XXXVlll INTRODUCTION. 



of no more avail to penetrate it than it would be to 

 propel a ship through the crust of the earth. 



But if the main object of the explorers was not 

 attained, it cannot be said that they were less success- 

 ful than any of their predecessors. The bold and 

 skilful seamanship which carried the ships to the 

 extreme limit of navigation, and placed the ' Alert ' 

 alone in a position in which no ship before had ever 

 passed an Arctic winter, was worthy of the leader, 

 and an earnest of what would have been accomplished 

 had it been in man's power to command success. The 

 subsequent deeds of the officers and crews, under cir- 

 cumstances of trial and suffering which have rarely 

 been equalled, can never be surpassed. 



If, indeed, the full accomplishment of the objects 

 sought in such voyages as these were to be taken as 

 the test of success, then should we look in vain for 

 success in the annals of Arctic history. The discovery 

 of a water passage between the two oceans along the 

 coast of America was the result of the most per- 

 severing though unsuccessful efforts of officers of the 

 Hudson's Bay Company and the Eoyal Navy, from the 

 time when Hearne and M'Kenzie traced the two great 

 Arctic rivers to the shores of the frozen ocean, until the 

 last link in the chain of this discovery was furnished 

 by Franklin in the very hour, so to speak, when he 

 gave up his life in the cause. Parry, who was perhaps 

 the most successful of all Arctic voyagers, never passed 

 west of Melville Island from the Atlantic, and the 

 intrepid M 4 Clure, though thirty years later he reached 

 the winter quarters of the ' Hecla ' and ' Griper ' from 

 the Pacific with a sledge crew and deposited his record 

 by the side of his great predecessor's under the same 

 stone, yet 70 miles of fixed ice intervened between the 





