ring's Straits, a reward of 20,000l. having been promised as far back as 1745 to the first person who should accomplish it, and in 1818 it was determined to send out two combined expeditions with a view to the discovery of the long-wished-for passage. The one of these, under Lieutenant Parry afterwards the famous Arctic navigator Sir Edward Parry was to proceed with the two ships Hecla and Griper through Baffin's Bay, and to endeavor to reach Behring's Straits by any practicable channel that he found to the west; the other, and by far the most arduous of the two, which was placed under the command of Lieutenant Franklin, was a land expedition of so perilous a nature that every member of it was brought within a hair's breadth of destruction after privations and sufferings in which many of them lost their lives. His orders were to proceed to Hudson's Bay, and to penetrate the territories of the Hudson Bay Company as far as the Coppermine River, and, after getting all the information and supplies that he could obtain at the Company's station, to endeavor to ascertain where that river fell into the Arctic Sea, and then to survey the coast to the eastward, where it was thought he might fall in with Parry, who would be prosecuting his search for the passage towards the west with his two ships. The expedition was admirably composed; it had Franklin for a leader, and he had under him Dr. Richardson, George Back, and Robert Hood, of whom the two first afterwards made names for themselves, while the last, who was a most promising young officer, met with a tragical fate. In addition to these there was John Hepburn, a man-of-war sailor, to whose simple devotion to his chief and to his duty the party greatly owed their escape from the destruction with which they were threatened. The expedition arrived at York Factory, in Hudson's Bay, at the end of June, and after a short time spent in making preparations, in which they received every assistance from the Company's officials, it started on its inland journey. It was not, however, till the third summer after leaving York Factory, and after passing two dreary winters with insufficient food and scanty means of protection against the cold, that they reached the Coppermine River, and finally launched the boats they had dragged with them on the Arctic Ocean; but space will not allow us to follow their laborious march, for full as this was of hardships and difficulties, only overcome by the determination of a leader cheerfully seconded by those under him, they sink to insignificance when compared with those met with on the return journey. After ascertaining and fixing the posi tion of the mouth of the Coppermine, Franklin at once set about the execution of his orders to examine the coast to the eastward of it, which was a work of great difficulty and extreme risk. The "boats" with which he had to prosecute it were only the canoes used by the Hudson Bay Company on the rivers in the fur trade with the Indians, and with these frail barks, little adapted to ocean navigation, and constantly threatened with destruction from the ice and from the sea with which they were not fitted to contend, he proceeded along a rocky shore for above six hundred miles before, find. ing no signs of Parry, he reluctantly resolved to abandon further search and to return. It was well that he did so; for, had he persisted, it is unlikely that any of the party would have escaped with their lives, as their provisions were already so nearly exhausted that it would be difficult to reach a station where supplies could be obtained unless they took a course where they might fall in with hunting Indians or might themselves kill some game. Franklin therefore decided, instead of going back by the Coppermine, to attempt a direct route to Fort Enterprise, where the last winter was passed, which, as well as being much shorter, would, it was hoped, lead through the Indian hunting grounds. The party left Point Turnagain, the most eastern point it had reached, on the 22nd of August on its return journey, prepared, no doubt, for privations and hardships, but little anticipating the extent of the sufferings in reserve for them. To those who are unacquainted with Franklin's own simple but more detailed narrative of the expedition, Captain Markham's account will convey a vivid picture of what those sufferings were. They will learn how the whole party, after keeping themselves alive on pieces of old shoeleather and rock lichen, were reduced to the very verge of starvation when saved by the arrival of relief obtained by the energy and determination of Back, afterwards famous in Arctic exploration; how the instinct of self-preservation had degraded one of the number- a Canadian voyager-to resort to murder and cannibalism, while the excess of suffering called forth the noblest qualities of others, who, at the imminent risk of their own lives, stayed behind with their weaker comrades who were too feeble to walk, and how when all these had dropped off only two survivors out of a rear party of eight dragged themselves forward and joined those in advance, only to find them incapable of moving and doomed to certain death unless relieved within a very few days. When that almost despaired of relief arrived, of a total of twenty persons, consisting of fifteen Canadians and five English, eleven had already perished, but, contrary to what might have been expected, it was the former who succumbed under the hardships and rigor of a climate to which they were accustomed, no less than ten of them having sunk under the privations which all the British survived, with the exception of poor Hood, who had been foully murdered. On his arrival in England in the autumn of 1822, Franklin was at once promoted to the rank of captain. He had shown himself possessed of every qualification for a great leader of exploring expeditions; the courage and resolution with which he faced every difficulty acquired for him the confidence of his followers, while