284 Letter from Lady Franklin. [August, isee. 



tiime sending ino all the inlbrniation he gets. Xo one, especially no one of the 

 Arctic officers, can be indifterent to the news, but they see the painful side of the 

 matter as well as the other. It is our bounden duty, as it is an impetuous in- 

 stinct, to rescue them if possible, even though we may feel shocked as at the 

 sight of skeletons rising in their winding-sheets from the tombs; but the latter 

 impression seems among people in general to be the prevailing one. It is felt 

 that they, or lie, would return, after a death of near twenty years, to a world that 

 he knows not, in which the loved were gone, the living changed, and in which his 

 own brain would turn with the momentous pressure of his feelings and the bewil- 

 derment of his ideas. Sir Eoderick seems shocked at the news. He has no faith 

 at present in the recovery of any living man, and deprecates more harrowing 

 revelations. On this latter i)oint I am sure you will guard, dear Mr. Griiinell. If 

 the journals of my husband's expedition should be brought to light, nothing that 

 reflects on the character of another should be published — nothing that would 

 give sharj) i)ain to any individual living. As respects my husband, I feel sure 

 that Mr, Grinnell will yield me his journal if he should ever get it into his posses- 

 sion. I offered £100 for it, in McClintock's Expedition, to any man who brings it 

 back to me. That reward shall hold good, though I am sure Mr. Hall does not 

 require any pecuniary stimulus for the good work he is engaged in. 



I wish I might be allowed to offer another £100 toward any equipment that 

 may be made in future, either in aid of Mr. Hall's work or for his own recovery, 

 should he unfortunately be missing. I would gladly have done this earlier, had 

 I received timely iuforjuation of his second voyage to Eepulse Bay, because I 

 should have felt he was then in the right course, and doing the right thing. 

 When his first plan of going to Northumberland Inlet was brought before me in 

 1860, it was represented to me by all the Arctic people as the wildest and most 

 foolhardy of schemes, which must necessarily fail, and with which, for the poor 

 man's own sake, 1 ought to have nothing to do. I believe Hall is now doing 

 exactly what should have been done from the beginning, but which no govern- 

 ment could order to be done. Therefore, you must see how natural it is that I 

 should like, even in the humblest and most subordinate way, to help, or to make 

 Mr. Hall feel that I sympathize, in his labors. It is painful to me that I should 

 ai)pear to have no heart for the rescue of others, because my own dear husband 

 has long l)een beyond the reach of all rescue. * * * 



Invited to a sofa on tlie Ansell Gibbs, Hall again found the change 

 IVniii liis ifjloo too great to permit sleep, and at 1 a. ni. of the next day 

 was (lit ill tli(^ whale-boats cruising with the men. 



