e hatches poured
everybody, sick and well, to see the black stranger, and to hear his
news from England. It was nearly three years since they had seen any
civilized man but themselves.

The 28th of July, three years before, Commander McClure had sent his
last despatch to the Admiralty. He had then prophesied just what in
three years he had almost accomplished. In the winter of 1850 he had
discovered the Northwest Passage. He had come round into one branch of
it, Banks Straits, in the next summer; had gladly taken refuge on the
Bay of Mercy in a gale; and his ship had never left it since. Let it be
said, in passing, that most likely she is there now. In his last
despatches he had told the Admiralty not to be anxious about him if he
did not arrive home before the autumn of 1854. As it proved, that autumn
he did come with all his men, except those whom he had sent home before,
and those who had died. When Pim found them, all the crew but thirty
were under orders for marching, some to Baffin's Bay, some to the
Mackenzie River, on their return to England. McClure was going to stay
with the rest, and come home with the ship, if they could; if not, by
sledges to Port Leopold, and so by a steam-launch which he had seen left
there for Franklin in 1849. But the arrival of Mr. Pim put an end to all
these plans. We have his long despatch to the Admiralty explaining them,
finished only the day before Pim arrived. It gives the history of his
three years' exile from the world,--an exile crowded full of effective
work,--in a record which gives a noble picture of the man. The Queen
has made him Sir Robert Le Mesurier McClure since, in honor of his great
discovery.

Banks Land, or Baring Island, the two names belong to the same island,
on the shores of which McClure and his men had spent most of these two
years or more, is an island on which they were first of civilized men to
land. For people who are not very particular, the measurement of it
which we gave before, namely, that it is about the size and shape of
Ireland, is precise enough. There is high land in the interior probably,
as the winds from in shore are cold. The crew found coal and dwarf
willow which they could burn; lemmings, ptarmigan, hares, reindeer, and
musk-oxen, which they could eat.

"Farewell to the land where I often have wended
My way o'er its mountains and valleys of snow;
Farewell to the rocks and the hills I've ascended,
The bleak ar