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grounds at this time were covered with snow, but the lower lands were mostly bare.

The unavoidable conclusion of our sea voyage while still at some distance from the Coppermine River was contemplated by me, and I believe by every individual of the party, with great regret. I had hoped, that by conveying the boats and stores up the Coppermine River beyond the range of the Eskimos we could deposit them in a place of safety to be available for a voyage to Wollaston Land next summer. But abandoned as they must now be on the coast, we could not expect that they would escape the searches of the hunting parties who would follow up our foot-marks, and who were certain to break up the boats to obtain their copper fastenings. The unusual tardiness of the spring, and our unexpected delay on Methy Portage for want of horses, caused our arrival on the Arctic coast to be considerably later than I had in secret anticipated, though it differed little from the date I had thought it prudent to mention when asked to fix a probable time. Even a few days, so unimportant in a year's voyage elswhere, are of vital consequence in a boat navigation to the eastward of Cape Parry, where six weeks of summer is all that can be reckoned upon. Short, however, as the summer proved to be, neither that nor our tardy commencement of the sea voyage would have prevented me from coasting the south shore of Wollaston Land, and examining it carefully, could I have reached it, for the distance to be performed would have been but little increased by doing so. The sole hinderance to my crossing Dolphin and Union Straits was the impracticable condition of the close packed drift ice. In wider seas, where fields and large floes exist, these offer a pretty safe retreat for a boat party in times of pressure, and progress may be made by dragging light boats like ours over them: but the ice that obstructed our way was composed of hummocky pieces, of irregular shape, and consequently ready to revolve if carelessly loaded or trod upon. At certain times of the tide, moreover, they were hustled to and fro with much force.

As only small packs of ice and few in number were seen off the Coppermine by Sir John Franklin in 1820, by myself in 1826, and by Dease and Simpson in 1836 and 1837, being four several summers, the sight of the sea entirely covered so late in August was wholly unexpected, and I attributed so untoward an event to the northwest winds having driven the ice down from the

north in the first instance, and to the easterly gales, which afterward set in, pressing it into that bight of Coronation Gulf; but Mr. Rae's experience in the summer of 1849 shows that in unfavorable seasons, the boat navigation is closed for the entire summer, and we learned from a party of Eskimos whom we met in Back's Inlet, as I shall have occasion to mention hereafter, that the pressure of the ice on the coast this summer was relieved only for a very short time.

The state of the straits produced the melancholy conviction that a party, even though provided with boats, might be detained on Wollaston Land, and unable to cross to the main; but yet at that time my apprehensions for the safety of the missing ships were less excited than they have been since. For then their absence had not been extended much beyond the time that their provisions were calculated to last: and, being ignorant of Sir James C. Ross having been arrested in Barrow Straits, I hoped that the accumulation of ice which annoyed us might be the result of a clearance of the northern channels, and that the two ship expeditions might have happily met at the very time that we were no longer able to keep the sea. It is now known that the season was equally unfavorable throughout the Arctic seas north of America.

The idea of a cycle of good and bad seasons has often been mooted by meteorologists, and has frequently recurred to my thoughts when endeavoring to find a reason for the ease with which at some periods of Arctic discovery navigators were able to penetrate early in the summer into sounds which subsequent adventurers could not approach, and to connect such facts with the fate of the Discovery ships. But neither the periods assigned, nor the facts adduced to prove them by different writers, have been presented in such a shape as to carry conviction with them, until very recently. Mr. Glaisher, in a paper published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1850, has shown, from eighty years' observations in London and at Greenwich, that groups of warm years alternate with groups of cold ones, in such a way as to render it most probable that the mean annual tem. peratures rise and fall in a series of elliptical curves, which correspond to periods of about fourteen years; though local or casual disturbing forces cause the means of particular years to rise above the curve or fall below it.

The same laws doubtless operate in North America, producing

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a similar gradual increase and subsequent decrease of mean heat, in a series of years, though the summits of the curves are not likely to be coincident with, and are very probably opposed to those of Europe; since the atmospherical currents from the south, which for a period raise the annual temperature of England, must be counterbalanced by currents from the north on other meridians. The annual heat has been diminishing in London ever since 1844, according to Mr. Glaisher's diagram, and will reach its minimum in 1851.

It can be stated only as a conjecture, though by no means an improbable one, that Sir John Franklin entered Lancaster Sound at the close of a group of warm years when the ice was in the most favorable condition of diminution, and that since then the annual heat has attained its minimum, probably in 1847 or 1848, and may now be increasing again. At all events, it is conceivable that, having pushed on boldly in one of the last of the favorable years of the cycle, the ice, produced in the unfavorable ones which followed, has shut him in, and been found insurmountable; but there remains the hope that if this be the period of the mean heat in that quarter, the zealous and enterprising officers now on his track, will not encounter obstructions equal to those which prevented their skillful and no less enterprising and zealous predecessor in the search, from carrying his ships beyond Cape Leopold.

