KENNEDY'S EXPEDITION—SIR EDWARD BELCHER—McCLURE—DISCOVERY OF THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE—JUNCTION OF McCLURE AND KELLETT—EPISODE OF THE RESOLUTE—COMMODORE PERRY'S EXPEDITION—DECISIVE TRACES OF THE FATE OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN—THE LEVIATHAN.

Encouraged by the discovery of traces of her husband, Lady Franklin caused the Prince Albert, upon her return with the intelligence, to be at once refitted for another Arctic voyage. The expedition, though conducted with consummate skill by William Kennedy, late of the Hudson's Bay Company, and Lieutenant Bellot, of the French Navy, his second, totally failed of success. It returned in October, 1853. In the mean time, another and more imposing expedition—that under Sir Edward Belcher—had sailed for the Polar regions. The squadron consisted of five vessels,—the Assistance, with the steamer Pioneer, the Resolute, with the steamer Intrepid, and the North Star store-ship. They sailed on the 28th of April, 1852, and arrived at their head-quarters at Beechey Island—the scene of Franklin's hibernation in 1846—on the 10th of August. The North Star remained here with the stores, while the two ships, with their respective tugs, started upon distinct voyages of exploration,—Sir Edward Belcher, in the Assistance, standing up Wellington Channel, and Captain Kellett, in the Resolute, proceeding to Melville Island. The latter was instructed to seek at this point for intelligence of Captains McClure and Collinson, who had been sent to Behring's Strait in 1850, in order to force their way eastward from thence, and who had not since been heard of. As the interest of Sir Edward Belcher's expedition centres entirely in the junction effected by Kellett with McClure, we revert to the adventures of the latter explorer, now distinguished as the discoverer of the Northwest Passage.

Collinson and McClure sailed in the Enterprise and Investigator for Behring's Strait vi Cape Horn on the 20th of January, 1850. They arrived at the strait in July. The Enterprise, being foiled in her efforts to get through the ice, turned about and wintered at Hong-Kong. McClure, in the Investigator, kept gallantly on through the strait, and, during the month of August, advanced to the southeast, into the heart of the Polar Sea, along a coast never yet visited by a ship, and on the 21st of August arrived at the mouth of Mackenzie River, discovered by Mackenzie in his land-expedition in 1789 to determine the northern coast-line of America. He had now passed the region visited and surveyed in former years by Franklin, Back, Rae, and others, in overland explorations, and on the 6th of September arrived at a point considerably to the east of any land marked upon the charts. He now began to name the islands, headlands, and indentations. On the 9th, the ship was found to be but sixty miles to the west of the spot to which Parry, sailing westward, had carried his ship in 1820. Could he but sail these sixty miles his name would be immortal. "I cannot," he writes, "describe my anxious feelings. Can it be possible that this water communicates with Barrow's Straits and shall prove to be the long-sought Northwest Passage? Can it be that so humble a creature as I am will be permitted to perform what has baffled the talented and wise for hundreds of years?" On the 17th, the Investigator reached the longitude of 117° 10' west,—thirty miles from the waters in which Parry wintered with the Hecla and Griper in a harbor of Melville Island. Alas! the vessel went no farther east: the ice drifted perceptibly to the west, and it was fated that these thirty miles should remain, as they had remained for ages, as impassable to ships as the Isthmus of Suez.

The Investigator passed the winter heeled four degrees to port and elevated a foot out of water by a "nip," in which position she rested quietly for months. Late in October, a sledge-party of six men, headed by McClure, started to traverse on foot the distance which it was forbidden their ship to cross. On the 25th, they saw the Polar Ocean ice. The next morning, before daybreak, they ascended a hill six hundred feet high, convinced that the dawn would reveal them the previous surveys of Sir Edward, and make them the discoverers of the Northwest Passage, by connecting their voyage from the west with his from the east. The return of day showed their anticipations to be correct: Melville Strait was visible to the north, and between it and them, though there was plenty of ice, there was no intervening land. They had discovered the Passage,—that is, an ice-passage, which of course involved a water-passage when the state of the atmosphere permitted it. Though they regretted bitterly that they could not get their ship through, their only remaining course was to send one of their party home by the well-known route through Barrow's Straits, and thus prove the existence of the passage by the return of one who had made it. They erected a cairn and left a record of their visit, and then commenced their homeward journey to the ship. McClure became separated from his companions, and nearly perished in the snow. He arrived in safety, however, and the grand discovery was duly celebrated and the main-brace properly spliced. Numerous searching-parties were now from time to time sent out, and in the middle of July the ice broke up and the Investigator was released. She drifted five miles more to the east,—thus reducing the distance of separation to twenty-five miles. Here she was again firmly and inextricably frozen in. Another and another winter passed; and it was not till the spring of 1853 that relief reached them. In order to make a consecutive story, we must return to that portion of Sir Edward Belcher's squadron which, under Captain Kellett, was sent to Melville Island, and which arrived there late in 1852. At this period, Kellett, in the Resolute, and McClure, in the Investigator, were about one hundred and seventy miles apart.

