M’Clure’s expedition has been generally regarded only in connection with the discovery of the North-west Passage, but he also engaged in the search for Franklin. With him was associated Captain Collinson, and both were ordered to proceed _viâ_ Behring Straits to the Arctic. The _Enterprise_, commanded by the latter, proceeded a little in advance of the _Investigator_, commanded by M’Clure, which left Plymouth on January 20th, 1850. Late in July the Arctic Circle was crossed, and shortly afterwards, at different dates, the _Plover_ and _Herald_ were met. Captain Kellett, of the latter, reported the discovery of the new land north of Behring Straits since always associated with his name. It was covered with lofty and broken peaks, and Kellett thought it to be the same as described by Wrangell, the Russian explorer, on the authority of natives. Some doubt has at times been thrown on this discovery, but it has been since sighted by an American whaler. On August 21st the _Investigator_ reached the Pelly Islands, and crossed the mouth of the great Mackenzie River. Little did M’Clure think that the day after, Lieutenant Pullen, H.M.S. _Herald_, with a boat’s crew, was returning from a visit to Cape Bathurst, and must have passed at a distance of a few miles, a convincing proof of the easiness of missing one another in the Arctic seas. Shortly afterwards they met a number of natives, and held some communication with them. Osborn says that “when asked why they did not trade with the white men up the big river (_i.e._, the Mackenzie), the reply was they had given the Indians a water which had killed a great many of them, and had made others foolish, and they did not want any of it!” This statement is rather doubtful, as the Hudson’s Bay Company does not, as the writer well knows, trade in spirits, at least in those remote districts; and further, if they did, it would be a very unusual circumstance for natives to decline it, as the whalers and traders on the coast know full well.