3-070-909 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The American Franklin Search Expedition - down hill, April 15, 1879, (1881). 'Some additional Illustrations of this arduous journey and sojourn of an exploring party in the Arctic Regions, from the Sketches of Mr. H. W. Klutschak...are engraved for the present Number of our Journal...[View of] An incident of sledge-travelling, on April 15, 1879, when descending the hill ranges that intervene on the route from Hudson's Bay across the dreary desert to the more northerly Arctic Archipelago...One of the laden sledges had already reached the bottom of the steep and snow-covered incline, though not without some danger of running over and killing the team of Esquimaux dogs. These poor animals, completely exhausted, immediately threw themselves down and enjoyed their brief repose, while the men in charge waited for the other two sledges to follow them. But, as the second one got about halfway, the terrified dogs broke their traces and got loose, in doing which they nearly overturned the sledge at the top of an irresistible slide; and so it rushed down the slope by its own momentum, with two men clinging to it, and trying to save it from utter wreck. But a few hours' labour sufficed to put all to rights for continuing the day's journey'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.