LAST VOYAGE OF FKANKLIN. 557 



At last the ice-stream ceased to drift. Fifteen miles 

 N. N. W. of Point Victory, the dread winter of 1847-8, 

 with disease, and cold, and want, and darkness, 

 closed around those forlorn and desperate men. 



An escape by land was now their only hope, and 

 every effort was made during the winter to get all things 

 in readiness to start at the earliest practicable moment. 

 When that time arrived, eight officers and twelve men, 

 one after another, had shared the happy fate of Sir John 

 Franklin. The survivors, one hundred and five in num- 

 ber, a wan, half-starved, scurvy-stricken crew, piled up 

 their sledges with all descriptions of gear, and on the 

 22d of April, 1848, under the lead of Captains Crozier 

 and Fitzjames, took their way to King William's Land. 



They were three days traversing the intervening dis- 

 tance of fifteen miles, arid the sad conviction was already 

 pressing upon them that they had overrated their phys- 

 ical strength. A few miles north-west of Point Victory 

 they found the record deposited by Lieut. Gore. The 

 hand that wrote it was now cold in death. With a hand 

 almost as cold, Capt. Fitzjames proceeded to write round 

 its margin those few but graphic words which tell all 

 we know of this last sad page in their history. The 

 record, thus completed, was placed in a cairn built on 

 the assumed site of James Ross's pillar, at Point Vic- 

 tory. There the party were to rest for the night ; and 

 on the morrow, the 26th of April, 1848, about the 

 time that the first searching expedition was getting 

 ready to sail from England, they were to set out for 

 the Great Fish River. 



Here all positive knowledge of their movements comes 

 to an end. What afterward befell them can be stated 

 only from conjecture, based upon the statements of the 

 Esquimaux, and the various relics that have been dis- 

 covered. From the numerous articles found scattered 



