260 REFLECTIONS ON THE RETREA T Chap. XVI. 



tenting place to afford some shelter ; here it was I think that 

 Lieutenant Gore deposited the record in May, 1847, which 

 was found in 1 848 by Lieutenant Irving, and finally deposited 

 at Point Victory. Some scraps of tin vessels were lying 

 about, but whether they had been left by Sir James Ross's 

 party in May, 1830, or by the Franklin Expedition in 1847 

 or 1848, is uncertain. 1 



Here ended my own search for further traces of our lost 

 countrymen. Hobson found two other cairns, and many 

 relics, between this position and Cape Felix. From each 

 place where any trace was discovered the most interesting of 

 the relics were taken away, so that the selection we have 

 made is very considerable. 



Of these northern cairns I will give a description when I 

 have received Hobson's account of his journey; but here it 

 is as well to state that in his opinion, as well as my own, no 

 part of the coast between Cape Felix and Cape Crozier has 

 been visited by Esquimaux since the fatal march of the lost 

 crews in April, 1848; no cairn disturbed; none of the 

 numerous articles strewed about them, nor the scanty drift- 

 wood we noticed at long intervals — although invaluable to 

 the natives — had been touched. From this very significant 

 fact it is quite certain that they had not been discovered by 

 the Esquimaux, whose knowledge of the " white men falling 

 down and dying as they walked along " must be limited to 

 the shore-line southward and eastward of Cape Crozier, and 

 where, of course, no traces were permitted to remain for us 

 to find. It is not probable that such fearful mortality could 

 have overtaken them so early in their march as within 80 



1 It is remarkable that, when Sir James Ross discovered Point Victory 

 in 1830, he named two points of land, then in sight, Cape Franklin, and 

 Cape Jane Franklin respectively. Eighteen years afterwards Franklin's 

 ships were abandoned almost within sight of those headlands. Point 

 Victory, where the survivors landed, is almost identical with Cape Jane 

 Franklin. 



