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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



were others, as well as books and papers. 

 When the expedition arrived at its destina- 

 tion at a northern point of Hudson Bay, 

 this story was found to be without founda- 

 tion. Lieutenant Schwatlca, however, de- 

 termined to malie the trip to King William 

 Land, in the hope of obtaining new infor- 

 mation of value. The journey was in every 

 way a formidable undertaking, having to 

 be made on sledges, many hundred miles 

 across a totally unknown country, which had 

 to be depended upon for food. The party 

 consisted of four white men and thirteen 

 Esquimaux, provided with but one month's 

 provisions, but also amjjjy supplied with the 

 best and most accurate American guns, to 

 whose perfection, as it proved, they were 

 indebted for being able to successfully ac- 

 complish the task. The party left their 

 camp upon Hudson Bay, which they had 

 named Camp Daly, on the 1st of April, 

 IS'ZS, and reached it again in March, after 

 eleven months' absence, having traveled 

 more than three thousand miles, and expe- 

 rienced a degree of cold that seems incred- 

 ible. The lowest temperature was 71, 

 or 103 below the freezing-point, while the 

 mean temperatuies for the months of No- 

 vember and December, 1879, and January, 

 1880, were 49, 50 and 53'2. In 

 such temperatures as these any object sears 

 the skin as a red-hot iron, the slightest wind 

 burns the face, and meat, hot from a boiling 

 pot, freezes before it can be eaten. The 

 story of the wanderings of the Franklin ex- 

 plorers, as learned by this party from the 

 natives, and as confirmed by their personal 

 search, is terrible in the extreme. These 

 men were but a few hundred miles from 

 waters frequented by whalers, and yet they 

 all perished, and perished seas to leave hard- 

 ly any evidence of their journey. So far as 

 it could be traced, it was by Lieutenant 

 Schwatka's party, and the bones that were 

 found at different points along the desolate 

 shore of King William Land were buried. 

 Only one skeleton could be identified that 

 of Lieutenant Irving, and this was brought 

 away by them. It was known by means of 

 a medal found near by, which the natives, 

 in their desecration of his grave, had for- 

 gotten to take. It was learned from the 

 natives that one of the ships was sunk at a 

 point about five miles west of Grant Point, 



near the Adelaide Peninsula. As the Es- 

 quimaux did not know how to get in by the 

 deck, they cut a hole in the side on a level 

 with the ice, through which they carried off 

 what provisions and other things they could 

 find, and in the spring, when the ice broke 

 up, the ship sank. Across this Adelaide 

 Peninsula, at a point named Starvation Cove, 

 evidences were found that it was here that 

 the last remnant of the party perished, and 

 with them the records, Lieutenant Schwatka 

 believing that they are irrecoverably lost. 

 All the relics found here by the natives, 

 as well as at other points, were destroyed, 

 having been given to the children to play 

 with, and in time were broken up and lost. 

 Besides the knowledge gained of the Frank- 

 lin party, the searchers obtained geographi- 

 cal results of value, and found a consider- 

 able error in the Admiralty chart, in the 

 mapping of Back's River, which they found 

 to extend a good deal east of south, in- 

 stead of west of it. 



The DIarsball-Islanders. A work recent- 

 ly published by Franz Ilemshein, a resident 

 German merchant and consul, on the lan- 

 guage of the Marshall Islands, affords some 

 interesting facts concerning this little Poly- 

 nesian group and its people. The islands 

 are of coral, and are called atolls, having for 

 their foundation a ring-shaped coral reef on 

 which a land surface has been formed of 

 varying length, but only a few hundred 

 yards in breadth, and rising but a few feet 

 above the water-line. Channels through these 

 banks connect the inclosed lagoons, which 

 are seldom more than thirty or thirty-five 

 fathoms deep, with the outer water. The 

 channels are entirely wanting or are too 

 shallow for ships in some of the islands. The 

 thin soil supports a scanty vegetation, which 

 is limited to only a few of the species pe- 

 culiar to the South-Sea regions; but many 

 useful plants have been imported from other 

 islands and do well. The fauna is likewise 

 insignificant, but has been increased by im- 

 portations from abroad, along with which the 

 universal rat has been introduced. The in- 

 habitants are a small, slightly built people, 

 who age early ; the women have rounder 

 faces than the men, with thin, fleshless hands, 

 and begin to fade before they reach maturity. 

 Four ranks arc recomized among them. The 



