trickle down the sides of the weather-beaten ships, and icicles hang pendant from the edge of hummocks; yet it is still intensely cold in the shade. Lieutenant Graham Gore, and Mr. F. Des Vœux, mate, both of the Erebus, are about to leave the ships for the land. They have six men with them. Why do all grasp them so fervently by the hand? Why do even the sick come up to give them a parting cheer? Surely they went forth to bring back the assurance that the expedition was really in the direct channel leading to those waters traversed in former years by Franklin; and to tell them all that they really were the discoverers of the long-sought passage! A record was left by Gore and Des Voeux, in a cairn beyond Cape Victory, on the west coast of King William's Land; it tells us that, "on May 24th, 1847, all were well on board the ships, and that Sir John Franklin still commanded." Graham Gore probably traversed the short distance between his cairn and that on Cape Herschel in a week; and we can fancy him and the enthusiastic Des Voeux,

casting one glance upon the long-sought shores of America, and hastening back to share their delight with those imprisoned in the ships.

Alas! why do their shipmates meet the flushed travellers with sorrow imprinted on pale countenances! Why, as they cheer at the glad tidings they bring, does the tear suffuse the eye of these rough and hardy men? Their chief lies on his death-bed; a long career of honour and of worth is drawing to its close. The shout of victory, which cheered the last hour of Nelson and of Wolfe, rang not less heartily round the bed of the gallant Franklin, and lit up that kind eye with its last gleam of triumph. Like them, his last thought must have been of his country's glory, and the welfare of those whom he well knew must now hope in vain for his return.

A toll for the brave-the drooping ensigns of England trail only half-mast; officers and men with sad faces walk lightly, as if they feared to disturb the mortal remains of him they love so much. The solemn peal of the ship's bell reverberates amongst

the masses of solid ice; a group of affectionate followers stand round a huge chasm amongst the ice-stream, and Fitzjames, who had sworn only to part from him in death, reads the service for the dead over the grave of Franklin.

Oh! mourn him not, seamen and brother Englishmen! unless ye can point to a more honourable end or a nobler grave. Like another Moses, he fell when his work was accomplished, with the long object of his life in view. Franklin, the discoverer of the North-west Passage, had his Pisgah, and so long as his countrymen shall hold dear disinterested devotion and gallant perseverance in a good cause, so long shall they point to the career and fate of this gallant sailor.

The autumn comes. It is not without anxiety that Crozier and Fitzjames contemplate the prospect before them; but they keep those feelings to themselves. The Pacific is far off; the safe retreat of their men up the Great Fish River, or Copper