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obliged to acknowledge the dead Franklin as a claimant of equal fights with himself to the credit of having discovered the long-soughtfor North-west Passage. Two passages were discovered-one, we have every reason to suppose, by Franklin, to the south, and another by M'Clure to the north. The victory was won, like that of the Roman Decius, by the sacrifice of a noble general. The result proved that the passage might have been discovered earlier, had simultaneous expeditions been despatched to Behring's Straits and the Baffin Sea, for the great difficulty was the exact middle of the course. No vessel could hope to make the entire passage in any reasonable number of years-in fact, even now, no vessel ever has made it; but the same crew has passed from west to east the entire distance with the sacrifice of their vessel. The North-west Passage has been discovered, but, at the same time, been discovered to be impracticable, or, if barely practicable, useless for all ordinary commercial purposes.

If we were attempting in this article a condensed history of arctic adventure, or even a brief recapitulation of the deeds of polar heroes, we should be under the necessity of exceeding all ordinary limits, or of continuing the subject through many numbers of the Magazine. We must guard ourselves from the supposition of any attempt to do even-handed justice to the glorious memories of the dead, or the reputations of the living. In that case the Danes, the Dutch, and even the Russians, could have claims on our attention, as well as the hundreds of our countrymen, or our quasi-countrymen the Americans, who have fought the elemental war-some nobly conquering, some nobly defeated, some perishing, if possible, more nobly still, in the moment of victory. Our present purpose is to give a certain prominence to two recent publications, both occasioned by voyages, the main object of which was the search for Franklin-in themselves of considerable literary merit, and fraught with a peculiar graphic interest, inasmuch as they appear to present

within their compass, as well as any books we know, as fair pictures of arctic adventure, in all its rare dangers, difficulties, and glories, and between which, as they adorn the literature of two kindred and rival nations, we should be sorry to attempt to draw invidious comparisons. We have also, it may be premised, some sort of moral purpose in our background. These books are, The Discovery of the North-west Passage by Sir Robert M'Clure, edited by Captain Osborn; and Dr. Kane's Arctic Explorations. Both, as all books of travel should be, are illustrated with maps and engravings, the latter taken from the rough sketches of Captain Osborn and Dr. Kane. The map in Captain Osborn's book is remarkable for its clearness, and the bird's-eye view it gives of the last achievements of discovery; the engravings in Dr. Kane's book are eminently happy, as the productions of a man who is a real poet in art, Mr. Hamilton, whose good taste scatters beautiful vignettes, like gems, through the two volumes, and invests the whole work with a halo of romance, mysterious as the effects of light in those northern regions, and which could scarcely have been produced by the power of words, or letterpress, unassisted. It is, we believe, fair to consider Franklin and M'Clure as the joint discoverers of the North-west Passage, for they discovered a north-west passage each.

M'Clure certainly did, and Franklin did also, according to the weight of circumstantial evidence. But M'Clure lives to tell his story, and Franklin has passed away. We cannot suppose that the living hero would grudge the dead a single leaf of his well-earned laurels. While Dr. Kane was sent in a due northerly direction from the head of Baffin Sea, M'Clure was sent round Behring's Straits, from west to east, in order to meet the line of former discoveries. It was owing to the sending out of the expedition of Sir Edward Belcher, to search at once for him and Franklin, that the memorable junction was effected and the passage discovered.

Captain Osborn's narrative thus ably commences:

"The 'Enterprise' and 'Investigator,' it will be remembered, had failed in their attempt to get to the westward of Leopold Island in 1849, and only escaped from that inhospitable spot to be bound in the drifting pack-ice of Barrow's Strait, and swept with it out of Lancaster Sound into Baffin's Bay, so that they could but just secure their retreat to England before the Arctic Sea has become generally sealed for that season. Tempest-tossed and ice-worn though they were, yet a little dockyard work soon put the good ships into proper condition for once more resuming their contest with floe and iceberg. Captain Richard Collinson, C.B., was appointed as senior officer and leader of the expedition to the Enterprise,' and Commander Robert L. M. M'Clure to the 'Investigator.' The former officer enjoyed a high naval reputation, and in China his ability as a surveyor had done the State good service; the latter-the destined discoverer of the North-west Passage-had served through a long and severe probation in every grade, until, after a struggle of twenty-six years, he was appointed to the command of the Investigator,' as a reward for the good service he had rendered as first-lieuten

ant to Sir James Ross in his voyages of 1848, 1849."

