on Beechey Island.  Another set of four vessels were despatched under Sir Edward Belcher in 1852, who were fortunate enough to reach M’Clure in the Investigator in the following year, and enabled him to complete the north-west passage, for which he gained the reward of L10,000 offered by Parliament in 1763.  But Belcher was obliged to abandon most of his vessels, one of which, the Resolute, drifted over a thousand miles, and having been recovered by an American whaler, was refitted by the United States and presented to the queen and people of Great Britain.

Notwithstanding all these efforts, the Franklin remains have not yet been discovered, though Dr. Rae, as we have seen, had practically ascertained their terrible fate.  Lady Franklin, however, was not satisfied with this vague information.  She was determined to fit out still another expedition, though already over L35,000 had been spent by private means, mostly from her own personal fortune; and in 1857 the steam yacht Fox was despatched under M’Clintock, who had already shown himself the most capable master of sledge work.  He erected a monument to the Franklin expedition on Beechey Island in 1858, and then following Peel Sound, he made inquiries of the natives throughout the winter of 1858-59.  This led him to search King William Land, where, on the 25th May, he came across a bleached human skeleton lying on its face, showing that the man had died as he walked.  Meanwhile, Hobson, one of his companions, discovered a record of the Franklin expedition, stating briefly its history between 1845 and 1848; and with this definite information of the fate of the Franklin expedition M’Clintock returned to England in 1859, having succeeded in solving the problem of Franklin’s fate, while exploring over 800 miles of coast-line in the neighbourhood of King William Land.

The result of the various Franklin expeditions had thus been to map out the intricate network of islands dotted over the north of North America.  None of these, however, reached much farther north than 75 deg..

Only Smith Sound promised to lead north of the 80th parallel.  This had been discovered as early as 1616 by Baffin, whose farthest north was only exceeded by forty miles, in 1852, by Inglefield in the Isabel, one of the ships despatched in search of Franklin.  He was followed up by Kane in the Advance, fitted out in 1853 by the munificence of two American citizens, Grinnell and Peabody.  Kane worked his way right through Smith Sound and Robeson Channel into the sea named after him.  For two years he continued investigating Grinnell Land and the adjacent shores of Greenland.  Subsequent investigations by Hayes in 1860, and Hall ten years later, kept alive the interest in Smith Sound and its neighbourhood; and in 1873 three ships were despatched under Captain (afterwards Sir George) Nares, who nearly completed the survey of Grinnell Land, and one of his lieutenants, Pelham Aldrich, succeeded in reaching 82.48 deg.  N. About the same time, an Austrian expedition under Payer and Weyprecht explored the highest known land, much to the east, named by them Franz Josef Land, after the Austrian Emperor.