Facsimile of the Record Found of Franklin's Expedition

 

About 12 miles from Cape Herschel I found a small cairn built by Hobson's party, and containing a note for me. He had reached this, his extreme point, six days previously, without having seen anything of the wreck, or of natives, but he had found a record—the record so ardently sought for of the Franklin Expedition—at Point Victory, on the N.W. coast of King William's Land [King William Island]. The record is indeed a sad and touching relic of our lost friends . . . In the short space of twelve months how mournful had become the history of Franklin's expedition; how changed from the cheerful "All well" of Graham Gore! The spring of 1847 found them within 90 miles of the known sea off the coast of America; and to men who had already in two seasons sailed over 500 miles of previously unexplored waters, how confident must they then have felt that the forthcoming navigable season of 1847 would see their ships pass over so short an intervening space! It was ruled otherwise. [M'Clintock, pp. 282-283, 287.]