11 
(iicctc/icd bij li. M CjrtJiick, li.N. 
Cape Osborn, bearing N. (Magnetic.) 
at 12.30 A.M. on Sunday, August 22d, during a gale of wind, and left for Baring 
JJay on the following morning at 10.30. 
No traces found. 
R. M'CoRMiCK, Officer Commanding Party. 
August 23rd 1 852. 
At 10.45 A.M., as we were about to start, I shot a sandpiper ( Tringa maritima) 
on the beach. On rounding the outer point we found a considerable swell out- 
side, with a strong breeze to pull against, passing Rogier Head, the headland 
we ascended yesterday, and another adjoining promontory ; we had to contend 
with a short head sea, in a deeply laden boat, with a damaged rudder almost 
useless, compelling us at times to use a steer-oar in addition to keep her head to 
the sea, along as dreary and desolate a looking coast as I ever recollect having 
seen in these regions. The land appeared like a vast wreath of deep snow 
banked up against the horizon, its continuity broken only by deep gullies in 
one or two places, with not the smallest bight or indentation along its ice-encum- 
bered shores, on which a heavy surf was breaking, where a boat could find shelter 
during a gale of wind. 
After a most laborious pull of four hours we reached the steep and alm^ost 
perpendicular ridge of Cape Osborn, a bold headland of rounded form, white 
with snow% excepting where a dark blotch appeared just below its summit, formed 
by the bare rock of the projecting buttresses. This cape may be considered the 
northernmost boundary of Wellington Strait, which here expands out into the 
broader Queen's Channel. At 1.45 p.m. we passed a very remarkable isolated 
mass of rock, rising abruptly from the steep face of this ridge about one third 
from the summit. 
It bore a striking resemblance to the bust of a human figure of burly form, and 
habited in a cloak and cap ; the horizontal layers of limestone rock, of which it is 
composed, being so arranged as to give the cloak a caped appearance; a slab of the 
limestone in front of the figure, fancy might liken to a book. ' This singular 
specimen of sculpture from the hands of nature, worked out of the rock by the 
miited chisels of time and weather, removing the softer portions and leaving the 
harder standing forth in strong relief, — I transferred a fac- simile of it to my 
sketchbook under the name of " Franklin's Beacon," whose attention it could 
not fail to attract, pointing as it does to those unknown and unexplored regions 
which lie beyond, around the Northern Pole, untrodden by the foot of man 
smce creation's dawn, and in the deep recesses of which, doubtless, lies hidden 
his mysterious fate, of which our search, thus far, unhappily has failed to elicit 
the slightest trace. 
At 4 P.M. we doubled Cape Osborn, on the north side of which a huge pile oi 
dirty yellow-looking old berg-pieces of ice lay aground in the turbid greenish 
shoal water which skirts the coast all the way to Baring Bay, extending out 
from the hummock -fringed beach to the distance of a mile or two and up\vards, 
and along Avhich a heavy ground swell sets upon the shore in a succession of 
B 2 
