258 RECORDS AT THE CAIRN. Chap. XVI. 



with it from the top of the cairn. Hobson removed every 

 stone of this cairn down to the ground and rebuilt it. 



Brief as these records are, we must needs be contented 

 with them ; they are perfect models of official brevity. No 

 log-book could be more provokingly concise. Yet, that 

 any record at all should be deposited after the abandonment 

 of the ships, does not seem to have been at first intended ; 

 and we should feel the more thankful to Captains Crozier 

 and Fitzjames, to whom we are indebted for the invaluable 

 supplement, and our gratitude ought to be all the more 

 sincere when we remember that the ink had to be thawed, 

 and that writing in a tent during an April day in the arctic 

 regions is by no means an easy task. 



Before moving forward from that known position, how- 

 ever, they seem to have reflected upon the importance of 

 leaving there information as to their route. They must have 

 felt that their countrymen were seeking, and would seek for 

 them until some clue was obtained ; and that such definite 

 points as Simpson's cairn at Cape Herschel, and James 

 Ross's cairn at Point Victory (between which lay the only 

 unexplored portion of the North-West Passage) would be 

 examined, as instinctively as McClure, and Kellett, made for 

 well-known sandstone rock-beacon at Melville Island, to 

 seek, and to deposit information. This is the only explana- 

 tion I can offer of their having sent to Sir James Ross's 

 pillar in May, 1847, an d of their taking such pains in April, 

 1 848, to seek out the exact position where it stood, there to 

 erect a cairn five or six feet high, and place their record 

 in it. 



Besides placing a copy of the record taken away by 

 Hobson from the cairn, we both put records of our own in 

 it ; and I also buried one under a large stone ten feet true 

 north from it, stating the explorations and discoveries we 

 had made. 



