d comrade
of Franklin's former journeys. He would not believe that Franklin had
failed. He knew too well the temper of the man. Franklin had been
instructed to strike southward from the Arctic seas to the American
coast. On that coast he would be found. Thither went Sir John
Richardson, taking with him a man of like metal to himself, one John
Rae, a Hudson's Bay man, fashioned in the north. Down the Mackenzie
they went and then eastward along the coast searching for traces of the
_Erebus_ and the _Terror_. For two years they searched, tracing their
way from the Mackenzie to the Coppermine. But no vestige of Franklin
did they find. The queen's ships were searching too. Sir James Ross,
with the _Enterprise_ and the _Investigator_, went into Lancaster
Sound. The _Plover_ and the _Herald_ went to Bering Strait. The
_North Star_ went in at Wolstenholme Sound. The _Resolute_, the
_Assistance_, the _Sophia_--a very flock of admiralty ships--spread
their white wings for the Arctic seas. The Hudson's Bay Company sent
Sir John Ross, a tried explorer, in the yacht _Felix_. Lady Franklin,
the sorrow-stricken wife of the lost commander, sent out Captain
Forsyth in the _Prince Albert_. One Robert Spedden sailed his private
yacht, the {122} _Nancy Dawson_, in through Bering Strait; and Henry
Grinnell of New York (be his name honoured), sent out two expeditions
at his own charge. By water and overland there went out, between 1847
and 1851, no less than twenty-one expeditions searching for the
_Erebus_ and the _Terror_.

Thus passed six years from the time when Franklin sailed out of the
Thames, and still no trace, no vestige had been found to tell the story
of his fate. Then at last news came, the first news of the _Erebus_
and the _Terror_ since they were sighted by the whaling ship in 1845.
The news in a way was neither good nor bad. But it showed that at
least the melancholy forebodings of those who said that the heavily
laden ships must have foundered before they reached the Arctic were
entirely mistaken. Captain Penny, master of the _Lady Franklin_, had
sailed under Admiralty orders in 1850, and had followed on the course
laid down in Franklin's instructions. He returned in 1851, bringing
news that on Beechey Island, a little island lying on the north side of
Barrow Strait, he had found the winter quarters that must have been
occupied by the expedition in 1845-46, the first winter after its
departure. There