peril, hope of release seemed to be gone, was
actually on the point of doing what many of
our countrymen may probably have done.
"I well know," writes the brave American,
"how glad I would have been, had my duties
to others permitted me, to have taken refuge
among the Esquimaux of Smith's Straits and
Etah Bay. Strange as it may seem to you,
we regarded the coarse life of these people
with eyes of envy, and did not doubt that
we could have lived in comfort upon their
resources. It required all my powers, moral
and physical, to prevent my men deserting
to the Walrus settlements; and it was my
final intention to have taken to Esquimaux
life, had Providence not carried us through
in our hazardous escape."

There are grounds not yet stated here, for
believing that the Esquimaux for many miles
round the mouth of Back River know more
about the white men than they wish to tell
us. Captain Penny, who has intimate knowledge
of these people and their ways (and
who, by the bye, states that accusation of
cannibalism is one of their common forms of
reproach against persons with whom they
are offended), Captain Penny was told by
them that a large party of white men had
been seen and visited some years previously,
when they inhabited a large round tent (the
Franklin expedition had been furnished with
such a tent), and were living upon deer.
Several months afterwards, the Esquimaux
went to the tent again and found only two
men in it. Made talkative with brandy, one
of the tribe said afterwards that those white
men had been murdered; but, next day
retracted in the presence of his sister. The
Esquimaux who carried this report to Captain
Penny were said afterwards to have
been taken away by eight sledges to a
distance of five hundred miles, and the natives
who had been for twenty-eight years on the
friendliest terms with the captain, and had
obtained great advantage from his trading,
absented themselves in an unaccountable way
last season.

So the case stands, and so we cannot leave
it. With the more than possibility that some
of our lost seamen are yet living, with dark
hints of murder against Esquimaux which
may have no foundation, and with darker
hints of cannibalism against some of the
bravest sailors and the truest men that ever
perished in the service of their country—
hints which are in direct opposition to just
analogy and experience, and which assuredly
have no foundation— with such questions
raised, and with a distinct knowledge of what
must be done to set them all at rest, we
cannot surely leave that one thing undone,
and so blot as we turn over, the best page
of all our history.

This last effort may be made by volunteers,
who are already eager for permission to proceed
upon their way. There are no unknown
seas to penetrate, there is no wide stretch of
unknown coast to explore, few men are
needed for a simple and sufficient undertaking.
Lieutenant Bedford Pim volunteers,
on the one part, and Dr. King, who from the
very first has been pointing in vain to the
right course of search, and whose neglected
counsels time has justified, volunteers on the
other part. One is prepared to go with a
small screw-steamer, by sea, through Barrow's
Strait and down Peel's Sound; the other, upon
a land journey across North America with
bark canoes, and down Back River; the two
leaders acting in concert and agreed to meet
in the immediate neighbourhood of the space
to be searched, at the magnetic pole. The
proper time for starting upon the land journey
would be towards the end of February; the
sea expedition should start at the end of
June. Each party will be small, and, as they
act in concert, both the completeness of the
search and the safety of each set of men will
be to the utmost possible degree ensured.

Of other searching parties it is to be
regretted that they have gone out together,
but without being united by a common
plan. The first search for Franklin was
by three expeditions. Two of them— one
descending the Mackenzie River, and the
other entering the Polar Seas by Barrow's
Strait— were to have been united by sledge
journeys. The distance between the
Mackenzie and Barrow's Strait made this
impracticable. Had the two parties met, the
land party from the Coppermine would have
been acquainted with the movements of both
the eastern and the western ships. As it
was, sledge parties from different expeditions
passed unconsciously within forty or fifty
miles of one another; and, at last, two of the
expeditions came back safely, bringing no
tidings whatever of the third, which for some
time was almost given up for lost. In those
days, also, the party of forty men seen
travelling southward by the Esquimaux
must have passed within a few miles of a
sledge party from the sea expedition. Had
the land party descended Back River instead
of the Mackenzie, it would have fallen in
with those men of whom now we ask to know
the fate.

            A JOURNEY DUE NORTH.
THE GREAT RUSSIAN BOGUEY (THE POLICE).

DROSCHKYING one day along the Gorokhovaïa,
or Street of the Peas, there passed
me, darting in and out of the usual mounted
escort of dust, one of the neatest turn-outs in
the way of a private droschky that I had
seen since my arrival in St. Petersburg. The
horse was a magnificent Alézan, worth from
eight hundred to a thousand roubles
probably— an arched-necked, small, proud,
wicked-headed brute. The Ischvostchik was
a picture— stalwart, well-proportioned,
full-bearded and white-teethed; his caftan
well-fitting, his sash resplendent, his neckcloth so
snowy in its hue, so irreproachable in its