2-913-884 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Dr. Rae - (from a daguerreotype by Beard), 1854. 'Dr. [John] Rae, of the Hudson's Bay Company, has reached England, bringing with him from the Arctic Seas a number of articles that belonged to Sir John Franklin and his companions..."during my journey over the ice and snow this spring, with the view of completing the survey of the west shore of Boothia, I met with Esquimaux [Inuit] in Pelly Bay, from one of whom I learned that a party of "white men" (Kablounans) had perished from want of food some distance to the westward"...the bodies of some thirty persons were discovered on the continent, and five on an island near it...From the mutilated state of many of the corpses and the contents of the kettles, it is evident that our wretched countrymen had been driven to the last resource - cannibalism - as a means of prolonging existence'. From "Illustrated London News", 1854.