Many ships were started out at once, and also parties overland, of which mention will be made later. The _Herald_ and _Plover_, during 1848 and 1849, scanned the whole coast from Bering Sea to the mouth of the Mackenzie, and discovered Herald Island. Following them, in March, 1850, went the _Enterprise_, under Collinson, and the _Investigator_, under M’Clure, via Bering Strait, while the _Assistance_ and _Resolute_, with two steam tenders, under Captain Austin, went to renew the search by Barrow Strait, and two brigs, the _Lady Franklin_ and _Sophia_, under a whaling captain named Penny, followed them. The eastern expeditions discovered Franklin’s winter quarters of 1845-46 at Beechey Island, but no record of any kind indicating the direction taken by his ships. Admirable arrangements were made for passing the winter, and their combined sailing and sledging work added much to the map of that district, and to our knowledge of life in polar latitudes, but it learned nothing whatever of Franklin’s fate. [Illustration: A FLOATING ICE-CASTLE OF THE FROZEN NORTH. “Out from the dark, mysterious North, With all its glamour, every night Tingling with unforgotten dreams, And every day flood-full of light.” ] Meanwhile the expedition via Bering Sea had become separated in the Pacific, and M’Clure, in the _Investigator_, got so far ahead that he was able to pass through Bering Strait and work his way eastward north of British America, and through the narrow Prince of Wales Strait until he reached Princess Royal Islands, where he wintered. Here he was only thirty miles from Barrow Strait; and when he had climbed a high hill and saw its ice gleaming in the distance, he had in reality discovered the Northwest Passage. Yet he was not the first, as we now know, for when the survivors of Franklin’s ships, in their attempt to escape, had reached Cape Herschel, they, too, saw this same passage they had been sent to find, but then, as now, it was closed by perpetual ice, so that although we now know the way, we can no more avail ourselves of it than could they, except by going south of King William’s Land, through a strait of which they had not yet learned. The next summer was spent in a fruitless struggle to get north along the western side of Banks (or Baring) Land, in which he succeeded only far enough to get frozen in so firmly on the north shore of that great island that even the summer warmth did not release his ship. He would have perished had it not been that musk-oxen were plentiful; and by the spring of 1853, it was plain that the _Investigator_ must be abandoned.