: Adrift in the Arctic Ice Pack from the history of the first U.S. Grinnell Expedition in search of Sir John Franklin by Kane Elisha Kent Kephart Horace Editor - Arctic regions; Franklin John 1786-1847; Grinnell Expedition (1st : 1850-1851)

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ery of like vestiges on Beechy Island, just on the track of a party moving in either direction between it and the channel: all these speak of a land party from Franklin's squadron.

Our commander resolved to press onward along the eastern shore of Wellington Channel. We were under weigh in the early morning of the 26th, and working along with our consort toward Beechy--I drop the "Island," for it is more strictly a peninsula or a promontory of limestone, as high and abrupt as that at Cape Riley, connected with what we call the main by a low isthmus. Still further on we passed Cape Spencer; then a fine bluff point, called by Parry Point Innes; and further on again, the trend being to the east of north, we saw the low tongue, Cape Bowden. Parry merely sighted these points from a distance, so that the shore line has never been traced. I sketched it myself with some care; but the running survey of this celebrated explorer had left nothing to alter. To the north of Cape Innes, though the coast retains the same geognostical character, the bluff promontories subside into low hills, between which the beach, composed of coarse silicious limestone, sweeps in long curvilinear terraces. Measuring some of these rudely afterward, I found that the elevation of the highest plateau did not exceed forty feet.

Captain Penny had occupied the time more profitably. In company with Dr. Goodsir, an enthusiastic explorer and highly educated gentleman, whose brother was an assistant surgeon on board the missing vessels, he had been examining the shore. On the ridge of limestone, between Cape Spencer and Point Innes, they had come across additional proofs that Sir John's party had been here--very important these proofs as extending the line along the shore over which the party must have moved from Cape Riley.

For myself, looking only at the facts, and carefully discarding every deduction that might be prompted by sympathy rather than reason, my journal reminds me that I did not see in these signs the evidence of a lost party. The party was evidently in motion; but it might be that it was a detachment, engaged in making observations, or in exploring with a view to the operations of the spring, while the ships were locked in winter quarters at Cape Riley or Beechy, which had returned on board before the opening of the ice.

I may add, as not without some bearing on the fortunes of this party, whatever may have been its condition or purposes, that the vacant water-spaces around us at this time were teeming with animal life. After passing Beechy, we saw seal disporting in great flocks, rising out of the water as high as their middle, like boys in swimming; the white whale, the first we had seen, to the extent of thirty-eight separate shoals; the narwhal, or sea-unicorn; and, finally, that marine pachyderm, the tusky walrus. These last were always crowded on small tongues of ice, whose purity they marred not a little--grim-looking monsters, reminding me of the stage hobgoblins, something venerable and semi-Egyptian withal. We passed so close as to have several shots at them. They invariably rose after plunging, and looked snortingly around, as if to make fight. Polar bears were numerous beyond our previous experience, and the Arctic fox and hare abounded. If we add to these the crowding tenants of the air, the Brent goose, which now came in great cunoid flocks from the north and north by east, the loons, the mollemokes, and the divers, we may form an estimate of the means of human subsistence in these seas.

The first, or that most to the southward, is nearest to the front in the accompanying sketch. Its inscription, cut in by a chisel, ran thus;

"Sacred

to the

memory

W. Braine, R. M.,

Died April 3d, 1846,

aged 32 years.

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