98 THE SEA. 



was drunk therewith and forthwith. Two barrels of letters for the Alert and Discovery 

 were left there. 



At Beechey Island, visited at different periods by (Sir John) Ross, Belcher, and Franklin, 

 they found the yacht Mary, left by the former in 1851, in good condition. Northumber- 

 land House, erected by Sir Edward Belcher in 1854 as a depot for stores, had evidently 

 been broken into. The ground outside was strewn with tins of preserved meats and 

 vegetables, forty-pound tins of pemmican, great rolls of heavy blue cloth, hundreds of 

 pairs of socks and mittens, bales of blankets and clothing, all scattered over the ground 

 in the most admired disorder. The ruin and destruction was so great that the place 

 resembled the scene of a disastrous railway accident. Who were the marauders, these 

 burglars that left their booty behind them ; these housebreakers that not merely broke 

 into a house, but spoiled nearly everything in it out of sheer wantonness ? Evidently the 

 Polar bears. The marks of their claws were everywhere and on everything. They had 

 oven gnawed into two or three barrels of salt beef, which they had quite emptied, and it 

 was their claws that had punched holes in the heavy pemmican tins. Polar bears seem 

 to be possessed of the very genius of destruction. Near the house is the monument of 

 Lieutenant Bellot, the brave young French officer who lost his life when on the search for 

 Franklin. Here also is a marble slab, the tombstone of brave Sir John himself. Both 

 monuments were sent out in the Fox, at the expense of Lady Franklin. Three miles 

 farther up the bay the graves of five seamen, of the crews of the Erebus, Terror, and 

 North Star, were also found. " This Arctic graveyard is situated on a gravelly slope, 

 which rises up from the little bay towards the foot of a high bluff, that frowns down 

 upon it as though resenting the intrusion of human dead in this lonely world. Sad 

 enough looked the poor head-boards as the low-sinking sun threw its yellow rays 

 athwart them, casting long shadows over the shingly slope; silent, sad, and mournful 

 as everything else in this dreary Arctic world." 



On the evening of August 27th they arrived at the entrance of Peel Strait, where 

 a heavy pack of ice was encountered, so dense that it was hopeless to attempt a passage. 

 A little later and it became evident that they were hourly in danger of being beset, and, 

 once beset, imprisoned for the winter, and perhaps for more than one, without a harbour, 

 with no opportunity of accomplishing anything. Neither were they provisioned for a 

 length of time sufficient to run the risk of stopping in that neighbourhood. 



On the shores of North Somerset they made an interesting discovery. The Pandora 

 had attained the furthest point reached by Ross and McClintock when coming down the 

 coast on foot from the north in 181<9, at which time they had built a cairn, and left a 

 record addressed to Sir John Franklin, stating that they had been despatched for his 

 succour. Poor Franklin never found it, but it was reserved for Captain Young to receive 

 it twenty-eight years later. Ross had at that time been within two hundred miles of the 

 spot where the wrecks of Franklin's vessels had been abandoned. 



The Pandora at length succeeded in reaching La Roquette Island, and the expedition 

 had, therefore, in a very brief space of time, attained a position only 120 miles from 

 Franklin's farthest point. Success had crowned their efforts so far. All on board were 

 sanguine that they would ere long be basking in the warmth of a Californian autumn, 



