tions. Day after day they trudged on, employed for two hours each
evening, before they could take their food or go to rest, in building
their snow huts, exposed to biting winds, to snow and sleet, and often
to dense fogs.

On one occasion one man alone of a whole party escaped being struck by
snow-blindness; and he had to lead them with their packs, and to guide
them back to the vessel. How terrible would have been their fate had he
also been struck with blindness!

On the west coast of King William's Island, which is separated by a
broad channel from the mainland of America, they fell in with several
families of Esquimaux, among whom numerous relics of the Franklin
expedition were discovered. The most interesting were purchased.
Farther north, on the west coast, a cairn was found, within which was a
paper with the announcement of Sir John Franklin's death, and with the
sad statement, written at a subsequent period, that it had been found
necessary to abandon the ships and to proceed to the southward.

A boat on runners also was found with two skeletons in her, and another
skeleton at a distance--all too plainly telling a tale which shall be
narrated hereafter. The Esquimaux also said that they had seen men sink
down and die along the shore; and that one ship had gone down crushed by
the ice, and that another had been driven on shore. With this terrible
elucidation of the long-continued mystery, only partly cleared up before
by Dr Rae, they began their return journey.

On the 19th of June Captain McClintock reached his ship, the ice having
begun to melt with the increased warmth of the weather. August arrived,
and the explorers began to look out anxiously for the breaking up of the
ice.

At last, on the 10th, a favourable breeze drove the ice out of the bay,
and the trim little _Fox_, under sail and steam, merrily darted out of
her prison, and hurried north towards Barrow's Straits. She reached
Baffin's Bay, and, touching at the Danish settlements, arrived in the
English Channel on the 20th of September, having made the passage under
sail in nineteen days from Greenland.

THE FATE OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN'S EXPEDITION.

The last intelligence which had been received of the _Erebus_ and
_Terror_ was from the whalers in July 1845, at Melville Bay. Thence the
expedition passed on through Lancaster Sound to Barrow's Straits, and
entered Wellington Channel, the southern entrance to which had been
discovered by Sir