ARCTIC VOYAGES, FROM BAFFIN TO M'CLINTOCK. 



363 



this work of piety, for in the summer of 185T the floating ice off Melville Bay, 

 on the coast of Greenland, seized the " Fox," and after a dreary winter, various 

 narrow escapes, and eight months of imprisonment, carried her back nearly 

 1200 geographical miles, even to 63^° X. lat. in the Atlantic. 



At length, on April 25, 1858, the " Fox" got free, and, having availed her- 

 self of the scanty stores and provisions which the small Danish settlement of 

 Holstenburg afforded, sailed into Barrow Strait. Finding Franklin Channel 

 obstructed with ice, she then turned back, and steaming up Prince Regent's 

 Inlet, arrived at the eastern opening of Bellot's Strait. Here the passage to 

 the west was again found blocked with ice, and after five ineffectual attempts 

 to pass, the " Fox " at length took up her winter-quarters in Port Kennedy, on 

 the northern side of the strait. 



On his first sledge excursion in the following spring, M'Clintock met at 

 Cape Victoria, on the south-west coast of Boothia, with a party of Esquimaux, 

 who informed him that some years back a large ship had been crushed by the 

 ice out in the sea to the west of King William's Island, but that all the people 

 landed safely. 



Meeting with the same Esquimaux on April 20, he learned, after much anx- 

 ious inquiry, that besides the ship w^hich had been seen to sink in deep water, 

 a second one had been forced on shore by the ice, where they supposed it still 

 remained, but much broken. They added that it was in the fall of the year — 

 that is, August or September — when the ships were destroyed ; that all the 

 white people went away to the Great Fish River, taking a boat or boats with 

 them, and that in the following winter their bones were found there. 



These first indications of the fate of Franklin's expedition were soon fol- 

 lowed by others. On May '7 M'Clintock heard from an old Esquimaux woman 

 on King William's Island that many of the white men dropped by the way as 

 they went to the Great River; that some were buried, and some v/ere not. 

 They did not themselves witness this, but discovered their bodies during the 

 winter following. 



Visiting the shore along which the retreating crews must have marched, he 

 came, shortly after midnight of May 25, when slowly walking along a gravel 

 ridge near the beach, which the winds kept partially bare of snow, upon a hu- 

 man skeleton, partly exposed, with here and there a few fragments of clothing 

 appearing through the snow. 



" A most careful examination of the spot," says M'Clintock, " was of course 

 made, the snow removed, and every scrap of clothing gathered up. A j^ocket- 

 book, which being frozen hard could not be examined on the spot, afforded 

 strong grounds for hope that some information might be subsequently obtained 

 respecting the owner, and the march of the lost crews. The victim was a 

 young man, slightly built, and perhaps above the common height ; the dress 

 appeared to be that of a steward. The poor man seems to have selected the 

 bare ridge top, as affording the least tiresome walking, and to have fallen upon 

 his face in the position in which we found him. It was a melancholy truth 

 that the old woman spake when she said, ' They fell down and died as they 

 walked along.' " 



