Volume 3 > Half-Volume 5

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his valuable publications, besides establishing the
museum of Haslar, which owed its existence to his
zeal and energy. But from all this the united calls
of duty and affection called him away, to undertake,
at the age of sixty-one, a third Arctic expedition, to
ascertain the fate of his beloved friend and com-
mander of former years, Sir John Franklin. That
intrepid navigator and traveller, still as ardent in
old age as in his youth for geographical discovery,
had left England in 1845 in search of the north-
west passage; but the expedition never returned;
and as time passed onward, the public feeling became
more intense either to aid the enterprising travellers,
or at least to ascertain their fate. Three distinct
expeditions of search were instituted by the British
government for the purpose: one to Lancaster Sound
under Sir James Clarke Ross; a second down Mac-
kenzie River, under Sir John Richardson; and a
third to Behring's Straits, under Captain Kellett.
Thus Sir John in his old days was again gratuitously
to brave those dangers between the Mackenzie and
the Coppermine Rivers, which he had confronted
with such difficulty in the strength of his matured
manhood. So widely spread was the enthusiasm
for such a generous enterprise, that persons the most
unlikely were desirous to share in it. "I was almost
daily," says Richardson, "receiving letters from
officers of various ranks in the army and navy, and
from civilians of different stations in life, expressing
an ardent desire for employment in the expedition.
It may interest the reader to know that among the
applicants there were two clergymen, one justice-of-
peace for a Welsh county, several country gentlemen,
and some scientific foreigners, all evidently imbued
with a generous love of enterprise, and a humane
desire to be the means of carrying relief to a large
body of their fellow-creatures."
The chief object of the expedition under Sir
John Richardson was to search the coast between
the mouths of the Mackenzie and Coppermine Rivers,
and the shores of Victoria Land and Wollaston
Land lying opposite to Cape Krusenstern. With
him was associated Mr. John Rae, chief trader of
the Hudson's Bay Company, a bold explorer, and
possessed of those qualities best fitted for such
an enterprise, having lived fifteen years in Prince
Rupert's Land. They left Liverpool by a steamer
on the 25th of March, 1848, and on the 18th of the
following month they had reached Montreal. Hav-
ing crossed the Canadian lakes in steamers, they
afterwards travelled with canoes along the northern
series of lakes and rivers to the Great Slave Lake.
Boats and all necessary stores having been provided
for the expedition, they commenced the descent of
the Mackenzie River on the 24th of July, and on the
6th of August reached the sea. After tracing and ex-
amining the shores as far as Cape Krusenstern, they
proceeded to Cape Kendall, but were prevented by
the ice from reaching the mouth of the Coppermine
River. They therefore were obliged to leave their
boats, and proceed overland on foot, till they reached
Fort Confidence, on Dease River, where they passed
the winter of 1848-9, log-houses having been con-
structed for their use. On the return of summer in
1849, Mr. Rae made a bold attempt to reach Wol-
laston Land by sea, as a search in that quarter was
included in the purposes of the expedition, while
only one boat remained sea-worthy for such service.
But although the attempt was gallantly made and
skilfully conducted, it was baffled by the ice and
stormy weather, which compelled the adventurers to
return. And thus after dangers surmounted and
hardships endured, the mere narrative of which makes
the home-keeping reader shudder at his fireside, and
look around him to be assured of his safety, the
generous purpose of the expedition had proved a
failure, as no traces of the lost ones could be ascer-
tained. The dreary residence of Richardson and his
party at Fort Confidence, in which they had passed
the winter, gives a strange picture of their comforts
when their condition was at the best. "Our winter
dwelling, though dignified, according to custom, by
the title of 'the fort,' had no defensive works what-
ever, not even the stockade which usually surrounds
a trading-post. It was a simple log-house, built of
trunks of trees laid over one another, and morticed
into the upright posts of the corners, door-ways, and
windows. The roof had considerable slope: it was
formed of slender trees laid closely side by side,
resting at the top on a ridge-pole, and covered with
loam to the depth of six or eight inches. A man
standing on the outside could touch the eaves with
his hand. Well-tempered loam or clay was beat
into the spaces left in the walls by the roundness of
the logs, both on the outside and inside, and as this
cracked in drying, it was repeatedly coated over, for
the space of two months, with a thin mixture of clay
and water, until the walls became nearly impervious
to the air. The rooms were floored and ceiled with
deal. Massive structures of boulder-stones and loam
formed the chimney-stacks, and the capacious fire-
places required three or four armfuls of fire-wood,
cut into billets three feet long, to fill them. The
building was forty feet long by fourteen wide, having
a dining-hall in the centre measuring sixteen by
fourteen, and the remaining space divided into a
store-room and three sleeping apartments. A kit-
chen was added to the back of the house, and a
small porch to the front. Mr. Rae's room and mine
had glazed windows, glass for the purpose having
been brought up from York factory. The other
windows were closed with deer-skin parchment,
which admitted a subdued light. Two houses for the
men stood on the east, and a storehouse on the west,
the whole forming three sides of a square, which
opened to the south. The tallest and straightest
tree that could be discovered within a circuit of
three miles was brought in, and being properly
dressed, was planted in the square, for a flag-post;
and near it a small observatory was built, for holding
magnetic instruments." Such was the fort in which
they gallantly held out against the siege and blockade
of an Arctic winter. It was well that their necessary
occupations left them no time to be idle; and every
day each man had his allotted task of house repair-
ing, carpentering, wood-cutting, hunting, fishing,
&c., which kept them in a healthy excitement of
constant occupation. "From this sketch," adds Sir
John, "of our occupations it will be seen that our
time was filled up, and that we had no leisure for
ennui in the long winter. In fact, we enjoyed as
much comfort as we could reasonably expect, and
had our postal arrangements succeeded as well as
the others, we should have had little more to desire.
Our schemes for sending and receiving letters were,
however, failures, and productive of much subsequent
disappointment." 1
On the 7th of May, 1849, Sir John Richardson
left his winter-quarters of Fort Confidence, and re-
turning by the former route he and his party reached
the Great Bear Lake, and afterwards the Great
Slave Lake. Having safely arrived in Canada, Sir
John left Montreal in October, and landed at Liver-
pool on the 6th of November. On returning home
his resting time must have been very brief, as in
1851 he published an account of the expedition in
1 Richardson's Arctic Searching Expedition, &c.