The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-11-04 00:00:00

LADY FRANKLIN'S EXPLORING
EXPEDITION.

By the Royal Mail steam
,ship Magdalena, we have received
accounts from Valparaiso, announcing the arrival there of the
by way of

screw schooner Isabel, se
the Straits of Magellan, on an exploring expedition in search
of Sir John Franklin. We are sorry to learn that a disagree-
ment amongst the officers had led to an abandonment of the
whole expedition. The details are given in extructs from the
Valparaiso Herald of the 14th of September, of which the
following is one :

out many months sin

Upon her arrival, in consquence of a disagreement
between Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Robert Grate, sailing master,
the latter left the vessel. Then difficulties arose with the
crew, who refused to proceed further in the vessel. An ap-
peal was made by Mr. Kennedy to Mr. M‘Kay, R.N., of
Her Majesty!s ship Nereus, the result of which widened the
breach instead of producing any good effect—not from any-
thing done by Mr. M•Kay, who acted throughout the affair
in the most gentlemanly mnaner, but from Mr Kennedy
having called on a naval officer while there -vas a Consul in
The men were taken on shore to the Consul on
August the 27th, and he said that it was a very un-
pleasant thing for him to interfere between the parties, em-
barked as they were upon such a glorious service as the
rescue of their fellow countrymen from death. He advised
them to go on board and reconsider the subject, and trusted
that they would then see the true state of affairs, and that any
unpleasantness that had occurred should be forgotten, and that
the motto of all embarked on such an expedition, should be
mutually to bear and forbear. He then told the men they
were to appear before him again on Monday, at 2 p.m. ; but
Mr. Kennedy went on shore on Thursday morning, and, by
application to the captain of the port got the men sent to prison,
so that the affair was now fairly out of the hands of the Consul.
A new crew was now partly engaged, and the repairs of the
vessel proceeded with; but new difficulties now arose, which
finally ended in the engineer leaving the vessel. Mr. Ken-

the port

Saturday

nedy now seeing that his path became more and more rugged,
determined not to proceed any further ; so that for the present,
the expedition is abandoned, which, on the whole, is fortunate
for Lady Franklin, as, from the advanced period of the season,
it would have been impossible to reach the ice this season in
time to render any service; so that the saving of wages and
provisions will be a considerable item between this and next
March, when it is to be hoped that the vessel will be dispatched
to aid in the good work before her. It is an unfortunate affair
altogether; but let us trust that good may result from it."

" We have been favoured with the perusal of the journal
of Mr. Richard Eardin, engineer to the Isabel, kept during
the passage from London to Valparaiso. Speaking of the pas-
sage through the Straits be says, when near Port Famine,
July 1853 :

"On the whole, upon looking over our day's work, it is
a truly surprising one, and I doubt, if we were to make 20
voyages to the Pacific via the Straits of Magellan, whether
we should ever do the like again. Very few vessels, I am
positive, ever did more in a day in their progress through the
Straits, as far as we -have come, that part of our outward
voyage that was most dreaded has proved the most fortunate ;
it shows that we ars but poor creatures, mostly creating our
own difficulties. Our men have been continually croaking
upon the dangers to be apprehended from the attacks of the
natives, who were all set down as the most murderous set of
villains that disgraced humanity, so numerous that you were
beset with them every mile of your progress ; nothing could
take it out of their heads that such was not the case ;
and natives were supposed to abound in innumerable crowds.
We have seen a few of the former, but of t'-e latter, not one

guanacos

"'22nd.—About 12 30 this morning we felt the first
" williewaw" (this word was unfortunately overlooked by
Webster). We were running along with a fresh breeze, when
in an instant we where in the midst of a hurricane ; it came
on to blow furiously from the Patagonian hills, and I can
well believe what Captain Fitzroy says of their violenee. The
Isabel is a very stiff vessel, but this and the succeeding ones
were too much for her ; she succumbed to them for a moment,
and then righted. They only lasted for a few moments at a
time, and were succeeded by an almost perfect calm, as if the
♦iolence of tha effort had left Monsieur Boreas breathless, of
attacked with a sudden fit of asthma.'
" On the same morning, he says,—
"' I saw the remains of the penal settlement that the
Chilian Government established here, and which was broken
up in such a tragical manner by the rising of the prisoners
and part of the garrison ; after which they seized an English
bark—l believe the Eliza Cornish, of Plymouth—and
another vessel, and, there is every reason to believe, murderetk

the crew.'

" Shortly after passing this settlement the Isabel anchored,
and the commander with a party, including our journalist,
went ashore. His description of the place is valuable, as
being the latest visitor whose observations have been offerred
to the public, and his reflections and reasoning upon the
premises will also be found interesting.

