592 



HISTORY OF THE SEA. 



judicious and honorable treatment, to experience and acknow> 

 ledge the benefits of commerce and intercourse with the nations 

 of Christendom. 



To return once more to the Arctic researches. Soon after 

 the return of Belcher and McClure to England, decisive intelli- 

 gence of Franklin and his party was received in England. Dr. 

 Rae, who had been engaged for a year past in a search by 

 land, had met a party of Esquimaux who were in possession of 

 numerous articles which had belonged to Franklin and his men. 

 They stated that in the spring of 1850 they had seen forty 

 white men, near King William's Land, dragging a boat and 

 sledges over the ice. They were thin and short of provisions : 

 their officer was a tall, stout, middle-aged man. Some months 

 later the natives found the corpses of thirty persons upon the 

 mainland, and five dead bodies upon a neighboring island. 

 They described the bodies as mutilated; whence Dr. Rae in- 

 ferred that the party had been driven to the horrible resource 

 of cannibalism. The presence of the bones and feathers of 

 geese, however, showed that some had survived till the arrival 

 of wild-fowl, about the end of May. Dr. Rae purchased such 

 articles of the natives as would best serve to identify their late 

 possessors. All furnished decisive testimony ; but a round 

 silver plate gave peculiarly strong evidence, bearing as it did 

 the following inscription :— " Sir John Franklin, K.C.B." The 

 slight clue thus yielded of his fate was the last which has thus 

 far been obtained ; and it will doubtless be the only one till the 

 Arctic seas give up their dead. The expedition of Dr. Kane 

 had, however, already sailed from New York. 



It was while these events were transpiring that the keel of the 

 mammoth steam-vessel — known at first as the Great Eastern, 

 and afterwards as the Leviathan — was laid, at Milwall, on the 

 Thames. We refer the reader to the engraving on the opposite 

 page for a view of this "village adrift." 



