SUMMARY OF ARCTIC EXPLORmC EXPEDITIONS. 



751 



belonged to Franklin or his officers. Close questioning disclosed the following facts : 

 Some four years before some of their people while hunting seals on a large island, pre- 

 sumably that which we know ^s King William's, saw a party of white men, about 40 in 

 number, they thought, going southward along the west shore of the island, they were 

 dragging boats and sledges along with them. There was with them no one who could 

 speak Esquimaux ; but as far as could be learned from signs, their ships had been crushed 

 and they were trying to get to a place where there were deer to shoot. They seemed 

 to have plenty of ammunition, but to be short of provisions. They purchased some 

 food of the natives and went on their way. When five years later the record was 

 found on the island that Crozier and the surviving 105 had started for Back's River, 

 there could be no doubt that this party were those who then survived. But how 

 many had died before this is unknown. Rae was clearly of the opinion that this party 

 had died from starvation and not from any violence by the natives. The relics were 

 purchased from the Esquimaux, and sent to England. Still later in the year but 

 before the breaking up of the ice, the corpses of about thirty persons and some graves 

 were discovered on the Continent, and on an island near by five more corpses. All 

 the indications were that the men had broken up into small squads, who had wanderei 

 in different directions in search of food. 



In 1855, Mr. James Anderson was sent to search the region of the disaster. On 

 June 30, a little way from Back's River, he found natives who had many articles 

 which had evidently belonged to the expedition. They said that the owners had all 

 died of starvation. On the small island where the five men were said to have perished 

 were a few articles, among others a stij3k upon which was rudely carved the name 

 of Mr. Stanley, the surgeon of the Erebus, and a plank, having on it the word 

 Terror. That was all; there were no corpses there nor a scrap of paper. This 

 party were unable to search King William's Island, presumably thft main scene 

 of the disaster. It was not, indeed, until four years later that the scrap of paper, 

 already mentioned, was discovered, which told where and when the vessels had been 

 lost, and that Franklin himself had died ten months before. 



In 1857, Lady Franklin fitted out, at her own expense, a new expedition in search 

 of her husband, then dead for almost ten years, though no one as yet knew it. The 

 Fox, a screw steamer of 177 tons, formerly a pleasure yacht, was purchased and fitted 

 up. The crew consisted of 24 men all volunteers, and the command was confided to 

 Captain Francis McClentock, who had already served in the Arctic Seas under Ross, 

 Austin, and Belcher. The Fox left Aberdeen on July 1, 1857. The design was to 

 explore a tract of about 300 miles square, lying west of Boothia, between the northern 

 limits of the explorations of Rae and Anderson, and the southern ones of Sir James Ross 

 and Belcher, and to the west as far as the track of McClure. By the middle of August 

 the little vessel was far up Baffin's Bay, and on the 17th was beset by the ice near the 

 entrance of Lancaster Sound. For eight weary months she was held fast and ap- 

 parently unmovable, by the solid pack which was, however, drifting slowly southward, 

 and when finally released, April 25, 1858, she had been borne helplessly 1395 miles. 

 McClentock refitted at Holsteinborg, in Greenland, and boldly set out again. On the 

 12th of July he sailed through Barrow's Strait, and attempted to pass down through 

 Peel's Sound, but was stopped by the ice. Then he went north-eastward, skirting 

 North Somerset, hoping to reach the mouth of Back's River through a strait, since 



