About 12 miles from Cape Herschel I found a small cairn built by Hobson's
party, and containing a note for me. He had reached this, his extreme
point, six days previously, without having seen anything of the wreck,
or of natives, but he had found a recordthe record so ardently
sought for of the Franklin Expeditionat Point Victory, on the
N.W. coast of King William's Land [King William Island]. The record
is indeed a sad and touching relic of our lost friends . . . In the
short space of twelve months how mournful had become the history of
Franklin's expedition; how changed from the cheerful "All well"
of Graham Gore! The spring of 1847 found them within 90 miles of the
known sea off the coast of America; and to men who had already in two
seasons sailed over 500 miles of previously unexplored waters, how confident
must they then have felt that the forthcoming navigable season of 1847
would see their ships pass over so short an intervening space! It was
ruled otherwise. [M'Clintock, pp. 282-283, 287.]