The winter was passed at the mouth of the Dease River, on Great Bear Lake, where Fort Confidence had been built ready for the expedition on its return. On the 6th of June, 1838, a start for the coast was made by the Coppermine route, that river being reached on the 22nd, and its descent accomplished, on the spring flood, in nine days. But it was a bad season, and the navigation was so hampered by ice that no start was made to the eastward until the 17th of July. At Boathaven, in 109° 20´, Simpson again left the boats and went ahead with Sinclair and six others who had not been to Point Barrow. Passing Franklin's farthest at Point Turnagain, he kept on for a hundred miles along the whole length of Dease Strait, discovering and naming Victoria Land, reaching Beaufort River beyond Cape Alexander, and sighting an open sea to the eastward. From here, in 106° 3´, the return began; and by many devices and the unfailing skill of McKay and Sinclair, the two boats were taken up the Coppermine stream, falls and rapids and all, to the nearest point to Fort Confidence, where they were hauled up in readiness for next year. On the 22nd of June, 1839, the boats again left for the sea; and they were run down to Bloody Fall without a stoppage in eleven hours. Again there were fourteen all told in them, but this time one of the men was Ooglibuck, who had come specially from Ungava in Labrador, in the wonderful time of three months less eight days, to join the expedition which was to meet with great success and accomplish an Arctic boat journey of over sixteen hundred statute miles. Entirely blocked until the 3rd of July, and hindered by ice difficulties all the way, the boats did not reach the previous year's farthest until the 28th of July. On the 11th of August, through an outlet only three miles wide, they passed into the much-desired eastern sea. "That glorious sight," says Simpson, after whom the strait is named, "was first beheld by myself from the top of one of the high limestone islands, and I had the satisfaction of announcing it to some of the men who, incited by curiosity, followed me thither. The joyful news was soon conveyed to Mr. Dease, who was with the boats at the end of the island, about half a mile off." On the continent and on King William Land, where Franklin's men were in time coming to perish of starvation, reindeer were seen browsing on the scanty herbage among the shingle. A terrible thunderstorm followed, and then, doubling a very sharp point on the 13th, Simpson landed and saw before him a sandy desert. It was Back's Point Sir C. Ogle that he had at length reached. Away in the distance was the Great Fish River, and three days afterwards the party were encamped on Montreal Island, where McKay led the way to the provisions and gunpowder deposited by Back among the rocks.