OBITUARY.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXVII, Issue 3410, 18 April 1898, Page 2

OBITUARY.

CAPTAIN DAVIDSON. On Saturday morning the death was an? nounoed of Captain Davidson, of Ifaikoura, one of the members of the relief expedition which recovered the relies of Sir John Franklin’s evpipripg party. The deceased was one of the two who discovered the first traces of the ill-fated mariners.

Sir John Franklin left England on his last voyage to the ioe-bound northern seas with the two ships Erebus and Terror on the 19th May, 1845, and was last seen in Baffin’s Bay on the 26th of the following July. His prolonged absence and the dearth of intelligence as to the whereabouts of the expedition oaused profound anxiety in England and several fully-equipped search Iparties were sent out in quest of the mincing men. It was not until ten years had elapsed, however, that the snow-clad wastes of King William Island at last gave np their secret, and Captain MoOlintook was able to bring back news of the fate of the explorers. This officer went to the Arctic regions in the Pox during the year 1850 and wintered at Port Kennedy. There he left the ship and, in company with Lieutenant Hobson, set ont overland on what was supposed to be the track of the missing men. Each of the leaders had a sledge drawn by four men, besides a dog-sledge and driver.

Shortly after midnight on May 25th, as MoClintoek was slowly walking along a ridge of snow, he came upon a human skeleton partly exposed, with here and there a few fragments of clothing. The limbs and smaller bones of the remain) had been partly gnawed away, apparently by animals. The victim was a young man, slightly built, and above the ordinary height. Of this skeleton only a portion of the skull appeared above the snow, and so strangely resembled a smooth, rounded stone that a man the captain called from the sledge, mistaking it tor one, rested his shovel upon it, but started hack with horror when the hollow revealed to him its true nature. This was the first real discovery to show the fate of the Franklin party—only a tew trinkets and tools having been found before. An old Esquimaux woman had when questioned before by MoOlintook on the subjeottoldhim that “they fell down and died as they walked along.’’ The melancholy trnih of this was fully realised by the seqpqhers oq mqkjng this gruesome discovery. Twelve miles further on was found the cairn in which the manners had enclosed the famous record that told of the fate of their ships and the gajlant Sir John. For sqoh a record many thousands of miles had been explored during the preceding 10 years; many a weary march and many a perilous voyage undertaken. No scrap of paper had before been found,and this first record wqs also the last. Weather-stained, frayed with rust and ragged from damp and contact with tae tin case in which it was enclosed, the very appearance of the paper was eloquent. The nrnrnful history of human suffering was written on ordinary ship’s paper and states that after a sojourn of two years in the ice packs of Lancaster Sound the officers and crews abandoned the ships on April 12th, 1848, starting oqt on thefr long, fatal sledge journey. The signatures attached were those of Q. m! Gore, Chas. Des Voux, James Fitzjames and F. Croxier, Sii John Franklin having died on June 11th in the previous year. Other discoveries were made hy MoOlintook and Hobson, but the detailed history of the fate of the men who met with calmness and decision the frightful alternative of a last bold struggle for life rather than perish without effort on their ships lies buried with the bones beneath the snows of that desolate region.