Schwatka's Search: Sledging in the Arctic in Quest of the Franklin Records

Inlet, but saw no traces of white men. Henry and Frank, who had been sent up the coast, were more fortunate. About a mile and a half

uantity of canvas in and around the grave, with coarse stitching through it and the cloth, as though the body had been incased as if for burial at sea. Several gilt buttons were found among the rotting cloth and mould in the bottom of the grave, and a lens, apparently the object-glass of a marine telescope. Upon one of t

D. G. BRITTANN

n the reverse a laure

ICAL PRIZE, ROY

incl

N IRVING. MID-

ble state of preservation. The skull and a few other bones only were found in and near by the grave. They were carefully gathered together, with a few pieces of the cloth and the other articles, to be brought aw

e ponds near the shore nearly all dry; we therefore had little difficulty in completing the search at that time. Among the various articles found was a brush with the name "H. Wilks" cut in the side, a two-gallon stone jug stamped "R. Wheatley, wine and spirit merchant, Greenhithe, Kent," several tin cans, a pickle bottle, and a canvas pulling strap, a sledge harness marked with a stencil plate "T 11," sh

had weathered the storms of more than twenty Arctic winters. It was with much difficulty that I could open it without tearing it, while all stood

expedition, and was in the handwriting of Sir Leopold McClintock. The document was written with a

7, 1

min., long. 98

n's discovery yacht 'Fox', now wintering in Bellot Strait * *

23 min. W., having wintered at Beechy Island, in lat. 74 deg. 43 min. 28 sec. N., long. 91 deg. 39 min. 15 sec.

commanding the exp

and six men left the

h M

AM G

F. DES

as a request in six languages, that if picked up

rgin of this

H APRIL

aving been beset since 12th Sept., 1846. The officers and crews, consisting of 105 souls, under the com

s to the northward, where it had been deposited by the late Commander Gore in June, 1847. Sir James Ross' pillar has not, h

ed on the 7th of Jun

the expedition has

iftee

Captain and S

ES, Captain H.

orrow for Back

of gear for travelling- leaving all that was superfluous strewn about its vicinity. I re- mained

follow the land to t

said by the Esquimau

ave been found betwe

ontain no in

* * * *

abou

M R. H

n charge

of a record left he

he crews of the 'Erebu

information of its

ed for me. As the n

erected here in 1831

e north from the centr

below the

LINTOCK,

* * *

ndicate illegible words, the paper be

nd, and the inference is that Captain McClintock either failed to deposit the record, or that changes in the surface of the ground have brought it to light, and it has either been stolen by natives or washed into the sea. Some of the articles found were strewn along the beach for a long distance on

e ship that sank off Grant Point, showed that there were some stores on board even then, though only a small quantity. It is probable that Lieutenant Irving was the officer in charge of this return party, and that he died after reaching the camp. It is also probable that these people, who, according to the Ookjoolik testimony, drifted with the ship to the island of Grant Point, were also of this party, and, with the sailors' instinct, preferred to stick to the ship to returning to the already famishing

eturned under Lieutenant Irving the sleds could not have been dragged along that line, as the snow would have been off the ground just then, and probably was gone when the large party got so far on their way south, as the testimony of the natives who met them in Washington Bay shows that they moved exceedingly slow by. That there were men on the ship that drifted down Victoria Strait is additional reason for believing that they returned, for Captain Crozier in his record accounts for all the survivo

und, with the edges pointing up, or lying flat and slipping as we stepped upon them and sliding the unwary foot into a crevice that would seemingly wrench it from the body. These are some of the features of a walk on King William Land, and yet we moved about ten miles a day, and made as thorough a search as was possible. All rocky places that looked anything like opened graves or torn-down cairns-in fact, all places where stones of any kind seemed to have been gathered together by human hands-were examined, and by spreading out at such intervals as the nature of the ground indicated, covered the greatest amount of territory. Lieutenant Schwatka

arse red woollen stuff, pieces of blue cloth, broken bottles, and other similar stuff, showing that there had been a permanent camping place h

rk was resumed. Henry and Frank were sent to explore the two points further along the coast, while Lieutenant Schwatka and I searched the vicinity of the camp and about a mile inland. It was a dismal, foggy day, but we derived great

n the way we stopped and took down a cairn that I had seen on the day of our arrival. We found nothing in it, though, the earth beneath it being soft, we dug far down in the hope of finding something to account for its existence, as Toolooah believed, though he was not certain, that

s' and 'Terror', though hidden by intervening hills from those walking along the coast. The next day Frank, Toolooah, and I went with Lieutenant Schwatka to take another look in the vicinity of the cairn, and to see if, with a spy-glass, we could discover any other cairn looking from that hill, but without success. It seemed unfortunate that probably the only cairn left standing on King William Land, built by the hands of white men, sho