FOREWORD xxi 



a fortune to equip a searching party to be commanded 

 by Leopold McClintock, one of the ablest and tough- 

 est travelers over the ice the world has ever known. 

 In 1859 McClintock verified the Eskimos' sad story 

 by the discovery on King William Land of a record 

 dated April, 1848, which told of Franklin's death and 

 of the abandonment of the ships. He also found 

 among the Eskimos silver plate and other relics of 

 the party; elsewhere he saw one of Franklin's boats on 

 a sledge, with two skeletons inside and clothing and 

 chocolate; in another place he found tents and flags; 

 and elsewhere he made the yet more ghastly discov- 

 ery of a bleached human skeleton prone on its face, as 

 though attesting the truthfulness of an Eskimo woman 

 who, claiming to have seen forty of the survivors late 

 in 1848, said "they fell down and died as they 

 walked." 



The distinction of being the first to make the 

 Northwest Passage, which Franklin so narrowly missed, 

 fell to Robert McClure (1850-53) and Richard Collin- 

 son (1850-55), who commanded the two ships sent north 

 through Bering Strait to search for Franklin. McClure 

 accomplished the passage on foot after losing his ship 

 in the ice in Barrow Strait, but Collinson brought his 

 vessel safely through to England. The Northwest 

 Passage was not again made until Roald Amundsen 

 navigated the tiny Gjoa, a sailing sloop with gasoline 

 engine, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 1903-06. 



Yankee whalers each year had been venturing 

 further north in Davis Strait and Baffin Bay and Ber- 

 ing Sea, but America had taken no active part in polar 

 exploration until the sympathy aroused by the tragic 



