to seek the lost crews of the Erebus and
Terror, there have died no more than by disease
or casualty would have died had they been
during the same length of time living quietly
in London. There has been lost, by accidental
death, only a single officer, Lieutenant Bellot.
All England grieved for him; and by the
common mourning for his death England and
France were knit in closer brotherhood. We
have lost several vessels, chiefly because we
sent out five under a commander who has
since proclaimed in a book that he was unable
to apply himself to work in the true Arctic
temper. But, even for the lost wood and iron
we have compensation. One of the deserted
ships, the Resolute, drifted to sea, and, having
become an American prize, gave to the
United States an opportunity of doing a
right deed so thoroughly, and with so gallant
a courtesy, that, at a time when vexed topics
were chafing the two brother nations against
one another, the ship became the means of
showing both how truly they are friends.
The very accidents of Arctic enterprise have
thus tended to promote peace on earth as
surely as its daily effort strengthens goodwill
among men.

We need say no more, then, of the dread of
peril. A thousand sailors have gone out in
search of Franklin, and have come home again.
But, they had narrow escapes. Truly, they had.
They went out to face peril, and they faced
it. Between narrow escape and no escape
there is all the difference that there is
between life and death. Surely we are not to be
scared, by escapes from danger. Probably,
there is no man forty years of age who has
not, at least five or six times in his life, narrowly
escaped being killed. The instinct of
self-preservation, with the help of his five
wits, has brought him through them all.
Take that instinct away, and there is as
much peril of death to the landsman, from
the omnibuses in Cheapside, as to the seaman
from the floes in Barrow's Strait. Where
the peril is more certain, the guard is the
more constant, — there is more presence of
mind; and so it is that great risks often
prove less dangerous than little risks. And
all this while we talk of death as if it were
extinction; as if Christian men might
reasonably turn back through fear of being
overtaken by it, while engaged in the
performance of their duty!

The peril talked about is not, therefore,
too great; and, were it greater, should not
daunt us if it be a duty to complete— as we
now can— the search for Franklin. That this
is a duty we, for our own parts, cannot
hesitate to think. When Franklin and his
companions had been five years from England
a body of about forty Europeans, who
must have been part of their little band— the
ships then lost— were seen by Esquimaux
near the north shore of King William's
Land, travelling south. They were then
making for the continent of America. That
this or another party reached land near
the mouth of Back (or the Great Fish)
River, relics brought home by Dr. Rae— if
we reject Esquimaux testimony— are sufficient
evidence. Captain M'Clure gives some
slight evidence of Esquimaux, leading us to
imagine that another party from the ships
landed, perhaps, on the mainland at Point
Warren, farther west. He saw an old, flat
brass button hanging from the ear of a chief,
who said that it was taken from a white man
killed by one of his tribe. The white man
had strayed from a party which, having
landed at Port Warren, built a house there,
and went afterwards inland. The Esquimaux,
who supplied Dr. Rae with information, said,
— as we need hardly remind any one,— that
thirty white bodies had been found dead on
the mainland at the mouth of Back River,
and five on Montreal Island; that there
were stores also; and that the men had fed
upon each other before they died. "None of
the Esquimaux with whom I conversed,"
said Dr. Rae, "had seen the whites, nor had
they ever been at the place where the bodies
were found, but had their information from
those who had been there, and who had seen
the party when travelling." Dr. Rae's interpreter
became anxious to join his brethren,
and did afterwards escape to them.
Mr. Anderson, who was sent out to confirm
Dr. Rae's report, found, on the ground
indicated, so far as he searched it, during a too
hurried visit, more evidence that men belonging
to the lost crews had been there, but no
bodies or graves. He supposed the bodies
to have been covered by drifting sand, on
which Lieutenant Pim observes, "How was
it then the drifting sands did not enshroud
such small articles as pieces of rope, bunting,
a letter-clip, &c. &c., picked up by him?"
And Mr. Pim remarks further, that when he
crossed Melville Island in eighteen hundred
and fifty-three, he found, at Point Nias, the
bones of ptarmigan and other remnants of a
meal left by Sir Edward Parry three-and-thirty
years before. We put no faith in the
drift of sand.

Thomas Mistigan, one of Dr. Rae's exploring
party, came home with the impression
that "perhaps one or two of Sir John's men
may be still alive and among the Esquimaux."
That Sir John Franklin himself
lives, it is too much to hope. That all struggled
to live on anything rather than die by
starvation or suicide, is certain.

That some may be still living, we deliberately
hold to be as likely as that all are dead.
Sir John himself has said in words which
Lieutenant Pim aptly takes as the motto to
An Earnest Appeal to the British Public on
behalf of the Missing Arctic Expedition—
"Where Esquimaux do live out a fair period
of life, it is but reasonable to suppose that
Europeans may subsist and survive for many
years."

Dr. Kane when, in his own day of Arctic