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 Another Random Document on
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favourite immediately in consequence. They had among them a
great many knives, which we feared would influence the magnet. Mr.
Pullen therefore kindly drew off the crowd to a distance, distributing
among them tobacco, beads, snuff, etc., and much to their credit be
it said, there was neither confusion nor contention, each taking his
allotted portion, and seeming delighted with his good fortune. They
took care not to come near the instruments, finding that we did not
like their approach; one or two indeed came towards us, but retired
instantly when laughingly motioned back, and this should be
considered as a display of great forbearance, inasmuch as their
curiosity must have been highly excited. When the observations
were concluded they were allowed to inspect the objects of their
wonder; then fast and thickly to utterance flew their expressions of
astonishment at the—to them—novel and splendid instruments. The
trough of quicksilver, liquid and restless, especially attracted them,
pleasure and wonder were evident at the simple view, but when one
or two had permission to take some from the dish, and found it ever
elude the grasp, their astonishment knew no bounds."

THE FROZEN YUKON

From Wainwright Inlet, which is between Icy Cape and Point Barrow,
the Herald sailed along the pack to the westward, reaching her
highest north, 72° 51´, in 163° 48´, and, on the 17th of August,
Kellett landed on and named Herald Island in 71° 17´ 45˝, a mass
of granite towering nine hundred feet above the sea, under five
miles long and three broad, inhabited mainly by black and white
divers and yielding the collector only four flowering plants. Further
to the west he sighted Wrangell Island, sailed past and named by
the American whaling captain, Thomas Long, in August, 1867.
In 1881 Wrangell Island was thoroughly explored by another search
expedition, that of Captain Berry in the American ship Rodgers, who
was in these parts looking out for traces of the Jeannette. He found
it to be, not a continent as some had supposed, but an island forty
miles broad and sixty-six miles long, about thirty miles from Herald
Island and eighty from the Siberian coast; and on it, as on all these
Siberian islands and the coast of Alaska, remains of the mammoth
were found. Examining the ice to the northward, he reached 73° 44´
in 171° 30´, being fifty-three miles further north than Kellett and
twenty-four miles further than Collinson in 1850. Returning from the
north to winter quarters he achieved another Arctic record in his ship
being destroyed by fire in St. Lawrence Bay on the Asiatic side of
Bering Strait.
Opposite this, on the American side, from Cape York downwards the
land trends away to the south-east to Norton Sound, in which are
the mouths of the Yukon, one of the mightiest rivers of the world, its
volume being as great as, or according to some writers greater than,
the Mississippi. In a course of two thousand miles it runs northwards
to the Arctic Circle at the now abandoned trading post of Fort Yukon,
where its waters are reinforced by its tributary, the Rat or Porcupine,
coming in from the north-east, and given their seaward direction to
the south-west. Up this vast waterway in 1866 went Frederick
Whymper and William H. Dall.
Beginning with a sledge journey of a hundred and seventy miles
from Unalachleet, they struck the Yukon on the 10th of November,
gliding down a high steep bank on to it. Hardly a patch of clear ice
was to be seen, the snow covering the whole extent. Accumulations
of hummocks had in many places been forced on the surface before
the river had become thoroughly frozen, and the water was still
open, running swiftly in a few isolated streaks. From bank to bank
was not less than a mile, the stream flowing among several islands.
As they sledged up the river the dreary expanse of snow made them
almost forget they were on a sheet of ice; and, as it winds
considerably, their course was often from bank to bank to cut off
corners and bends. Many cliffs abutted on the stream, and islands of
sombre green forest studded it in all directions.

