It was
on a very prominent hill, from which could plainly be seen the trend of
the coast on both the eastern and western shores, and would most
certainly have attracted the attention of any vessels following in the
route of the 'Erebus' and 'Terror', though hidden by intervening hills
from those walking along the coast. The next day Frank, Toolooah, and
I went with Lieutenant Schwatka to take another look in the vicinity of
the cairn, and to see if, with a spy-glass, we could discover any other
cairn looking from that hill, but without success. It seemed unfortunate
that probably the only cairn left standing on King William Land, built
by the hands of white men, should have had no record left in it, as
there it might have been well preserved. When satisfied that no document
had been left there, the inference was that it had been erected in the
pursuit of the scientific work of the expedition, or that it had been
used in alignment with some other object to watch the drift of the
ships. Before leaving we rebuilt the cairn, and deposited in it a record
of the work of the Franklin search party to date.
CHAPTER IX.
ARCTIC COSTUMES.
We left Cape Felix on the 7th of July, reluctantly satisfied that Sir
John Franklin had not been buried in that vicinity. The minuteness of
our search will appear in the number of exploded percussion caps, shot,
and other small articles that were found in various places.
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