A sledge-party sent out by Kellett discovered, with the wildest delight, in October, 1852, a cairn in which McClure had deposited, the April previous, a chart of his discoveries. They were compelled to wait the winter through; and it was not till the 10th of March that Kellett ventured to send a travelling-party in quest of the Investigator. The communication was effected on the 6th of April, 1853. McClure thus describes it:

"While walking near the ship, in conversation with the first lieutenant, we perceived a figure coming rapidly towards us from the rough ice at the entrance of the bay. He was certainly unlike any of our men; but, recollecting that it was possible some one might be trying a new travelling-dress preparatory to the departure of our sledges, and certain that no one else was near, we continued to advance. The stranger came quietly on: had the skies fallen upon us we could hardly have been more astonished than when he called out, 'I'm Lieutenant Pim, late of the Herald, now of the Resolute. Captain Kellett is in her, at Dealy Island.'

"To rush at and seize him by the hand was the first impulse; for the heart was too full for the tongue to speak. The news flew with lightning rapidity: the ship was all in commotion; the sick, forgetful of their maladies, leaped from their hammocks; the artificers dropped their tools, and the lower deck was cleared of men; for they all rushed for the hatchway, to be assured that a stranger was actually among them and that his tale was true. Despondency fled the ship, and Lieutenant Pim received a welcome—pure, hearty, and grateful—that he will surely remember and cherish to the end of his days."

It was now decided to abandon the Investigator, immovably fixed as she was in the ice. Her colors were hoisted on the 3d of June, and she was left alone in Mercy Bay. The officers and crew arrived on board the Resolute on the 17th. McClure sent Lieutenant Gurney Cresswell, with despatches for the Admiralty, by sledges, down to Beechey Island, where he found a Government vessel and at once sailed for England. Though he had not made the Northwest Passage, he had at least crossed the American continent within the Arctic Circle; and this had yet been done by no mortal man.

Kellett and McClure remained for many months in the Resolute and Intrepid, beset in the ice. They received instructions from Belcher, in April, 1854, to abandon their ships. The latter were placed in a condition to be occupied by any Arctic searching-party,—the furnaces of the steamer being left ready to be lighted. Sir Edward Belcher had also been compelled to abandon his vessels, the Assistance and Pioneer: the four crews met at Beechey Island, and embarked on board their storeship, the North Star, which had been laid up for two years. They arrived in England late September. The reader will at once recognise the Resolute as the ship which was found in Baffin's Bay, in 1855, by Captain Buddington, of the New London whaler George Henry. She had forced her way, unaided by man, through twelve hundred miles of Arctic ice. The incidents of her arrival at New London, of the abandonment to the American sailors of all claim upon her by the British Government, of her purchase by the United States Congress from her new owners, her re-equipment at the Brooklyn Navy-Yard, and her restoration to the English Navy by Captain Hartstene, U.S.N., are still fresh in the mind of all.

In the year 1853, an expedition sent by the United States under Commodore Perry ventured into waters never before ploughed by vessels of a Christian nation. On the 8th of July, the precipitous southern coast of Niphon—the largest island of the Japanese group—loomed up through the fog. The American steamers entered the Bay of Jeddo, eight miles wide at the mouth but spreading to a width of twelve beyond. They were now land-bound, with the shores of an empire almost fabulous enclosing them on every side. Though peremptorily forbidden to anchor, though surrounded by myriads of boats filled with men eager for a conflict, though menaced by forts which seemed formidable till examined through the glass, the fleet kept on, and finally, by dint of persistence and several salutary displays of power, the commodore, having at his disposal the national steamers Susquehanna, Mississippi, and Powhatan, the frigate Saratoga, and the ships Macedonian, Vandalia, Lexington, and Southampton, wrung from the sullen monopolists a treaty opening to American trade the port of Simoda, in Niphon, and that of Hakodadi, in Jesso. It now remains for the Americans to lead the Japanese, by judicious and honorable treatment, to experience and acknowledge the benefits of commerce and intercourse with the nations of Christendom.

To return once more to the Arctic researches. Soon after the return of Belcher and McClure to England, decisive intelligence of Franklin and his party was received in England. Dr. Rae, who had been engaged for a year past in a search by land, had met a party of Esquimaux who were in possession of numerous articles which had belonged to Franklin and his men. They stated that in the spring of 1850 they had seen forty white men, near King William's Land, dragging a boat and sledges over the ice. They were thin and short of provisions: their officer was a tall, stout, middle-aged man. Some months later the natives found the corpses of thirty persons upon the mainland, and five dead bodies upon a neighboring island. They described the bodies as mutilated; whence Dr. Rae inferred that the party had been driven to the horrible resource of cannibalism. The presence of the bones and feathers of geese, however, showed that some had survived till the arrival of wild-fowl, about the end of May. Dr. Rae purchased such articles of the natives as would best serve to identify their late possessors. All furnished decisive testimony; but a round silver plate gave peculiarly strong evidence, bearing as it did the following inscription:—"Sir John Franklin, K.C.B." The slight clue thus yielded of his fate was the last which has thus far been obtained; and it will doubtless be the only one till the Arctic seas give up their dead. The expedition of Dr. Kane had, however, already sailed from New York.

It was while these events were transpiring that the keel of the mammoth steam-vessel—known at first as the Great Eastern, and afterwards as the Leviathan—was laid, at Milwall, on the Thames. We refer the reader to the engraving on the opposite page for a view of this "village adrift."