The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1880-11-26
THE FRANKLIN EXPEDITION.

1t was thirty five years last July since
Franklin's ships were for the last time
seen in Baffin's BAY. Three years after
ward England sent the first expedition
in search of him and his men and since
that time more than twenty more have
sailed Little by little and piece by
piece, they have brought home the relics
and mementos which have gradually
told the story of the fate that overlook
them in that land of perpetual ice. For
many years, there were floating about
vague beliefs that he and his men were
still alive, and might one day be found
again. This tradition was fostered by
Lady Franklin's devotion to her hus-
bands memory, and her heroic measures
for discovering the secretiocked up some
where in the dreary Arctic wastes. Her
bereavement infected the sympathies Of
the civilized world, and the crusades
which were preached and led, sometimes
by English pluck, often by American
enterprise, have at last brought back the
tidings that nothing more can ever be
known.
In 1854 skeletons of some of the men
were discovered. In 1859 a paper found
in cairn where il had been placed by
| one of Franklin's officers, briefly saying
"Sir John Franklin died on the 11th of
June, 1S47," blotted out the faint figures
which the Imagination fancied it saw
still moving in that northern twilight,
and nearly destroyed LadY's Frsnklin's
| grief-stricken mind. Then half a dozen
| spoons, inwrought with Sir John Frank.
Inns crest, were, in 1872, given by ma.
| tive to Captain Barry, an American ex-
| plorer, with the statement that he had
! taken them from a cairn 700 miles dis
tant, where books and other relics still
remained. Captain Barry, with Lieu
| tenant Schwatka, were, two years ago
sent out by the enterprise of New York
merchants, and landed at the head Of
Repulse bay. Thence, gong and return
ing, they made a sledge journey of 5000
miles, travelling over ice and snow, anC
what was still more difficult, over brok
en- and jagged clay stone, with marshes
intervening. and covered with patches o
brown and green moss, with purple flow
ers creeping through the crevices of tn,
stones. On this Journey they lived ant
preserved their health by eating the fooC
VIII ich the Esquimaux eat and the game
which in some places abounded. Dur
ting the winter the thermometer was FIRE
quently from 80 to 60 degrees below re
ro, and, at one time, fell to 103.
They found no cairn, as was told t.
Captain Barry, but they discovered sew
eral skeletons, a ships boat or rather tn
PROV and stern post, with a few clinkeI
ed boards still holding together, gil
navy buttons, copper and iron bolts, shot
cartridges, powder-cans. barrels, broker
medicine and wine bottles, axes and
few barrel slaves. The rigid climat
had preserved, for over thirty years
pieces of navy blue cloth which wer
scattered along The shores of the inlets
With the exception of a scrap of pape
marked with an index finger pointing
southerly, no writing of any sort wa
found.
And so, after enduring great hardship
but no great suffering, the expedition re
turned, still leaving to the Esqulmaul
and the eternal cold the remains o
Franklin and his crew. Beyond tn
fact that they abandoned their vessel:
the Erebus and Terror, and attempted t
drag their boats overland in the hope
of launching them in the open waite
again. nothing is yet, nothing probabl
ever will be, definitely known of thei
struggle and their end.