west side of Cornwallis Island. On the 12th of September 1846 they were beset, in lat. 70° 05′ N., and 98° 23′ W. long. Sir John Franklin died on the 11th of June 1847. On the 22d of April 1848 the ships were abandoned, five leagues to the N.N.W. of Point Victory; and the survivors, one hundred and five in number, landed here, under the command of Captain Crozier." This paper was dated the 25th of April 1848, and upon the following day they intended to start for the Great Fish River. A vast quantity of clothing and stores of all sorts lay strewed about, as if here every article had been thrown away which could possibly be dispensed with-pickaxes, shovels, cooking utensils, iron-work, rope, blocks, canvas, a dip-circle, a sextant marked "Frederic Hornby, R.N.," a small medicine chest, oars, &c. Lieutenant Hobson continued his search until within a few days' march of Cape Herschel, without finding any trace of the wreck or of natives. Hobson's journey illustrates forcibly the last sad march of the lost crews. Although supplied with plenty of fresh meat, pemmican, &c., with the lightest possible baggage to draw, and a number of dogs to assist, his men suffered a good deal, and he himself excessively. He was so much reduced with scurvy that he was not able to stand, and for more than forty days had been upon his sledge. Throughout the journey he had killed only one bear and a few ptarmigan. What, therefore, must have been the condition of the poor fellows in the Franklin expedition, already worn and wasted with privation, sickness, and anxiety, with heavy sledges to drag along, without dogs, and with the barest possible sustenance ! The object of the expedition being now accomplished, the Fox only waited till she could get away from the ice, and then returned to England, with great difficulty escaping the clutches of the "pack," which would fain have cut off her retreat. The great problem of the North-west Passage has now been solved; the mystery which overhung the fate of Franklin and his band has been cleared up-thanks to Lady Franklin's devotion, and the intrepidity and courage of M'Clintock and his gallant associates; and the "one thing left undone, whereby a great mind may become notable," must be sought elsewhere. Captain M'Clintock has been knighted, as an acknowledgment of his gallantry. J. H. FYFE. SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. THE Polar clouds uplift-a moment and no more— Through the snow's dazzling blink, into the dark they've gone:- Unharmed the wild deer run, to graze along the strand, The river of their hope at length is drawing nigh— Not under snow-clouds white, by cutting frost-wind driven, His heart ne'er ached to see his much-loved sailors ta'en; Punch. HENRY HUDSON. ONE of the boldest and most successful of early navigators was the celebrated Henry Hudson, discoverer of that vast inland sea now known by the name of Hudson's Bay. In a small vessel, and with a crew of only ten men and a boy, he first distinguished himself, in 1607, in an attempt to reach China by the Arctic seas to the north of Europe. He succeeded in reach ing a very high latitude, within nine degrees of the Pole, where the impassable barrier of ice checked his further progress, and obliged him to return home by Spitzbergen. This failure to discover a north-east passage did not deter Hudson from renewing the attempt. The keenest interest was felt on this subject by the maritime nations of Europe, among whom it then formed a favourite topic of debate. Next year, accordingly, Hudson again set sail, hoping to solve this problem. Keeping more to the eastward than on his former voyage, he at last reached Nova Zembla, where the solid ice again arrested his progress, and convinced him that a northeastern passage did not exist. The correctness of this judgment has been established by the more accurate knowledge of these dreary regions which we now possess. In 1609 he made a final but still unsuccessful search for a north-east passage. Baffled by the ice, as on his former voyages, he happily resolved to pursue his explorations in another quarter, and crossed the Atlantic to America, where, with most insignificant means, his skill and daring were destined to achieve the greatest results. How He sailed along the coast of North America, and at length was rewarded for his toils by the discovery of the bay on which New York stands, and of the magnificent river which, as he was the first to explore it, has since borne his name,-the Hudson. striking the change which has taken place since Hudson's ship passed Sandy Hook and anchored in what is now the lower bay of New York Manhatten Island, then probably uninhabited, is now the site of the second commercial metropolis of the world, with more than half a million of inhabitants, while the stream itself swarms with shipping from every quarter of the globe. Happy, indeed, would it have been for Hudson if he could have closed his career on the banks of the river whose beauty he was the first to witness and describe, and thus have escaped the sorrowful and mysterious catastrophe which awaited him next year. He soon after returned to England, and obtained the command of a vessel of fifty-five tons' burden, manned by twenty-three men and victualled for six months. In this humble craft he set sail on what proved to be his last voyage. After touching at the Orkney Islands he steered his course to Iceland, where he witnessed one of nature's grandest spectacles-Mount Hecla in the blaze of a violent eruption surrounded by perpetual snows. The crew landed, and having killed a number of wild fowl, cooked them in one of the hot springs of this wonderful island. Again weighing anchor, Hudson passed the south of Greenland till he reached the strait which now bears his name. Here, in addition to the ordinary difficulties and dangers of navigation among the ice, he had to struggle against a mutiny among his crew; but, in spite of all, this intrepid explorer boldly pushed on till his vessel ploughed the waters of that great inland sea now known as Hudson's Bay. He did not know for a long time that it was a bay, but indulged the hope that he had discovered what he had so long sought-a passage by the north-west to China. Indeed the extent of its surface amply justified this expectation, since, with the exception of the Mediterranean, it is the largest inland sea in the world. Being obliged to pass the winter in these frost-bound regions, on the 1st of November, after seeking winter quarters, his men found a suitable spot for beaching their vessel. Ten days afterwards they were frozen in, with so scanty a stock of provisions, that, on the most stinted allowance, it was hardly sufficient to last till, by the return of spring, they could expect a release from the ice. It is impossible to describe the hardships of that winter, during which, notwithstanding all the birds, fishes, and animals serviceable for food which they could succeed in catching, they were always suffering from want and in dread of starvation. When we are told that they were finally compelled to live upon moss and frogs, we may form some faint conception of their awful privations. When the ice broke up Hudson prepared for the homeward voyage. The last ration of bread was dealt out to the crew on the day of their setting sail. As, with a long and perilous voyage before them, they had not other provisions for the entire crew for more than ten days, a report that their commander had concealed a quantity of bread for his own use was readily believed by the famishing men, and a mutiny, headed by a man named Green, broke out on the 21st of June. Hudson was seized and his hands bound on the deck of his own vessel, where his word should have been law. The mutineers, not satisfied with this cruel indignity, followed it up by an act of inhumanity which it is dreadful to think that British seamen could have perpetrated:-they put the captain, together with the sick and those whom the frost had deprived of the use of their limbs, into the shallop. The conduct of the carpenter, however, forms a striking contrast to the base heartlessness of the mutineers. Refusing to remain in the ship, he nobly preferred to share the fate of Hudson and his disabled shipmates. Soon afterwards the crew cast the boat adrift with its hapless freight, and stood out to sea. Doubtless in the great inland sea which they had discovered Hudson and his miserable companions found a grave; for the boat was never seen or heard of more. Two days after the mutineers had sailed they encountered a violent storm, and for fourteen days were in the greatest danger from the ice. That storm was probably fatal to their intrepid commander and his forlorn party, who may thus have escaped a still more terrible death from want and exposure. We contemplate with very different feelings the just retribution which overtook the guilty mutineers. They made the best of their way home in the ship which they had thus foully obtained; but not one of the ringleaders lived to reach the land. The rest, after suffering the most awful extremities of famine, finally gained the shore. None of them were ever brought to trial for their misdeeds;-probably because those who were deepest in guilt had already paid the penalty of their crimes. The melancholy end of Hudson is more affecting than the deaths |