It was during a sledging expedition in the following spring that he came nearest to the discovery of the remains of the Franklin expedition, for on May 10 he stood on Gateshead Island and looked across the strait to King William Land, where lay the skeletons of the lost sailors. Had M’Clure only seen fit to remain with his leader more might have been accomplished, for it would have been possible to send out stronger sledging parties and to examine that part of the coast more thoroughly. Moreover, on board the _Investigator_ was the only interpreter which the party possessed, and Collinson was, in consequence, unable to learn the origin of an engine rod which he obtained from the natives. It is practically certain, of course, that this was a relic of one of the ill-fated ships, as also was a hatch-way which was found on Finlayson Island. On being released from his winter quarters, Collinson turned westward again and spent his last winter in the Arctic regions off Flaxman’s Island, whence he returned to England in the following year. His voyage was unquestionably one of the most remarkable in the whole history of Arctic exploration. In a sailing ship of none too good a quality he succeeded in covering a distance within the Arctic circle which has only once been excelled, and that by a steamer, the _Vega_. He came within fifty-seven miles of completing the North-West Passage, the nearest approach on record; and of all the Government expeditions sent out he came nearest to bringing the Franklin search to a successful conclusion. His name ought to rank high in the annals of Arctic travel, and it is to be feared that he has never really received his just due. CHAPTER XVI BELCHER AND THE FRANKLIN SEARCH We now come to one of the strangest chapters in the whole history of the Franklin search. That Sir Edward Belcher’s expedition, the last, and in every way the most complete equipped by the Government, was a fiasco it is quite impossible to deny. At the time public feeling ran very high about it, and Belcher became the object of much opprobrium, more, probably, than he actually deserved. The fact, however, that five valuable ships had been abandoned, apparently unnecessarily, that not a single trace of Franklin had been found, and that the search was given up, although its field had been so narrowed down that the direction which the missing expedition had taken was practically a matter of certainty, naturally rankled in the breasts of the British taxpayers. Belcher himself, too, added fuel to the fire by writing a singularly fatuous account of his travels which is largely composed of stories illustrative of his own preternatural sagacity. We do not propose to dwell at very great length upon Belcher’s monumental work, much of which, indeed, is absolutely unintelligible to the average mind; but it contains one or two gems which ought to be preserved.