The expedition, consisting of the Erebus and Terror, which had recently returned from a voyage of discovery in the Antarctic sea, left England in May 1845. Unhappily its history and fate are still veiled in obscurity : this however we know, that everything was done to render it efficient ; that the officers under Sir John Franklin were men of experience and zeal, and that the last accounts received from them represent their commander animated by all the ardour and spirit which characterised his early Arctic exertions.
It would have been unjust to have expected less from such a man, and as his instructions contained the usual discretionary power given in these documents, there is too much reason to fear that he fell a victim to his daring attempts to achieve auccess. It will ever be a matter of regret, though it cannot be of surprise, that the discovery of traces of the Erebus and Terror at the entrance of Wellington Channel caused the search for our countrymen to bo directed prin cipally to the north and west of Barrow's Straits; because, although the information brought home by Dr. Rae in 1854, to the effect that Esquimaux had seen the bodies of forty white men in the spring of 1850 on what is supposed to be Montreal Island, at the mouth of the Fish River, cannot bo regarded as trustworthy; yet the relies of the expedition procured by Mr. Anderson and Dr. Rae auffioa to prove that
Franklin'e ships must, have been beset within an area comprised within the 70th and 72nd parallels of latitude and the 97th and 100th meridians.
This fact leads to the conolusion, which no biographer of Franklin can overlook, that although government has rewarded Sir Robert M'Clure for discovering a North-West Passage, another passage, and the only navigable one, was previously discovered by Sir John Franklin. This ie the opinion of Sir Francis Beaufort, the late eminent hydro grapher, and of his successor, Captain Washington, and also of Frank lin's old associate in Arctic adventure, Sir John Richardson, and other well-known .Arctic voyagers. Thus should the efforts prove unsuccess ful, which will assuredly he made by Lady Franklin, if not by govern ment, to ascertain the precise fate of Sir John Franklin and his com panions, sufficient is known to warrant the addition to Franklin's many high qualities and titles of renown on the monument which is about to be erected to his memory in Lincoln—that of his having been the first discoverer of a North-West Passage.