508 THE PROGRESS OF MARITIME DISCOVERY. 
conspired to repel him; the horrors of that iron-ribbed desert, 
without a single tree on the whole line of his passage ; and how 
heroically he persevered to the very last, and added Back’s River, 
as the Thlu-it-scho has most deservedly been called, to the geo- 
graphical conquests of which England may well be proud. 
The present is not a detailed account of Arctic discovery, a 
eomplete historical narrative of how step by step those dreary 
regions, the refuse of the earth, have grown into distinctness on 
the map; so passing over Simpson’s wonderful boat-voyage 
along the northern shores of America, which led to the discovery 
of 1600 miles of coast (1837-1839), and Rae’s important re- 
searches on Melville Peninsula (1846, 1847), I proceed to the 
last expedition of Sir John Franklin. We all know how the 
veteran seaman left England in the sixtieth year of his age, 
once more to try the north-western passage; how since his last 
despatches, dated from the Whalefish Islands, Baffin’s Bay, 
July 12th, 1845, months and months, and then years and years, 
elapsed without bringing any tidings of his fate; how Collinson 
and M‘Clure, Penny and Inglefield, Kane and Bellot, and so 
many other worthies, went out to search for the “ Erebus” and 
“ Terror,” and how in spite of all their efforts mystery still over- 
hung the ill-fated expedition, until M‘Clintock raised the veil 
and informed us how miserably most of the gallant seamen 
perished in those dreary wastes, but how their commander had 
been spared the pangs of protracted suffering, and gone to his 
eternal rest even before his country began to feel concerned 
about his loss. 
The search for Franklin is a page in history of which a 
nation may well be proud, more noble than a hundred battles 
and grander than the conquest of an empire. These are no 
blood-stained laurels, but palms of glory gained by matchless 
energy and perseverance over the horrors of a nature inimical to 
man, a theme which some future Homer will delight to sing. 
Had Franklin been ever so success‘ul, he could not possibly 
have achieved so much for Arctic discovery as his loss gave rise 
to; for to the disasters of his voyage we owe the knowledge of 
all the coasts of that intricate conglomeration of islands which 
faces the Pole, and of the channels, which opening far to the 
north, lead to its profoundest, and seemingly impenetrable depths. 
All these discoveries are of little commercial value, it is true, 
