ing the young officer to his destination, and he was compelled to return. On every occasion we have met with the most zealous co-operation from the Russian authorities at Behring's Straits.

Thus, we have exhausted the second series of Voyages in Search.' Such of them as are still in operation must be carried on as part of the third great attempt which is now in progress. The main feature of difference which distinguishes this attempt from former ones is, that the officer commanding the expedition in chief has been directed to make his way up north by Wellington Channel to the open sea spoken of by Captain Penny. Another officer is to make his way to Melville Island; but Sir James Ross and Captain Austin were previously charged with the same duty. We can scarcely hope that Captain Kellett will succeed in reaching a more westerly point than Lieutenant McClintock. This new expedition is composed of the same ships as Captain Austin took out with him on the previous occasion, namely, the Resolute,' Assistance,' and the two screw steamers Pioneer' and Intrepid.' To these the North Star' has been added.

The North Star,' by the latest advices, September 7. 1852, was stationed as depôt-ship at Beechey Island, in the mouth of Wellington Straits. Sir Edward Belcher had gone up Wellington Channel on the previous 15th August. On the same day Captain Kellett had sailed eastward for Melville Island. The despatches brought home the intelligence that the season was what is called an uncommonly 'open' one, or, in other words, that the passages were unusually free from ice. What the result of all these efforts may be, it is not for us to predict; but at least we think public opinion will bear us out in the assertion that the sacred duty of searching for our missing countrymen and their gallant chief has not been loosely performed. For six continuous years the search has been prosecuted with unremitting ardour, and without one answering token which could inspire hope of a successful result.

An idea seems to have arisen that Sir John Franklin has, in effect, passed up Wellington Channel into a northern sea; but it is based upon no firmer grounds that we know of than the fact, that he spent his first winter (1845-46) at the mouth of this strait, and that no traces of him have been found elsewhere. Sir John Franklin was not a man to depart from the letter of his instructions; and we know that those prescribed to him another course; leaving him, no doubt, a discretionary power in face of

impossibilities. To our apprehension, it is not compatible with the orders under which he was acting, or with what we know of his declared intentions, that Sir John Franklin should have advanced up Wellington Straits until he had spent a second season on the ice upon the line of his prescribed route. It is simply inconceivable that he should have pushed on into this hypothetical Polynia without leaving at some spot a record of his movements at Cape Riley or elsewhere. The more he was about to diverge from the tenor of his instructions, the more certain does it seem that he would have left behind some notice of his intention. If any inference can be founded upon this absence of information, it would be that he had departed from Cape Riley upon his appointed path, and had there encountered his fortune, whatever it might be. It is just possible that he may have been hurried up Wellington Channel into the Polynia amongst the ice, or into a great bay, without time for preparation. Every appearance at his first encampment would seem to negative this suggestion. There was no evidence of haste, the expedition departed leisurely and in order. All that can be said is, that this contingency too has been provided for. Sir Edward Belcher has been despatched upon this track-we can only trust that he may meet with more success than should, in reason, be anticipated. The discoveries of Captain Austin and Commander Inglefield would seem to preclude all hope by way of Jones's or Smith's Sounds; although, in any case, we do not believe that Sir John Franklin, had he been driven out of Baffin's Bay at the break-up of the winter season, would quietly, and with favourable gales, have advanced through unexplored passages at the head of Baffin's Bay without communication or memorial. To be sure, he may have been driven out of Lancaster Sound, as Sir James Ross was; and, when in Baffin's Bay, may have been overwhelmed by a sudden calamity, such as the one from which the Enterprise,' the ' Investigator,' and the North Star' narrowly escaped. It is but right that we should here take notice of the decided opinion expressed by Sir John Richardson in the introduction to his recent work (Journal of a Boat Voyage through Rupert's Land'), which is to the effect, that if the ships had been overwhelmed by some sudden calamity in Baffin's Bay, the disciplined and wellappointed crews of Sir John Franklin, with every requisite machinery at their disposal, would have effected their escape in their boats; and that some, at least, of them would have turned up to make no mention of the spars and relics of the wrecks. This naturally brings us to another fact in this sad history,

which has attracted much attention, and which has only added to the previous confusion of conjecture.

On or about the 20th of April, 1851, the brig 'Renovation,' bound from Limerick to Quebec, being then at no great distance from St. John's Light, in Newfoundland, sighted a large iceberg. On this iceberg, which stood about thirty feet out of the water, and was about two miles in length, two abandoned vessels were observed. One was certainly high and dry; the other might have had her keel and bottom in the water, but the ice was a long way outside of her. The larger one of the two appeared to be between 400 and 500 tons burthen; the smaller one somewhat less in size. The large one was lying on her beamends, with nothing standing but her three lower masts and bowsprit; the smaller one was upright, with her three masts, topmasts on end, topsail and lower yards across. The vessels were distinctly made out by the master, the mate, the man at the wheel, and, if we remember right, by others of the crew. The 'Renovation' did not approach the abandoned ships nearer than five or six miles; the reason stated is, that the ship was underbanded at the time, the master ill, and the weather unfavourable. They approached, however, sufficiently close to be quite convinced that no one was on board, and that no boats could be made out. This is their own tale. It should be added, that the Doctor Kneip,' a Mecklenburg brig, which arrived at New York, from Sligo, a fortnight later than the date of this occurrence, and which consequently must have passed over the same region somewhat more to the southward, saw much ice on the banks, also two vessels abandoned and water-logged.' There is uncertainty as to the precise date. The Doctor Kneip' sailed with emigrants from Sligo on the 3rd of April, 1851, and arrived at New York on the 3rd of May.

