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Page 42
There is not much time for travelling in autumn. The days grow very
short and very cold. But what, days there were were spent in sending out
carts and sledges with depots of provisions, which the parties of the
next spring could use. Different officers were already assigned to
different lines of search in spring. On their journeys they would be
gone three months and more, with a party of some eight men,--dragging a
sled very like a Yankee wood-sled with their instruments and provisions,
over ice and snow. To extend those searches as much as possible, and to
prepare the men for that work when it should come, advanced depots were
now sent forward in the autumn, under the charge of the gentlemen who
would have to use them in the spring.
One of these parties, the "South line of Melville Island" party, was
under a spirited young officer Mr. Mecham, who had tried such service in
the last expedition. He had two of "her Majesty's sledges," "The
Discovery" and "The Fearless," a depot of twenty days' provision to be
used in the spring, and enough for twenty-five days' present use. All
the sledges had little flags, made by some young lady friends of Sir
Edward Belcher's. Mr. Mecham's bore an armed hand and sword on a white
ground, with the motto, "_Per mare, per terram, per glaciem_" Over mud,
land, snow, and ice they carried their d�pot, and were nearly back,
when, on the 12th of October, 1852, Mr. Mecham made the great discovery
of the expedition.
On the shore of Melville Island, above Winter Harbor, is a great
sandstone boulder, ten feet high, seven or eight broad, and twenty and
more long, which is known to all those who have anything to do with
those regions as "Parry's sandstone," for it stood near Parry's
observatory the winter he spent here, and Mr. Fisher, his surgeon, cut
on a flat face of it this inscription:--
HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY'S
SHIPS HECLA AND GRIPER,
COMMANDED BY
W.E. PARRY AND MR. LIDDON,
WINTERED IN THE ADJACENT
HARBOR 1819-20.
A. FISHER, SCULPT.
It was a sort of God Terminus put up to mark the end of that expedition,
as the Danish gentlemen tell us our Dighton rock is the last point of
Thorfinn's expedition to these parts. Nobody came to read Mr. Fisher's
inscription for thirty years and more,--a little Arctic hare took up her
home under the great rock, and saw the face of man for the first time
when, on the 5th of June, 1851, Mr. McClintock, on his first expedition
this way, had stopped to see whether possibly any of Franklin's men had
ever visited it. He found no signs of them, had not so much time as Mr.
Fisher for stone-cutting, but carved the figures 1851 on the stone, and
left it and the hare. To this stone, on his way back to the "Resolute,"
Mr. Mecham came again (as we said) on the 12th of October, one memorable
Tuesday morning, having been bidden to leave a record there. He went on
in advance of his party, meaning to cut 1852 on the stone. On top of it
was a small cairn of stones built by Mr. McClintock the year before.
Mecham examined this, and to his surprise a copper cylinder rolled out
from under a spirit tin. "On opening it, I drew out a roll folded in a
bladder, which, being frozen, broke and crumbled. From its dilapidated
appearance, I thought at the moment it must be some record of Sir Edward
Parry, and, fearing I might damage it, laid it down with the intention
of lighting the fire to thaw it. My curiosity, however, overcame my
prudence, and on opening it carefully with my knife, I came to a roll of
cartridge paper with the impression fresh upon the seals. My
astonishment may be conceived on finding it contained an account of the
proceedings of H.M. ship 'Investigator' since parting company with the
"Herald" [Captain Kellett's old ship] in August, 1850, in Behring's
Straits. Also a chart which disclosed to view not only the long-sought
Northwest Passage, but the completion of the survey of Banks and
Wollaston lands. Opened and indorsed Commander McClintock's despatch;
found it contained the following additions:--
"'Opened and copied by his old friend and messmate upon this date,
April 28, 1852. ROBERT McCLURE
"'Party all well and return to Investigator to-day.'"
A great discovery indeed to flash across one in a minute. The
"Investigator" had not been heard from for more than two years. Here was
news of her not yet six months old. The Northwest Passage had been
dreamed of for three centuries and more. Here was news of its
discovery,--news that had been known to Captain McClure for two years.
McClure and McClintock were lieutenants together in the "Enterprise"
when she was sent after Sir John Franklin in 1848, and wintered together
at Port Leopold the next winter. Now, from different hemispheres, they
had come so near meeting at this old block of sandstone. Mr. Mecham bade
his mate build a new cairn, to put the record of the story in, and
hurried on to the "Resolute" with his great news,--news of almost
everybody but Sir John Franklin. Strangely enough, the other expedition,
Captain Collinson's, had had a party in that neighborhood, between the
other two, under Mr. Parks; but it was his extreme point possible, and
he could not reach the Sandstone, though he saw the ruts of McClure's
sleigh. This was not known till long afterwards.
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