528 THE FRANKLIN SEARCH— lM%-bl. 



Sunday the wind veered to the north, and the travellers set sails on the 

 sledges, and sent up enormous kites, with which each was provided by 

 some somewhat fanciful philanthropist in England. The little expedition 

 now advanced rapidly, the pace — ^thanks to the help afforded by the sails 

 rigged on the sledges — being such as to throw the seamen into a profuse 

 perspiration, and make them look like men " toiling under a tropical sun 

 rather than in an Arctic night with the temperature below freezing point." 

 On Easter Monday the cold increased with a cutting gale from the north- 

 west, and as the night closed round the travellers, the temperature sank with 

 alarming rapidity. With this change of temperature occurred one of those 

 magnificent displays of halos and parhelia common to those regions. The 

 whole heavens were lighted with the spectral gleam of mock suns, the 

 centres of vast mystic circles ; and the seamen, as they tugged hard at the 

 dragging-ropes to get across the floe, 



" Where oft the stormy winter gale 

 Outs like a scythe." 



thrilled throughout every fibre of their superstitious nature as they gazed 

 at the imearthly spectacle. But they did not gaze long. The savagely 

 biting blast recalled them from the spiritual, remote, " uncanny " pictures on 

 the curtain of the night sky. " The brilliant warm colouring and startling 

 number of false suns seemed as if to be mocking the sufferings of our gallant 

 fellows, who, with faces averted and bended bodies, strained every nerve to 

 reach the land, in hopes of obtaining more shelter than the naked floe 

 afforded from the nipping effects of the cutting gale." On the night of the 

 21st the edge of the floe at the base of Cape Walker was reached, and though 

 the sea-ice was here piled up in a rugged rampart, to the height of fifty feet. 

 Captain Ommanney's party, with one last gallant effort, carried the sledges 

 over the ice barrier, reached the land once more, and encamped. 



Next day exploring parties went off" to discover the trend of the land, and 

 seek for cairns or other possible traces of the lost expedition. The cape 

 itself is an immense cliff of sandstone and conglomerate, rising to the height 

 of 1000 feet. No traces were found on it or near it. But a broad channel ran 

 southward from it toward the coast of the American continent; and as this 

 channel was likely to have tempted Franklin to seek a passage to Behring 

 Strait, Captain Ommanney decided to send Lieutenant Browne to explore it 

 from the cape toward the south. The " Success " sledge was then despatched 

 with the invalids — for two or three of the men had been severely frost-bitten 

 — to the winter quarters at Grifl&th Island, while the remainder of the party, 

 after forming a dep6t, started away from the spot in five sledges to the 

 westward. It may here be stated that Lieutenant Browne, in following 

 out the channel leading southward from Cape Walker, discovered a con- 



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