ever experienced ; the severe exercise, 

 with a limited allowance of food, had reduced the whole 

 party very much. However, we marched merrily on, 

 tightening our belts, mine came in six inches, the 

 men vowing that when they got on full allowance they 

 would make up for lost time." On the 12th of August 

 the whole original party embarked at Repulse Bay, and 

 on the 31st arrived at Churchill. 



The return of Captain Sir James Clarke Ross, in 1844, 

 from his brilliant career in the Antarctic Ocean, gave a 

 sudden stimulus in England to the old craving for the 

 discovery of a north-west passage. The ships Erebus 

 and Terror were now famous for their fitness to brave 

 the dangers of the ice, and could be reequipped at com- 

 paratively small cost. Naval officers and whale-fisher- 

 men and hardy seamen were fired with the spirit of 

 adventure. Statesmen panted to send the British flag 

 across all the breadth of the Polar Sea ; scientific gen- 

 tlemen longed for decisions in terrestrial magnetism, 

 which could be obtained only in the regions around the 

 magnetic pole ; and, though merchants and other utilita- 

 rians could never again regard the old notion of a com- 

 mercial highway to the Indian seas through Behring's 

 Strait as worthy of consideration, yet multitudes of the 

 curious, among all classes of society, were impatient to 

 have the veil penetrated which had so long hid from the 

 world's wondering gaze the mysteries of the ice-girt 

 archipelago of the north. The very difficulties of the 

 enterprise, together with the disasters or failures of all 

 former expeditions, only roused the general resolution. 



Sir John Barrow, Secretary to the Admiralty, had for 

 thirty years been the fervent advocate of every enter- 

 prise which could throw light on the Arctic regions, and 



