206 BOOTHIA 



north for about a hundred and fifty miles, to 77, up 

 Wellington Channel into Penny Strait the first time 

 the passage had been made. Returning down the west 

 side of Cornwallis Island, discovering the strait between 

 it and Bathurst Island, they wintered at Beechey Island, 

 where three of the men died and were buried ; and where 

 the most significant relic was about seven hundred tins 

 of preserved meat that seemed to have been condemned 

 as bad, just as the stock of similar stuff had in the 

 same year been condemned and thrown overboard at 

 Portsmouth. 



Leaving Beechey Island in 1846, they went south 

 down Peel Sound, being the first to pass through it, 

 and Franklin Strait another new discovery to within 

 twelve miles of Cape Felix in King William Land, 

 where, on the 12th of September, they were beset 

 about half-way between Cape Adelaide in Boothia and 

 Pelly Point in Victoria Land. Hereabouts the second 

 winter was passed, and on the 24th of May a party 

 under Lieutenant Gore crossed the ice to Point Victory, 

 probably on a journey to examine the unknown coast 

 between there and Cape Herschel. On the llth of June, 

 1847, Sir John Franklin died. The ships drifted a short 

 distance during their imprisonment in the ice, and the 

 third winter was passed some twenty miles further south 

 down Victoria Strait, where, on the 22nd of April, 1848, 

 when fifteen miles north-north-west of Point Victory, 

 they were abandoned, and the officers and crews, a 

 hundred and five in all, under Crozier's command, started 

 for Back's Great Fish River, some of them completing 

 the first North- West Passage in crossing Simpson Strait 

 and reaching Montreal Island. 



