THE FRAN"KLIX EXPEDITION" 457 



and Cape Jane Eranklin resiDectively. Eighteen years after- 

 wards Franklin's ships perished within sight of these head- 

 lands! The point at which the fatal imprisonment of the 

 Erebus and Terror in the ice took place is only ninety miles 

 from the spot reached by the Hudson's Bay Company's expe- 

 dition, under Dease and Simpson, in 1839, coming from the 

 "West. Xinety miles more of open water and the Franldin 

 crews would not only have won the prize they sought, but 

 reached their homes to wear their well-earned honours. It 

 was not to be so ! Let us bow in humility and awe at the in- 

 scrutable decrees of that Providence who ruled it otherwise. It 

 was given them to win for their country the long-sought-for 

 gi-eat highway between the Atlantic and Pacific. It was 

 given them to win for their country a discovery for which 

 she had risked her sons and lavishly spent her wealth for 

 several centuries ; but they were to die in accomplishing their 

 last great earthly task, and, still more strange, but for the 

 pnergy and devotion of the noble and loving wife of their 

 chief and leader, it might never have been known that they 

 were indeed the first discoverers of a Xorth-west passage!" 



The expedition under Captain McC'lintock which obtained 

 this information was the last of eighteen sent out from Eng- 

 land in search of Franklin and his followers. A more ample 

 and creditable effort to rescue a lost party was never made, 

 and it was humanely seconded by our sympathetic kindred 

 of the United States of America. From the earliest Arctic 

 researches of John Cabot, at the end of the fifteenth century, 

 however, to the voyage of McClintock, there have been about 

 one hundred and thirty expeditions. Sir James Ross, in 

 1*^47, thought the Franklin ships might be heard of or looked 

 for about latitvide 73° north and longitude 135° west. Sir 

 John Richardson coincided in this view ; biat it is only render- 

 ing justice to the memory of the late Dr. Richard King, M.D. 

 — former companion of Admiral Sir George Back, when he 

 discovered and descended the Great Fish River in 1833 — to 

 state that, early in 1847, he strongly suggested and thereafter 