ASCENDING THE YUKON

On the 15th they reached Nulato, six hundred miles from the mouth,
where they spent the winter. Here they found a curious method of
fishing practised all through the season. Early in the winter large
piles or stakes had been driven down into the bed of the river, and
to these were affixed wickerwork traps like eel-pots on a large scale,
oblong holes being kept open over them by frequently breaking the
ice. This was cold work, for the temperature ran low. "In November
and December," says Whymper, "I succeeded in making sketches of
the fort and neighbourhood when the temperature was as low as
thirty degrees below zero. It was done, it need not be said, with
difficulty, and often by instalments. Between every five strokes of
the pencil, I ran about to exercise myself or went into our quarters
for warmth. The use of water-colours was of course impracticable—
except when I could keep a pot of warm water on a small fire by my
side—a thing done by me on two or three occasions, when engaged
at a distance from the post. Even inside the house the spaces near
the windows, as well as the floor, were often below freezing point.
Once, forgetful of the fact, I mixed some colours up with water that
had just stood near the oven, and wetting a small brush commenced
to apply it to my drawing block. Before it reached the paper it was
covered with a skin of ice, and simply scratched the surface, and I
had to give up for the time being."
On the 12th of May the Nulato River broke up and ran out on the top
of the Yukon ice for more than a mile upstream; and in a few days
the ice of the main river was coming down in a steady flow at a rate
of five or six knots, surging into mountains as it met with obstacles,
and grinding and crashing and carrying all before it, whole trees and
banks being swept away on its victorious march, the water rising
fourteen feet above the winter level. On the 26th Whymper and Dall
started with two Indians and a steersman in a skin canoe, the river
still full of ice, and navigation difficult. They had proceeded but a
short distance when they came to bends, round which logs and ice
were sweeping at a great rate, so that it was necessary for a man to
stand in the bows of the canoe, with a pole shod at one end with
iron, to push away the masses of ice and tangle of driftwood. They
could often feel the ice and logs rolling and scraping under the
canoe; and it was not the thickness of a plank between them and
destruction, but that of a piece of sealskin a tenth of an inch thick.
On the 7th of June they were two hundred and forty miles above
Nulato, at the junction of the Tanana, the furthest point reached by
the Russians, and soon were in a part abounding with moose owing
to their seeking refuge in the stream from the millions of
mosquitoes. Here the Indian hunters were busy, not wasting powder
and shot, but manœuvring round the swimming deer in their birch-
bark canoes until they tired the victim out; and then stealthily
approaching, securing it with a stab from their knives.
After twenty-six laborious days against the stream they reached Fort
Yukon, the then furthest outpost of the Hudson's Bay Company, six
hundred miles from Nulato, and, of course, managed and victualled
from the east. Here the amount of peltry was astonishing, the fur-
room of the fort containing thousands of marten skins, hanging from
the beams, and huge piles of common furs lying around, together
with a considerable number of foxes, black and silver-grey, and
many skins of the wolverine, thought so much more of by the
Indians than by any one else that they are used as a medium of
exchange. All these furs were brought in from the surrounding
districts, far and near, and traded for goods, as widely distributed,
among the native tribes whose representatives gathered at the fort
in such a miscellaneous crowd that perhaps half a dozen dialects
were heard in a morning.
 MOOSE-HUNTING ON THE YUKON

In the crowd the busiest and most prominent were the primitive
Tananas, gay with feathers and painted faces, looking like survivals
among the local Kutchins and the Kutchins of the upper river, the
Birch River men, and the Rat River men by whom the skins were
brought from the natives of the northern coast, as were the
messages from the Franklin search parties. Indians were all of these,
distinguishable by their wearing the hyaqua or tooth-shell
(Dentalium entalis) through the septum of the nose, while the
Mahlemut wears a bone on each side of the mouth, a practice
common with all the Innuit, or Eskimo tribes, from the Alaska
Peninsula to Point Barrow, unless some other form of labret happens
to be the local fashion.
 CHAPTER VIII
THE AMERICAN MAINLAND

The Hudson's Bay Company—Samuel Hearne—His journey down the

Coppermine River—The North West Fur Company—Sir Alexander Mackenzie
—His journey down the Mackenzie—Sir John Franklin's first land journey—
Fort Enterprise—Back's journey to Athabasca—The rapids of the
Coppermine—Point Turnagain reached—The Wilberforce Falls—The terrible
crossing of the Barren Grounds—Franklin's second land journey—
Richardson's voyage to the eastward—Discovers Wollaston Land and
Dolphin and Union Strait—Franklin's voyage to Return Reef—Back's journey
down the Great Fish River—Discovers Montreal Island and King William
Land—The Parry Falls—Sir George Simpson—Peter Warren Dease and
Thomas Simpson—Exploration of the coast between Return Reef and Point
Barrow—Simpson advances beyond Point Turnagain and discovers Victoria
Land and Dease Strait—Their second voyage down the Coppermine—
Discovery of Simpson Strait—Reach the Great Fish River—Their farthest
east—Complete the survey of the northern coast between Boothia and
Bering Strait—The first to find the North-West Passage.

