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In this tussle with the ice, the “Resolute” was nipped once or twice, but she has known harder nips than that since. As July wore away, she made her way across Baffin’s Bay, and on the 10th of August made Beechey Island,–known now as the head-quarters for years of the searching squadrons, because, as it happened, the place where the last traces of Franklin’s ships were found,–the wintering place of his first winter. But Captain Kellett was on what is called the “western search,” and he only stayed at Beechey Island to complete his provisions from the storeships, and in the few days which this took, to see for himself the sad memorials of Franklin’s party,–and then the “Resolute” and “Intrepid” were away, through Barrow’s Straits,–on the track which Parry ran along with such success thirty-three years before,–and which no one had followed with as good fortune as he, until now.

On the 15th of August Captain Kellett was off; bade good by to the party at Beechey Island, and was to try his fortune in independent command. He had not the best of luck at starting. The reader must remember that one great object of these Arctic expeditions was to leave provisions for starving men. For such a purpose, and for travelling parties of his own over the ice, Captain Kellett was to leave a depot at Assistance Bay, some thirty miles only from Beechey Island. In nearing for that purpose the “Resolute” grounded, was left with but seven feet of water, the ice threw her over on her starboard bilge, and she was almost lost. Not quite lost, however, or we should not be telling her story. At midnight she was got off, leaving sixty feet of her false keel behind. Captain Kellett forged on in her,–left a depot here and another there,–and at the end of the short Arctic summer had come as far westward as Sir Edward Parry came. Here is the most westerly point the reader will find on most maps far north in America,–the Melville Island of Captain Parry. Captain Kellett’s associate, Captain McClintock of the “Intrepid,” had commanded the only party which had been here since Parry. In 1851 he came over from Austin’s squadron with a sledge party. So confident is every one there that nobody has visited those parts unless he was sent, that McClintock encouraged his men one day by telling them that if they got on well, they should have an old cart Parry had left thirty-odd years before, to make a fire of. Sure enough; they came to the place, and there was the wreck of the cart just as Parry left it. They even found the ruts the old cart left in the ground as if they had not been left a week. Captain Kellett came into harbor, and with great spirit he and his officers began to prepare for the extended searching parties of the next spring. The “Resolute” and her tender came to anchor off Dealy Island, and there she spent the next eleven months of her life, with great news around her in that time.

There is not much time for travelling in autumn. The days grow very short and very cold. But what, days there were were spent in sending out carts and sledges with depots of provisions, which the parties of the next spring could use. Different officers were already assigned to different lines of search in spring. On their journeys they would be gone three months and more, with a party of some eight men,–dragging a sled very like a Yankee wood-sled with their instruments and provisions, over ice and snow. To extend those searches as much as possible, and to prepare the men for that work when it should come, advanced depots were now sent forward in the autumn, under the charge of the gentlemen who would have to use them in the spring.