After the return of Sir Edward Belcher’s expedition in 1854 the British Government was content to rest on its laurels, so far as Arctic research was concerned, and to leave the field entirely to Germans, Austrians, Americans, and to such private individuals as cared to undertake the very heavy cost of equipping an expedition for the Polar regions. In the year 1874, however, it once again awoke to a sense of its responsibilities. There was still about the Pole a tract of some two and a half million square miles which had never been trodden by the foot of a civilised man, and it was felt by men of science that no satisfactory data concerning the cause and the track of storms, together with the thousand and one other things concerning the sea which commercial nations wish to know, could be obtained unless the Polar seas became rather less of a sealed book. No time was lost in setting about the preparations, and in April of the following year two ships were commissioned for the great expedition of 1875-76, and the command was entrusted to Captain George S. Nares. The ships in question were the _Alert_, a steam sloop of 751 tons and 100 horse-power, and the _Discovery_, a steamer of 556 tons and 96 horse-power, which, under the name of the _Bloodhound_ had already seen service as a whaler. They were fitted with all the most modern appliances, and were provisioned for three years, while among the officers of the expedition were Albert H. Markham, commander of the _Alert_, Pelham Aldrich, who served as a lieutenant on the same ship, and Henry F. Stevenson, who was appointed captain of the _Discovery_. Accompanied by the store ship _Valorous_, from which they were to take additional supplies at Godhaven, the two ships set sail from Portsmouth on May 29, 1875. The passage across the Atlantic was long and boisterous, but they eventually arrived at Godhaven on July 6, where they parted company with the _Valorous_ after taking on board everything in the way of provisions that they needed as well as twenty-four Greenland dogs. At Ritenbenk they shipped more dogs, together with two drivers, Petersen, the Dane who had served under Hayes, and Frederick, an Eskimo. At Proven they touched again, to pick up our old friend Hans Christian, whose family, undeterred by their previous experiences on the ice-floe, once more insisted on accompanying him. They reached Port Foulke on July 28, and had the good fortune to find the entrance to Smith Sound entirely free from ice. They were net, indeed, delayed until they reached Payer Harbour, a little south of Cape Sabine, where they were beset in the ice for several days, during which time Stevenson occupied himself with exploring Foulke Fiord, while Nares visited Littleton Island and Life Boat Cove and examined the _cache_ left behind by the _Polaris_.