344 Hall’s Second Arctic Expedition. [ May, 
men aboard, The evidence of the exact number is circumstantial. 
Everything about this Northwest Passage ship was in complete 
order. It was found by the Ook-joo-lik natives near O'Reilly 
Island, lat. 68° 30’ N., long. 99° W., early in the prng of 1849, 
frozen in the midst of a floe of only one winter’s formation 
This vessel was sunk by the Innuits in getting rod es The 
other vessel is reported by the Esquimaux to have been crushed 
by heavy ice in the spring of 1848, while the crew were engaged 
in getting out provisions. Capt. Crozier and another man, perhaps 
Surgeon Macdonald, appears to have survived their comrades and 
are reported to have been heard of by the natives near Chester- 
field Inlet. There are some indications that a portion at least of 
the party after trying to go down the west side of King William’s 
Land had turned back, doubled Cape Felix, and had passed down 
the eastern coast. Between Port Parry and Cape Sabine on that 
coast See-pung-er, an Innuit, reports finding a monument within 
which he found a tin cup containing manuscript which was thrown 
away as useless. “ He said further that he and his uncle had spent 
one night near this monument, wrapping themselves up in blankets 
taken from a pile of white men’s clothing found there, and that a 
kob-lu-na’s (white man’s) skeleton lay by the pile.” “ Hall appears 
to have been impressed with the great probability that all of Frank- 
lin’s party had not continued on the hopeless route to Back’s 
river.” Prof. Nourse quotes Dr. Rae in confirmation of this 
opinion. This well-known Arctic explorer suggests that Fury 
beach where an immense stock of provisions still remained at the 
place where the Fury was wrecked was much more accessible 
than any of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s settlements. 
But it seems very questionable whether the result would have 
been any the less disastrous had this course been adopted, feasible 
as it appears, for the rapidity with which the greater portion of 
the party succumbed to the hardships of the journey indicates 
great feebleness of health or great scarcity of food. That the 
latter was indeed the case we have every reason to believe, yet, 
why it should have been, with one vessel still afloat and afterwards 
found by the natives in complete order, and well supplied with all 
kinds of food (see page 404) is one of the many unsolved enigmas 
connected with the fate of the Franklin expedition. Capt. Hall 
thought he could account for as many as seventy-nine of the party, 
but for this belief he has to rely upon the very vague statement of 
the Innuits. 
