472 THE FRANKLIN SEAUCH— 1848-51. 



changing from north-east to north-west, and the sky did not clear up till 

 nine in the morning of the 24th. At the same date an earthquake occurred 

 in the West India islands, which did much damage." The description of 

 this storm in Eichardson's journal is noteworthy, as proving that this 

 explorer, who was also an accomplished scholar and a man of great scien- 

 tific acquirement, was the first traveller who prosecuted the study of mete- 

 orology in the Arctic regions, upon the broader modern basis of comparing 

 the meteorological conditions of different localities, at a certain given time 

 — ^and thus tracing the courses of storms — ^which enables us in our own day 

 to foretell the approach of the tempest and to secure ourselves against its 

 ravages. 



Continuing to force his way along the main shore in the Dolphin and 

 Union Strait, which he himself had discovered in 1825-27; Eichardson saw 

 with regret, on the morning of the 26th, that a frosty night had covered the 

 sea and ponds with young ice, and had cemented all the floes into one solid 

 field. During this day, spent in cutting through tongues of ice, dragging the 

 boats over floes, etc., only five miles were made. On the following the dis- 

 tance gained was only three and a half miles. It was now determined to 

 lighten the men's labours, by depositing one of the boats with her cargo on 

 the shore. Accordingly, a deposit of several cases of pemmican, an arm- 

 chest, and several other things that encumbered the boats, was made on the 

 27th, on a flat shelf of rock distant about twelve miles from Cape Krusen- 

 stern. From this date progress by water was almost impracticable. On 

 the 29th Cape Krusenstern was reached, and the 30th was spent in the 

 encampment on its shore, watching for a change of weather, which fortun- 

 ately took place at four p.m., when a channel opened in the ice, through 

 which the boats made wuy round the cape. Cape Hearne was reached on 

 the 31st, and the party encamped that night about eight miles north-east of 

 Cape Kendall. Eichardson's boats were now much shattered by the rough 

 work among the floes, and a survey from the high ground above his encamp- 

 ment proved that all the lanes were frozen up. He therefore determined 

 to leave his boats here, and at once commence the homeward march by the 

 Coppermine Eiver to Fort Confidence — his winter quarters. The explorer's 

 reflections on the necessity for terminating his boat-voyage here, were not of 

 the pleasantest description. " The unavoidable conclusion of our sea 

 voyage," he writes, "while stiU at some distance from the Coppermine 

 Eiver, was contemplated by me, and I believe by every individual of the 

 party, with great regret. I had hoped that, by conveying the boats and 

 stores up the Coppermine Eiver beyond the range of the Eskimos, we could 

 deposit them in a place of safety, to be available for a voyage to WoUaston 

 Land next summer. But abandoned as they must now be on the coast, we 

 could not expect that they would escape the searches of the hunting parties, 



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