While Lieutenant Foote was sailing under the blazing sun of Africa, another lieutenant, Edwin J. De Haven, in command of the brigs "Rescue" and "Advance," was pushing his way northward through the ice of the Arctic Ocean. The Navy Department had considered it proper and fitting to aid England in her search for the British commander, Sir John Franklin and his men, who had sailed into the Arctic regions on an exploring expedition, and had been gone so long as to warrant the belief that they were in grave peril, if not already dead. Volunteers for the relief expedition had been called for by the department. Lieutenant De Haven and others had responded, and on May 24th, 1850, started on their errand of mercy. In July, the party was in Baffin's Bay, and here the brigs remained embedded in the ice for twenty-one days. On the 29th of July, by a sudden movement of the floe, an opening at the north presented itself; a north-east breeze sprang up at the same time, and with press of sail the brigs were able to force their way into clear water. For a month afterward there was continual battling with the ice, and slow progress northward. On August 27th, Lieutenant De Haven, having in the mean time fallen in with several English relief expeditions, decided to make a search on the shores adjacent to a Lancaster Sound. Here were found three graves, and various signs that Franklin and his companions had spent a winter somewhere thereabouts; but there were no indications of the course his vessels, the "Erebus" and the "Terror," had taken when they had sailed away. Throughout the winter the search was continued, and the "Rescue" and the "Advance" were often in imminent danger of destruction in the masses of ice which pressed against the sides of the ships with enormous force. "Every moment," said Lieutenant De Haven, in his report, "I expected the vessels would be crushed or overwhelmed by the masses of ice forced up far above our bulwarks." But at last, on June 6th, they forced their way again into the open sea; and as the instructions had been not to spend a second winter in the Arctic regions, sail was set for home, and late in the summer of 1851 the brigs arrived at New York. The sending of the frigate "Mississippi," commanded by Captain Matthew G. Perry, to the coast of Halifax, in 1852, averted what threatened to be serious trouble. A dispute had arisen among the American and Canadian fishing schooners in those waters, and seven American vessels had been seized by the British cruisers. This caused intense indignation in New England; but Captain Perry poured oil upon the troubled waters, and in 1854, as a result of his visit, a reciprocity treaty between the United States and Canada was signed, and this lasted for ten years.