He imagined himself to be the happy possessor, among other things, of a marvellous gift of prophecy, very nearly, as he naïvely remarks, approaching to sorcery. In support of this claim he mentions the following incident in his diary. “To-day I felt so perfectly satisfied that a sledge was due from Kellett (if he existed), that I fully intended when the master reported noon, to desire him to send a person to look out on the hill. It escaped me, being then engaged on other matters; but my clerk coming in, reporting, ‘A dog sledge nearly alongside, sir!’ my reply, instigated by what was then passing in my mind, was very short, and without emotion, ‘I know it,’ which somewhat astonished him.” Parenthetically, we may remark that this is a very fair example of the author’s style as well as of his gift of prophecy. Here, too, is a delicious passage which contains several bulls of the finest dimensions. “I ascended the hill, where I had ordered a cairn to be built; possibly it was deemed too steep for younger blood; we built three, _one was a house_, the two others were constructed by myself—the last being on the _inaccessible_ summit of True Star Bluff—and unattended. I must say that I would not have _ordered it to be done by any but a volunteer_.” The italics are our own; the English, however, is entirely Sir Edward Belcher’s. But we must return to the expedition itself, resisting the temptation to quote further examples of its leader’s unconscious humour. The Government was evidently disposed to leave no stone unturned to make it as complete as possible. The active work of the search was to be pushed on from four ships, the _Assistance_, Commander G. H. Richards; the _Resolute_, Captain Henry Kellett; the _Pioneer_, Lieutenant Sherard Osborn; and the _Intrepid_, Commander F. L. M’Clintock. In addition to these, the expedition was provided with a depôt ship, the _North Star_, commanded by Lieutenant Pullen. The plan of campaign was to be as follows: On reaching the western end of Lancaster Sound the squadron was to divide into two parts. The _Assistance_ and its tender, the _Pioneer_, were to devote their attention to Wellington Channel, while the _Resolute_ with its tender, the _Intrepid_, was to visit Melville Island and explore the Parry Islands. For some reason known only to themselves, the Arctic committee had decided that it would be useless to pursue the search south of these regions.