what has been done, and the superhuman efforts that have been made by our sailors on this continued and widely extended search to recover those who had been ordered to a given spot of limited area. It is not necessary to detail how that search has been made all around this spot-this confined area-but has been extended to it only in part, and then perhaps too late. We need not go into the results of the expeditions, unsatisfactory but not without a meaning; negatively in some cases, but positively in others, pointing to this area, and showing the necessity for its complete exploration. With all this valuable material for forming a judgment before them, it would naturally be concluded that memory-weary of its wanderings, its disappointments, and its abortive attempts-would revert to the object and intentions of the voyage, and that the primary spot would recur. It will be seen in the various opinions which we now give, opinions gathered not only from the scientific of the shore but also from Arctic authorities of the sea-we give them as we have heard them expressed, or have seen them written, in the course of our inquiry into the cause of our want of success, despite our unparalleled exertions. It were invidious to append names, but they are easy of reference, as all have appeared before the public. In recording them, we have no motive beyond the wish to show the causes of our failure in the search for the unhappy Franklin and his luckless crews. We trust not to memory, but give the substance of a note containing them addressed to an active officer of one of our most distinguished societies at this period, 1854:- "After what I heard I am less inclined than ever to bow to what is called Arctic authority. The question has not been made one of thought the remarks are those of impulse only. Hence the contradictory views. Not one of the opinions expressed was the result of reasonable conclusion; and if it were not a serious subject, one could laugh heartily at the absurdity of some of them. Franklin has been dragged in all directions; now to the southward—now to the westward-then to the north-west, vid Wellington Channel. Up this channel, at a point-heaven knows where!—he abandons his ships, which are driven to the eastward round the north of Greenland (making it an island), and then by Spitzbergen, down the coast of Greenland to the banks of Newfoundland, coming out in the 'two ships on an iceberg,' seen by the Renovation. One Eminent! takes him up Wellington Channel; but instead of eastward, he sayshence, west of Melville Island (unconscious of the new discoveries of Kellett and his officers), and down the west side of Baring Island: and yet a M'Clure has just examined that coast! One has placed : him on the Asiatic coast; another at the new Siberian Islands. One thinks from thence he sailed northward to Nova Zembla. Some have sought him in Jones's Sound; one from the west, another from Baffin's Bay; another, again, in Smith's Sound; and an Arctic authority! because he found nothing in an empty cairn, hence traces him to the eastward—either murdered by the Esquimaux, run over by the bergs of the middle ice, or lost on the west coast of Baffin's Bay. One looks to Cockburn Island, or down Regent's Inlet; another to Peel's Sound; some to the Great Fish River; many still cling to a high northern latitude; but none, at this period, to the space where he was sent― Melville Sound. Amid such varied and conflicting opinions, what becomes of one's faith? whither turn? on what rest?" Our reply is, See Section 5 of Franklin's Instructions. Fix faith there, and follow it. You have no other information to guide you. All the rest are mere phantasma of the brain. The year 1854 departs. Let it. It has not removed doubt. "The unfortunate fate of Sir John Franklin and his party is not set at rest." The Erebus and Terror may yet be in existence-yet unfold their own tale. The Homes of England! "What sighs have been wafted after these ships! What prayers offered up at the deserted fireside! How often has the mistress, the wife, the mother, pored over the daily news to catch some casual intelligence of these rovers of the deep! How has expectation darkened into anxiety-anxiety into dread-and dread into despair." ”米 "Oh! star-eyed Science, hast thou wandered there, * Vide "The Voyage," Washington Irving. 390 CHAPTER XVI. CAPT. COLLINSON ARRIVES SELECT COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON REWARDS TO CAPTS. KELLETT, COLLINSON, AND M'CLURE-REMARKS-DR. KANE ARRIVES-HIS VOYAGE. 1855.-MEN'S minds were too much occupied this year to think of the lost sons of science in the Arctic seas. England had drifted into war. And Carnage and Suffering, Recklessness and Waste followed in the train of glory. Occasionally memory would recall the sad uncertain fate of the noble fellows on board the Erebus and Terror, but a transient sigh would dispel the image soon as formed. May 6th, 1855.-The Enterprise, Capt. R. Collinson, arrived in safety at Portsmouth after her extended search in the Arctic regions; the particulars of which we have already given (ante, p. 376): thus completing the return of all the British ships sent in search of the Franklin Expedition. July 20th, 1855.