posts in it
} likewise.

C E. and F D. } The doorways.

H. } Evidently a carpenter's workshop, from the shavings,
&c.]

It consisted of an exterior and interior embankment, into which, from
the remnants left, we saw that oak and elm scantling had been struck as
props to the roofing; in one part of the enclosed space some coal-sacks
were found, and in another part numerous wood-shavings proved the
ship's artificers to have been working here. The generally received
opinion as to the object of this storehouse was, that Franklin had
constructed it to shelter a portion of his superabundant provisions and
stores, with which it was well known his decks were lumbered on leaving
Whale-Fish Islands.

Nearer to the beach, a heap of cinders and scraps of iron showed the
armourer's working-place; and along an old water-course, now chained up
by frost, several tubs, constructed of the ends of salt-meat casks,
left no doubt as to the washing-places of the men of Franklin's
squadron: happening to cross a level piece of ground, which as yet no
one had lighted upon, I was pleased to see a pair of Cashmere gloves
laid out to dry, with two small stones on the palms to prevent their
blowing away; they had been there since 1846. I took them up carefully,
as melancholy mementoes of my missing friends. In another spot a
flannel was discovered: and this, together with some things lying
about, would, in my ignorance of wintering in the Arctic Regions, have
led me to suppose that there was considerable haste displayed in the
departure of the "Erebus" and "Terror" from this spot, had not Captain
Austin assured me that there was nothing to ground such a belief upon;
and that, from experience, he could vouch for these being nothing more
than the ordinary traces of a winter station, and this opinion was
fully borne out by those officers who had in the previous year wintered
at Port Leopold, one of them asserting that people left winter quarters
too well pleased to escape to care much for a handful of shavings, an
old coal-bag, or a washing-tub. This I from experience now know to be
true.

Looking at the spot on which Penny had discovered a boarding-pike, and
comparing it with a projecting point on the opposite side, where a
similar article had been found with a finger nailed on it as a
direction-post, I concluded that, in a line between these two
boarding-pikes, one or both of the ships had been at anc