Iii the Arctic Regl 1< :; 



longing for rest and home, which not even the agony 

 of hunger could subdue — vain desires, hopeless craft- 

 ings, never to be realized on earth : lmt can we for a 

 moment doubt, that the merciful All-Father Looked 

 pitifully down apon the homeless ones, and, in his 

 tendei love, closed their long wanderings, and gave 

 them a calmer home ami a more perfect rest than the 

 Lest that earth could offer ! There is much to specu- 

 late upon in this brief narrative. What had become 

 of all the rest ? One hundred and forty men I 

 these Bhores lull of health and vigor, nine short years 

 ago. This painful narrative accounts only too clearly 

 for forty, but where are the hundred ? Then, again, 

 another question arises, how had the intermediate 

 time horn spent between the winter passed al Beechey 

 Island, 1845-G, and the piteous tragedy of L850 ? 

 Searching parties have visited every probable spot 

 -where they could have touched, and since some v. 

 certainly alive at such a comparatively recent date, it 

 seems quite inexplicable that we should not have come 

 upon some traces, either of winter quarters, hedging 



parties, or shipwreck. How was it, again, that while 



the Esquimaux lived comfortably through the winter, 

 the English party in the same district wera a prey to 

 all the agonies of starvation ? Questions like tl. 

 might he multiplied to any extent, but how shall they 

 be answered ? 



