In May the vessels were afloat again, though ice-bound, and, in June, walking, not sledging, journeys were organised, the furthest points reached being Cape Fisher to the north and Cape Hoppner to the west. On the 1st of August the vessels moved out of the bay to the westward, and six days afterwards Beechey called attention to the land with the three capes already mentioned. "The land," says Parry, "which extends beyond the 117th degree of west longitude, and is the most western yet discovered in the Polar Sea to the north of the American continent, was honoured with the name of Banks Land out of respect to the late venerable and worthy President of the Royal Society." On the 16th Cape Dundas was named, but progress was impossible. For a week Parry made every endeavour to pass, but the floes, forty to fifty feet thick, heaped up by the tides from the east and the west so as to form a wide-stretching landscape of hill and dale, barred the way right across Banks Strait; and no further west could be attained than 113° 46´ 43·5˝, in latitude 74° 26´ 25˝. Thence Parry returned, hoping to get through on another voyage, and bidding farewell to the North Georgian Islands, as he called them, or the Parry Islands, as we now know them, he came home by the way he went out, through Lancaster Sound. Needless to say, the very next season the whalers followed on Parry's track, and Lancaster Sound became the highway to a very profitable fishing-ground. [Illustration: PARRY'S DISCOVERIES ON HIS FIRST VOYAGE] Among the Parry Islands in 1851 were several vessels in search of Franklin. Sir John Ross, aged seventy-four, was there in the schooner-yacht _Felix_ on a private expedition chiefly memorable for the story of his having sent off a carrier pigeon from his winter quarters at Cornwallis Island, which reached his home—North-West Castle, Stranraer, Wigtownshire—three thousand miles away, in five days. Lady Franklin's vessel, the _Prince Albert_, was there, with Captain Forsyth and Parker Snow on board, an old fruit schooner, and therefore the speediest sailing-craft among the crowd. The Grinnell expedition of the two American brigs, _Advance_ and _Racer_, under De Haven, was also there, to drift afterwards up Wellington Channel and down again back into Baffin Bay; as was a British Government expedition of the two whaling brigs, _Lady Franklin_ and _Sophia_, under Captain William Penny, who was to discover the sea open north of Wellington Channel. In addition to these was the British squadron under Captain Horatio Austin in H.M.S. _Resolute_, with H.M.S. _Assistance_, Captain Erasmus Ommanney, and the old Cattle Conveyance Company's boats known as H.M.S. _Intrepid_, Lieutenant Cator, and H.M.S. _Pioneer_, Lieutenant Sherard Osborn, these two being screw steamers used as tenders, which proved of great value as tugs and ice-breakers.