The _North Star_, they told us, had been caught by the ice last season in the neighborhood of our own first imprisonment, off the Devil's Thumb. After a perilous drift, she had succeeded in entering Wolstenholme Sound, whence, after a tedious winter, she had only recently arrived at Port Bowen. They followed in our wake the next day as we pushed through many streams of ice across the strait. We sighted the shore about five miles to the west of Cape Hurd very closely; a miserable wilderness, rising in terraces of broken-down limestone, arranged between the hills like a vast theatre. On the 25th, still beating through the ice off Radstock Bay, we discovered on Cape Riley two cairns, one of them, the most conspicuous, with a flag-staff and ball. A couple of hours after, we were near enough to land. The cape itself is a low projecting tongue of limestone, but at a short distance behind it the cliff rises to the height of some eight hundred feet. We found a tin canister within the larger cairn, containing the information that Captain Ommanney had been there two days before us, with the _Assistance_ and _Intrepid_, belonging to Captain Austin's squadron, and had discovered traces of an encampment, and other indications "that some party belonging to her Britannic majesty's service had been detained at this spot." Similar traces, it was added, had been found also on Beechy Island, a projection on the channel side some ten miles from Cape Riley. Our consort, the _Rescue_, as we afterward learned, had shared in this discovery, though the British commander's inscription in the cairn, as well as his official reports, might lead perhaps to a different conclusion. Captain Griffin, in fact, landed with Captain Ommanney, and the traces were registered while the two officers were in company. I inspected these different traces very carefully, and noted what I observed at the moment. The appearances which connect them with the story of Sir John Franklin have been described by others; but there may still be interest in a description of them made while they were under my eye. I transcribe it word for word from my journal. "On a tongue of fossiliferous limestone, fronting toward the west on a little indentation of the water, and shielded from the north by the precipitous cliffs, are five distinct remnants of habitation. "Nearest the cliffs, four circular mounds or heapings-up of the crumbled limestone, aided by larger stones placed at the outer edge, as if to protect the leash of a tent. Two larger stones, with an interval of two feet, fronting the west, mark the places of entrance. "Several large square stones, so arranged as to serve probably for a fire-place. These have been tumbled over by parties before us.