XXX INTRODUCTION. 



time hopelessly astray. Be this as it may, it must be 

 confessed, and perhaps with humiliation, that the united 

 wisdom and judgment of the most experienced Arctic 

 navigators, and the energy and perseverance of the most 

 able leaders, were alike at fault, so that it was left for 

 the solitary little 'Fox,' equipped by Lady Franklin 

 and her friends, and commanded by M'Clintock, to 

 solve the mystery, which had previously baffled so 

 many able commanders (himself among the number), 

 with means and resources unlimited. His success, 

 however, complete as it was, detracts in no way from 

 the credit of those who went before. Working in the 

 dark, so to say, they did all that undaunted perseve- 

 rance and devotion could accomplish, in the face of 

 difficulties and hardships which have rarely been 

 equalled. 



But to return from a digression which to some 

 may scarcely seem relevant. The special influence 

 exercised on the renewal of Arctic discovery by the 

 lost expedition and those which followed in its search 

 was twofold. The shock which the nation sustained in 

 the tragic fate of the former, and the disappointment 

 experienced by the entire failure of the latter, after 

 ten weary years of effort and an enormous expendi- 

 ture of money, may be said to have sealed the North- 

 west passage indefinitely, and thus narrowed the 

 fields of discovery to the one other point of interest — 

 the Pole. Again, the search for the missing ships 

 involved the minute examination of a vast extent of 

 coast-line, which neither ship nor boat could approach, 

 and this task could only be accomplished by the 

 manual labour of dragging heavily laden sledges along 

 the margin of the frozen sea for weeks or months to- 

 gether. The art of sledge-travelling in this manner 