" Upon landing we found wells dug, for the convenience
of vessels seeking water, close to the beach, which was
covered with trunks of trees, some of them two feet in •
diameter. We found the snow in some places two feet
deep. Upon gaining the summit of St. Anne Point we
directed our course to the settlement. Part of it had been
destroyed by fire. There were two fieldpieces, one dis-

feet in thickness ; it was almost levelled. We found the
tew iron of a forge there. There wore four houses built
of brick and lined with pencil cedar on the south of the
battery, but they were constructed in the rudest manner,
an adze only having been used to smooth the wood. There
had evidently been very little regard piad to cleanliness or
comfort. To the north of the settlement was the grave-
yard, a square enclosed space of about 60 feet, upon enter.
ing which the first object which atracted our attention was
a cenotaph in the centre of the yard, upon which was the
following inscription :•••‘ Sacred to the memory of Captain
Pringle Stokes, Royal Navy, who died at Port Famine,
while in command of her Majesty's ship Beadle, Ist of
August, 1828. His body was buried on the opposite side of
the bay. This board was put up by her Majesty's ship
ilavanttah, 21st September, 1851.' It was a singular thing
to come upon such a record in such a place, surrounded as it
was by the graves of such a set of fellows ; no one can question
the feelings that prompted its erection. Would it not have
been better to have placed it over his-head, if it had been re-
quired? Some people would cavail at the idea of recording
the death of a suicide in any manner ; in Scotland it would not
be allowed ; but surely if ever any one deserved such a remem-
brance, it was poor Captain Stokes, whose mind had become
unhinged by his performance of one of the hardest duties ever
intrusted to man—the survey of a portion of the Straits in the
winter time; and also by his great devotion to the cause of sci-
ence and Sumanity. His death added another to the long array
of the martyrs of science. Peace be to thee ! and let us trust
that the Recording Angel, when he entered that deed performed
by thee while in a state of insanity, blotted out all previous
record of thy faults and frailties. There was only one other
headstone in the yard, and the inscription upon it was in Spanish.
There had been an enclosure for cattle, apparently, but not the
east attempt at the formation of a gai den, or place for agricul-
ural improvement. I suspect that it was the fact of not keeping
he prisoners usefully empioyed that led to the events which
preceded the breaking up of the colony. The morality must
have been very great among the parties there resident, as the
yard was entirely filled with graves, each surmounted by a
wooden cross. Some of them had been buried like the
Indians, as there were three of the bodies above ground, the
thigh bones of one of them protruding. I think there is no
doubt that great rigour had been used with them, as I do not
think common causes would have produced so great a mor-
tality.

"There are some roots of large trees on the south front of
Mount Felipe, some as much as four feet in diameter three
feet from the roots, and it appears to have been thickly wooded

at one time

" Upon going into the Governor's residence, we found
records of several visitors who had left their cards on the walls,
stating name of vessels, date of visit, &c. The last one was as
follows Thomas Kandrick, Hudson's Bay Company steam
bark Otter, May 9, 1853—bound to Vanconver's Island-
-20 of crew, six passengers.' Another was ' George Brown,
Ellsworth, Maine, United States. A schooner, Victory, 50
tons, bound to California—all well, 13 in all, seven pas-

sengers

"Finding there was not • much of interest to occupy our
attention, and having proved that there were no Chilians

remaining, we came on board

" Saturday, 231 d.—As the men had been very hard worked
since we entered the Straits, I proposed to Mr. Kennedy that
I should keep watch at night, to allow them one night of
uninterrupted rest. Accordingly I had the middle watch,
and as I wanted to find out the rise and fall of the tide, I
every hour put over the hand lead and marked the depth of
water at the water's edge, and to secure greater accuracy, I
marked a place on the ship's gunwale, and marked the line
there also. The following was the result obtained :—The
tide turned at 1.30 a.m. At 1.30 the rise was 14 inches ;
from 2.30 to 3.30 the rise was 151 inches; from 3.30 to 4.30
it was 17 inches ; from 4.30 to 5.30 it was 12 inches ; giving.
a mean per hour for four hours of rather more than 14.1
inches."

IMPORTATION OF
GOATS INTO WALES.—Singular
as it may appear, yet it is perfectly true, that large flocks of
Goats have recently been imported into Wales from the
Highlands of Scotland. This step has been rendered ne-
cessary by the almost total extinction, in many parts of the
principality, of one of the original inhabitants of the coun-
try. This scarcity of the goat has arisen from the extensive
enclosure of barren and waste lands for the purpose of agri-
culture, and the number of plantations made of late years ;
these,joined with the fact that the tenants have been dis-
puraged from keeping up the breed, have materially operated
in rendering scarce this hardy animal. The importations
have been with a twofold object; but the principal one is
that the milk of the goat is very nutritious and large in
quantity, and, as the animal can easily be kept upon herbs
and garden refuse, it falls within the power of any poor
cottager to keep a goat, which, in return, would afford a full
supply of milk at comparatively no expense. In the
neighbourhood of the iron works flocks of these animals
would prove of great utility and economy.
AN APOLOGY.—One of our weekly exchanges
gives the following naive excuse for lack of editorial matter.
" The editor is still absent, and the pro tern. has run " out
of soap," in the way of editorials. The recent change in
the weather has served to cool us down, and we don't feel
like " splurging " this week l"—Mobile Advertiser.