his sympathy and attention to their wants attached them to him by an affectionate devotion, and the deeply religious character which made him accept with cheerful resignation every hardship that came in the way of duty was an example not lost upon those about him. Consequently, when the government determined to send out another expedition, it was a matter of course that the command of it should be offered to Captain Franklin, who, equally as a matter of course, undeterred by the recollection of the hardships of his last journey, did not hesitate a moment in accepting it, and his former companions, Dr. Richardson and Lieutenant Back, sharing the spirit of their late commander, at once volunteered to take part in it. survey the coast to the eastward as far as the Coppermine, and the other should push to the west in the hopes of meeting Beechey. The descent of the Mackenzie was accomplished without much difficulty in boats, built in England under Franklin's superintendence, adapted to river navigation, and at the same time far better suited to the work required when the sea was reached than the wretched canoes to which he had to trust on his last expedition. With these, according to his instructions, he proceeded to survey the coast to the west till his provisions got so low as to oblige him to turn back at a point which he named Cape Beechey, and it was afterwards found that a boat despatched by Captain Beechey from the opposite direction had penetrated within one hundred and sixty miles of it. On the 21st of September his party safely reached Fort Franklin, where the previous winter had been passed, after travelling two thousand and fifty nautical miles since leaving it in the spring, and there they met Dr. Richardson, who had made an equally successful expedition to the east of the Mackenzie, so that in the course of Franklin's two great land expeditions the whole northern coast of the American continent between Point Turnagain and Behring's Straits had been traced for the first time with the exception of the one small gap of one hundred and sixty miles. With Franklin's arrival in England in 1827 his Arctic explorations were closed for many years; but he was not long allowed to remain idle, as in about two years he was appointed to the command of the Rainbow frigate for service in the Mediterranean, where he was soon selected for a duty on which it was essential to have an officer whose judgment and discretion could be relied upon. The battle of Navarino, fought two years before, had been followed by the recognition of the independence of Greece, This expedition, like the last, was to but no sooner had the Greeks got rid of proceed by land to the examination of the the Turks than they split into hostile facunknown northern coast of America, and, tions threatening civil war and universal like it also, it was combined with expedi- anarchy. Nowhere was the danger greater tions sent by sea. Parry with two ships than at Patras, the most important trading was to renew his attempt to effect the town of Greece, situated at the entrance north-west passage from Baffin's Bay, and of the Gulf of Corinth and inhabited by Captain Beechey, in the Blossom, was to many Ionians entitled to British protecfollow the coast eastward as far as he tion, who were menaced on the one side could penetrate from Behring's Straits; by pillage by Palikaris and wild Roumewhile Franklin was to descend the Mac-liotes eager to attack them, while their kenzie River to the sea, where his party only defenders were a body of scarcely was to divide, so that one-half of it should less wild irregular troops in the service of the government, who did not scruple to extort arbitrary exactions from the helpless merchants and other inhabitants. To Patras accordingly Franklin was sent for the purpose of affording them the requisite protection, of preventing the piracy that prevailed, and with orders to concert with the commanders of the ships of war of our French and Russian allies in endeavoring to avert collisions between the rival factions while abstaining from taking part with either; and, although he was loyally seconded by his French colleague, the tricky proceedings of the Russians rendered his task a difficult one, but he accomplished it successfully, earning the warm gratitude of the inhabitants and receiving from the new king the Order of the Redeemer in recognition of his services. Franklin's next employment was in a civil capacity. In 1836 he accepted the lieutenant-governorship of Tasmania, or rather of Van Diemen's Land, as it was then called, but he did not on that account intend to abandon the profession to which he was devoted, and he expressly stipulated that, in the event of a war breaking out, he should be free to resign his governorship. Tasmania was at that time a penal colony, of which nearly one-half of the population either were or had been convicts, and Sir John Franklin's position was by no means an easy one. He succeeded a predecessor under whose able administration immense progress had been made, and who had brought the country from the state of lawlessness and bushranging in which he found it to a condition of comparative security; but he had not done so without the creation of a party bitterly hostile to him among many of the best and most influential settlers, and it was obvious that one of the first objects of a new governor must be to reconcile, if possible, the rival parties. In his attempts to effect this Franklin got little assistance from those below him. The highest posts in the government were occupied by men who, although mostly able and efficient public servants, had been appointed by the late governor, and were so devoted to him and to his system as to view with aversion the slightest departure from it, and they were more disposed to thwart than to assist Franklin in his wish to conciliate the discontented settlers and in his attempts to introduce the changes and reforms that he saw to be requisite. Serious