356 



THE POLAR WORLD. 



inches below the surface, and the spray froze on the oars and rigging of their 

 boats, which the drift-ice along the shore ultimately obliged them, to leave 

 behind. 



As they went onward on foot, heavily laden, the frequent necessity of wading 

 up to the middle in the ice-cold water of the inlets, together with the constant 

 fogs and the sharp north wind, tried their powers of endurance to the utmost; 

 but Simpson, the hero of the expedition, was not to be deterred by any thing 

 short of absolute impossibihty ; nor did he stop till he had reached Point 

 Barrow. Indeed, no man could be more fit than he to lead an expedition like 

 this, for he had once before travelled 2000 miles on foot in the middle of 

 winter from York Factory to Athabasca, walking sometimes not less than 

 fifty miles in one day, and without any protection against the cold but an ordi- 

 nary cloth mantle. 



After wintering at Fort Confidence, on Great Bear Lake, the next season 

 was profitably employed in descending the Coppermine River, and tracing nearly 

 140 miles of new coast beyond Cape Turnagain, the limit of Franklin's survey 

 in 1821. The third season (1839) was still more favored by fortune, for Simpson 

 succeeded in discovering the whole coast beyond Cape Turnagain as far as 

 Castor and Pollux River (August 20, 1839), on the eastern side of the vast arm 

 of the sea which receives the waters of the Great Fish River. On his return 

 voyage, he traced sixty miles of the south coast of King William's Island, and 

 a considerable j^art of the high, bold shores of Victoria Land, and reached Fort 

 Confidence on September 24, after one of the longest and most successful boat 

 voyages ever performed in the Polar waters, having traversed more than 1600 

 miles of sea. 



Unfortunately he was not destined to reap the rewards of his labor, for in 

 the following year, while travelling from the Red River to the Mississippi, 

 where he intended to embark for England, he was assassinated by his Indian 

 guides ; and thus died, in the thirty-sixth jeav of his age, one of the best men 

 that have ever served the cause of science in the frozen north. 



On May 26, 1845, Sir John Franklin, now in the sixtieth year of his age, and 

 Captain Crozier, sailed from England, to make a new attempt at the north-west 

 passage. IS'ever did stouter vessels than the "Erebus" and "Terror," well- 

 tried in the Antarctic Seas, carry a finer or more ably commanded crew ; never 

 before had human foresight so strained all her resources to insure success ; and 

 thus, when the commander's last dispatches from the Whalefish Islands, Baf- 

 fin's Bay (July 12), previous to his sailing to Lancaster Sound, arrived in Eng- 

 land no one doubted but that he was about to add a new and brilliant chapter 

 to the history of Arctic discovery. 



His return was confidently expected towards the end of 1847; but when 

 the winter passed and still no tidings came, the anxiety at his prolonged absence 

 became general, and the early part of 1848 witnessed the beginning of a series 

 of searching expeditions fitted out at the public cost or by private munificence, 

 on a scale exceeding all former examples. The " Plover " and the " Herald " 

 (1848) were sent to Bering's Straits to meet Franklin with supplies, should he 

 snGc<3ed in getting thither. In spring Sir John Richardson hurried to the shores 



