PREFACE. xv 



way of securing the passage of a ship from the Atlantic 

 to the Pacific is by following, as near as possible, the coast- 

 line of North America : indeed, it is his opinion, founded 

 upon a large experience, that no passage by a ship can ever 

 be accomplished in a more northern direction. This, it 

 is well known, was the favourite theory of Franklin, who 

 had himself, along with Richardson, Back, Beechey, and 

 Dease and Simpson, surveyed the whole of that same North 

 American coast from the Back or Great Fish River to 

 Behring Strait. Thus, when Franklin sailed in 1845, the 

 discovery of a North-West Passage was reduced to the 

 finding a link between the latter survey and the discoveries 

 of Parry, who had already, to his great renown, opened 

 the first half of a more northern course from east to west, 

 when he was arrested by the impenetrable ice-barrier at 

 Melville Island. 



And here it is to be remembered that the tract in which 

 the record and the relics have been found is just that to 

 which Lady Franklin herself specially directed Kennedy, 

 the commander of the ' Prince Albert,' in her second private 

 expedition in 1852 ; and had that intrepid explorer not been 

 induced to search northwards of Bellot Strait, but had felt 

 himself able to follow the course indicated by his sagacious 

 employer, there can be no doubt that much more satis- 

 factory results would have been obtained than those which, 

 after a lapse of seven years, have now been realized by the 

 undaunted perseverance of Lady Franklin, and the skill and 

 courage of M'Clintock. 



The natural modesty of this commander has, I am bound 

 to say, prevented his doing common justice, in the following 

 journal, to his own conduct — conduct which can be esti- 

 mated by those only who have listened to the testimony of 



