oulders. The survivors
were plainly starving, for they fell ravenously on the Eskimos' putrid
whale meat. The next summer only two demented men were alive. They were
clad in rabbit and fox skins. Their hair and beards had grown unkempt,
and they acted like maniacs. Again the superstitious Eskimos fled in
terror. Next summer when the savages came down to the coast no white men
were alive. The wolves had scraped open a score of graves.

It may be stated here that before 1759 the books of the Hudson's Bay
Company show L100,000 spent in bootless searching and voyaging for the
mythical North-West Passage. Nevertheless study-chair explorers who
journeyed round the world on a map, continued to accuse the Company of
purposely refusing to search for the Passage, for fear of disturbing its
monopoly. So violent did the pamphleteers grow that they forced a
parliamentary inquiry in 1749 into the Company's charter and the
Company's record, and what saved the Company then, as in 1713, was the
fact that the adventurers were the great bulwark against French
aggression from Quebec.

Arthur Dobbs, a gentleman and a scholar, had roused the Admiralty to
send two expeditions to search for the North-West Passage. It is
unnecessary for history to concern itself with the 'tempest in a
teapot' that raged round these expeditions. Perhaps the Company did not
behave at all too well when their own captain, Middleton, resigned to
conduct the first one on the _Furnace Bomb_ and the _Discovery_ to the
Bay. Perhaps wrong signals in the harbours did lead the searchers' ships
to bad anchorage. At any rate Arthur Dobbs announced in hysterical fury
that the Company had bribed Middleton with L5000 not to find the
Passage. Middleton had come back in 1742 saying bluntly, in sailor
fashion, that 'there was no passage and never would be.' At once the
Dobbs faction went into a frenzy. Baseless charges were hurled about
with the freedom of bombs in a battle. Parliament was roused to offer a
reward of L20,000 for the discovery of the Passage, and the
indefatigable Dobbs organized an opposition trading company--with a
capital of L10,000--and petitioned parliament for the exclusive trade.
The _Dobbs Galley_, Captain Moon, and the _California_, Captain Smith,
with the _Shark_, under Middleton, as convoy for part of the way, went
out in 1746 with Henry Ellis, agent for Dobbs, aboard. The result of the
voyage need not be told. There was the usual struggle with the ice