back to the mouth of the Coppermine, which he reached on August 24. Eight days later he and his men were back once more at Fort Confidence.

Meanwhile Richardson had left Fort Confidence, and after a somewhat difficult journey down Bear River, had reached Fort Norman on the Mackenzie. From here he ascended the Mackenzie to Fort Simpson, and was again at Fort Chipewyan on July 19. He arrived at Fort William on September 14, and about the end of the month was once more in Montreal. A quick passage from Boston brought him to Liverpool on November 6, after an absence of nineteen months.

The return of Ross from his bootless voyage of 1848-49, instead of discouraging the government and people of England, seems to have stimulated them to renewed activity in the search for the Franklin expedition. The Admiralty sent one squadron to Bering Strait, under Captains Richard Collinson and Robert John Le Mesurier McClure, and two separate expeditions on the eastern side, by way of Lancaster Sound, under Captains Horatio Thomas Austin and William Penny. To Lancaster Sound also sailed, in this notable year 1850, the Felix, under the command of Sir John Ross, and equipped by private benevolence, the Prince Albert, equipped by Lady Franklin, and commanded by Captain Charles Codrington Forsyth, and the Advance and Rescue, commanded by Lieutenant Edwin J. de Haven, and sent out by American sympathizers.

Collinson in the Enterprise, and McClure in the Investigator, sailed from England in January 1850. McClure outsailed Collinson, and reaching Bering Strait first, pushed through it, rounded Point Barrow about the beginning of August, and sailed along the coast to Cape Bathurst. From here he sailed north, discovered and landed on Banks Land, and following Prince of Wales Strait eastward, was forced to winter in the midst of dangerous pack-ice. During the winter McClure explored the coast of Banks Land to its north-east extremity, and in 1851 sailed round to the extreme north-west point, and wintered in Mercy Bay. From his winter quarters he visited Melville Island, and sent

his lieutenants to explore Banks Land, Wollaston Land and Prince Albert Land.

The summer of 1852 found the Investigator still fast in the ice; and when the spring of 1853 brought no change in the situation, the rapidly-diminishing stock of food compelled McClure to abandon his ship, and cross Barrow Strait on the ice to one of the ships of the eastern squadron. The crew of the Investigator therefore completed the North-West Passage,1 though their ship did not.

Sailing through Bering Strait in 1851, Collinson in the Enterprise traversed Prince of Wales Strait and reached the western entrance of Barrow Strait. Following McClure round Banks Land without meeting him, he went into winter quarters in Walker Bay, Prince Albert Land. The winter was spent in sledge journeys around Prince Albert Land and Melville Island searching for traces of the Franklin expedition, and also to find the whereabouts of the Investigator. Nothing was learned of either party.

In 1852 Collinson sailed south and east through Dolphin Strait and Coronation Gulf to the eastern end of Dease Strait, where he again went into winter quarters. During the winter he explored the south-east coast of Victoria Land, but found it impossible to cross over to King William Land where he would have discovered the Franklin relics. Sailing west in 1853, he was unable to make Bering Strait and had to winter at Flaxman Island. He got out of the ice in July 1854, and reached England in May of the following year, after an absence of over five years.

'The voyage of Collinson,' says General Greely, 'is one of the most remarkable and successful on record. With a sailing ship he navigated not only the Arctic Sea forward and back through 128 (64 one way) degrees of longitude, a feat only excelled by the steamer Vega, but he also sailed the Enterprise more than ten degrees of longitude through

1 The first and only captain to sail his ship through the North-West Passage was Captain Roald Amundsen, the discoverer of the South Pole, in the gallant little Gjoa, 1903-5.

General Adolphus W. Greely, who commanded an expedition to Lady Franklin Bay, Ellesmere Island, 1881-84. On this expedition out of twenty-five officers and men only six survived.

the narrow straits along the northern shores of continental America, which never before had been navigated save by small boats and with excessive difficulty.'

Of the various expeditions sent out to Lancaster Sound to follow the supposed course of Franklin, practically the whole squadron of ten vessels forgathered in Barrow Strait on August 1850. Here they separated, the Prince Albert returning to England with a report as to the discovery of graves and other signs of the sailing of the Erebus and Terror through Lancaster Sound and Barrow Strait; the American expedition proceeding up Wellington Channel, discovering Murdaugh Island and Grinnell Land, and returning home in 1851, after eight months' drifting with the floes. Wellington Channel and Cornwallis Land were examined by Penny's expedition, and by Sir John Ross in the Felix; while the principal government party, under Captain Austin, spent the year 1851 in exploring Prince of Wales Land. Captain William Kennedy, who had come out in the Prince Albert in 1851, wintered at Batty Bay, and in a sledge journey of eleven hundred miles, discovered Bellot Strait1 and travelled completely round North Somerset.

In 1852, after the return of Captain Austin, a further expedition was sent out by the Admiralty under Sir Edward Belcher, with instructions to examine the upper portion of Wellington Channel. While no trace was, of course, found of the Franklin expedition in this direction, the expedition made a thorough exploration of Bathurst, Cornwallis and Melville islands, and achieved other important geographical discoveries north and west of Wellington Channel. This was the last of the official expeditions in search of Franklin.

Two years after his disappointing expedition of 1849, Dr Rae again descended the Coppermine, this time under instructions from the Hudson's Bay Company, and early in May succeeded in crossing Dolphin Strait. He explored the coast of Wollaston Land to Cape Bering, and recrossed the strait to Cape Krusenstern and Kendall River, after a journey on foot, with only two companions, of eleven hundred miles.

1 Named after Joseph René Bellot, a French naval officer, who as a volunteer accompanied the Kennedy expedition.

Not content with this notable piece of work, Rae returned to the mouth of the Coppermine, followed the coast round to Cape Colburn, and explored Victoria Land to within fifty miles of the spot where the Erebus and Terror had been abandoned three years before. Heavy ice prevented him from crossing to King William Land, as he had hoped to do, and he was compelled to return without finding any trace of the Franklin parties beyond the butt of a flagstaff at Parker Bay.

In 1853 Dr Rae again returned to the Arctic, reaching Repulse Bay by boat from Chesterfield Inlet. Game was abundant, and he and his men were able to winter in this most uninviting region with comparative comfort. In the spring of 1854 he explored a large part of the west coast of Boothia. From a young Eskimo whom he met in the course of this journey, he learned that in the spring of 1850 about forty white men had been seen dragging a boat southward along the west coast of King William Land; that they had told the Eskimos of the loss of their ship, and that they were on their way to the mainland, where they hoped to find reindeer; and that later in the spring, the bodies of some thirty of the white men had been found on the mainland, and five on an island near the coast. The Eskimos showed Rae pieces of silver with the Franklin crest, and other articles that proved conclusively the tragic end of the expedition. These and other relics secured from the Eskimos, Rae carried back to York Factory in August 1854 and sent to England. The following year James Anderson, also of the Hudson's Bay Company, descended Backs River to the sea, and from the Eskimos there secured many additional relics of the Franklin expedition. Satisfied by this confirmatory evidence of the death of Franklin and his men, the Admiralty awarded to Rae and his companions the £10,000 reward offered for positive information as to the fate of the expedition.

Although, with the return of Belcher, the Admiralty had declined to equip any further expeditions, Lady Franklin was determined to ascertain exact particulars of the death of her husband and his men. She secured in McClintock an officer of wide experience in Arctic exploration, and one also of excellent judgment and tireless determination.