he morning of 16th August, McClintock sailed from Beechey Island,
but the short summer was passing quickly and they had no fresh news
of the Franklin expedition. Half-way through Bellot Strait the _Fox_
was again icebound, and another long winter had to be faced. By the
middle of February 1859 there was light enough to start some sledging
along the west coast of Boothia Felix. Days passed and McClintock
struggled on to the south, but no Eskimos appeared and no traces of
the lost explorers were to be found. Suddenly they discovered four
men walking after them.

A naval button on one of the Eskimos attracted their attention.

"It came," said the Eskimo, "from some white people who were starved
upon an island where there are salmon, but none of them had seen the
white men."

Here was news at last--McClintock travelled on some ten miles to Cape
Victoria, where the Eskimos built him a "commodious snow-hut in half
an hour." Next morning the entire village of Eskimos arrived--some
forty-five people--bringing relics of the white men. There were silver
spoons, part of a gold chain, buttons, knives made of the iron and
wood of the wrecked ships. But none of these people had seen the white
men--one man said he had seen their bones upon the island where they
died, but some were buried. They said a ship "having three masts had
been crushed by the ice out in the sea to the west of King William's
Island." One old man made a rough sketch of the coast-line with his
spear upon the snow; he said it was eight journeys to where the ship
sank.

McClintock hastened back to the ship with his news--he had by his
sleigh-journey added one hundred and twenty miles to the old charts
and "completed the discovery of the coast-line of Continental
America."

[Illustration: EXPLORING PARTIES STARTING FROM THE _FOX_. From
McClintock's _Voyage of the_ "Fox" _in Search of Franklin_.]

On 2nd April more sledge-parties started out to reach King William's
Island--the cold was still intense, the glare of the sun painful to
their eyes. The faces and lips of the men were blistered and cracked;
their fingers were constantly frostbitten. After nearly three weeks'
travelling they found snow-huts and Eskimos at Cape Victoria. Here
they found more traces of Franklin's party--preserved meat tins, brass
knives, a mahogany board. In answer to their inquiries, they heard
that two ships had been seen by the natives of King William's Island;
one had been seen to si