Sir George Back was to make a summer's cruise to Wager Inlet, and return to England. The result every ɔne knows or may make themselves acquainted with, by reading the fearful voyage of the Terror, an abstract of which I have already given. It would be superfluous to enumerate many other of our series of polar voyages, but it is pretty evident that Captain. Forsyth's voyage, performed in the summer months of 1850, will be handed down to posterity as one of the most remarkable, if not the most remarkable, that has ever been accomplished in the arctic seas- the expedition consisting of one solitary small vessel. The main object of the voyage, it is true, has not been accomplished, but as all the harbors in Regent Inlet were frozen up, and it was utterly impossible to cut through a vast tract of ice, extending for perhaps four or five miles, to get the ship to a secure anchorage, under these circumstances, Captain Forsyth had no alternative but to return, and in doing so, he has, in the opinion of all the best-informed officers, displayed great good sense and judgment rather than remain frozen in at the Wellington Channel, where he only went to reconnoiter, and where he had no business whatever, his instructions being confined to Regent Inlet. Lady Franklin purposes, if she can raise sufficient funds, to send out another boat expedition this spring to Regent Inlet, to prosecute the search in the regions to which we have before alluded, and on which she places so much reliance. The party, under the charge of Mr. Kennedy, will probably winter in Brentford Bay or some other convenient place, and carry on the searching operations on the opposite shores of Boothia, as the season permits. But her ladyship's income has been so largely drawn upon by the various enormous expenses she has been put to, that it is doubtful whether she will be able to carry out her views without assistance from the public. I sincerely trust that the generosity and chivalry of the people of England, which has displayed its sympa thies with the distressed soldier and the weather-bound seamen on so many occasions, and in so many splendid and richly-endowed institutions, will not allow this. noble-minded lady to exhaust her private resources in the equipment of expeditions which are deemed so important and necessary, but that they will come forward and relieve her, recollecting that the expedition is required in search of two of her Majesty's ships, sent out on their arduous service by the government of the country, and under command of her honored, amiable, and distinguished husband, the good and brave Sir John Franklin. I have thus gone through, as fully as my space would permit, the voyages and journeys of our navigators and travelers within the Arctic circle, and the record of their arduous services cannot fail to prove interesting. There is one land expedition, that of Dr. Sir John Richardson, on the Polar shore between the Coppermine and Mackenzie Rivers, in 1848, which I have not touched on because it has already been published in detail in several quarters, and the gallant Doctor is preparing a very full account of it for immediate publication. Captain Kellett, also, has it in contemplation to publish an account of the voyage of the Herald. The following recapitulation will give the position of the different vessels engaged in the search, when last heard of. The Investigator having passed Behring's Strait, reached Kotzebue Sound on the 27th of July, and when last heard of, was pushing her way along between the ice toward Melville Island. The Enterprise had put back to Hong Kong to winter having been unable to enter the ice. The Advance, was aground off Cape Riley, August 25th. The Assistance, in Wellington Channel, August 25th, standing toward Cape Hotham. The Felix, off Cape Crawford, in Lancaster Sound, August 22d. The Intrepid and Lady Franklin, on August 24th and 25th, in Wellington Channel, standing toward Cape Hotham. The Resolute and Pioneer, in Possession Bay, Aug. 17th. The Rescue and Sophia, in Wellington Channel, August 25th, apparently beset with ice. The Plover, wintering in Grantley Harbor, Port Clarence, 1850. The North Star and Prince Albert have, as we have seen, arrived in England, and the Herald is also on her passage home. I have been favored with the sight of a private letter of very recent date from an officer of the Herald, dated Hong Kong, 23d of December, 1850, from which I make the following extracts: "On our third and last cruise north in search of the ill-fated expedition under Sir John Franklin, we sailed from Oahu on the 24th of May, 1850, arriving in Kotzebue Sound on the 14th of July. The Sound was a perfect wall of ice, with no prospect of our being able to communicate with the Plover for a week or ten days. One of our cutters was sent in with letters, getting between the floes, and hauling over some, at last reached her, and found them all well, but no news during the winter of Sir John Franklin. On the 21st of July, after watering and refitting, we sailed for Cape Lisburne to intercept the Enterprise and Investigator, this being the appointed rendezvous. The Plover also sailed for Point Barrow to look after Pullen's party. On the 26th, in a dense fog, we made the ice-pack, much to our surprise, 180 miles south of where we found it last season, in latitude 70° 13′ N. The ice was fourteen feet high, a solid wall without an opening through which we might with safety sail. Toward midnight it blew a gale of wind, and we were compelled to haul off. On the 29th, we again made the pack much higher than before, rising like a hill from the sea face, in latitude 71° 12′ N. On the night of the 30th, we saw detached icebergs off Wainwright Inlet, from thirty to forty feet high. The wind again increasing to a gale, with thick rainy weather, reduced us to close reefs, and compelled us to bear up for Cape Lisburne. 66 Arriving off that place on the last day of July, we were fortunate enough to fall in with the Investigator in a dense fog. Clearing, for an instant, we were alongside each other! and' we had the news of the last twelve months. She had come from Oahu in the short space of time, twenty-six days. The Enterprise sailed five days before her. They had not seen each other since rounding the Horn. The Investigator remained but a few minutes in our company, and then departed with three hearty cheers from us for the ice pack, determined to get to Melville Island. She had our good wishes, but at the same time our doubts as to her success; we had the experience of three voyages. was as yet green, and all her troubles to go through. She "From this day, 31st of July, to 26th of August, we were blockading Cape Lisburne, to intercept the Enterprise and Plover, a most tedious and troublesome twenty-six days as ever we experienced; we did not see the former, but the Plover we spoke. She had been to Point Barrow, had heard from the natives that a party of white men had been murdered and buried near the Colville River, near the Mackenzie River, and that whales' jaws and bones now marked the spot. If it had not been so late in the season we should have sent a boat expedition there, but we hardly knew what conclusion to come to. It may be Pullen's party,-it may be only native report' to get tobacco and beads. My opinion was, and is, that the story was a most improbable one, as the natives refused to accept a cask of tobacco and two muskets to go there as pilots. But should any thing have unfortunately happened to Pullen's party, and no movement made by us to rescue them if still alive, it would be a damper on the Herald, and the affair never forgiven or forgotten by the public. 66 6 Finding it useless to wait any longer for the Enterprise, we sailed for Port Clarence, and put the Plover into winter quarters as a depot for the two ships north.” TO THE EXPEDITIONS IN SEARCH OF SIR [From Fisher's Drawing-Room Scrap-Book.] ACROSS the Arctic foam, To bring the wanderer home, Speed on, ye fleets, whom Mercy's hand equips! And waft you safely, oh, ye gallant ships! And tempests still their wrath, And fortune guide you on your darkest track; And bring to British hearts their long lost hero back. Farewell -a short farewell!. And prayers of myriads rise to Heaven for you, May bear their gentlest on each hardy crew! And gives its benison ; America and Europe join their hands ; And o'er the Northern Sea, Gaze forward hopefully, And sound our Franklin's name through all the anxious lands. Return! oh, soon return! On every mountain-top and dizzy scaur ; And clapping hands rejoice For his and your returning from afar, Of Roman fame or Greek, Such proud ovation gathered, laurel-crowned, From every sea or shore, And hive of busy men, on all our English ground. But if this may not be, They sleep in death, the victims of their zeal; The greatness of our woe, And end the doubting hopes that millions feel. For them, the glorious dead; |