F
or two elks and two black beavers, paid yearly whensoever the
King of England entered their estate, the Hudson's Bay Company
were, in 1670, presented by Charles II with the northern part of
the American mainland, thus ensuring an ample stretch of British
territory along the passage to the South Sea. But the company soon
ceased to be interested in any such passage, finding quite enough to
do in developing the very profitable fur trade of their vast
possessions. With the exception of John Knight's disastrous voyage
to Marble Island in 1719, whatever attempts at discoveries there
may have been were kept quiet for fear of aiding their rivals the
French to the south, who were fostering the trade in the region of
the great lakes; and not until the French dominion ended in 1763
and the Frenchmen's interests were passing to an opposition British
company was any effort made to explore the coast of the Polar Sea.

MAHLEMUT MAN

Owing to Indian reports of rich deposits of native copper and an

abundance of fur-bearing animals, Samuel Hearne, once a
midshipman in the Royal Navy, was sent by the company in 1769 to
explore to the west and north. After a journey of thirteen hundred
miles to the west he found the Coppermine River and the Great
Slave Lake, and he traced the river to its mouth and emerged on the
northern shore, being the first known white man to see the Arctic
Ocean between the Boothia Peninsula and Bering Strait. Among
other things he was instructed to discover a north-west passage,
and he certainly did something definite towards it by showing there
was open water so much further west; but, though he suspected it,
he was unable to prove that the northernmost point of the continent
was in the unexplored country between the Coppermine and Hudson
Bay.
In 1783 the North West Fur Company was formally established, and
after a severe struggle obtained, owing mainly to the efforts of
Alexander Mackenzie, a fair share of the trade in the west of the
region controlled by the Hudson's Bay people. Mackenzie was at Fort
Chippewyan, on Lake Athabasca, and thence he was sent in 1789 on
an exploring voyage to the north. In four birch-bark canoes, one of
his party being an Indian known as English Chief, who had been with
Hearne on his journey to the Coppermine, he started down the
Great Slave River into the Great Slave Lake. After spending twenty
days in crossing and exploring this vast sheet of water, he entered
the large river now bearing his name, and down it amid many
dangers and difficulties, overcome by skill, persuasion, force, good
humour or good fortune, he reached the sea on the 14th of July. He
camped on Whale Island, the name being given owing to one of the
men sighting a great many animals in the water, which he at first
supposed to be pieces of ice. "However," says Mackenzie, "I was
awakened to resolve the doubts which had taken place respecting
this extraordinary appearance. I immediately perceived that they
were whales; and having ordered the canoe to be prepared, we
embarked in pursuit of them. It was indeed a very wild and
unreflecting enterprise, and it was a very fortunate circumstance
that we failed in our attempt to overtake them, as a stroke from the
tail of one of these enormous fish would have dashed the canoe to
pieces. We may, perhaps, have been indebted to the foggy weather
for our safety, as it prevented us from continuing our pursuit. Our
guide informed us that they are the same kind of fish which are the
principal food of the Eskimos, and they were frequently seen as
large as our canoe. The part of them which appeared above the
water was altogether white, and they were much larger than the
largest porpoise"—being evidently belugas (Delphinapterus leucas).
Satisfied with a short canoe voyage on the sea, he returned to the
river and made his way back to the fort, arriving there in the middle
of September. He had thus proved the existence of the sea twenty
degrees further west than Hearne had done. Three years afterwards
he started on his notable journey to the Pacific at Cape Menzies,
facing Princess Royal Island, being the first white man to cross the
Rocky Mountains, and, as he had reached Fort Chippewyan by way
of Montreal, the first to cross North America above the Gulf of
Mexico.
Another of Hearne's Indians accompanied Franklin on his first land
journey in 1819, the object of which was to explore the coast
between Hearne's farthest and Hudson Bay, thus filling in the gap in
which the assumed northern promontory was to be found. Franklin,
who was sent out by the British Government, had with him, as
surgeon and naturalist, Dr., afterwards Sir, John Richardson, to
whom as a boy Robert Burns had lent Spenser's Faerie Queene, a
naval surgeon with a distinguished record, who while on half-pay
had studied botany and mineralogy at Edinburgh. Like another
member of the expedition, George Back, who had been with Franklin
in the Trent and Dorothea voyage, he was destined to gain a great
reputation among Arctic explorers. With Back was another
midshipman, Robert Hood, whose fate it was to be murdered by an
Iroquois half-breed who, through want of food, betook himself to
cannibalism.
Landing at York Factory, in Hudson Bay, after an exciting voyage, on
the 30th of August, Franklin, disregarding local advice, pushed on
across the continent during the winter, arriving at Fort Chippewyan
on the 26th of March, the losses and trying experiences of the long
journey being mainly due to the rigours of the climate at that time of
year; and thence, in July, the party followed Mackenzie's route to
Fort Providence on Great Slave Lake. Here they were joined by Mr.
Wentzel, of the North West Company.
Starting for the north on the 2nd of August in four canoes, they
were joined next day at the mouth of the Yellow Knife by a band of
Indians, under a chief named Akaitcho, in seventeen canoes. The
Indians were to guide the party and supply them with food by
hunting and fishing on the way, but game and fish proved scarce—
and scarcer owing to the poorness of the Indian marksmanship—
provisions were short and portages long, so that the journey, which
soon led across a series of lakes, was pursued under toilsome and
hazardous conditions until it ended at Winter Lake in 64° 30´, where
it became necessary to winter in a log house built by Wentzel, and
named Fort Enterprise. The site was delightful: a hillside amid trees
three feet in diameter at the roots, the view in front bounded at a
distance of three miles by round-backed hills, to the eastward and
westward the Winter and Roundrock Lakes connected by the Winter
River, its banks clothed with pines and ornamented with a profusion
of mosses, lichens, and shrubs.

