334 Did all of Franldin's Party go to Back's River f [January, ises. 



Quasha's wife to obtain further news and the minute particulars of the 

 accounts ah'eady received. On their return Hall wrote : " The news 

 relative to there having been seen white men near Ig-loo-lik between 

 1849 and 1865, proves to be true beyond all question in my mind 

 Certainly I am bound at once for Ig-loo-lik and Fury and Hecla 

 Strait. There is not a shadow of doubt about my duty, which is to 

 fly to the rescue of the probable survivors of Frankhn's Expedition." 



It will not be forgotten that this rescue was the chief one of the 

 two objects named in all his appeals and lectures from the date of 

 1860, when he had begun his training for these expeditions by tenting 

 out on tlie hills of Cincinnati. He now yearned to be off to the strait, 

 which he calls " a hallowed spot." Papa told him that he and all the 

 Ig-loo-lik natives believed the accounts which have been now given, 

 and that some of the survivors might he still found alive; he was will- 

 ing to assist in the search. Hall appears to have been impressed with 

 the great probability that all of Franklin's party had not continued on 

 the hopeless route to Back's River. His hopes of this resulted from 

 reflections like those lately expressed by Dr. Rae, as found in ''Smith's 

 Arctic Expeditions, 1878." Rae says : 



What struck me at the time, as it does still, was the great mistake made by 

 Franklin's party in attempting to save themselves by retreating to the Hudson's 

 Bay territories. We should have thought that the fearful suflerings undergone 

 by Franklin and his coiiii)nni(»ns, Tfiolinrdson and Back, on a former short Jour- 

 m-y through tlicsc burrtMi grounds, would jiavt' deterred inexperienced men trom 

 attempting such a thing, when the well -knoAvn r<»ntc to Fury Beach — certainly 

 niiM h more accessible than any of the Hudson's Bay Company's settlements, and 

 h\ wliich the T^osses escaped in 1832-'.3.3 — was open to them. The distance from 

 their shijjs to !• iny Beach was very little greater than that from where Ross's 

 vessel was al»and(iiie<l to the same jdace, and Franklin and liis officers must have 

 known that an immense stock of provisions still remained at the place where 

 the Fury was wrecked, anH where, even so late as 1850, an immense stock of pre- 



