1 8 TRANSACTIONS iSqQ-'oO 



Well and truly lias Peter Sutherland, writing in 1850, said, 

 "There is hardly an island on which one lands from the Arctic 

 Circle to the top of Baffin Bay but it will be found in a manner 

 consecrated by the remains of some British seamen over which 

 the burial service has been read and a green mound has been 

 raised and marked by a monument of which St. George's Cross is 

 the most common form. Our friends buried within the Arctic 

 Circle lie forgotten by all except perhaps their relatives, and un- 

 visited save by the eider-duck which makes her nest among and 

 on their graves." Since the worthy surgeon wrote this statement, 

 yea, even while he was writing it, the circle of graves in the Arctic 

 islands was much more widely extended. Through Barrow Straits 

 and Melville Sound and McClure Straits, on the islands on both 

 sides, there are graves of British seamen. Of the "Investigator's' ' 

 crew five men died and Beechy Island and Cape Cockburn and 

 Bay of Merc}', (Banks Land), hold their remains, while King 

 William Land and other points hold 9 officers and 15 seamen of 

 Franklin's fated expedition, of the other 118 men of Franklin's 

 party who perished it may be said that their graves are scattered 

 far and wide within the Arctic Circle. 



II. 



The Greeks were early in the field as northern navigators for 

 320 or 323 years before Christ was born into this world, Pytheas, 

 a Greek sailor, contemporary with Alexander the Great, having 

 learned the art of navigation in that early training school of sea- 

 men, the Mediterranean Sea, left Cadiz, (the oldest great city of 

 Europe, name coming from Gades, meaning the "walled place"), 

 then the chief Phoenician emporium, and cautiously felt his way 

 along the coasts of Spain and Gaul and explored the shores of 

 Great Britain. Among other things geographical he mentions as 

 about six days' voyage from Great Britain, an island he calls 

 Thule,* a place-name embedded in the history of place-names, as 

 a fly in amber, by Virgil in the form of "Ultima Thule"; "the 

 farthest off land' ' of the navigator of more than two thousand 

 two hundred years ago thus coming down to us, "the heirs of the 

 ages," as a frequently used expression to denote some far away 

 goal difficult to reach. 



*From the Gothic word Tiule meaning "the most distant land." We 

 have several near relations of this word in common use, as, for instance, 

 Telescope, Telegram, Telephone. 



