T was in the summer of 1845 that Sir John Franklin undertook his fourth voyage into the Arctic regions, in search of a northwest passage, and disappeared forever in that icy waste. Franklin's two ships, the Erebus and the Terror, were supposed to be provisioned for three years. When this interval had passed without word of the daring navigator there was grave fear that he had met with disaster. Then began an unparalleled series of search and relief expeditions, public and private, English and American: five separate ones in 1848, three in 1849, ten in 1850, two in 1851, nine in 1852, five in 1853, two in 1854, one in 1855, and one in 1857. Among the earliest of these was one from the United States, known as the first Grinnell expedition, which left New York in May, 1848. Lady Franklin had appealed to the President of the United States to enlist his countrymen as a "kindred people, to join heart and hand in the enterprise of snatching the lost navigators from a dreary grave." Accordingly a bill was introduced in Congress to fit out an expedition for this purpose; but the process of legislation was too slow to provide vessels and equipment in the short time that was left for such a venture.