WINTER TRAVELLING ON THE GREAT SLAVE LAKE

In a few weeks, however, the weather became so severe that,
according to Franklin, the trees froze to their very centres and
became as hard as stones, on which some of the axes were broken
daily, until but one was left. And though at first the reindeer
appeared in numbers, their visits lasted only for a short time, and
the party, short of tobacco for the Canadian voyageurs and of
ammunition for the Indians, had so poor an outlook that it became
necessary to accept Back's proposal to return to the forts and bring
on supplies which had not been forwarded as promised; the failure
being due to the journey, unlike the successful ventures of Hearne
and Mackenzie, being pushed on regardless of climatal conditions,
and, in some degree, to the rivalry between the two fur companies
which were amalgamated while the expedition was in progress.
Back set out accompanied by Wentzel and two Canadians and two
Indians and their wives, crossing lakes frozen just hard enough to
bear them, going wide circuits to avoid those which were open, amid
mist and fog and storm, over rugged, bare country, through dense
woods and snow-covered swamps, rafting across a river with pine
branches for paddles, until Fort Providence was reached. From here
he sent back Belanger with letters and a hundred bullets he
procured on loan. Belanger arrived at Fort Enterprise on the 23rd of
October alone; he had walked constantly for the last six-and-thirty
hours through a storm, his locks were matted with snow, and he
was encrusted with ice from head to foot, so that he was scarcely
recognised when he slipped in through the doorway.
At Fort Providence Back had to wait until the Great Slave Lake was
frozen over. On the 18th of November he observed two mock moons
at equal distances from the central one, the whole encircled by a
halo, the colour of the inner edge of the large circle a light red
inclining to a faint purple; and two days afterwards two parhelia
were observable, with a halo, the colours of the inner edge of the
circle a bright carmine and red-lake intermingled with a rich yellow
forming a purplish orange, the outer edge being a pale gamboge. On
the 7th of December he left, sledging across the lake before the
wind, for the North West fort on Moose Deer Island, and finding at
the Hudson's Bay fort, also on the island, five packages of belated
supplies and two Eskimo interpreters on their way to Franklin.
Here he was told that nothing could be spared at Fort Chippewyan,
that goods had never been transported so far in the winter season,
that the same dogs could not go and return, and that from having to
walk constantly on snow-shoes he would suffer a great deal of
misery and fatigue. Nevertheless he undertook the journey in dog-
sledges with a Canadian and an Indian, leaving Wentzel behind. At
times the weather was so cold that they had to run to keep
themselves warm, and, owing to the snow, the feet of the dogs
became so raw that an endeavour was made to fit them with shoes.
With legs and ankles so swollen that it was painful to drag the snow-
shoes after him, Back hurried on, reaching Fort Chippewyan on the
2nd of January to find that he and all Franklin's party had been
reported to have been killed by Eskimos. Here he had to wait a
month, and then, with an instalment of what he wanted, he set out
on his return, arriving at Fort Enterprise on St. Patrick's Day after a
memorable journey of over a thousand miles.