M'Clure and Collinson raced for Behring's Strait. M'Clure won the race by taking a short and dangerous cut among the Aleutian Islands. On the other side of the Strait, with a westward course, he was launching into unknown regions. He took leave of his tender with a misgiving that he might never return; and under the circumstances, we do not wonder at the language he uses in his letter to the Admiralty:

"In the event of this being our last communication, I would request you to assure their Lordships that no apprehension whatever need be entertained of our safety until the autumn of 1854, as we have on board three years' of all species of provisions, which, without much deprivation, may be made to extend a period of four years; as, moreover, whatever is killed by the huntingparties, I intend to issue in lieu of the usual rations, which will still further protract our resources."

He made his way gallantly, as Collinson did also, along the north coast of America, passing the formidable opening of the Mackenzie River,

with the perpetual danger of the great pack of oceanic ice to the northward closing in upon him, and imprisoning him against the shore; and he fought on and on to the entrance of the narrow channel of the Prince of Wales' Strait. He forced his way for some distance up that channel, until the goal was almost within his grasp, when the winter of 1850-51 came upon him, and locked him in, almost within sight of the North-west Passage.

starboard hand, exhibited, in its interior, "Sept. 9, 1850.-Albert Land on the ranges of mountains covered with snow, but the lower grounds were as yet free. Here and there peaks of a volcanic character and outline were seen, but none that appeared active; and the rocks shore. Among the islands, gulls still were mostly limestone, as on the western lingered, giving a hope of winter having delayed its arrival; and that arrival They felt as if they would give all they was now what the voyagers most feared. held dear in life for another week of tion,-cold, hunger, and hardship, all summer. The dangers of the naviga they said, and we must make the were forgotten. Only give us time,' North-west Passage.' At noon the ob servations placed the Investigator' only sixty miles from Barrow's Strait. 'I cannot,' writes Captain M'Clure in his pri vate journal, describe my anxious feelings. Can it be possible that this water shall prove to be the long-sought Northcommunicates with Barrow's Strait, and west Passage? Can it be that so humble a creature as I am will be permitted to perform what has baffled the talented and wise for hundreds of years? But all praise be ascribed unto Him who hath conducted us so far in safety. His ways are not our ways, or the means that He uses to accomplish His ends within our world is foolishness with Him.” comprehension. The wisdom of the

But the "Investigator" was never destined to pass this Prince of Wales' Strait: a vast barrier of moving ice was before her; backwards and forwards and sideways, with great danger of wreck, she was driven, with the much-coveted prize tantalisingly dangling almost within the grasp of her gallant commander, when, with patience as examplary as his courage, he determined to try his fortune by altering his course, and sailing round the northern coast

of Banks's Land, acting on the French proverb, "Reculer pour mieux

sauter."

The prize was awhile withdrawn from sight, and on the north of Banks's Land new difficulties and dangers crowded on the navigators.

"Noon that day (the 19th of August) found them in 73° 55′ north latitude, and 123° 52′ 30′′ west longitude, and already did Captain M'Clure insist upon extending his voyage to the north of Melville Island, and the striking for some strait or sound leading into Baffin's Bay! That night, however, a sudden and remarkable change took place. They had just crossed Burnet Bay, within Norway and Robillan Island, when the coast suddenly became as abrupt and precipitous as a wall; the water was very deep, sixty fathoms by the lead-line within four hundred yards of the face of the cliffs, and fifteen fathoms water when actually touching them. The lane of water had diminished to two hundred yards in width where broadest, and even that space was mnch hampered by loose pieces of ice aground or adrift. In some places the channel was so narrow that the quarter-boats had to be topped up to prevent them touching the cliffs upon the one hand, or the lofty ice upon the other; and so perfectly were they running the gauntlet, that on many occasions the ship could not 'round to' for want of space. Their position was full of perils, yet they would push on, for retreat was now as dangerous as progress. The pack was of the same fearful description as that they had fallen in with in the offing of the Mackenzie River during the previous autumn: it drew forty and fifty feet water, and rose in rolling hills upon the surface, some of them a hundred feet from base to summit. Any attempt to force the frail ship against such ice was of course mere folly; all they could do was to watch for every opening, trust in the goodness and mercy of God, and push ahead in the execution of their duty. If the ice at such a time had set in with its vast face against the sheer cliff, nothing, they all felt, could have saved them; and nothing in the long tale of arctic research is finer than the cool and resolute way in which all, from the captain to the youngest seaman of his gallant band, fought inch by inch to make their way round this frightful After the 20th of August, the Investigator' lay helplessly fixed off the north-west of Banks's

coast

On the

Land; the wind had pressed in the
ice, and for a while all hopes of far-
ther progress were at an end.
29th of August, however, a sudden move
took place, and a moving floe struck a
huge mass to which the ship had been

