We must now go back a few years. In May 1819, an overland expedition was despatched to ascertain the exact position of the Coppermine River, to descend it to its mouth, and to explore the coast of the Arctic Sea on either hand. The command was given to Lieutenant Franklin, who was accompanied by Dr. Richardson the naturalist, by Messrs. Hood and Back, two English midshipmen, and two picked seamen. The expedition was spread over a period of two years and a half, and the narrative of what was accomplished and endured by its members reads like a romance. They reached the mouth of the Coppermine, and then launched their little barks on the chill waters of the Polar Sea. With much perseverance, and after encountering some serious obstacles, they made their way along its shores in a westerly direction as far as Point Turnagain, in lat. 68° 30’ N. Between this headland on the east, and Cape Barrow on the west, opens a deep gulf, stretching inland as far as the Arctic Circle, Franklin named it George the Fourth’s Coronation Gulf; and describes it as studded with numerous islands, and indented with sounds affording excellent harbours, all of them supplied with small rivers of fresh water, abounding with salmon, trout, and other fish. * * * * * Passing over Franklin’s after-labours in the great cause of Arctic Discovery, labours which secured him the well-merited reward of knighthood, we come to that last voyage, which helped, as we shall see, to solve the problem of a North-West Passage, but was the cause of one of the saddest chapters in the history of Maritime Enterprise. It was in the spring of 1845 that Sir John Franklin, in command of the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_, with Captain Crozier, an experienced Arctic navigator, as his lieutenant, and at the head of one hundred and thirty-seven picked seamen, brave, resolute, and hardy, once more sailed for the Polar waters. On the 8th of June he left the Orkneys, and a month later arrived in Baffin Bay. About the end of July some whaling-ships in Melville Bay saw the _Erebus_ and _Terror_ contending gallantly with the ice which impeded their progress to Lancaster Sound. On the evening of the 26th the ice opened up, and the two discovery-ships sailed away into the north-western seas. * * * * *