CHAPTER VI. 



PLANS FOR AN INTERNATIONAL SEARCH IN 1882. 



ri lIIE several United States expeditions which went north 

 -i- to search for the Jeannette in the year 1881 had 

 returned home or gone into winter quarters, and not the 

 slightest clue to the whereabouts of the missing ship or to 

 the fate of the adventurous men who sailed in her so gaily 

 out through the Golden Gate nearly two and one-half years 

 previously had been discovered. As cold weather came on 

 the thoughts of all friends of humanity turned painfully 

 northward, in sympathy with DeLong and his men, who, if 

 still alive, seemed doomed to pass a third weary and sunless 

 winter amid the cold, darkness, and desolation of the 

 remorseless frost-land which held them in its icy grasp. 



Meantime new plans for solving the mystery which sur- 

 rounded the lost explorers were being projected and dis- 

 cussed both at home and abroad, and it was felt that, owing 

 to the failure thus far of all attempts to gain any informa- 

 tion respecting them, nothing less than international search 

 could cover the field. 



The fact that Leigh Hunt had not returned home and 

 might himself need relief, and gratitude for the part taken 

 by the United States in the search for Franklin, served to 

 intensify the feeling of the English people. The Colonial 

 Department addressed a letter to the governors of the Hud- 

 son Bay Company, urging upon them the importance of a 

 thorough search by the trappers and employees of the com- 

 pany along the northern coast of North America ; and the 

 Geographical Society of Great Britain was actively engaged 

 in devising plans for relief expeditions. At a meeting of 

 the society, held in the London University, December 12th, 

 1881, Mr. C. R. Markham, C. B., spoke as follows : 



(79) 



