The old woman was right. "They fell down and died as they walked along." And now the reward of the explorers was at hand. On the north-west coast of King William's Island was found a cairn and a blue ship's paper, weatherworn and ragged, relating in simple language, written by one of the ship's officers, the fate of the Franklin expedition. The first entry was cheerful enough. In 1846 all was well. His Majesty's ships, _Erebus_ and _Terror_, wintered in the ice--at Beechey Island, after having ascended Wellington Channel and returned to the west side of Cornwallis Island. Sir John Franklin was commanding the expedition. The results of their first year's labour was encouraging. In 1846 they had been within twelve miles of King William's Island, when winter stopped them. But a later entry, written in April 1848, states that the ships were deserted on 22nd April, having been beset in ice since September 1846--that Sir John Franklin had died on 11th June 1847, and that Captain Crozier was in command. Then came the last words, "And start to-morrow twenty-sixth for Back's Fish River." That was all. After a diligent search in the neighbourhood for journals or relics, McClintock led his party along the coast, till on 30th May they found another relic in the shape of a large boat, with a quantity of tattered clothing lying in her. She had been evidently equipped for the ascent of the Great Fish River. She had been built at Woolwich Dockyard; near her lay two human skeletons, a pair of worker slippers, some watches, guns, a _Vicar of Wakefield_, a small Bible, New Testament, and Prayer Book, seven or eight pairs of boots, some silk handkerchiefs, towels, soap, sponge, combs, twine, nails, shot, and cartridges, needle and thread cases, some tea and chocolate, and a little tobacco. Everything was carefully collected and brought back to the ship, which was reached on 19th June. Two months later the little _Fox_ was free from ice and McClintock reached London towards the end of September, to make known his great discovery. The rest of the story is well known. Most of us know the interesting collection of Franklin relics in the United Service Institution in London, and the monument in Waterloo Place to "the great navigator and his brave companions who sacrificed their lives in completing the discovery of the North-West Passage." It was acknowledged "that to Sir John Franklin is due the priority of discovery of the North-West Passage--that last link to forge which he sacrificed his life." And on the marble monument in Westminster Abbey, Tennyson, a nephew of Sir John Franklin, wrote his well-known lines-- "Not here, the white north hath thy bones, and thou, Heroic Sailor Soul, Art passing on thy happier voyage now Towards no earthly pole." CHAPTER LXII DAVID LIVINGSTONE "I shall open up a path to the interior or perish."