In 1845 Sir John Franklin started on the voyage from which neither he nor any of his companions returned. It is not known exactly what he achieved before he was lost, but he came nearer to accomplishing the north-west passage than anyone before him. The expeditions of Sir John Richardson, Dr. John Rae, and others, sent by land in search of his party, filled in the last gap in the northern coast-line of America. The different expeditions, under McClintock and others, sent by sea in the fifties for the same purpose not only decided the fate of Franklin’s party and extended knowledge over a vast area, but also at last rounded the north of America. The passage found by Kennedy in 1851 was traversed in 1853 by McClure, though part of the journey was made by travelling over the ice. An expedition under Captain Inglefield determined the northern point of Smith Sound. Elisha Kent Kane extended the knowledge of Grinnell Land and Greenland towards the north, and opened the way to others who followed the waterways he discovered. In 1871 Charles Hall sailed 250 miles up Smith Sound and reached the hitherto inaccessible polar sea; he touched a more northerly point than had previously been reached by any ship (82° 11´ N.). Stirred to action by these fine achievements of the Americans, England sent out the important expedition under Captain George Nares in 1875 which obtained very valuable scientific observations, taken on the frozen polar sea, and under Albert Markham reached the furthest point north yet attained--83° 20´ N.--after battling with immense difficulties caused by bad conditions of the ice and scurvy. Meanwhile much good work had been done in the Arctic from the old world. A purely scientific expedition had been sent to the Spitsbergen seas as early as 1827 from Norway; but from then till 1858 the work of exploration was chiefly carried on by the men engaged in the seal-hunting and fishing, in the interests of their trade. Before 1872, however, several Scandinavian expeditions which visited Spitsbergen and Greenland brought back valuable scientific results. The most noteworthy expedition of this period, however, was Austrian; it was captained by Lieutenant Julius Payer, who had previously been on an expedition in Greenland. He and Lieutenant Weyprecht sailed in 1871 to search for the north-east passage. They were beset by ice off Novaya Zemlya, and drifted till they came to a mountainous country which they called Franz Josef Land. They believed it to consist of two large masses of land, instead of perceiving it to be an archipelago, and much of the country they thought they saw has been since proved not to exist. Franz Josef Land was not visited again till 1880, when a large part of it was surveyed by the Englishman Leigh Smith. The north-east passage was made in 1879 by A. E. Nordenskiöld, who accomplished the journey which led so many before him to failure without loss of life or vessel, and almost in one season.