McClintock sailed in the Fox in 1857, drifted eight months in the ice south of Melville Bay, refitted in Greenland ports and returned to Beechey Island in 1858. From here he sailed down Peel Sound, but, meeting solid ice, returned to Port Leopold and coasted the east side of North Somerset to Bellot Strait. Failing to drive his vessel through the strait, he wintered there, and in 1859 with Lieutenant Hobson made a series of important sledge journeys; to the north magnetic pole, where a party of Eskimos was found with relics of the Franklin party; and to Victoria Land and King William Land. This second journey resulted in the complete exploration of King William Land, and the discovery of many relics of the Franklin expedition, including the record found by Hobson at Point Victoria, on the northwest coast of King William Land. Meantime another officer, Captain Allen W. Young, had crossed Franklin Strait to Prince of Wales Land, which he explored to its southern extremity at Cape Swinburne, and returned to the Fox after an unsuccessful attempt to cross McClintock Channel to Victoria Land. The Fox returned to England in September 1859, with the first definite information as to the fate of the Franklin expedition.

In 1865 an American explorer, Charles Francis Hall, followed Rae to Repulse Bay, wintered at Fort Hope, Rae's old winter quarters, and in the spring of 1866, with Eskimo guides, got as far as Cape Weynton, Simpson Peninsula. Here he encountered a party of Eskimos, who told him that they had seen Franklin and visited his ships, and from whom he obtained silver bearing the crest of Franklin. The following year he visited Igloolik, Parry's winter quarters in 1822, and in 1868 explored the west coast of Melville Peninsula, connecting Parry's farthest, at the western entrance to Fury Strait, with Rae's, on the eastern side of Committee Bay-the last gap in the exploration of the northern coast of America. After again wintering at Fort Hope, this indefatigable explorer, who had determined to find some definite record of the Franklin expedition, if such existed, started overland from Repulse Bay in the spring of 1869, crossed Rae Isthmus and Boothia, and found one or two skeletons

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on the mainland south of King William Land. Here he also learned from the natives that the remnant of the Franklin party under Crozier had been seen by the Eskimos off the west coast of King William Land in July 1848, and that subsequently they had all died of starvation. So ended the long search for the lost Franklin expedition, a search which so far as its immediate object was concerned, brought only the most meagre returns, but which did result in most important additions to the geography of the Arctic Archipelago and the northern coast of America.

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II

THE FAR NORTH AND THE YUKON

THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY

URNING to the interior of the continent, we find that before the year 1840 the Hudson's Bay Company had established a chain of trading posts down the Mackenzie River, from Fort Providence, a little below Great Slave Lake, to Fort Good Hope, below the Ramparts. In 1840 Fort McPherson, which still remains the most northerly post of the company, was built near the mouth of Peel River, the lowest tributary of the Mackenzie, by John Bell, a chief trader in the company's service, who had been engaged the previous year in exploring Peel River.

In 1842 Bell, who had been urged by some of the western Indians to visit their country, crossed the mountains and reached the banks of a river which he called Rat River, but which was afterwards named in his own honour. Descending this stream, he found that it emptied into a larger riverthe Porcupine-which he explored to a point near the present international boundary, three days' journey down-stream. Two years later he completed his exploration of the Porcupine, and stood on the banks of a great river which the Indians told him was called the Youcon, or Yukon. This river, as will presently be shown, had already been explored from the upper waters of the Pelly to the junction of the Pelly and Lewes, and therefore to the beginning of the Yukon proper.