3-070-684 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The American Franklin Search Expedition: an Arctic night's lodging, 1881. Engraving of a sketch by Henry W. Klutschak, made during the '...search for traces and relics of the fate of Sir John Franklin and the officers and crews of the Erebus and Terror...[It shows] the peculiar sleeping arrangements, which served for...Mr. Klutschak and Mr. William Gilder, special correspondent of the New York Herald, on the night of Oct. 8, 1878, during a three-days' excursion apart from the rest of the expedition..near their encampment on the north shore of Hudson's Bay. They found a place somewhat sheltered from the cold wind, by a hillock of rising ground, built with loose stones two parallel walls, a couple of feet high, and spread between them a bed of soft moss, upon which they lay down, each man having first got into his sleeping-bag, made of skins and lined with several blankets, and having a close hood to pull over his head; a tarpaulin, secured by heavy stones, formed the roof stretching across from wall to wall. It was tolerably snug, after all, either to sleep or to smoke a pipe in this retreat, while the loaded rifles and the dogs were close at hand, in case of prowling bears or any other enemies, but of these little fear was there entertained'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.