HOPE ON.
Eves yet the hopes for Franklin's party are not quite exhausted. They have now been out five years, and are entering upon their sixth winter; and they had provisions only for three or four years. That last is the darkest fact. Cold they are inured to ; many winters would not be worse for them than one. That they have lost some of their party we know ; but they had experience, courage, and steady purpose, to keep np their health. It is not impossible that they may still be pursuing their way, animated and buoyed up by the expectation of being the first party to effect "the North-west passage." But their provisions?
On this point Dr. Rae, an officer of the Hudson's Bay Company, has advanced some cheering evidence, in a letter to the New York Albion. The date of his letter indeed is remote—" Fort Confidence, North-east end of thereat Bear Lake, October 14, 1850 " ; but the argument still holds good.
" In 1846.7, I wintered at Repulse Bay with a party of twelve men ; only two of whom, before arriving there, had ever practised deer-shooting, and two others were fishermen. We had little or no fuel that could be properly so called ; the mud with which our stone house was plastered never dried, but only froze ; and it was so cold inside, that a man, one night, got his knee frostbitten although he had one of his companions under the blankets with him. Yet we suffered no privation as regarded food, except that during the shortest days we took only one meal per diem, as a precautionary mea- sure, not knowing how late it might be in the spring before the reindeer migrated Northward. "That we were not much the worse for our exposure to cold and low diet, may be inferred from the fact, that in the spring we traced about five hun- dred miles of new coast, forming the shores of Committee Bay ; in doing which, I and one of my men travelled on foot upwards of a thousand miles, and were on our return, although rather low in flesh, as sound and well as when we started.
" When leaving York factory, in June 1846, we had not more than four months' provisions with us ; when we returned to that place, after art absence of fourteen months and twenty-three days, we had still a third of our original stock of provisions on band ; showing that we had by our own exertions, in a country previously totally unknown to us, obtained the means of subsistence for twelve months. Why may not Sir John Frank- lin's party do the same."
Three months' provisions sufficed for nearly fifteen : at the same ratio, Franklin's provisions might serve for fifteen or twenty years. Moreover, Dr. Rae may already have met with the missing party-
" It being the belief of those on whose judgment most reliance can be placed that the missing vessels are shut up somewhere between the longi- tude of 103 deg. and 115 deg. West and latitude 71 deg. North, it is evident that the most direct route thither from the Southward is the Coppermino River ; and that is the route I intend to follow next summer, if I receive no intelligence that the searching parties of this season have been successful."
He had succeeded in building two boats light and suitable for the purpose. Dr. Rae's " next " summer is now last summer; • so that the failure of the ships does not prove that Franklin has not already been reached by the cheering hand and voice.of help and hope.
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