316 NAVIGABLE N.W. PASSAGE. Chap. XVI. 



side of the island is founded upon the observa- 

 tions and experience of Rae and Collinson in 

 1851-2-4. I am of opinion that the barrier of 

 ice off Bellot Strait, some 3 or 4 miles wide, 

 was the only obstacle to our carrying the ' Fox,' 

 according to my original intention, southward 

 to the Great Fish River, passing east of King 

 William's Island, and from thence to a winter- 

 ing position on Victoria Land. Perhaps some 

 future voyager, profiting by the experience so 

 fearfully and fatally acquired by the Franklin 

 expedition, and the observations of Rae, Collin- 

 son, and myself, may succeed in carrying his 

 ship through from sea to sea ; at least he will 

 be enabled to direct all his efforts in the true 

 and only direction. In the mean time to 

 Franklin must be assigned the earliest dis- 

 covery of the North- West Passage, though not 

 the actual accomplishment of it, in his ships.* 



Saturday, ^nd July. — Upon my arrival on 

 board on the morning of the 1 9th June, my first 

 inquiries were about Hobson ; I found him in a 



* This will be understood when it is recollected that W. of 

 Simpson Straits or Victoria Land a navigable passage to Behriug's 

 Straits is known to exist along the coast of North America. Franklin 

 himself, with his companion Richardson, surveyed by far the greater 

 portion of that distance. Franklin's and Parry's discoveries overlap 

 each other in longitude, and for the last thirty years or more the dis- 

 covery of the North- West Passage has been reduced to the discovery 

 of a link uniting the two. 



