100 NOTES ON THE ARCTIC EXPEDITIONS. [June 23, 1856. 



the most barren character, and, for the most part, magnesian limestone ; the 

 latter, in places, has a good deal of soil, overlying sandstone and fossiliferous 

 limestone. On the 17th, noon, or rather before it, another landing for angles, 

 observations, and cairn-building took place at Cape Franklin, on the north 

 shore, and, from its summit, I was not a little disappointed to see that the 

 breeze, before which we had been sailing, was blowing upon a tiglit pack edge, 

 extending right across the channel from shore to shore. Away to the N.W. 

 was one vast body of ice, broken and detached, but without a pool of water 

 amongst it. That night we went into a harbour close to Cape Franklin, and 

 the rest of our sailing adventures in those seas is soon told. At midnight 

 the wind chopped suddenly round to the N.W., and in one hour the winter 

 was upon us. To give you an idea of its suddenness, I had a party on shore, 

 watering the ship by means of a canvas hose, led down a rivulet ; the stream 

 froze from the hill top to the sea in the middle watch, and the hose was 

 brought off one solid column of ice as thick as my arm. On the 18th the land 

 was white with snow — the soil was everywhere frozen. The sea, yesterday all 

 blue and sparkling, was covered with one great body of ice, rolling along to 

 the S.E. and down Queen Channel ; and prepared as I had been, by experi- 

 ence, for the sudden advent of winter, 1 had no idea of a change so early, or 

 rapid. Until the 5th October, Sir Edward Belcher, Kichards, and myself, 

 continued hard at work, sledging and boating over the surface of a half- 

 cemented sea. The main object I had in view was to see our road for the 

 following spring journeys. In a trip to Table Island and the Wall Cliff, on 

 which occasion Sir Edward Belcher made a flying visit to an extensive land 

 to the north, called North Cornwall, situated in the parallel of 77-30 north, 

 I became fully satisfied that I had been right in the chart published by me in 

 1852, in leaving Jones Sound open to the west ; and when I saw the flood- 

 tide coming from it, and the ice ail driving towards it, it required no great 

 brains to see that we were on a sea opening into Baffin Strait. 



Sir Edward l^elcher's journey in 1853, some fifty njiles farther, or beyond 

 the place reached by Captain Richards and myself in 1852, only goes to con- 

 firm that hypothesis. The actual connection of Jones Sound with the water 

 north of Queen Channel, resting only as yet upon opinion, there is still fifty 

 miles of unknown region intervening. 



The winter of 1852-53 was a fearfully severe one. In Banks Land, Mel- 

 ville Sound, as well as with us, temperatures were recorded below G0° of 

 Fah., or 90° below freezing point ; and what with us added to its rigour, was 

 the unusual prevalence of cold, piercing mists, occasioned by the rapid tides de- 

 stroying the ice in our neighbourhood, and the condensation of the wann vapour 

 thrown off from the water. This, together with the total absence of the sun 

 for 106 days, or three months and a half, made it, I should say, one of the 

 most, if not the most, trying winter ever undergone. 1 shall not detain you 

 farther with these particulars, and proceed to describe the spring operations 

 of 1853. 



Captain Richards and I, with a strong division of sledges, were to go west- 

 ward, whither, of course, it was natural to be supposed Franklin would have 

 gone. So little of the coast was seen beyond Cape Lady Franklin, that no 

 one could tell where it might lead us before we reached Byam Martin 

 Channel, of which, as a communication into the Northern Sea, I had no 

 doubt. 



Sir Edward Belcher was, with the ample means which would be at his 

 disposal by the return of some of our sledges, and three of his own particular 

 division, with some picked men, to explore the lands to the N. and N.E. of 

 the ships, reaching Smith Sound, as well as the cairn left by the * Pioneer ' 

 in Jones Sound in 1851, which was about 150 milts from our winter quarters. 

 We, the western division, started to establish a large depot ujion Cape Lady 

 Franklin, on the 22nd of March, 1853 — nearly twenty days earlier than 