CROSSING POINT LAKE

During his absence he was told that the cold had been so severe
that Hood had found accurate observing difficult owing to the
sextant having changed its error and the glasses lost their
parallelism from the contraction of the brass, a circumstance,
combined with the crystallisation of the mercury of the artificial
horizon, that might account for some of the diversity of results
obtained by Arctic navigators. And Richardson had to tell him of an
early discovery that when fishing and the hands get cold by hauling
in the line, the best way to warm them is to put them in the water;
and how the fish had frozen as they were taken out of the water so
that by a blow or two of the hatchet they were easily split open,
leaving the intestines removable in one lump, and yet that these
much-frozen fish retained their vitality so that he had seen a thawed
carp recover so far as to leap about with much vigour after it had
been frozen for thirty-six hours.
On the 14th of June Fort Enterprise was left, and on the 25th the
expedition began to cross Point Lake on the way to the Coppermine,
the river being reached through Rocknest Lake on the 30th. Down
the river they paddled, taking the rapids as they went—in one place
three miles of them on end. "We were carried along with
extraordinary rapidity, shooting over large stones, upon which a
single stroke would have been destructive to the canoes; and we
were also in danger of breaking them, from the want of the long
poles which lie along their bottoms and equalise their cargoes, as
they plunged very much, and on one occasion the first canoe was
almost filled with the waves; but there was no receding after we had
once launched into the stream, and our safety depended on the skill
and dexterity of the bowmen and steersmen."
There were rapids day by day affording almost every possible chance
of wreck except that due to driftwood; the two worst being one
where the stream descends for three-quarters of a mile in a deep
but narrow and crooked channel which it has cut through the foot of
a hill of five hundred or six hundred feet high, confined between
perpendicular cliffs resembling stone walls varying in height from
eighty to a hundred and fifty feet, on which lies a mass of fine sand;
the body of the river pent within this narrow chasm dashing furiously
round the projecting rocky columns as it discharges itself at the
northern extremity in a sheet of foam. The other being where the
river flows between lofty stone cliffs, reddish clay rocks and shelving
banks of white clay, and is full of shoals. Franklin's people had
entered this rapid before they were aware of it, and the steepness of
the cliffs prevented them from landing, so that they owed their
preservation to the swiftness of their descent. Two waves made a
complete breach over the canoes; a third would probably have filled
and overset them, which would have proved fatal to all on board.
This Escape Rapid, as it was named, was, as it were, the gate into
the territory of the Eskimos who were soon met with in small parties
all the way down to the sea. It was passed on the 15th of July; three
days afterwards the Indians bade farewell to the expedition in the
morning, and in the afternoon the canoes were afloat on the Arctic
Ocean.
 KUTCHIN INDIANS

