HISTORICAL SUMMARY 101 
King William island, bringing the first intelligence of the loss 
of the Erebus and Terror, and of all their crews. 
1853-55-dr. Elisha Kent Kane, of the United States navy, 
to Smith sound, Humboldt glacier and Grinnell land. 
1855-chief factor John Anderson, of the Hudson's Bay 
Company, canoe voyage down the Great Fish river to Montreal 
island and Point Ogle, procuring further relics of the Erebus 
and Terror. 
1857-59-captain F. L. m'clintock, r.n., in the Fox, Lady 
Franklin's yacht, to Peel sound, Regent inlet, Bellot strait, 
King William island and Montreal island, bringing precise in- 
telligence of the fate of the Erebus and Terror, and a short 
record of their proceedings. 
The above list is taken from ' The Polar regions,' by Sir John 
Richardson, and gives a very brief statement of the numerous 
expeditions sent out in search of these ill-fated ships. Lengthy 
records of most of these expeditions have been published, in 
which the trials and hardships undergone are recorded in a 
matter-of-fact Way, without any attempt to excite sympathy, and 
all honour should be paid to the memory of these men, many of 
them volunteers, for the dangers they passed through in the 
endeavour to rescue their fellowmen from terrible death by 
starvation and cold in the inaccessible Arctics. Many lost their 
own lives, while others drifted all winter in ships crushed 
between great floes of arctic ice; others, again, travelled through 
the northern winter, with its short days and intensely cold 
nights, with only a fireless tent to shield them from death in the 
howling storms which sweep the treeless regions; all did their 
duty, and were faithful unto death. 
A summary made shortly after the search ended, gives the 
length of coast-line examined by the various searching 
parties as follows: Sir James Ross, in 1849, explored 990 miles- 
of coast-line on the eastern side of Peel strait, in Lancas- 
