22 FINDLAY. [Jan. 28, 1856. 



ocean-water around the Arctic basin, which, passing out by Baffin Bay, 

 kept up a perfect system of compensation. This current from the N.W. 

 will drift out any floating- bodies in some form, or at some period, or 

 they must be driven by the ice on to the shores. As no remains of 

 wreck or other evidences of the existence of the * Erebus ' and * Terror ' 

 have been met with in the widely-extended search, it may be argued 

 that the first of these events has occurred. 



The first evidences of the route pursued by Sir John Franklin were 

 those given by the pieces of a boat's fittings found by Dr. Rae on the 

 S.E. coast of Wollaston Land, Aug. 21, 1851 ; these were at the head 

 of the flood-tide coming from the N.E. In April of the same year, 

 after the discovery of the winter-quarters of 1845-6, numerous small 

 pieces of wood, &c., were found by Capt. Penny up the Wellington 

 Channel : these it was shown may have come from the S., and therefore 

 do not give so clear an indication. Allusion was then made to the 

 Esquimaux report and sketch brought from Pond Bay, June, 1849, 

 describing four ships near Prince Regent's Inlet, two of which were 

 Sir James Ross's, in Port Leopold, and tlie other two, to the westward, 

 were considered to be the ' Erebus ' and * Terror.' 



There is no evidence whatever to show how the interval was passed 

 between the ships leaving Beechey Island in 1846 (perhaps in or after 

 September), and the autumn or winter of 1849, when the boats' crews 

 found their way to the north shore of King William Land, down the 

 Victoria Strait of Rae, and in the spring of 1850, when they reached 

 the mouth of the Back River, where the last sad consummation took 

 place. It was contended that the only indications met with are those of 

 boats, and therefore that the ships were deserted to the westward of Peel 

 Sound. For had they passed to the eastward of that part, the retreating 

 party would have passed down Prince Regent Inlet to have availed 

 themselves of the depot of provisions on Fury Beach, on its west side, 

 found still untouched by Kennedy and Bellot in 1851. By what route 

 the * Erebus ' and * Terror ' arrived at this part is open to all conjecture. 

 They may have passed up the Wellington Channel to the N.W., and 

 then southward down the Byam Martin Channel, and thus arrived at 

 the same spot attained by Capt. Kellett in the ' Resolute' in 1853; or 

 they may have gone to the W. and S.W. past Cape Walker, as the 

 original instructions directed, and by either route become inextricably 

 entangled in the field-ice of Melville Sound. The fate of the ships was 

 then referred to those seen on an ice-floe on the north side of the Banks 

 of Newfoundland on April 20, 1851. The perfect consistency of the 

 evidence, zealously collected, which has never been contradicted or 

 shaken in the slightest degree by any subsequent testimony, leads to the 

 irresistible conclusion that the report is correct. If so, there is no other 



