A Country Idyl, and Other StoriesBolton, Sarah Knowles
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A Country Idyl, and Other Stories
Bolton, Sarah Knowles
United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
A few years afterward a merchant from Hull, England, Mr. Bolby, met
them at Cumberland gulf, where they had come off the island to trade,
and prevailed upon them to take the long journey to England. When he
reached home he made a large company, and in the presence of these
guests the young woman Hannah was married to Joe. Mr. Bolby took them
to several places in England and Scotland, and they were finally
presented to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The Queen was deeply
interested in these people from the far North in British America, and
asked them to dine with her. If the Queen was pleased with the sincere,
uneducated, fur-dressed pair, Hannah was no less pleased with the
gracious Queen in her elegant home, so entirely different from a snow
hut. She always said Victoria was “very kind, very much lady.” After
two years they returned to Cumberland inlet, and in 1860 Charles F.
Hall, the explorer, met them.
Everybody in both England and America had become deeply interested in
the fate of Sir John Franklin. He had left England in 1845 with two
ships, the “Erebus” and “Terror,” with one hundred and thirty-four
persons, in search of the North Pole. After two years relief parties
were sent out to find them. Lady Franklin spent all her large fortune
in sending out ships to search for her missing husband.
Finally, in 1850, the graves of three of the men were found at the far
North, on Beechy island, west of Hannah’s home, so that the course
which Franklin took was known. Four years later Dr. Rae, of England,
heard from the Eskimos that a large company of white men had starved
on King William Land, far to the northwest of Baffin’s bay, and he
obtained from the Eskimos many articles which belonged to Franklin and
his men.
After England had spent over five million dollars in searching for
Franklin it was ascertained that both his ships had gone to pieces in
the ice off the west coast of King William Land, and that his poor
men had starved and frozen, as they wandered over the ice in a vain
search for food or friends. Then skeletons were found in boats or in
snowbanks, and their boots, watches, and silver had become the property
of the Eskimos. Sir John died two years after the ships left England,
and must have been buried in the ocean.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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