150 REPORT 1860. 



his ships, but also showed that the great navigator had discovered vast breadths of 

 Arctic lands and seas which were entirely unknown when he left our shores, and 

 had even remained so until the truth was revealed by the expedition of the ' Fox.' 



The geographer who compares the map of the Arctic regions as laid down by 

 Parry and others up to the year 1845, when Franklin sailed, and marks on it all that 

 he is now known to have added in the two brief summers before he was beset, and 

 then inspects any one of the most recent maps, even up to the year 1858 inclusive, 

 and traces the discoveries made by M'Clintock and his associates, Hobson, Young, 

 and Walker, will see what vast additions to geographical knowledge have been made 

 by the last expedition of Lady Franklin. 



Such services are indeed worthy of the highest national reward, and I have, I am 

 happy to say, reason to know, that a monument in commemoration of the glorious 

 deeds of Franklin and of his having been the first to discover a North West Passage 

 will be erected, and also that the officers and crew of the ' Fox' will receive that recom- 

 pense to which they are so justly entitled at the hands of their admiring countrymen. 



Whilst on this subject, I may well express the satisfaction and pride I felt as the 

 President of this Section, when the officers of the British Association asked us, the 

 Geographers, to bring forward one of our distinguished men to deliver a lecture 

 on one of our manifold subjects, before the body of men of Science assembled 

 at Oxford. As this is the first occasion since our foundation on which geographical 

 discovery has been considered to be of sufficient scientific importance to occupy the 

 attention of the whole meeting, I rejoice in the fact, and also in the knowledge that 

 Captain Sherard Osborn, so well known to us through his charming ' Arctic Stray 

 Leaves,' and other books, as well as by his laurels won in the Crimea and the Sea 

 of Azof, is to be the lecturer, and that he who is so experienced an ice-man is to 

 give us a sketch of the discoveries of Franklin, as laid open by the last researches of 

 Sir Leopold M'Clintock. 



And here I may well say, that every justice will be done to any subject connected 

 with the conditions of icy seas, including the proposed submarine telegraph by the 

 Faroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland to Labrador ; for never at any of our former 

 meetings have I seen so many explorers met together who have rendered their names 

 eminent through Arctic and Antarctic discoveries. Under their observation the 

 paper which is to be brought before us by Captain Parker Snow of the Mei chant 

 Marine, warmly urging a further search after the missing crews and scientific records 

 of the 'Erebus' and 'Terror', will be ably scrutinized. The names of Admiral Sir 

 James Ross, Sir Edward Belcher, Captains Ommaney and Sherard Osborn, when 

 united with those of Sir J. Richardson and Dr. Rae, are truly guarantees that the 

 question will have so much light thrown upon it, as will either satisfy the public 

 that no additional important results as respects the lost expedition can be achieved, 

 or they will stimulate us to fresh exertions. For, though all the Arctic voyagers 

 with whom I have conversed are satisfied that there is now no longer the hope, which 

 I long cherished, of saving a human life, still every man of science must wish that 

 strenuous efforts should be made to recover, if practicable, some more of the many 

 scientific records of the lost expedition which may have been left in various places 

 around the spot where Franklin breathed his last. 



In the vast possessions of British North America much additional knowledge has 

 been gained by the successful explorations of Palliser and his associates, Hector, 

 Blakiston, and Sullivan, not only as respects the great fertile prairies watered by the 

 Saskatchewan and its affluents, but also touching the practicability of traversing the 

 Rocky Mountains within our territories by passes lower than any which exist to 

 the south of the boundary of the United States. 



At this stage of our inquiries it would be very hazardous to speculate on these 

 passes being rendered available for railroads ; the more so, as the wild region lying to 

 the west of the Rocky Mountains — i. e. between them and those parts of British 

 Columbia which are gold-bearing, and are beginning to be inhabited by civilized people 

 — is as yet an unexplored woody region. We may hope, however, that such routes of 

 communication will be established as will connect the Red River settlements with 

 the prairies of the Saskatchewan, and these last with the rich auriferous tracts of 

 British Columbia. And if the most northern lines be found too difficult for railway 

 communication, through the severity of the climate and physical obstacles, let us 



