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



force or by intimidation, one of the contending parties in any other nation, un- 

 less it be to counterbalance the aid given to an opposite party by a third 

 nation." Now the four most powerful nations in the world are interested in 

 China. England and America have large and increasing commercial interests 

 and missionary enterprises engaged there ; France has the same to a less but 

 still increasing extent ; and Russia has not only important commercial inte- 

 rests at stake, but has a common boundary with China for thousands of miles, 

 a boundary on which she has shown a determination to encroach. In fact, 

 were Russia allowed to conquer China, she might become the mistress of the 

 world and pursue her conquests into America. That Russia has before made 

 aggressions on the Celestial Empire is matter of history ; and as China is 

 herself unable to resist her for the next generation, it becomes the duty of 

 England, France, and America vigilantly to watch the movements of the 

 Muscovite, and enter into a compact to preserve the Chinese Empire from 

 such aggressions, without at the same time interfering in any way with the 

 quarrel between the Manchoos and Tae-pings. The work concludes with 

 some observations on the morale of the opium trade, which the author defends, 

 as not more objectionable than many other branches of our commerce with 

 the East. 



3. Notes on the late Arctic Expeditions. By Captain Sherard 



OSBORN, R.N., F.R.G.S. 



Communicated by the Secketary. 



It is some years since, on a similar occasion, I was called upon to give my 

 experience of the past, and hopes of the future, to this scientific body. Some 

 of those now present may remember that occasion. I then combated the idea 

 that Franklin's squadron had perished east of Beechey Island, and retreating 

 home from their first winter . quarters, and your generous sympathies went 

 with me in my views — that those gallant men were incapable of turning their 

 backs in 1846 upon work they went to execute in 1845. The sequel has 

 shown that we were right, though there were those who looked upon the san- 

 guine as visionaries ; and Dr. Rae's evidence proves that some of Franklin's 

 crew only perished in 1850. 



Where I was wrong was in heeding that great Arctic bugbear, " the want of 

 traces." It was the absence of these traces for a distance of 100 miles down 

 either side of Peel Channel, searched by Sir James Ross and Lieut. Brown, 

 which made me and others look hopefully to the route that held out the next 

 best hope — Wellington Channel. 



It is easy now to turn round and condemn those who advocated the search 

 in 1852 up that route. I would remind them that, but for the hopes which 

 lay in that direction, the search would have been abandoned in 1851 ; and, at 

 any rate, all England can say we never desisted from the search until a clue 

 was discovered. What a source for congratulation it must be to every right- 

 feeling person that we did not, as many suggested years ago, cease our exer- 

 tions to find them ! and is there not something more than remarkable, that, 

 just as a noble squadron has been deserted, and the search likewise, that God 

 should grant a clue to Dr. Rae, which shows us that within an easy sledge 

 journey of the position of either of our ships, the ill-fated ' Erebus ' and ' Terror ' 

 are probably lying ? With respect to our past operations and discoveries of 

 1852-53 in Wellington and Queen Channel, I would recall to your notice the 

 state of the chart when we left England, to give you an idea of what has been 

 done, and that mainly by the zeal and strength of seamen dragging heavy 

 sledges over the rough and frozen surface of the Polar Sea. It has not been, 

 believe me, by sitting in a boat or sailing in a ship that all those many miles 