secured, and, to the horror of those on
board, such was the immense power ex-
erted, that the mass slowly reared itself
on its edge close to the ship's bows,
until the upper part was higher than
the fore-yard, and every moment ap-
peared likely to be the Investigators'
last; for the ice had but to topple over,
to sink her and her crew under its
weight. At this critical moment there
was a shout of joy, for the mass, after
oscillating fearfully, broke up, rolled
back in its original position, and they
were saved. Hardly, however, was this
danger passed, than a fresh one threat-
ened, for the berg to which the ship was
secured was impelled forward by the
whole weight of the driving pack to-
wards a low point of land, on which,
with frightful pressure, the great floes
were breaking up, and piling themselves
tier upon tier.

"The 'Investigator' had no power of escape; but every hawser was put in requisition, and hands stationed by them. An attempt to blow up a grounded berg upon which the ship was driving, only partially succeeded; the nip came on, the poor ship grounded, and every plank and timber quivered from stem to stern in this trial of strength between her and the ice. 'Our fate seemed sealed,' says Captain M'Clure, and he made up his mind to let go all hawsers. The order was given, and with it the wreck of the Investigator' seemed certain. All the leader hoped for was, to use his own words, 'that we might have the ship thrown up sufficiently to serve as an asylum for the winter;' if she should sink between the two contending bergs, the destruction of every soul was inevitable. But at the very moment when the order to 'Let go all hawsers' was given, and even before it could be obeyed, a merciful Providence caused the berg which most threatened to break up, and the 'Investigator' was once more saved, though still so tightly was she beset that there was not room to drop a lead line down round the vessel, and the copper upon her bottom was hanging in shreds, or rolled up like brown paper.

"On the 10th September the wind veered to the northward, the temperature rose, and at midnight the ice went off the coast, without the slightest warn

ing, carrying the poor Investigator' with it, and handing her thus over to the tender mercy of the much dreaded pack in the offing. Fortunately, the ship was on its weather edge, although so cradled-in under her bottom as to be helpless; and painful were the feelings of all on board of her until their position was ascertained at daylight; but amid the roar of the gale and tossing of the floes, which had caused this sudden danger, the firm hand of the leader wrote in his diary: Thus we launch into this formidable frozen sea. Spes mea in Deo!'"

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The "Investigator" was cleared from the ice by enormous charges of powder, and got round to Mercy Bay, so fitly called by the devout commander, a position from which she was never destined to be extricated with her crew on board.

In this region of extremest possible cold the second arctic winter was passed. The imprisoned sailors shot and hunted and amused them selves as best they could, in an atmosphere often fallen to 60° below zero, and made travelling parties to explore the coasts, whose reports confirmed the existence, though not the practicability, of the passage. They found on Melville Island the signs of Parry's presence, and left a memorial which enabled their countrymen afterwards to find them. But their hardships were terrific. One of the great plagues was that of the African desert-thirst. If they attempted to eat snow, it blistered like caustic. The travelling parties had no fuel to warm them, but only just enough to thaw their scanty pittance of ice-water. But summer would come in time, and release them. Summer came, or some faint semblance of it, but release them it did not; for as fast as the old ice broke up, the new ice formed. July came and passed; August came also. Surely August must release them. With September their hopes are gone. The "Investigator" never moved during that summer of 1852, more appalling to the imagination than any winter, because it seemed to seal their fate for ever. Was it a punishment for their presumption in transgressing human domains, and trespassing on the exclusive manor of nature? Now they were put on short allowance, and

in a latitude where cold exhausts like tropical heat, and human nature needs extraordinary nourishment. Officers and men shared and suffered alike; and scurvy began to strike them down. -53. All hope seemed dead; but deDrearily passed the winter of 1852 spair was not written in M'Clure's vocabulary. He resolved to feed up his sick by full rations, and send them off across the ice under escort in the spring-a forlorn hope-while he stood by his ship yet another winter. All was ready for the desperate start, when an event took place of the most vital importance to all, best related in the commander's own words:

