Yet the fortitude and pride of the cripple was displayed in the return journey, with the outer joint of his great toe sloughed off, thus making it most painful to walk; as Rae remarks, "He had too much spirit to allow himself to be hauled." Rae's collected information was as follows: In 1850 Eskimo families killing seals near King William Land saw about forty white men travelling southward along the west shore, dragging a boat and sledges. By signs the natives learned that their ships had been crushed and that they were going to find deer to shoot. All were hauling on the sledge except one officer. They looked thin and bought a seal from the natives. Late that year the natives found the corpses of about thirty-five men near Montreal Island and Point Ogle, part in tents and others under a boat. None of the Eskimos questioned by Rae had seen the explorers either living or dead. They learned of these matters from other natives, from whom they had obtained by barter many relics of various kinds. Rae succeeded in purchasing about sixty articles from the Eskimos. The most important, which left no doubt of their having come from Franklin's squadron, were twenty-one pieces of silver for the table, which were marked with five different crests and with the initials of seven officers of the expedition, including Sir John Franklin. The natives thought that some of the explorers lived until the coming of wild fowl, in May, 1850, as shots were heard and fish bones with feathers of geese were later seen near the last encampment. Although Rae had completed his survey only in part, he wisely decided that he had, as he records, "A higher duty to attend to, that duty being to communicate with as little loss of time as possible the melancholy tidings which I had heard, and thereby save the risk of more valuable lives being jeopardized in a fruitless search in a direction where there was not the slightest prospect of obtaining any information." As may be imagined, Rae's definite reports stirred deeply the hearts and minds of the civilized world, which for seven long years had vainly striven to rend the veil of mystery that surrounded the fate of Franklin and his men. The silver and other articles brought back by Dr. Rae were placed in the Painted Hall of Greenwich Hospital, among the many historic relics of the royal navy. Even to-day these relics attract the attention and excite the admiration of countless visitors. And well they may, not alone as memorials of the deeds in peace of the naval heroes of England, but also as evidences of the modest courage, the stanch endurance, and heroic efforts of a Scotch doctor, John Rae, through whose arduous labors they were placed in this temple of fame. SONNTAG'S FATAL SLEDGE JOURNEY "Death cut him down before his prime, At manhood's open portal." --POMEROY.