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 G-rinnell 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.K, 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 l 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- 



