CONCLUSION. 313 



countrymen, they most certainly would have told us of it. 

 During my two spring-journeys, comprising one hundred 

 and four days' marching along these and the West Boothian 

 shores, although constantly on the look-out for game, and 

 accompanied by Petersen, one of the most ardent and suc- 

 cessful of arctic sportsmen, we succeeded in shooting only two 

 rein-deer, one bear, two foxes, a hare, and twenty birds. 



The retreating crews could not have carried with them 

 more than forty days' provisions at a very short allowance ; 

 that any considerable number of them reached Montreal 

 Island, a distance of about 250 miles by sledge-route, is 

 marvellous \ yet here they were separated by 600 or 800 

 miles from any land sufficiently abounding in animal life 

 to sustain them, and the Back River, by which they hoped 

 to obtain access to this more favoured region, was still 

 frozen to a depth of five or six feet. 



Under these appalling circumstances, I cannot but con- 

 clude that all superfluous weights, such as logbooks l and 

 journals, were thrown away very early upon the march, the 

 officers themselves setting the example ; Sir Robert M'Clure 

 did not attempt to save his logbooks, he left them behind 

 him on board the 'Investigator' when that ship was aban- 

 doned in Mercy Bay. 



It has been the generally received opinion that one 

 hundred and thirty-eight individuals sailed on board the 

 ' Erebus ' and ' Terror,' that number being the sum of their 

 united complements. I am enabled to state, on the authority 

 of the Admiralty, that only one hundred and thirty-four 

 persons left England; and of these, one subsequently re- 

 turned in H.M.S. 'Rattler,' and four in the transport 

 ' Barretto Junior ' — so that only one hundred and twenty- 

 nine, the exact number mentioned in the record, actually 



entered the ice. 



1 See p. 242. 



