418 POSTSCRIPT, 



Island and the neighbourhood very carefully and minutely, 

 believe that the Expedition did not quit its winter anchor- 

 age till the end of August or beginning of September, 1846, 

 founding their opinion mainly on the lateness at which the 

 ice breaks up ; that much of the summer was passed there, 

 they consider as proved by the deep sledge ruts in the 

 shingle, which must have been made after the snow had 

 partially disappeared, and by small patches of garden 

 ground bordered with purple saxifrage, and planted in 

 compartments with the native plants. 



It is also the opinion of several officers of the searching 

 party that Franklin's ships left their wintering station sud- 

 denly. The reasons assigned for this belief are, that 

 several articles which might have been useful were left 

 behind, and that at a look-out or fowling station, on Cape 

 Spencer, a long day's journey from the anchorage, the lines 

 for securing the covering of a circular enclosure, formed by 

 a low wall of stones, had been cut, instead of having been 

 deliberately untied, when the covering was removed, leav- 

 ing the ends of line attached to the stones. The absence 

 also of any memorandum of past efforts or future inten- 

 tions, either at the stone cairn erected on the south side 

 of Beechey Island, at the pile of canisters, or in the neigh- 

 bourhood of the kitchen, forge, and other marked lo- 

 calities opposite the anchorage, is thought by some to be 

 an indication of the sudden departure of the Expedition. 

 The value of the articles left behind is too trifling to sup- 

 port such an inference* and the absence of the diligently- 



* These were an armourer's wooden stand, used when laid on its side 

 for (he support of an anvil, and when standing on its end for the in- 

 sertion of a vice ; several coal bags, two of them containing coal dust 

 mixed with a small proportion of small cinders and ashes, some pieces 

 of rope, and scraps of old canvass, and a small piece of oaken fire wood, 

 besides many fragments of worn clothing utterly worthless. An iron 

 stove that had been made on board ship was also found at a fowling 



