MR. BROWN ON TICE SEARCH FOR FRANKLIN'S EXPEDITION. * larr opinion
as to a further search for Sir John Franklin's expe- dition will be determined by the nature of men's minds. That there exists the slightest chance of finding one of the crew alive, can, we think, only be entertained by zealots like our author, who seems to conceive that "all" have not perished, but that some "may yet live harboured by the wild Esquimaux, or self- sustained." It is, however, a reasonable wish to discover if pos- sible the remains of the vessels ; to fix the exact spot where they were abandoned (for we conceive the facts of M'Clnre's voyage pretty well indicate the cause and character of the catastrophe) ; to gratify the natural feeling of mankind by clearing up the mys- tery, and to endeavour to learn from any documents that remain, the features of the voyage, the extent of the sufferings undergone by the crew, and the reasons which led to their final determina- tion. Those who hold that the spirit of our nautical enterprise should be upheld at any cost will not attach much weight to the Objection of expense. Those who see how life is daily sacrificed in the discharge of common duties, and how often it is risked for the most trivial purposes, or no purpose at all, and who further conceive that our national character and extensive dominions can only be upheld by the best Englishmen being ready at any mo- ment to put their lives behind them for a national object, will not think the risk to the seamen's lives a valid reason against another Arctic expedition. At the same time it may be fairly alleged by the practical mind as an argument against further " trouble ' in the business that there is not now the slightest prospect of saving a single life, that the honour of the country has been up- held by the number of searching expeditions that were sent out in all directions while a shadow of hope remained, and lastly by the great uncertainty not to say improbability of success. This all but hopelessness is the great argument against what may per- haps be called merely curious exploration. It may be that we have better indications of the probable whereabouts than we had at starting. The traces of Franklin at Beechey Island, (in nearly 75 degrees of north latitude and about 92 of west longitude,) fix the limitation of the search to the eastward ; the discovery of the relics of the expedition show that we must look to the south tif Beeehey Island for further traces ; in other words, that the most probable searching ground lies between 68 and 76 degrees of north latitude' and 92 and 11,5 of west longitude, the last
bein about the line of Collinson's and Rae's exploration. Large of this spaoe, however, have been examined, so far as an power could accomplish it at that particular season and - for the simple reason that Franklin's leading orders point:ed to that quarter. The later expeditions towards the north in the di- -
• The North-West Passage, and the Plan for the Search of Sir John Franklin. A Review. By John Brown, F.B.G.S., &c. &c. Published by Stanford.
II 11 I II.
reetion of the "Polar Sea" which Mr. Brown so censures, were really works of addition, because those in the more likely line had not succeeded. Still the difficulties in those Arctic expeditions are so great, especially from ice, and the weather in its various forms--heat, cold, snow, fog, that no certainty exists in reaching a fixed place in a given year. To find something when you do not know where to look for it, is a matter of accident or luck in those regions. A badly-appointed vessel or party might stumble upon a discovery, which half-a-dozen of the most qualified expe- ditions might miss. The precise object of Mr. Brown in publishing this ample vo- lume, The North-West Passage, is not very distinctly stated • but he seems to desire that a further expedition should be undertaken in compliance with a theory of his own. This is, that the imper- fectly explored indentation of the southern coast of Melville' s or Parry's Sound, lying in its broadest part between Cape Dundas west longitude 100, and Point Willoughby about 112 west, and in a north latitude of 73 and 74 degrees is not a gulf, but a strait leading in a south-easterly ' direction to King William's Island, and the coast of North America where the relies of the expedition where found by Dr. Rae. Mr. Brown assumes that Franklin hod got as far westward through Melville's or Parry's Sound as this indentation, and then either sailed or drifted down the assumed strait, where he had to abandon his vessels, &c. The conclusion is obvious. An expedition should be sent to explore this strait; and either in a national or a geographical point of view there is no objection to it, except the extreme uncertainty of reaching even the starting-point. This pet idea of Mr. Brown is frequently recurred to throughout the volume in an imperfect, unskilful, and therefore tedious way. But though he rides his hobby, he does not ride it continuously through more than four hundred closely-printed pages. The larger part of the book consists—not of a history of the expedi- tions in search of Franklin, which would be a useful work, but of an account of them, jumbled up with critical remarks, and inter- larded with notices of all the schemes brought forward during each different year from the time the public mind became alive to the necessity of the search. In a critico-moral point of view this is badly done, for nearly everybody, is found to be wrong except Mr. Brown. In a literary sense the book is extremely poor. A great subject—for such the searching expeditions really are, either in a national, a nautical, or a geographical point of view, is overlaid so as to become unreadable ; and an idea which we think on the whole probable, is made to suffer from the feeble, bald, disjointed way, in which it is put forward.
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