The point, says Sherard Osborn, at which the fatal imprisonment of the _Erebus_ and _Terror_ in 1846 took place, was only ninety miles from the spot reached by Dease and Simpson in their boats in 1838–39, coming from the east. Ninety miles more of open water, and Franklin and his gallant crew would have not only won the prize they sought, but reached their homes to wear their well-earned honours. “It was not to be so. Let us bow in humility and awe to the inscrutable decrees of that Providence who ruled it otherwise. They were to discover the great highway between the Pacific and the Atlantic. It was given them to win for their country a discovery for which she had risked her sons and lavishly spent her wealth through many centuries; but they were to die in accomplishing their last great earthly task: and, still more strange, but for the energy and devotion of the wife of their chief and leader, it would in all probability never have been known that they were indeed the _First Discoverers of the North-West Passage_.” * * * * * We have thought it for the convenience of our readers to set before them an uninterrupted narrative of the exertions made to ascertain the fate of Franklin and his companions by English seamen under English influence; but we must now return to 1853, to chronicle the American expedition under Dr. Kane--which did not, indeed, succeed in its primary object, but made some remarkable additions to our knowledge of the Polar Regions. Dr. Elisha Kane sailed from Boston in 1853, in command of the _Advance_, with a crew of seventeen officers and men, to whom two Greenlanders were subsequently added. On the 7th of August he passed the two great headlands which guard the entrance of Smith Sound,--Cape Isabella and Cape Alexander, discovered and named in the preceding year by Captain Inglefield,--and after a voyage of equal difficulty and danger reached Rensselaer Bay on the east coast of the sound, where he passed the winter. A few extracts from his diary will show under what conditions, and in what circumstances, Kane and his followers passed the long and dreary winter months:-- “_October 28th._--The moon has reached her greatest northern declination of about 25° 35’. She is a glorious object; sweeping around the heavens, at the lowest part of her curve, she is still 14° above the horizon. For eight days she has been making her circuit with nearly unvarying brightness. It is one of those sparkling nights that bring back the memory of sleigh-bells and songs, and glad communings of hearts in lands that are far away.