-A Select Committee having been appointed by the House of Commons, on the motion of Mr. Mackinnon (June 19th), to inquire into the circumstances of the expedition to the Arctic seas, commanded by Capt. M'Clure, with a view to ascertain whether any and what reward may be due for the services rendered on that occasion, and further, to examine into the claims of Capts. Collinson and Kellett, to ascertain whether any and what reward may be due to them for services rendered on the occasion of that expedition, now gave in their Report. It says, "The attempt to discover a water communication through the Arctic regions between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, is one which has engaged the attention of maritime nations, especially that of Great Britain, for a period now extending over three centuries. It has fallen to the lot of Capt. M'Clure, his officers and crew, to set at rest this question. They are undoubtedly the first who have passed by water from sea to sea, and have returned to this country a living evidence of the existence of a North-West Passage." The Report, then alluding to the "Rewards offered by Parliament for the discovery of the NorthWest Passage," remarks: "Successive sovereigns have encouraged the enterprise, and men of science have, .through succeeding generations, urged the attempt." It then details the course of the Inves tigator to Mercy Bay, the arrival there of Lieutenant Pim from the Resolute, the abandonment of the Investigator, the subsequent arrival of Capt. M'Clure, his officers and crew, on board the Resolute, Capt. Henry Kellett, at Melville Island, and finally their arrival in England on board the Phoenix, Capt. Inglefield, proving, "beyond doubt, that to Capt. M'Clure incontestably belongs the distinguished honour of having been the first to perform the actual passage over water between the two great oceans that encircle the globe. . . By this achievement he has demonstrated the existence, and traced the course of that connection between these two oceans which, under the name of the North-West Passage, has so long been the object of perilous search and deep interest to the nations of the civilized world." In making the following remarks we have no desire to take from Capt. M'Clure the honour of having been the first who has passed by water from sea to sea, and returned a living evidence of the existence of the Passage; still we much question whether he was the first to discover and prove the existence of the Passage. We must doubt it, when we see how clearly the movements of Franklin and his associates are developed in the floating fragments of Rae and Collinson; and yet more so, in the undoubted relics recently obtained by Rae. These martyrs to science have unhappily not returned to claim the honour, but that they were the first to discover and to make the North-West Passage, few, we think, will doubt, especially when they see such authorities as Sir R. I. Murchison, the late Admiral Beaufort, the present active Hydrographer, Capt. John Washington, Capt. Collinson, &c.,* advocatiny this "claim for those who can urge nothing for themselves." In this opinion, then, we are not solitary. Sir John Richardson, than whom no sounder Arctic authority exists, in the Times, June 23rd, 1855, says: "The remnant of the crews of Franklin's ships made the Passage in the spring of 1850, precisely in the same sense as it was performed in October of the same year, over the ice, by the party sent out from Prince of Wales' Strait by Capt. M'Clure." That "the boats dragged by the forty determined men whose bones are blanching near the mouth of the Great Fish River proceeded from the ships or wrecks lying in a water-way continuous with the sea that washes the Continent is proved by the fragments of the ships' fittings that had drifted to the Finlayson Islands, picked up by Capt. * See the "Report of the Select Committee on Arctic Expeditions, 1855," pp. 11, 18, 22, 30. + Discovered, not performed. The passage was not made, i. e., performed by Capt. M'Clure, until between April and May, 1852. Collinson; and also by a spar, to which the same origin can now be ascribed, found by Dr. Rae, in the previous year, in the same channel.” Sir John then gives extracts from a letter he received from Sir John Franklin in January, 1845, "to show that he purposely sought an entrance into the line of water that washes the shores of the mainland (America)," and adds, "Whether Franklin, after leaving Beechey Island, carried his ships to the eastward or westward of Cape Walker, will perhaps be ascertained by Mr. Anderson, now descending the Great Fish River, . but no dispassionate reasoner can doubt that the priority of discovery rests with the Erebus and Terror, the Investigator being at least six months later." Lady Franklin also claims the precedence of discovery and performance of the NorthWest Passage for her gallant husband and his associates. In a letter sent to Mr. Mackinnon* (July 6th, 1855), chairman of this committee, she says: "When it is remembered that these brave and unfortunate men, after years of intense privations and suffering, were found dead of starvation upon a spot which they could not have reached without having first solved that geographical problem which was the object and aim of all these painful efforts, and when it is remembered that they are beyond the reach of their country's rewards, you will not, I think, refuse them the just acknowledgment that is due to their memories.+ Capt. M'Clure . . is not the less the discoverer of a North-West Passage, because my husband had previously, though unknown to Capt. M'Clure, discovered another and a more navigable passage." The fact of finding the drifting fragments of ship's fittings with the Government mark at Parker and Cambridge Bays, and on the larger Finlayson Island, and also the important fact of there being a boat with the distressed party who are said to have perished at the mouth of the Back River, all these go to prove the existence of continuous water, extending towards the American coast; it may exist on both sides, but we have shown the improbability of such a condition east of Cape Walker by Peel Sound, and in this we differ from the authorities we have quoted; they all think the ships, or a party, or parties, came down that sound, we cannot. The only other passage is Bellot's Strait, and it is narrow, doubtful and unlikely. We have * See "Parliamentary Paper, No. 409, 1855. Report from Select Committee on Arctic Expeditions,” p. 35. + See also a paper, "Des Derniers Expéditions faites à la Recherche de Sir John Franklin et de la Découverte d'un Passage par Mer de l'Océan Atlantique à l'Océan Pacifique,” lu à la Séance de la Société de Géographie de Paris, du 18 Janvier, 1856, par M. de la Roquette. |