ARCTIC MAPS. 253 



an island or a peninsula, nor whether Boothia was or was not 

 connected with the main land of America. All to the north 

 was just as Parry had left it in 1820. There was a blank between 

 the south coast of the Parry IsLmds and the American continent, 

 broken only by indications of land seen by Dease and Simpson, 

 and called Victoria and Wollaston Lands, by the distant coast 

 seen by Parry from Melville Island, and called Banks Land, and by 

 a far off headland south of Cornwallis Island, named by Parry 

 Cape Walker. The northern shores of the Parry Islands were 

 unknown. Baffin's Bay remained as laid down by Sir John Ross 

 in 1818. The east coast of Greenland had not been approached 

 since the time of Scoresby, Clavering, and Graah. Nothing had 

 been done in the direction of Spitzbergen since the voyage of 

 Phipps in 1773 ; but Admiral Lutke, in 1825, had made a new 

 survey of the east coast of Novaya Zemlya. 



1 6. Sir John Franklin sailed from England in 1845, with the 

 Erebus and Terror, and, next to Parry in 1819, he made the most 

 remarkable Arctic voyage on record. Passing up Barrow Strait 

 and Wellington Channel, he returned by the strait between 

 Bathurst and Cornwallis Islands, and wintered at Beechey Island. 

 The next year, in accordance with his instructions, he made his 

 way round Cape Walker, and to the south and west, where he was 

 beset in the ice, and his two ships were drifted down, in the pack, 

 and finally stopped to the north of King William Island. Here 

 the brave leader died in June, 1847, and when the survivors set 

 out on their last sad journey, those few who passed Cape Herschel 

 discovered the North West Passage, that is, they proved the 

 continuity of a sea from Baffin's Bay to Behring Strait, by forging 

 the last link in the Chain of discoveries. The continuity was thus 

 established. Parry in 1819 found that sea was continuous from 

 Lancaster Sound to Cape Walker, Franklin and his followers from 

 Cape Walker to Cape Herschel, Simpson from Cape Herschel to 

 Point Turnagain, Franklin, Richardson, and Back from Point 

 Turnagain to Return Reef, Simpson from Return Reef to Point 



