182 THE PARRY ISLANDS 



were organised, the furthest points reached being Cape 

 Fisher to the north and Cape Hoppner to the west. 

 On the 1st of August the vessels moved out of the 

 bay to the westward, and six days afterwards Beechey 

 called attention to the land with the three capes already 

 mentioned. " The land," says Parry, " which extends 

 beyond the 117th degree of west longitude, and is the 

 most western yet discovered in the Polar Sea to the 

 north of the American continent, was honoured with 

 the name of Banks Land out of respect to the late 

 venerable and worthy President of the Royal Society." 



On the 16th Cape Dundas was named, but progress 

 was impossible. For a week Parry made every en- 

 deavour to pass, but the floes, forty to fifty feet thick, 

 heaped up by the tides from the east and the west so 

 as to form a wide-stretching landscape of hill and dale, 

 barred the way right across Banks Strait ; and no 

 further west could be attained than 113 46' 43 "5", in 

 latitude 74 26' 25". Thence Parry returned, hoping 

 to get through on another voyage, and bidding farewell 

 to the North Georgian Islands, as he called them, or 

 the Parry Islands, as we now know them, he came 

 home by the way he went out, through Lancaster 

 Sound. Needless to say, the very next season the 

 whalers followed on Parry's track, and Lancaster 

 Sound became the highway to a very profitable fishing- 

 ground. 



Among the Parry Islands in 1851 were several 

 vessels in search of Franklin. Sir John Ross, aged 

 seventy-four, was there in the schooner-yacht Felix on 

 a private expedition chiefly memorable for the story 

 of his having sent oft' a carrier pigeon from his winter 



