752 



THE POLAR WORLD. 



uaraed Franklin's. This was obstructed by ice ; but he managed to push through on 

 the 6th of September. Here again he was caught fast, and held for three weeks, 

 when he took up winter quarters on the north side of the strait. Sledge expeditions 

 were sent out in all directions ; and on one of these McClentock, March 1, 1859, he 

 learned from a party of Esquimaux a ship had been crushed by ice in deep water off 

 the north-west shore of King William's Island. Slowly new scraps of information 

 were gained, to the purport that when the vessel had gone down the men had moved 

 toward a great river, that many of them had dropped down by the way, their bodies 

 being found in the spring, and some of them buried ; but that all had died of starva- 

 tion. McClentock had now got at last upon Franklin's track, or rather that of the 

 105 who had escaped after the wreck of the Erebus and Terror. 



The first trace of the long-lost crew was found near Cape Herschell. It was a 

 bleached skeleton on the beach j near it were some fragments of clothing, a pocket- 

 book and a few letters, which told nothing, for they were from home, addressed to, 

 but not written by the person to whom they had belonged. The next day they came 

 to a boat fitted up as a sledge, in which were two skeletons, two loaded guns, ammu- 

 nition, chocolate, tea, tobacco, and some articles of silver plate, the marks on 

 which showed that they had belonged to Franklin. At last, on the 6th of May, 

 they came to a large cairn, and lying among some stones which had fallen from 

 its top, was the paper containing the record already mentioned, upon which was 

 written all that man can ever know of the fate of the Franklin expedition from July 

 26, 1845, when the ships were seen moored to the iceberg in BafSn's Bay, to April 

 25, 1848, when the surviving 105 were on the point of setting off on their returnless 

 journey towards Back River. 



Captain (now Sir Francis Leopold) McClentock, had thus supplied the last of the 

 links in the story of the Franklin expedition. He had demonstrated that there was 

 not a human probability that a man of them could now be living. He had also 

 solved some of the great problems which had for eleven years occupied the mind of 

 all Arctic explorers. He had also shown that Franklin, when finally beset, had 

 really gone over the waters which linked together the explorations made from the 

 east and west, and was, therefore, the actual discoverer of the long sought north-west 

 passage, whose uselessness for all purposes was also demonstrated. 



Subsequent explorations are yet to be briefly noted. In July, 1860, Dr. Isaac 1. 

 Hayes succeeded, by aid of private subscriptions, in organizing an exploring expedi- 

 tion. It consisted of fourteen men ; sailed from Boston July 6 ; late in August was 

 frozen in in latitude 78° in Smith's Sound. He made boat and sledge expeditions to 

 the north; and finally on May 18, 1861, with a single companion stood upon a pro- 

 jecting headland, in latitude 81° 35', which he believed to be the most northern 

 known land on the globe. Parry had indeed gone somewhat farther, but it was upon 

 a floe of ice. No other naan had before or has since gone so far north upon land, un- 

 less indeed Hall, three weeks before his death, in 1871, went a degree beyond; a 

 point which will, perhaps, never be settled. Before him Hayes saw a sea then en- 

 cumbered by soft ice and floes, but which he thought would be free in summer ; but 

 he had no boat, and was obliged to turn back, reaching New York in October, 1861. 



In 1860, Charles Francis Hall constituted himself an expedition to the Arctic re- 

 gions. He lost his boat, and was obliged to confine his explorations within narrow 



