160 



the views of Sir John Franklin, as communicated to his friends, Sir 

 Edward Parry and Col. Sabine, were to pass into Wellington chan- 

 nel, a strait extending northward, in longitude 931°, and which was 

 described by Capt. Parry, in 1819, as a "broad opening, free from 

 ice, and as open and navigable as any part of the Atlantic." The 

 two vessels of the expedition were last seen on the 26th of July, 1845, 

 in latitude 74° 48', longitude 66^ 13', moored to an iceberg, awaiting 

 an opening through the pack ice into Lancaster sound ; the transport 

 having left them shortly before that time, " well, and sanguine" of 

 success. 



Dr. Kane's first inquiry is, could the party have subsisted up to 

 the present time ? 



The transport, he says, left them furnished with the estimated al- 

 lowance of provisions, stores, and fuel, for three years. This means, 

 according to the published report of the Navy Victualling Board, that 

 the party was abundantly supplied for four years, and could subsist 

 for a much longer time; Arctic expeditions being always fitted out on 

 a scale of exuberant liberality. Our own, for instance, says Dr. 

 Kane, which is provisioned by estimate for only two years and a 

 half, can carry on its operations for five without sufl"ering from want. 



Nor, he adds, must we undervalue the resources of a region rich 

 in animal life, it is true of a migratory and therefore capricious cha- 

 racter, but not the less to be depended on during a term of years. 

 Sir John Ross, an absentee of four winters, owed his support, in a 

 very great degree, to the hordes of migrating salmon. Rae, in his 

 late expedition, was almost entirely sustained by the chase. Franklin 

 himself lived for nearly a whole winter on resources equally precari- 

 ous. And Goodsir, in his little work on the upper Baffin's bay re- 

 gion, describes the awk (aica alle) as coming from the north in such 

 stupendous quantities, as to " supply, in a few hours, the nutriment 

 of years." In fact, Wrangell and Richardson, and hosts of others, 

 have pointed to these very latitudes, or those still further north, as 

 the sources of annual migration. 



Dr. K. refers to the facility with which the Esquimaux construct 

 their snow-huts, and the abundance of oils they obtain for fuel from 

 marine mammalia and fishes, and to the known experience, pru- 

 dence, and aptitude of resource of Sir John Franklin, as negativing 

 the probability that the party can have sunk under the rigour of the 

 climate. 



He next discusses the question, whether they can have been de- 

 stroyed by accident. He speaks of the manner in which navigation 



