A boat on runners also was found with two skeletons in her, and another skeleton at a distance--all too plainly telling a tale which shall be narrated hereafter. The Esquimaux also said that they had seen men sink down and die along the shore; and that one ship had gone down crushed by the ice, and that another had been driven on shore. With this terrible elucidation of the long-continued mystery, only partly cleared up before by Dr Rae, they began their return journey. On the 19th of June Captain McClintock reached his ship, the ice having begun to melt with the increased warmth of the weather. August arrived, and the explorers began to look out anxiously for the breaking up of the ice. At last, on the 10th, a favourable breeze drove the ice out of the bay, and the trim little _Fox_, under sail and steam, merrily darted out of her prison, and hurried north towards Barrow's Straits. She reached Baffin's Bay, and, touching at the Danish settlements, arrived in the English Channel on the 20th of September, having made the passage under sail in nineteen days from Greenland. THE FATE OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN'S EXPEDITION. The last intelligence which had been received of the _Erebus_ and _Terror_ was from the whalers in July 1845, at Melville Bay. Thence the expedition passed on through Lancaster Sound to Barrow's Straits, and entered Wellington Channel, the southern entrance to which had been discovered by Sir Edward Parry in 1819. Up by it the ships sailed for 150 miles, when, being stopped by the ice, they returned south by a new channel into Barrow's Straits, and passed the winter of 1845-46 at Beechey Island. In 1846 they proceeded to the south-west, and ultimately reached within twelve miles of the north entrance of King William's Land. Here they spent the winter of 1846-47, as far as can be known, in the enjoyment of good health, and with the intention and hope of prosecuting their voyage to the westward through the only channel likely to be open along the northern shore of America, and from the known portion of which they were then only ninety miles distant. On Monday the 24th May 1847, Lieutenant Gore, with Mr Des Voeux, mate, and a party of six men, left the ship, and proceeded for some purpose to King William's Island, where, on Point Victory, he deposited a document stating that Sir John Franklin and all were well. This document was afterwards visited by Captain Crozier, and a brief but sad statement of after events written on it. In less than three weeks after that time, the brave, kind, and well-beloved commander of the expedition, Sir John Franklin, had ceased to breathe, as Captain Crozier states that he died on the 11th of June 1847. Who can doubt that his life was taken by a merciful Providence before he could become aware of the dreadful doom about to overtake his gallant followers?