THE FRANKLIN SEARCH. 465 
and miseries can never be excluded in this kingdom of darkness and winter. No 
ship can be so well found as to be secure from them. But in a land expedition, 
such as Lieutenant Schwatka commanded, while the dangers are as many, the 
tribulations of daily existence are multiplied a hundredfold. The records of 
Franklin’s land expeditions, sixty-one and fifty-five years ago, and of Back’s, 
eight years later, demonstrate what these are. The American members of the 
Franklin Search Expedition might repeat those ancient tales of continual conflict 
with numbing cold and privation with variations of theirown. Experiences like 
theirs of a sledge journey of eleven months it would be difficult to match even in 
the painful reminiscences of Arctic labors. Always conscious of an enemy on 
the watch about their path they must at intervals have felt his sword at their very 
hearts. None who have not braved an Arctic winter can rightly understand the 
mere meaning of a temperature a hundred degrees below freezing-point. How 
human frames endured such an ordeal it is hard to imagine. Only the human 
sense of power to bear what others have borne, and the instinct of an obligation 
to let no scattered clues of hapless generous endeavor perish unrecorded, could have 
sustained this little company of dauntless sailors amid the warning evidences of 
Polar remorselessness. 
Confronted with Arctic mysteries men forget the minor distinctions of race 
and country. ‘They appreciate one another’s perplexities; they take up the task 
at the point at which their forerunner has been compelled to relinquish it; and 
they award him his full share in the glory of final success. Praise is not grudged 
to the hand which has passed on the torch, though it could not fire the beacon. 
There is no stint of tears from the survivors, whatever their nation, for lives sacri- 
ficed to the attainment of an end, but left without the prize. Citizens of the 
United States and Englishmen, Danes and Swedes, North Germans, and Austrians 
are emulous, not envious of a courageous example which has been set by aliens in 
blood ; they acknowledge the common burden of a duty to bear testimony to 
victories which those aliens have won, and to the cost they have paid. No page 
is brighter in the history of human enterprise than that which enumerates the 
ceaseless efforts of a succession of explorers differing in blood and allegiance to 
rescue from oblivion the work of Sir John Franklin and his comrades. The 
veteran Arctic explorers whose letters we publish to-day express a natural regret 
that the success which Lieutenant Schwatka has won should not have been 
achieved by their own countrymen. But Englishmen may rejoice that in the long 
and glorious chronicle of these expeditions their kinsmen from the great American 
Republic share no unequal space with themselves. The munificence of citizens 
of the United States went hand in hand with the affection of Lady Franklin and — 
the conscience of the British nation in the resolve to bring succor or to build a 
tomb. If it was given to M’Clintock to disperse the clouds which enveloped the 
fate of the vessels and their crews, Kane in the Advance had helped to penetrate 
the darkness. Lieutenant Schwatka has now resoived the last doubts which 
could have been felt. He has traced the one untraced ship to its grave beneath 