With respect to the maintenance of a party detained on the islands north of Coronation Gulf, reindeer and musk-oxen may be procured by skillful hunters; but unless the chase were duly organized, and only the most expert marksmen and good deer stalkers suffered to go out, there would be a danger of the animals migrating from feeding grounds on which they were much disturbed. With nets a large quantity of salmon and other fish might be captured in Dolphin and Union Straits, and doubtless also in the various channels separating the islands; with percussion guns we had no difficulty in killing seals, and we might, had we chosen, have slain hundreds, though, as they dive at the flash, the chance of shooting them with a ship's musket having an ordinary lock, would be greatly diminished. Swans, snow geese, brent geese, eiders, king ducks, cacawees, and several other waterfowl, breed in immense numbers on the islands and the old ones when moulting, and the young before they are fledged, fall

an easy prey to a swift runner, and still more surely to a party hemming them in and cutting off their retreat.

To people acquainted with the Eskimo methods of building ice and snow houses, shelter may be raised on the bleakest coast, except in the autumn months; but, unless blubber were used as fuel, there would be a difficulty in maintaining fire for cooking by any one who has not the genius for turning every thing to account which Mr. Rae evinced, when he boldly adventured on wintering on a coast bearing the ominous appellation of Repulse Bay, with no other fuel than the Andromeda tetragona-an interesting and beautiful herb in the eye of a botanist, but giving no promise to an ordinary observer that it could supply warmth to a large party during a long Arctic winter. To apply it, or any of the other polar plants, to such a purpose, a large quantity must be stored up near the winter station before the snow falls.

I have thought it right to throw these few observations together in this place, that a reader unacquainted with the natural resources of the country, may judge of the probability of the whole or part of the crews of the Erebus and Terror maintaining themselves there, supposing the ships to have been wrecked. Of course, as long as the vessels remained, they would afford shelter and fuel; but the other contingencies would come into consideration, if parties went off in various directions in quest of food. One great purpose of the expedition which I conducted along the coast, was to afford relief to such detached parties, or to the entire crews, had they directed their way to the continent, and our researches proved at least that none of the party, having gained that coast, were dragging out a miserable existence among the Eskimos, without the means of repairing to the fur posts. In the following summer of 1849, Mr. Rae ascertained that the Eskimo inhabitants of Wollaston Land had seen neither the ships nor white men. The knowledge of these facts had an influence with the Admiralty in concentrating the future search in the vicinity of Melville Island; Captain Collinson and Commander Pullen being directed to approach its coasts from the westward, while Captain Austen, and the squadron of hardy navigators in his wake, were to trace the Discovery ships from the eastward. A more ample and noble effort to rescue a lost party was never made by any nation, and it has been humanely seconded from the United States of America. May God bless their endeavors!

CHAPTER X.

Preparing for the March.-Sleep in Back's Inlet.-Eskimo Village.-Eskimos Ferry the Party across Rae River.-Basaltic Cliffs.-Cross Richardson's River.March along the Banks of the Coppermine.-Geese.-First Clump of Trees.— Musk-oxen.-Copper Ores and Native Copper.-Kendall River.-Make a Raft -Fog.-Pass a Night on a Naked Rock without Fuel.-Fine Clump of Spruce Firs.-Dismal Lakes.-Indians.-Dease River.-Fort Confidence.-Send off Dispatches and Letters.

On the 1st and 2d of September, we had northerly and northeast winds, with a low temperature, sleet, snow, and occasional fogs. We were all employed in preparing the packages for the march, consisting of thirteen days' provision of pemican, cooking utensils, bedding, snow-shoes, astronomical instruments, books, ammunition, fowling-pieces, portable boat, nets, lines, and a parcel of dried plants. These were distributed by lot, each load being calculated to weigh about sixty or seventy pounds. Mr. Rae voluntarily resolved to transport a package nearly equal to the men's in weight; but, distrusting my own powers of march, I made no attempt at carrying such a load, as I had done on a former voyage, and restricted myself to a fowling-piece, ammunition, a few books, and other things which I thrust into my pockets. Six pieces of pemican were buried under a limestone cliff, together with a boat's magazine full of powder. The tents were left standing near the boats, and a few cooking utensils and hatchets deposited in them for the use of the Eskimos.

After an early breakfast on the morning of Sunday, the 3d of September, we read prayers, and then set out at six o'clock, At first we pursued a straight course for the bottom of Back's Inlet, distant about twelve geographical miles; but finding that we were led over the shoulder of a range of hills on which the snow was deep, we held more to the eastward, through an uneven swampy country, where we saw many deer feeding; but made no attempt to pursue them.

The men, with a few exceptions, walked badly, particularly the two senior seamen, and after we had gone a few miles, were glad to lighten their loads by leaving their carbines behind. At half