Opinions have varied as to the value of this information with reference to Sir John Franklin's expedition. In Newfoundland the story is disbelieved: it is there said, that if an iceberg of the magnitude described had passed along their coast from the north, it must have been seen by some of the sailing vessels which were then out in the waters named, or by some of the vessels which at that season are on their way to or from the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Nova Scotia, or New Brunswick; or, finally, by the weekly steamers which run between Liverpool, Halifax, and the States. Captain Penny, a man of great experience in the ice, believes the two appearances seen were what the whalers call 'country ships;' that is, formations upon an iceberg, which are said to bear so great a likeness to real ships as to deceive the most practised eyes. He adds, that to freeze

ships into an iceberg in such a position would require thirty or forty years; whilst, if they had been jammed into floe-ice, the floes would have been broken up by the swell of the ocean long before they had reached Cape Farewell. No iceberg,' writes Captain Penny,' of one-fourth of a mile would reach such a position-it must have been two pieces of icebergs; and the vessel being five miles distant, could not observe the water ' over the detached ice.' As it is our bounden duty, we record those suggestions; but can only add, with all due deference to the superior experience of the author, that the testimony by which the reality of the incident has been supported would be sufficient to prove a fact in any court of justice in Europe.

But admitting that these vessels were seen, as reported, by the Renovation's' people, two grave questions remain - Were they Franklin's ships?-If they were indeed the 'Erebus' and 'Terror,' what inference can we draw from the fact as to the fate of the expedition? Let us presume the first question to be answered in the affirmative-we are still at sea as to the legitimate deductions to be drawn from the admission. The vessels had drifted down through Davis's Straits from Baffin's Bay. Did they come from Lancaster Sound, Jones's Sound, Smith's Sound, or from any point at the east head of Baffin's Bay? At what point were they abandoned by the crews? Are we to suppose that Sir John Franklin had penetrated into the hypothetical Polynia, by Wellington Channel or elsewhere—a great distance in? that then his ships were caught between the field of ice and the iceberg on which they were seen? that he and his companions took to the boats, attained some Spitzbergen near the Pole, where they are now eking out a subsistence, and that meanwhile the iceberg made its way into Baffin's Bay, with the Erebus' and Terror' in its adamantine grasp, through presumed channels at the north of the Parry Islands, and so out by Wellington Strait and Lancaster Sound, or by Jones's Sound, into Baffin's Bay? It should be remarked that Commander Inglefield talks of a northerly current setting up Smith's Sound at the only season of the year when an iceberg of that size would have moved; so that could not have been its path into Baffin's Bay. If the vessels were actually seen, the fact must be accounted for somehow. We frankly own ourselves unable to offer any conjecture of our own upon the matter; nor, after the most careful and anxious consideration of all that has been written and said upon the subject, can we recommend any suggestion that has come to our knowledge as worthy of public attention.

Thus, then, we have attained the limits prescribed to us in a

paper of this description. Our effort has been throughout not so much to offer theories of our own, as to lay before our readers substantial and ascertained facts connected with the Arctic regions. We firmly believe that a man who would read Parry's first voyage so carefully as to master the peculiarities of Arctic navigation and to understand its dangers, and who would then jot down upon a chart the mere outlines of subsequent discoveries in the same quarters, would be in a better position for forming an opinion about the fate of poor Sir John Franklin and his companions than one who had spent much time in reading the most brilliant essays and criticisms upon the same subject. We feel too we feel most deeply — that a great reverence is due to those who have gone out from amongst us into the eternal ice, and to the sorrow of those who bewail their loss as a private and domestic grief. Far be it from us to weave phrases in the presence of such a calamity, or needlessly to harrow up the feelings of friends and relatives by ingenious speculations as to the fate of the missing expedition.

In conclusion, let us hope that we have expressed ourselves in no ambiguous terms upon a subject which has so deeply interested the civilised world. There may have been a certain rashness in despatching Franklin, in 1845, upon his fatal errand. That is a bygone question. We trust that we have heard the last of speculative attempts at a North-west Passage by Barrow's Straits. The efforts in search of Franklin rest upon another foundation; but in our opinion, with the expedition of Sir Edward Belcher, enough has been done. The recent despatch of Commander Inglefield in the 'Phoenix' for Beechey Island, if his instructions confine him to the mere support of Sir E. Belcher's squadron, is intelligible enough, and so of any further expedition to Behring's Straits for the purpose of succouring the ships already engaged in that portion of the Arctic regions. Beyond this let us trust that the authorities at the Admiralty are prepared to act up to the spirit of their own declaration. In the last Arctic Blue-book we find it stated, in reply to an application for service in that quarter, that My Lords' do not contemplate the despatch of any further expeditions. Be it so we accept the promise. We are bound to hold our hands at last lest we involve others in destruction for the sake of those who cannot be benefited by so costly an offering. Next winter will be the ninth winter since the Erebus' and Terror' set sail. That nothing will come from Sir E. Belcher's exertions is what we will not affirm; but certainly, if he does not succeed, it would be madness to repeat the experiment. With regard to this Polynia, which is now the

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