"While walking near the ship in conversation with the first lieutenant upon the subject of digging a grave for the man who died yesterday, and discussing how we could cut a grave in the ground whilst it was so hardly frozen--a subject naturally sad and depressing-we per ceived a figure walking rapidly towards the bay. From his pace and gestures, us from the rough ice at the entrance of we both naturally supposed at first that he was one of our party pursued by a bear, but as we approached him doubts arose as to who it could be. He was, certainly, unlike any of our men; but recollecting that it was possible some one might be trying a new travelling dress preparatory to the departure of our sledges, and certain that no one else was near, we continued to advance. When within about two hundred yards of us, the strange figure threw up his arms, and made gesticulations resembling those used by Esquimaux, besides shouting at the top of his voice words which, from the wind and intense excitement of the moment, sounded like a wild screech; and this brought us both fairly to a stand-still. The stranger came quietly on, and we saw that his face was as black at ebony, and really at the moment we might be pardoned for wondering whether he was a denizen of this or of the other world, and had he but given us a glimpse of a tail or a cloven hoof, we should assuredly have taken to our ground, and, had the skies fallen upon legs; as it was, we gallantly stood our us, we could hardly have been more astonished than when the dark-faced stranger called out I'm Lieutenant Pim, late of the " Herald," and now in the "Resolute." Captain Kellet is in her at Dealy Island.'"

Lieutenant Pim came like the reprieve in romances to the con

demned. There was not much in his message apparently. The "Resolute" was at Dealy Island, but the poor fellows well understood the interpretation of the laconic phrase. It meant nothing less than life instead of death, friends and families instead of arctic solitude, the green fields of old England for their eyes, instead of a white freezing waste as a bed for their corpses, which was hard even to open into a grave, and which would mock death itself by denying decay, and consigning their remains to unseemly preservation, even if they escaped the ravening maw of the arctic bear or wolf.

The arrival of Lieutenant Pim is the climax of the interest of this memorable expedition. It is well known how all the ships were abandoned in the ice by a decision of Sir Edward Belcher, which has since been seriously questioned, and how the united crews made their way over the ice to Baffin Sea and Greenland, and thence got home in safety; and how Collinson, who was left behind, turned up afterwards. It is also known how the "Resolute" was picked up by the American whaler, having drifted out by herself into navigable seas, bought by the American Government, and gracefully presented, through Captain Hartstein, U.S.N., to her Majesty Queen Victoria, in spick-and-span order, with all her fittings complete, even her little nautical elegancies being carefully and delicately replaced. The "Resolute" is a sacred ship-as it appears to us, rescued even providentially-even as her crew providentially rescued the discoverers of the North-west Passage. If we might, we would have a new Crystal Palace built over her, and keep her so for the gaze of the million, as an enduring and characteristic memorial of Britain's peculiar heroism, as well as a monument of the great discovery.

America looked upon Franklin as belonging to herself no less than to the mother country, and sent out expeditions in search of him. The last and most interesting of these was that commanded by Dr. Kane, which explored up the east coast of Green

VOL. LXXXI.

land, and the stupendous glacier of Humboldt, beyond the 80th degree of latitude. The plan of the expedition was founded, according to Dr. Kane, (n five principles: firstly, Terra firma as the basis of operations, avoiding the capriciousness of ice-travel; secondly, A due northern line, which would soonest lead to the open sea, should such exist; thirdly, The benefit of the fanlike abutment of land on the south face of Greenland, to check the ice in the course of its equatorial drift, thus obviating Parry's great drawback in his attempts to reach the Pole; fourthly, Animal life to sustain travelling parties; and, fifthly, The cooperation of the Esquimaux, whose settlements had been found in a very high latitude. Dr. Kane had got together, as necessary to the overland journeys, a large pack of hounds, or rather harness-dogs. They were a plague to him at first, a perpetual anxiety afterwards, but their services a great assistance in the end.

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The bother with these wretched dogs! worse than a street of Constantinople emptied upon our decks; the unruly thieving wild-beast pack! Not a bear's paw, or an Esquimaux's cranium, or any specimen whatever, can leave your hands for a moment without their making a rush at it, and, after a yelping scramble, swallowing it at a gulp. I have seen them attempt a whole feather-bed; and here, this very morning, one of my Harsuk brutes has eaten up two entire birds' nests, which I had just before gathered from the rocks; feathers, filth, pebbles, and moss-a peckful at the least. One was a perfect specimen of the nest of the tridactyl, the other of the big burgomaster. When we reach a floe, or crag, or temporary harbour, they start out in a body, neither voice nor lash restraining them, and scamper off like a drove of hogs in an Illinois oak-opening. hind at Fog Inlet, and we had to send Two of our largest left themselves beoff a boat-party to-day to their rescue. It cost a pull through ice and water of about eight miles before they found the recreants, fat and saucy, beside the carcass of the dead narwhal. After more than an hour spent in attempts to catch them, one was tied and brought on board, but the other suicidal scamp had to be left to his fate."

25

On the coasting voyage they encountered a storm which tore the

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