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Banks Land, or Baring Island, the two names belong to the same island, on the shores of which McClure and his men had spent most of these two years or more, is an island on which they were first of civilized men to land. For people who are not very particular, the measurement of it which we gave before, namely, that it is about the size and shape of Ireland, is precise enough. There is high land in the interior probably, as the winds from in shore are cold. The crew found coal and dwarf willow which they could burn; lemmings, ptarmigan, hares, reindeer, and musk-oxen, which they could eat.

“Farewell to the land where I often have wended
My way o’er its mountains and valleys of snow;
Farewell to the rocks and the hills I’ve ascended,
The bleak arctic homes of the buck and the doe;
Farewell to the deep glens where oft has resounded
The snow-bunting’s song, as she carolled her lay
To hillside and plain, by the green sorrel bounded,
Till struck by the blast of a cold winter’s day.”

There is a bit of description of Banks Land, from the anthology of that country, which, so far as we know, consists of two poems by a seaman named Nelson, one of Captain McClure’s crew. The highest temperature ever observed on this “gem of the sea” was 53 deg. in midsummer. The lowest was 65 deg. below zero in January, 1853; that day the thermometer did not rise to 60 deg. below, that month was never warmer than 16 deg. below, and the average of the month was 43 deg. below. A pleasant climate to spend three years in!

One day for talk was all that could be allowed, after Mr. Pim’s amazing appearance. On the 8th of April, he and his dogs, and Captain McClure and a party, were ready to return to our friend the “Resolute.” They picked up Dr. Domville on the way; he had got the broken sledge mended, and killed five musk-oxen, against they came along. He went on in the dog-sledge to tell the news, but McClure and his men kept pace with them; and he and Dr. Domville had the telling of the news together.

It was decided that the “Investigator” should be abandoned, and the “Intrepid” and “Resolute” made room for her men. Glad greeting they gave them too, as British seamen can give. More than half the crews were away when the “Investigator’s” parties came in, but by July everybody had returned. They had found islands where the charts had guessed there was sea, and sea where they had guessed there was land; had changed peninsulas into islands and islands into peninsulas. Away off beyond the seventy eighth parallel, Mr. McClintock had christened the farthest dot of land “Ireland’s Eye,” as if his native island were peering off into the unknown there;–a great island, which will be our farthest now, for years to come, had been named “Prince Patrick’s Land,” in honor of the baby prince who was the youngest when they left home. Will he not be tempted, when he is a man, to take a crew, like another Madoc, and, as younger sons of queens should, go and settle upon this tempting god-child? They had heard from Sir Edward Belcher’s part of the squadron; they had heard from England; had heard of everything but Sir John Franklin. They had even found an ale-bottle of Captain Collinson’s expedition,–but not a stick nor straw to show where Franklin or his men had lived or died. Two officers of the “Investigator” were sent home to England this summer by a ship from Beechey Island, the head-quarters; and thus we heard, in October, 1853, of the discovery of the Northwest Passage.

After their crews were on board again, and the “Investigator’s” sixty stowed away also, the “Resolute” and “Intrepid” had a dreary summer of it. The ice would not break up. They had hunting-parties on shore and races on the floe; but the captain could not send the “Investigators” home as he wanted to, in his steam tender. All his plans were made, and made on a manly scale,–if only the ice would open. He built a storehouse on the island for Collinson’s people, or for you, reader, and us, if we should happen there, and stored it well, and left this record:–