they may, at least, have the satisfaction of knowing that it is a
faithful narrative of carefully sifted evidence. 

This needs to be said because the statements of the writer have already
been questioned in one or two details.  He says that the party
experienced such cold weather as was almost without precedent in Arctic
travel, the temperature falling to seventy-one degrees below zero.  He
says that the party killed more than five hundred reindeer, besides
musk-oxen, bears, walrus, and seal, in regions where Rae and McClintock
could scarcely find game at all, and where the crews of the
'Erebus' and 'Terror' starved to death.  He says that of the
last survivors of Franklin's party the majority were officers, arguing
that the watches and silver relics found with their skeletons go far to
prove their rank.  These statements have been doubted.  The accuracy of
the thermometers being questioned, they were tested and found to be
curiously exact.  The facilities for procuring game were assisted by the
use of improved weapons; and besides, as Sir Leopold McClintock has
justly shown, it was merely a tradition, not an ascertained fact, that
these sub-arctic regions were destitute of animal life.  The method by
which the official position of the bodies was determined is