Produced by Julia Miller and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) Transcriber's Note: In the line "We sailed by Fairl[=e]e, by Beach[=e]y, and Dung[)e]ness," [=e] represents the letter "e" with a macron above it and [)e] represents an "e" with a breve above it. The symbol "^" in y^e indicates that the "e" is printed as a superscript. STRAY LEAVES FROM AN ARCTIC JOURNAL; OR, Eighteen Months in the Polar Regions, IN SEARCH OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN'S EXPEDITION, IN THE YEARS 1850-51. BY LIEUT. SHERARD OSBORN, COMMANDING H.M.S. VESSEL, "PIONEER." _DEDICATED TO LADY FRANKLIN._ New York: GEORGE P. PUTNAM, 10 PARK PLACE M. DCCC. LII. DEDICATION. Accept, my dear Lady Franklin, these few pages, as the warm and honest tribute of deserved admiration for yourself and estimable niece, Miss Sophia Cracroft--admiration, which I delight in, in common with thousands, that such as you are Englishwomen; and pride, that a sailor's wife should so nobly have fulfilled her duty; for, if, on the one hand, the name of Sir John Franklin, that chief "_sans peur et sans reproche_," is dearly associated with our recollections of the honours won in the ice-bound regions of the Pole, your names are not the less so, with the noble efforts made to rescue, or solve the fate of our missing countrymen. That those sacrifices, those untiring exertions, that zeal which has never wavered, that hope so steadfast, since it is that of an Englishwoman for her husband, that patience under misconstruction, that forgiveness for the sneer of jealousy, and that pity for the malicious, which you have so pre-eminently displayed, may yet, by God's help, one day reap its reward in the accomplishment of your wishes, is the fervent prayer of SHERARD OSBORN. PREFACE. I fear with the many of my cloth, my crime in writing a book will be an unpardonable one; the more so, that I cannot conscientiously declare, that it has been at the urgent desire of my friends, &c., that I have thus made my debut. My motive is twofold: to tell of the doings of a screw steam-vessel, the first ever tried in the Polar regions, and by a light, readable description of incidents in the late search for Sir John Franklin, to interest the general reader and the community at large upon that subject. Without fear, favour, or affection, I have told facts as they have occurred; and I trust have, in doing so, injured no man. A journal must necessarily be, for the most, a dry narration of facts; I have, therefore, thrown in here and there general observations and remarks founded upon such facts, rather than a dry repetition of them.