s of Arctic America, and added _three thousand
six hundred and eighty miles_ of coast-line to our Polar charts. Is
this nothing? If the mere _quid pro quo_ is required of public
servants, surely the Arctic navigator has far better repaid to his
country the pay and food he has received at her hands than those who,
in a time of universal peace, idle through year after year of foreign
service in her men-of-war; and most assuredly, if we are proud of our
seamen's fame and our naval renown, where can we look for nobler
instances of it than amongst the records of late Arctic voyages and
journeys. The calm, heroic sufferings of Franklin,--always successful,
let the price be what it would; the iron resolution of Richardson;
Back's fearful winter march to save his comrades; the devoted Hepburn,
who, old though he be, could not see his former leader perish without
trying to help him, and, whilst I write these lines, is again braving
an Arctic winter in the little "Prince Albert;" Parry, who knew so well
to lead and yet be loved; James Ross, of iron frame, establishing, by
four consecutive years of privation and indomitable energy, that high
character which enabled him to carry an English squadron to the
unvisited shores of Victoria Land at the southern pole; and lastly, the
chivalrous men, who, again under Franklin, have launched, in obedience
to their Queen and country, into the unknown regions between the
Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, to execute their mission or fall in the
attempt.

[Headnote: _NORTH-WEST DISCOVERY._]

It was to save these devoted servants, that the spring of 1851 saw full
500 British and American seamen within the frigid zone. That portion of
them that had come by Baffin's Bay had been so far successful in their
mission, that they had dispelled all the visions--gratuitous enough--of
Franklin having perished by shipwreck or other disaster in his passage
across the bay.

We had seen his winter quarters; we had seen his lookout posts, and the
trail of his explorations. They all said, Onward! To be sure, we did
not at once know by which route he had gone onward. The uncertainty,
however, gave a spur to those about to be engaged in the searching
parties, and each man thought there were especial reasons for believing
one particular route to be the true one. The majority--indeed all those
who gave the subject any consideration--believed Franklin to have gone
either by Cape Walker, or to the north-west by Wellingto