misunderstandings with one of his principal subordinates at length arose and troubled the last years of his administration, and the Colonial Office having espoused the cause of his opponent and inflicted on him a censure he was conscious of not deserving, he left the colony under a deep sense of injustice, but rewarded by the demonstrations of regret with which his departure was witnessed by those over whom he had ruled for above six years, and whose affections he had won by the interest he had ever shown in their welldoing. How deep and lasting was the regard with which he had inspired them was afterwards seen when Lady Franklin, who was organizing at her own expense a search expedition after her missing husband, received a handsome contribution from his late "subjects" in aid of it. Shortly after Sir J. Franklin's return to England it was determined to send out a fresh Arctic expedition, and, as the senior of all living Arctic explorers, he at once put in his claim to the command of it, and when this was admitted by the Admiralty the proof of the esteem in which he was held by his own profession was to him more than a compensation for any disapproval of the Colonial Office. He was in his sixtieth year, but if he had been thirty he could not have entered with more enthusiastic ardor into an enterprise of which no one better knew all the difficulties and risks. Everything was done to make the expedition as complete as possible: the Erebus and Terror, recently returned from Sir James Ross's Antarctic expedition, were again fitted for battling with the ice; a splendid set of officers and men, one hundred and thirty-four in all, were carefully selected, Captain Crozier, in the Erebus, being appointed second in command of the expedition, and Captain Fitzjames second in command of the Terror, in which Sir John flew his pennant. Leaving England on the 19th of May, 1845, with orders to proceed up Lancas ter Sound, and to take the most direct line they could find to Behring's Straits, they were at first accompanied by a transport, which, after filling up their stores and provisions off the coast of Greenland, parted from them on the 10th of July, and brought home the last communications ever received from the ill-fated party, all of whom were at that time in the highest spirits, looking forward with confidence to a speedy and triumphant accomplishment of their task, and the letters sent by Captain Fitzjames to his friends by this opportunity show how quickly Franklin had won the esteem and affection of his followers. Sir John [he wrote] is delightful, active and energetic, and evidently even now persevering. What he has been we all know, and I think it will turn out that he is in no ways altered. Again : Sir John is full of life and energy, with good judgment, and of all men the most fitted for the command of an enterprise requiring sound sense and great perseverance. I have learnt much from him, and consider myself most fortunate in being with such a man. In 1847, when two years had passed without tidings of the expedition, fears began to be entertained that it might be imprisoned in the ice, and relief expeditions were organized both by the government and by Lady Franklin, who offered besides large rewards to any one who would bring news of the missing party, but it was not till the autumn of 1850 that the first traces of them were discovered by Captain Ommanney at Beechey Island, where they had passed their first winter, that of 1845-46, as appeared from the dates of the inscriptions on the tombstones that had been placed over three graves. But most strangely, in spite of the most minute search, no written record could be found nor anything to indicate the course they were likely to take; and thus nothing more was learnt till three years later, when Dr. Rae, who had been sent by the Hudson Bay Company to explore the north-eastern coast of America, fell in with some Eskimos, who told him that some years before a party of white men dragging a boat had perished when endeavoring to make their way up the Great Fish River, and a few silver spoons and other small articles found among these Eskimos proved only too conclusively that the party of white men were the remnant of the Franklin expedition. The government came to the conclusion that they would not be justified in risking further lives in a search for those of whom it was scarcely possible that one could remain alive; but others were not to be so easily deterred from making another effort. Franklin's noble-minded wife had already, from her own resources, fitted out two ships which had taken part in the search, and she now determined to send a third. With the help of some private subscriptions she purchased and fitted out the small steam yacht Fox, of which the command was given to Captain McClintock, the best qualified officer that could possibly have been selected, and it was by her devoted resolution that the mystery of the fate of the missing expedition was at last cleared up; and it was through her also that it became known that her husband had the glory of being the first to ascer tain beyond doubt the existence of the long-sought-for north-west passage, although the discovery was not completed till within a very few days of the close of the life which he had devoted to its pursuit. The Fox left Aberdeen on the Ist of July, 1857, and during her second winter in the ice a party sent by McClintock discovered the only record of the Franklin expedition that has ever been found which, meagre as are its contents, coupled with the information obtained from the Eski mos, enables us to trace its course from the first to the time when the last survivors perished. This paper had been deposited in June, 1847 (eleven years before), by Lieutenant Graham Gore, one of Franklin's officers, who had been sent from the ships, and who penetrated far enough to complete the discovery of the missing link of the north-west passage, and, as left by him, it merely stated that the