where, on the 29th, he was beset by icebergs, with which the vessel drifted helplessly until the 21st of September. On that day, the vessel was driving before a south-westerly gale towards an enormous iceberg in Melville Bay, and her destruction seemed imminent; but a corner of the ice-field with which she was drifting struck the berg, and an immense fragment was broken off, while the positions of the ship and the jarring masses of ice became changed by the collision, and the anxious crew escaped the fate that had seemed to threaten them.

The season was now too far advanced for the supplies to be landed before the following summer; and on the 29th the ship was moored for the winter in Wolstenholme Sound, being the most northerly situation in which the winter has ever been passed by men of any European nation. In a few days they were frozen in. The cold was intense; and even the Esquimaux, from whom they received occasional visits, suffered severely.

The ship remained fast in the ice until the 1st of August, 1850, and was not got into open water until the 3rd. Saunders then steered to the south-west, and on the 23rd landed the stores in Navy Board Inlet, and deposited them in a ravine near the beach. A memorandum, secured in a waterproof case, was placed in a cairn, marked by a high pole, surmounted by a black ball. Captain Penny had been spoken with on the 21st, on his way to search for Franklin in Wellington Channel; and Sir John Ross, who had sailed upon a similar expedition, on the 22nd; and on the 30th, while sailing down the coast of Cockburn Land on his way home, Saunders met Commander Forsyth, engaged in the same service. The nation had resolved that Franklin and his companions, if yet living, should be rescued at any cost; and a dozen expeditions were by this time engaged in the search.

MORE SEARCHES FOR THE FRANKLIN EXPEDITION-SIR JOHN Ross's VOYAGE TO BAFFIN BAYEXPEDITIONS OF CAPTAIN AUSTIN, CAPTAIN PENNY, AND COMMANDER FORSYTH-DISCOVERY OF TRACES OF THE FRANKLIN EXPEDITION-WINTER IN BARROW STRAIT-SLEDGE JOURNEYS ON THE ICE-DISCOVERY OF VICTORIA CHANNEL.

OR several years after the departure of the ill-fated Franklin expedition, the history of Arctic exploration is a record of the arduous efforts made by sea and land to penetrate the mystery which so long veiled the course and the end of those unfortunate explorers from the knowledge of the world. The British Government, not content with despatching Sir James Ross to Barrow Strait, and Captain Kellett and Commander Moore to Behring Strait, offered a reward of £20,000 to any ship which should afford efficient relief to the missing expedition, and one of half that amount for information concerning it. Several search expeditions followed close upon each other. Partly at the cost of the Hudson Bay Company, partly by public subscription, a small schooner was chartered to explore the shores of Baffin Bay, and Sir John Ross volunteered to command her. Four steamers were fitted out at Woolwich to renew the search which Sir James Ross had left incomplete, and were placed under the command of Captain Austin, with such able subordinates as Captain Ommaney, and Lieutenants Osborne and Maclintock. Partly

at the cost of Lady Franklin, who devoted to the duty all her available means, partly by public subscription, another vessel was chartered, to search in waters to which Captain Austin's instructions did not apply, under the direction of Commander Forsyth. Finally, Captain Penny, an intelligent and experienced whaler, started with two ships to explore Wellington Channel.

Sir John Ross sailed from Aberdeen on the 23rd of May, 1850, and steered for the west coast of Greenland. Calling at the Danish settlement of Holstein Bay in June for an Esquimaux interpreter, he sailed on to the Whale Islands, and through Waygat Strait, between the Greenland coast and the island of Disko. He fell in with Captain Austin's expedition on the 10th of August, and on the 30th was off Cape York, where he learned from three Esquimaux that two vessels, which were not whalers, and the officers of which wore epaulettes, had been crushed by icebergs near Cape Digges in the winter of 1846; and that a fierce tribe of Esquimaux had burned the vessels, and massacred all the survivors. No corroboratory evidence could be obtained, however; and when one of the Esquimaux was subsequently examined by Captain Austin's interpreter, his story (or the interpretation) differed so much from that given to Sir John Ross, that doubts were raised as to its truth. Captain Austin gave it no credit, but Sir John Ross, though he appeared doubtful at the time, returned to England, and urged his belief of the story as his reason for abandoning the search.

Lady Franklin, who had carefully studied the problem which involved her husband's fate, thought it probable that he had lost or abandoned his vessels to the south-westward of Cape Walker, which forms the eastern extremity of an island off the north coast of Prince of Wales Land; and had sought