1908-9.] A Story OF A FRANKLIN SEARCH EXPEDITION. 395 
ship, the Eredus, but not before he had learned the glorious news that 
his work was accomplished and that he had discovered “the North- 
West Passage.” 
All that summer the ice remained firm around the ships, and the 
men’s spirits must have sunk very low as they saw the prospects of 
reaching home and friends again disappearing into another Arctic winter. 
They knew too that even if all their provisions were good they would 
not last longer than the following summer, and there is a strong 
suspicion that much of the tinned meat with which they had been 
provided was bad. 
That winter sickness and death took a heavy toll from the party 
and eight officers and twelve men died—a frightful mortality among 
the officers, showing that care, anxiety and idleness were telling heavily 
on them. But some hope doubtless came back to them with the 
return of the long days of spring, and it was determined to abandon the 
ships, and proceed up Great Fish River, and thence overland to Fort 
Resolution, the trading post of the Hudson’s Bay Company on Great 
Slave Lake, dragging sleds with any supplies and provisions that they 
might have. A journey in boats up Great Fish River, or westward 
along the coast and then up the Mackenzie River might easily have 
been successfully undertaken during the preceding summer, before 
the provisions were exhausted, and probably it would have been under- 
taken at that time if Franklin had lived, but in his absence there was 
no one to efficiently direct travel except in the ships. 
However on the 22nd of April, 1848, they abandoned the two ships 
and crossed the ice to Point Victory, the promontory nearest the ships 
on the west coast of King William Island. On the 26th they left 
Point Victory and started southward, dragging one or more heavy 
boats loaded on heavy sleds along withthem. Before leaving they left 
a short memorandnm under a cairn of stones, and this, having been 
found by Sir Leopold McClintock some years later, is the only written 
record of the expedition that has ever reached the outer world. 
A hundred and five men all told started south, and some reached 
as far as Starvation Cove, on the mainland just west of Point Richard- 
son, where they died of starvation, while others returned to the ships, 
and all of these died either on the way back or at the ships. 
The ultimate fate of the party was learned from accounts related 
by Eskimos living in the vicinity. These Eskimos also stated that one 