From the river mouth Wentzel returned, as arranged, with

despatches, taking with him a number of voyageurs and others, thus
reducing the party to twenty in all in two canoes. In these Franklin,
nearly two years after he had landed in America, went on his voyage
to the eastward to enter at last on the work he had been sent to do.
But the survey of this lofty rocky coast was no easy matter; the sea
was rough, the weather tempestuous, the canoes were lightly built
and only suited for river work, and, in short, it was a most risky
enterprise. Tracing the shore of Coronation Gulf and coasting up and
out of Bathurst Inlet, Franklin reached Point Turnagain in 109° 25´
W., at the entrance of Dease Strait, on the 16th of August, 1821.
Though the voyage had extended over only six and a half degrees of
longitude, he had sailed 555 geographical miles; and then, as his
resources did not permit of his going further or of his returning to
the Coppermine, and in his own words "Our scanty stock of
provisions rendering it necessary to make for a nearer place," he, on
the 22nd, turned back to ascend the Hood River.
Here they soon reached the Wilberforce Falls, beautiful and
remarkable, but not easy of navigation. "In the evening," says
Franklin in his journal, "we encamped at the lower end of a narrow
chasm through which the river flows for upwards of a mile. The walls
of this chasm are upwards of two hundred feet high, quite
perpendicular, and in some places only a few yards apart. The river
precipitates itself into it over a rock forming two magnificent and
picturesque falls close to each other. The upper fall is about sixty
feet high, and the lower one at least one hundred, but perhaps
considerably more, for the narrowness of the chasm into which it fell
prevented us from seeing its bottom and we could merely discern
the top of the spray far beneath our feet. The lower fall is divided
into two by an insulated column of rock which rises about forty feet
above it."
As the river above the falls appeared too rapid and shallow for the
large canoes they were taken to pieces, and two smaller ones built
from their materials. The voyage in these lasted but three days,
when the river was abandoned as trending too far to the west, and
the party, carrying the canoes, proceeded overland to Point Lake on
their struggle of starvation across the Barren Grounds. For days they
had nothing to eat but lichens—species of Gyrophora or Umbilicaria
known as tripe-de-roche—a diet varied with leather, burnt bones and
skins, an occasional ptarmigan, and, once, a musk ox, until they
were so weak that when a herd of reindeer went strolling past they
had not strength enough to shoot at them.
The tragedy need not be lingered over. Back was again sent for help,
and, finding no stores at Fort Enterprise, was on his way to Fort
Providence when he fell in with Akaitcho, who at once hurried to the
rescue; and on the 14th of July, 1822, Franklin, Richardson, Back,
and Hepburn the seaman, who had behaved as a hero all through,
returned to York Factory after a three years' journey, fraught with
peril and horror, by land and water, of over six thousand three
hundred statute miles.
After he had been at home a year, Franklin suggested that another
attempt should be made to survey the northern coast while Parry
was at work in search of the North-West Passage. The suggestion
was accepted. Accompanied by Richardson and Back, and by E. N.
Kendall as assistant surveyor—who had been out with Captain Lyon
in the same capacity—and by Thomas Drummond as assistant
naturalist, he left Liverpool on the 26th of February, 1825.
 PREPARING AN ENCAMPMENT ON THE BARREN GROUNDS

