red up in our time
except by some unexpected miracle.'

The unexpected happened. Strangely enough, {127} it was just at this
juncture that a letter sent by Dr John Rae from the Hudson Bay country
brought to England the first authentic news of the fate of Franklin's
men. Rae had been sent overland from the north-west shores of Hudson
Bay to the coast of the Arctic at the point where the Back or Great
Fish river runs in a wide estuary to the sea. He had wintered on the
isthmus (now called after him) which separates Regent's Inlet from
Repulse Bay, and in the spring of 1854 had gone westward with sledges
towards the mouth of the Back. On his way he fell in with Eskimos, who
told him that several years before a party of about forty white men had
been seen hauling a boat and sledges over the ice. This was on the
west side of the island called King William's Land. None of the men,
so the savages said, could speak to them in their own language; but
they made signs to show that they had lost their ships, and that they
were trying to make their way to where deer could be found. All the
men looked thin, and the Eskimos thought they had very little food.
They had bought some seal's flesh from the savages. They hauled their
sledges and the boat along with drag-ropes, at which all were tugging
except one very tall big man, who seemed to be a chief and {128} walked
by himself. Later on in the same season, so the Eskimos said, they had
found the bodies of a lot of men lying on the ice, and had seen some
graves and five dead bodies on an island at the mouth of a river. Some
of the bodies were lying in tents. The big boat had been turned over
as if to make a shelter, and under it were dead men. One that lay on
the island was the body of the chief; he had a telescope strapped over
his shoulders, and his gun lay underneath him. The savages told Dr Rae
that they thought that the last survivors of the white men must have
been feeding on the dead bodies, as some of these were hacked and
mutilated and there was flesh in the kettles. There were signs that
some of the party might have escaped; for on the ground there were
fresh bones and feathers of geese, showing that the men were still
alive when the wild fowl came north, which would be about the end of
May. There was a quantity of gunpowder and ammunition lying around,
and the Eskimos thought that they had heard shots in the neighbourhood,
though they had seen no living men, b