,
together with a ship put in commission by the wifely devotion of
Lady Franklin. These all attempted the search of Lancaster Sound,
where Franklin had last been seen, and they only succeeded in finding
three graves of men who had died at an early stage, and had been
buried 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 farth