Taught by experience, the expedition was better managed in every

way. Instead of driving ahead regardless of the season or the trade
routine, the ordinary conditions of local travel were kept in view
throughout, and the results were more in proportion to the effort.
Three boats were specially built at Woolwich on Franklin's design
and under Buchan's superintendence. They were of mahogany with
timbers of ash, both ends alike, steerable by oar or rudder, the
largest 26 ft. by 5 ft. 4 ins., the two others 24 ft. by 4 ft. 10 ins., and
with them Colonel Pasley's portable boat, known as the Walnut Shell
from its shape, 9 ft. long and half as wide, with frames of ash
fastened with thongs and covered with canvas. The canvas was
"waterproofed by Mr. Macintosh, of Glasgow"—the first instance of
its use—and for the first time also what we know as macintosh coats
and overalls were issued as part of the outfit, the process having
been patented in 1824.
The boats and stores were sent on ahead by way of York Factory in
1824, and Franklin and his party, travelling by New York and the
lakes, caught them up on the Methye River at sunrise on the 29th of
June. With them were several old friends, not the least delighted
being the two Eskimo interpreters, Augustus and Ooligbuck, who
were to be of the utmost importance throughout. On the 8th of
August they had got along so well that they were at the junction of
the Bear Lake River with the Mackenzie. Here Back and Peter Warren
Dease of the Hudson's Bay Company, who had joined the expedition
to look after the local arrangements, were sent off to build a house
to winter in on the banks of the Great Bear Lake, in Keith's Bay,
where the river leaves it; Richardson also left to explore the northern
shore of the lake, and Franklin and Kendall continuing down the
Mackenzie reached the sea before the week was out in less than six
months from their departure from Liverpool. And on the 5th of
September they had returned upstream and were at their winter
quarters at the new house on the lake, which Back had named Fort
Franklin, to find that Richardson had been along the northern shore
and noted as being the nearest point to the Coppermine the
entrance of the river he had named after Dease, which was to be of
so much service to him later on.
During the winter another boat, the Reliance, was built on the lines
of the Lion, the largest of the Woolwich boats, and leaving Dease to
complete the stores for another comfortable winter, the expedition
started on the 24th of June. At Point Separation, at the head of the
Mackenzie delta, Franklin in the Lion with Back in the Reliance—our
old friend Robert Spinks being his coxswain—took the western arm,
and Richardson in the Dolphin and Kendall in the Union, carrying the
Walnut Shell with them, took the eastern arm.
Richardson, with a few more or less threatening encounters with the
Eskimos, ending fairly well owing to Ooligbuck, and in constant
danger of wreck avoided by careful navigation, rounded Cape
Bathurst in 70° 36´ and discovered Wollaston Land, the coast-line of
which they left continuing to the east, when they reached
Coronation Gulf and, on the 8th of August, entered the Coppermine,
and thus filled in the gap of nine hundred and two statute miles
from Point Separation. Leaving the Dolphin and Union at Bloody Fall
on that river, it being impossible to take them further, the expedition,
carrying the Walnut Shell with them, proceeded along the banks, but
finding they had no use for the portable boat, owing to the
shallowness of the stream, they soon abandoned it, and in 67° 13´,
where the river is nearest to the north-eastern arm of Great Bear
Lake, the Coppermine was left and the course laid across the Barren
Grounds for Dease River. This was reached three days afterwards,
Richardson being met at its mouth by Dease's people on the 24th of
August.
Franklin had similar experiences with the Eskimos, and was as
deeply indebted to Augustus for his tact and bravery in dealing with
them. Coasting along to the westward, hindered by ice, bad weather
and fog, and tormented by mosquitoes, his progress was much
slower than that of Richardson. Delayed for some days on or about
Foggy Island, he had to give up his intention of reaching Bering
Strait, and not knowing that Elson with the barge of the Blossom
had come as far east as Point Barrow, he gave the name of Cape
Beechey to the westernmost headland in sight, and leaving Return
Reef in 148° 52´ on the 18th of August, after covering six hundred
and ten statute miles through parts not previously discovered, began
his voyage back to Fort Franklin, where he arrived on the 21st of
September. Meanwhile Richardson had gone off to explore the Great
Slave Lake, whence Drummond had started on his journey among
the Rockies; and, being unable to get away till another winter had
passed, both Franklin and Richardson landed in England in
September, 1827, after an important and fruitful expedition that had
no death-roll.
Back was again in these regions in 1833 on his expedition in search
of Sir John Ross. Reaching the Great Slave Lake, he built Fort
Reliance at its north-eastern corner and began the long winter there
on the 5th of November. Soon afterwards Akaitcho put in an
appearance, and expressed his intention—which he did his best to
fulfil—of being of as much assistance as he could; and later on
Augustus made his way across country to offer his services, but,
either exhausted by suffering and privation, or caught in a
snowstorm, he died alone near the Rivière à Jean.
Temperatures ranging from 50 to 70 minus were of frequent
occurrence, and, on one occasion Back, after washing his face within
a yard of the fire, had his hair clotted with ice before he had time to
dry it. Every animal was driven away from the neighbourhood by the
cold, except a solitary raven which swept once round the house and
then winged his flight to the westward. On the 25th of April a
messenger arrived at the fort with the news of the safe return of Sir
John Ross to England, but Back determined to proceed with the
journey for exploring purposes, taking one boat instead of two, and,
with Richard King the surgeon, and eight men, he started for the
Great Fish River on the 8th of July.

BACK'S JOURNEY DOWN THE

GREAT FISH RIVER

The voyage was a hazardous and adventurous one. For five hundred
and thirty geographical miles the river was found to run through an
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