456 THROUGH THE MACKEITZIE BASIlf 



and met with calmness and decision the fearful alternative 

 of a last bold struggle for life rather than perish without 

 effort on board their ships, for we know that the Erebus and 

 Terror were only provisioned up to July, 1848. 



" The spring of 1847 had found them within ninety miles 

 of the known sea of the American coast, and to men who had 

 already sailed over five hundred miles of previously unex- 

 plored waters, how confident they must have felt that the 

 forthcoming navigable season of 1847 would see their ships 

 pass over so short an intervening space. It was ruled other- 

 wise, however. Many relics were found and brought home 

 to England by Captain McClintock of these heroic men who 

 perished in the path of duty — but not imtil they had achieved 

 the grand object of their voyage, the discovery of the long- 

 sought-f or Iforth-West Passage ! Had Franklin only known 

 that the King William Land of Sir John Eoss, as later 

 ascertained by Dr. Rae, was an island; and had he then 

 taken the eastern instead of the attempted western passage 

 of Victoria Strait, he would, in all probability, have carried 

 his ships by the American coast to Behring's Strait, and 

 thence, via Cape Horn and the Atlantic, to England. Capt. 

 McClintock passed on foot over this connecting link of the 

 only feasible ISTorth-West Passage. 



" The Eskimos informed McClintock that they saw one 

 of the Franklin ships sink in deep water, and that the other 

 was driven ashore by the ice, where she grounded, and they 

 got lots of material from the wreck. They also told him 

 that they discovered the body of a large man with long teeth 

 on board of this ship. McClintock, on his travels, found 

 King William Island for the most part extremely barren, 

 and its surface dotted with numerous ponds and lakes. It 

 is not by any means a land abounding with reindeer and musk 

 oxen. There were none of the latter, and but few of the 

 former, met with. It is a remarkable circumstance that 

 when Sir James Ross discovered Point Victory, in 1830, he 

 named the prominent points of land in sight. Cape Franklin 



