of food, however repulsive." On the other hand, Sir George Richards shows strong reasons why the Esquimaux should not be believed. "They are said to give as their reasons," he writes, "that some of the limbs were removed as if by a saw. If this is correct, they were, probably, the operators themselves. We learn from the narrative that they were able to saw off the handles of pickaxes and shovels. At all events the intercourse between the natives and such of Franklin's crews as they met is surrounded by circumstances of grave suspicion, as learned from themselves, and this suspicion gathers strength from various circumstances related on Schwatka's journey. Be this as it may, I take my stand on far higher ground. Of course such things have happened. Strong, shipwrecked mariners, suddenly cast adrift on the ocean, have endeavored to extend life in this way when they were in hourly expectation of being rescued. But how different the case in point! The crews of the 'Erebus' and 'Terror', when they abandoned their ship, were, doubtless, for the most part, suffering from exhaustion and scurvy; death had been staring them in the face for months. The greater part of them probably died from exhaustion and disease long before they got a hundred miles from their ships, and found their graves beneath the ice when it melted in summer, or on the beach of King William Land. It is possible that no more than half a dozen out of the whole crew ever reached the entrance to the Great Fish River. We need not call in starvation to our aid. I fully believe that by far the greater portion perished long before their provisions were consumed. The only thing that would have restored men to convalescence in their condition would have been nursing and the comforts of hospital treatment, not a resort to human flesh." Apart from these objections, of which the reader is only forewarned, the importance of the results achieved by Lieutenant Schwatka's expedition has not been gainsaid by any one possessing the least acquaintance with Arctic matters. It made the largest sledge journey on record, having been absent from its base of supplies for eleven months and twenty days, and having traversed 2,819 geographical, or 3,251 statute miles. It was the first expedition which relied for its own subsistence and for the subsistence of its dogs on the game which it found in the locality. It was the first expedition in which the white men of the party voluntarily assumed the same diet as the natives. It was the first expedition which established beyond a doubt the loss of the Franklin records. McClintock recorded an opinion that they had perished: Schwatka recorded it as a fact.