By September 2 the two government ships and the _Nancy Dawson_ were all lying in Kotzebue Sound, where it had been decided that the _Plover_ should spend the winter. After supplying the wants of her companion ship, the _Herald_ sailed away south with the _Nancy Dawson_, reaching Mazatlan, on the coast of Mexico, at the beginning of October. Mr Sheddon, who had been in failing health for some time, did not survive the winter. In the meanwhile, Moore, of the _Plover_, opened up communications with the natives round Kotzebue Sound in the hope that he might obtain tidings of Franklin. The result was that circumstantial tales concerning white men travelling in the interior, were poured into his ears, and, in attempting to verify these, Bedford Pim very nearly lost his life. Neither then, however, nor in the summer, when the _Herald_ and _Plover_ made a cruise round the coast, could they discover that these stories had any foundation in fact, nor did their search give them any reason to suppose that Franklin and his party had approached the shores along which they were sailing. Lieutenant Pullen’s boat expedition to the Mackenzie met with no better success. Cramped up in open boats which were in constant danger of being wrecked by gales or the drifting ice, he and his men suffered tortures from cold and exposure, and the difficulties and dangers of their 1500-mile journey were enhanced by the unfriendliness of the natives. The winter was spent at the various stations of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and, in the following spring, Pullen set out again for the shores of the Polar Sea. The conditions, however, were such as to preclude any possibility of success, and he was obliged to turn back before he had even reached the point at which his search proper was to have begun. The conduct of the first overland journey was entrusted to Richardson, who, with Rae as his lieutenant, was commissioned to search the coast of North America from the Mackenzie to the Coppermine. The Polar Sea was reached without misadventure, but from that point onwards the journey proved dangerous and difficult, as owing to the lateness of the spring they were obliged to cache their boats and make a great part of it on foot. In the following year Rae returned to the mouth of the Coppermine only to find that the natives had discovered the boats and had broken them up for the sake of the copper fastenings. Any sea voyage was, therefore, out of the question, and, after cross-examining the Eskimos and sweeping the shores of Wollaston Land with a telescope, he was obliged to return to headquarters at Fort Confidence.