The Northwest Passage 211 



dragging heavy boats on sleds. M Clintock 

 found one of the boats on the west side of King 

 William Island with two skeletons inside it; and 

 the Eskimos told him that the men dropped down 

 and died in the drag ropes. The Eskimos living 

 at the mouth of Fish River said that about forty 

 white men reached the mouth of the river, and 

 dragged a boat as far as Montreal Island in the 

 estuary, where the natives found it and broke 

 it up. The last of the survivors died shortly 

 after the arrival of the summer birds. It is ex 

 ceedingly doubtful, if their strength had lasted, 

 whether they could have travelled over the 

 thousand miles of barrens separating the mouth 

 of the river from the nearest trading post on 

 Great Slave Lake, but at least a trial would have 

 been made.&quot; 



Captain Amundsen, the discoverer of the captain 

 South Pole, in a little vessel the Gjoa and in a 

 voyage of three years, finally made the North 

 west Passage; but the search for it, as a way to 

 fabled Atlantis, to the mystic islands of the Seven 

 Cities, to the golden lands of Cathay, or as a 

 prosaic and practical route to the Pacific, died 

 and was buried with Sir John Franklin. 



