466 KANSAS C1ITV REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
the ocean, and cleared the reputation of a harmless people from an undeserved 
reproach. He has given to the unburied bones of the crews probably the only 
safeguard against desecration by wandering wild beasts and heedless Esquimaux 
which that frozen land allowed. He has brought home for reverent sepulture in 
a kindlier soil the one body which bore transport. Over the rest he has set up 
monuments to emphasize the undying memory of their sufferings and their exploit. 
He has gathered tokens by which friends and relatives may identify their dead, 
and revisit in imagination the spots in which the ashes lie. Lastly, he has carried 
home with him material evidence to complete the annals of Arctic exploration. 
Sir Leopold M’Clintock found that the brave men who perished on their terrible 
retreat before the legions of cold and disease toward Back’s River had before 
they acknowledged defeat done their work. The Franklin Search Expedition 
adds the concluding link to the chain. ‘There are skilful eyes and shrewd wits in 
the dockyard whence the Erebus and Terror were commissioned, which will soon, 
with the proof which Lieutenant Schwatka supplies, put beyond controversy the 
question of the right of the especial ship of the two to the fame of having first 
pierced the awful barrier of the North-West. 
It has been a point of honor with sailors and science to collect the uttermost 
vestiges of the fate and acts of Franklin and his companions. The task is at 
length finished. Lieutenant Schwatka asserts, on grounds which at present no 
means exist of examining, that the records of the expedition are lost beyond re- 
covery. Captain Parker Snow, on the other hand, is of opinion that the records 
may yet be found. However this may be, there is no longer any secret when and 
where the admiral, his officers, and his men sickened, fell down, and died. The 
sad details are given in another column this morning and will be read with pain- 
ful interest. What the unfortunate explorers did is known, and how they did it. 
Perhaps it may be thought that, now the book of Sir John Franklin’s romantic 
tragedy can be closed, the fruitless, ungrateful, sullen Polar seas may be left to 
their dead and dull repose. Rather, as it seems from our correspondence of to- 
day, the sense that the obscurity of a long past incident has been dissipated wall 
nerve seamen eager for honor and careers to push the boundaries of Arctic im_ 
possibilities yet further forward. They will forget at what a price the North- 
West passage was completed. They will make the graveyard of the explorers of 
1845 their starting and rallying point, as men build their homes on the walls of 
cemeteries. What is to be gained by making a habit of achieving the North- 
West or the North-East passage it is held in some quarters profane to question. 
We aré the less disposed to incur the reproach that we admit the uselessness 
of resisting an impulse which works as powerfully in Austrian and German and 
Swedish as in British and American breasts. The praise of courage is not the 
main inspiring motive. Still less is it the craving for admiration, or the hope of 
rewards. Men, especially those of Anglo-Saxon and Scandinaivan blood, love to 
match themselves against the caprices of the elements, and to learn thereby their 
own capacity to do and to endure. Against such a temperament the arguments of 
