Does the reader know that in the desolation of the Arctic shores the Ptarmigan is the bird most often found?  It is the Arctic grouse or partridge,[O] and often have the ptarmigans of Melville Island furnished sport and even dinners to the hungry officers of the “Resolute,” wholly unconscious that she had ever been their god-child, and had thrown off their name only to take that which she now wears.

Early in May, 1850, just at the time we now know that brave Sir John Franklin and the remnant of his crew were dying of starvation at the mouth of Back’s River, the “Resolute” sailed first for the Arctic seas, the flag-ship of Commodore Austin, with whose little squadron our own De Haven and his men had such pleasant intercourse near Beechey Island.  In the course of that expedition she wintered off Cornwallis Island,—­and in autumn of the next year returned to England.

Whenever a squadron or a man or an army returns to England, unless in the extreme and exceptional case of complete victory over obstacle invincible, there is always dissatisfaction.  This is the English way.  And so there was dissatisfaction when Captain Austin returned with his ships and men.  There was also still a lingering hope that some trace of Franklin might yet be found, perhaps some of his party.  Yet more, there were two of the searching ships which had entered the Polar seas from Behring’s Straits on the west, the “Enterprise” and “Investigator,” which might need relief before they came through or returned.  Arctic search became a passion by this time, and at once a new squadron was fitted out to take the seas in the spring of 1852.  This squadron consisted of the “Assistance” and “Resolute” again, which had been refitted since their return, of the “Intrepid” and “Pioneer,” two steamships used as tenders to the “Assistance” and “Resolute” respectively, and of the “North Star,” which had also been in those regions, and now went as a storeship to the rest of the squadron.  To the command of the whole Sir Edward Belcher was appointed, an officer who had served in some of the earlier Arctic expeditions.  Officers and men volunteered in full numbers for the service, and these five vessels therefore carried out a body of men who brought more experience of the Northern seas together than any expedition which had ever visited them.

Of these, Captain Henry Kellett had command of the “Resolute,” and was second in seniority to Sir Edward Belcher, who made the “Assistance” the flag-ship.  It shows what sort of man he was, to say that for more than ten years he spent only part of one in England, and was the rest of the time in an antipodean hemisphere or a hyperborean zone.  Before brave Sir John Franklin sailed, Captain Kellett was in the Pacific.  Just as he was to return home, he was ordered into the Arctic seas to search for Sir John.  Three years successively, in his ship the “Herald,” he passed inside Behring’s Straits, and far into the Arctic Ocean.  He discovered