We have at last apparently the conclusion of the Franklin
searches. Another of those bold expeditions has been accom- plished, under the guidance of Mr. Anderson, one of the chief factors of the Hudson's Bay Company ; who has again searched near the spot where the bodies were described to have been seen by Dr. Rae. Mr. Anderson's party found a portion of a boat on
which the name of " Terror " was distinctly ; an English snow-shoe marked with the name of "Stanley," the surgeon of the Erebus, and other traces of the lost band. They found also natives, with whom they instituted an imperfect communication by means of signs ; and from the gesticulated answers of the natives, not difficult to interpret, it seems certain that the whole party died of hunger. The Esquimau' placed their fingers in their cheeks and their hands on their stomachs to express the gaunt countenance and hollowed front of starvation. We have a mournful picture of the figure of the last of the party, an officer, sitting with his head buried in his hands, and resting on his knees ; and the howling of the wolves tells how the remains were dis- posed of.
Again we see expressions of a hope that this is the last of the Arctic expeditions. The last, no doubt, it is for the present ; the last, until some other great scientific question shall justify a renewal of the labours and the hazards that Franklin and his compeers have so nobly and so repeatedly encountered. Those dangers were not confronted in ignorance ; Franklin himself had encountered them before. He and his companions knew the price—even the price of starvation in the desert--that they might have to pay for their inquiry into the source of scientific truths. But, again we say, science never works for direct pro- fit ; it works for the sake of searching into truth ; and invariably the search returns, in some indirect form, payment with ample usanee on the sacrifice.
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