Erebus and Terror were wintering in the ice in lat. 70.5 and long. 98.23 west, having wintered the preceding year at Beechey Island, after as cending the Wellington Channel, and returning by the west side of Cornwallis Island; that all was well with Sir John Franklin in command of the expedition. Such was the paper as originally deposited by Graham Gore, but when found by McClintock it told a very different and a despairing tale, and the "all was well" of Graham Gore stood in bitter contrast with what was unfolded by an addition of a year's later date, written round the margin and signed by Captains Crozier and Fitzjames. The ships had continued inextricably fixed in the ice, while the provisions got so low that the only hope for the crews lay in an attempt to reach the American continent on foot, and to make their way up the Great Fish River to the stations of the Hudson Bay Company. Sir John Franklin had died on the 11th of June, 1847, only a very few days after the return of Graham Gore, when the approaching moment for the probable break-up of the ice must have raised in all the hopes of a successful issue; but the ice did not break 586 up at all that summer, and another winter came upon them with starvation staring them in the face. The marginal addition on Graham Gore's paper further stated that the Erebus and Terror, which had been beset since the 12th of September, 1846, were abandoned on the 22nd of April, 1848; that the deaths up to that date had been twenty-four, of which not less than nine were officers, and that the rest, amounting to one hundred and five, were starting for the Fish River. Fortunate was Franklin and those who, like him, had died before the retreat commenced; they at least were spared the prolonged sufferings of their stronger comrades, of which heart-rending traces were found by McClintock, and which the Eskimos described. In one place on the route to the Fish River a boat was found with two skeletons with cocked guns lying beside them, in others single skeletons, all of them evidently of men who had been unable to struggle further with the retreat ing party, and fully confirming what was said by the Eskimos, that a party of white men who seemed very weak had been seen dragging a boat, and that "as they went along they one by one dropped down and died." Such was the fate of the expedition and of the gallant leader, whose life through out his career has been faithfully traced by Captain Markham in a volume which will be popular wherever books of daring and adventure are sought for, and still more so among those to whom it is a pleasure to find among our great explorers a character in which undaunted resolution and daring were linked to all the gentler and most lovable qualities of which our nature is susceptible. Franklin's great characteristic was his thoughtfulness for others and his complete absence of all thought for himself; deeply religious, his duty to God and man was at all times his sole and only guide; and, when he had once decided what that duty was, no earthly consideration could turn him a hair's breadth from it. Of a singularly simple and affectionate nature, identifying himself with the interests and welfare of those over whom he was placed, he won their love in an extraordinary degree, and, although of highly sensitive feelings, he was never known to be provoked to use a harsh or hasty word; and with such a combination of kindliness and resolution, Captain Fitzjames might well describe him as "of all men the most fitted" to command an expedition such as that in which they both lost their lives. AUNT ANNE. Copyright, 1892, by Harper & Brothers. CHAPTER XIX. AUNT ANNE went slowly along Portman Square. She felt, and it was a cruel moment to do so, that she was growing very old. Her feet almost gave way beneath her; her hands had barely strength to hold her cloak together over her chest. There was a little cold breeze passing by; as it swept over her face she realized that she was half stunned and sad and sick at heart. But she dragged on, step by step, stopping once, to hold by the iron railings of a house, before she could find strength enough to turn into a side street. "I won't believe it," she said; "it was not for the money. He could not have known; his uncle would not have told him-it is not likely that he would have betrayed the confidence of a client." And then she remembered what Sir William had said about the debt to the landlady in the Gray's Inn Road and to the mother in the country. Of course that meant Liphook. It gave her a world of comfort, had lifted a terrible dread from her heart, so that, even in spite of the insults of the last hour, she felt that her morning visit had not been wholly thrown away. She had not the faculty of looking forward very far, and it did not occur to her as yet that, by revealing her marriage, she had ruined her prospects with her cousin. It was the insults that had enraged her; the going back to Witley, the day's dinner, and the very near future that perplexed her. A month, even a week, hence might take care of itself, provided to-day were made easy; it had always been so with her. She was bewildered, staggered, for want of money; she had just two shillings in Florence and Walter were the world. still away; she could think of no one of whom to borrow. She came to a confectioner's shop, and looked at it hesitat ingly, for she was tired and exhausted. Even though Alfred Wimple waited at the other end, mercilessly ready to count the coins with which she returned, she felt that she must buy a few minutes' rest for herself. She wanted to sit down and think. She tottered into the shop, and having asked for a cup of tea, waited for it, with a sigh of relief, in a dark corner. But she was too much stupefied and beaten to think clearly. When the tea came, hot • Aunt Anne. A Novel. By Mrs. W. K. Clifford, author of "Love Letters of a Worldly Woman," etc. Post 8vo, cloth, ornamental, $1.25. Published by Harper & Brothers, New York. |