On the 23rd of August Captain Ommanney found Franklin's winter quarters on Beechey Island, and four days afterwards Captain Penny came upon the gravestones marking where the three men, two of the _Erebus_ and one of the _Terror_, had been buried in 1846, though nothing was discoverable of the route intended to be taken by the ships. The news was important, and the _Prince Albert_, acting as despatch vessel, was immediately sent home with it, to return next year with Kennedy and Bellot to make a discovery of her own. Soon Captain Austin's four ships departed, also to return in the following year, Sir Edward Belcher, in the _Assistance_, being then in command, Kellett being in the _Resolute_, M'Clintock in the _Intrepid_, and Sherard Osborn again in the _Pioneer_. Belcher's attempt ended in his abandoning his vessels in the ice; one of them, the _Resolute_, as though in mute protest, drifting from 74° 41´ for a thousand miles, to be picked up by Buddington off Cape Dyer in Baffin Bay, bought from him by the American Government and presented to Great Britain, refitted as she used to be, as a much-appreciated token of goodwill. The great feature of these years was the wonderful sledge work; by it mainly the northern coasts of the islands discovered by Parry were surveyed and other islands added to the archipelago, including the westernmost, Prince Patrick, named after the Duke of Connaught, who was at first known as Prince Patrick instead of Prince Arthur. The sledges fitted out by Austin traversed 1500 miles of coast-line, 850 of which were new, the routes radiating between Osborn's 72° 18´ and Bradford's 76° 25´, M'Clintock going farthest, 760 miles, to 114° 20´ in 74° 38´. Those next year from Kellett at Dealy Island covered 8558 miles, radiating from Pim's 74° 6´ (to rescue M'Clure) to M'Clintock's 77° 23´, a run to 118° 20´ and back of 1401 miles, while Mecham reached 120° 30´ on a trip of 1163 miles; and Belcher from his winter quarters in Northumberland Sound, in 76° 52´, aided by Richards and Osborn, was almost as busy further north. Thus practically the whole belt of land and sea westward between and including Lancaster Sound and Jones Sound as far as 120° was searched and mapped, the most northerly of the Parry Islands known up to then being Finlay Island, North Cornwall, and Graham Island. But in 1898 Captain Otto Sverdrup went up Smith Sound in his old ship the _Fram_ on an endeavour to sail round the north coast of Greenland from west to east. He had to winter in Rice Strait, near Pim Island, and finding, to put it sportingly, that he was to a certain extent trespassing on Peary's preserves, decided to devote his attention to the unknown region approachable through Jones Sound. In 1899, therefore, he took the _Fram_ up the sound, and, failing to pass through Cardigan Strait, spent the three following years among the fiords at the north-western end.