Franklin crewmen, identified as Lieutenant John Irving of . Though the expedition failed to find the hoped-for papers, in a speech at a dinner given in his honor by the American Geographical Society in 1880, Schwatka noted that his expedition had made "the longest sledge journey ever made both in regard to time and distance" of eleven months and four days and and that it was the first Arctic expedition on which the Caucasians relied entirely on the same diet as the Inuit. The search was conducted under some of the coldest conditions experienced in polar exploration. Later career In 1883, he was sent to reconnoiter the Yukon River by the US Army. Going over the Chilkoot Pass, his party built rafts and floated down the Yukon River to its mouth in the Bering Sea, naming many geographic features along the way. At more than , it was the longest raft journey that had ever been made. Schwatka's expedition alarmed the Canadian government, which sent an expedition under George Mercer Dawson to explore the Yukon in 1887. After his resignation from the army in 1885, Schwatka led two private expeditions to Alaska financed by William D. Boyce and three to northeastern Mexico and published descriptions of the social customs and the flora and fauna of these regions. Schwatka received the Roquette Arctic Medal from the Geographical Society of Paris, and a medal from the Imperial Geographical Society of Russia. He was an honorary member of the Geographical Societies of Bremen, Geneva, and Rome. Works Schwatka's book-length publications include Along Alaska's Great River (1885) and The Search for Franklin (1882), republished in 1965 as The Long Arctic Search. Death He died in Portland, Oregon at the age of 43 in 1892. The New York Times reported his death as the outcome of an accidental overdose of morphine but the Coconino Sun of Coconino county (Flagstaff), Arizona listed his death as a suicide by laudanum. Schwatka was buried in Salem, Oregon. Legacy Schwatka Lake in Whitehorse, Yukon, is named after him, as is Mount Schwatka, Alaska. In 2007, an Arctic Sharps rifle commemorating Frederick Schwatka was begun by a group of prominent American gunsmiths. Engraved by Barry Lee Hands, the rifle depicts scenes from the arctic adventures of Schwatka (See "External Links" below). Since 1960, the cruise boat the MV Schwatka has ferried passengers along the Yukon River through Miles Canyon to