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.
For 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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: Yours faithfully John Richardson]
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.
[Illustration: 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
iron-ribbed country without a single tree on the whole line of its
banks, expanding into fine large lakes with clear horizons, most
embarrassing to the navigator, and broken into falls, cascades, and
rapids, to the number of no less than eighty-three, pouring its waters
into the Polar Sea in latitude 67° 11´ and longitude 94° 30´; so that
his explorations on the northern coast were confined to a section
further east than Point Turnagain.
The expedition met with its greatest danger at Escape Rapid, between
Lake Macdougall and Lake Franklin, on the 25th of July. Here the stream
was broken by a mile of heavy and dangerous rapids. The boat was
lightened, and every care taken to avoid accident; but so overwhelming
was the rush and whirl of the water, that she, and consequently those in
her, were twice in imminent peril of being plunged into one of the gulfs
formed in the rocks and hollows. It was in one of these places, which
are fall, rapid, and eddy within a few yards, that the boat owed its
safety to an unintentional disobedience of the steersman's directions.
The power of the water so far exceeded whatever had been witnessed on
any of the other rivers that the precautions used elsewhere were weak
and unavailing. McKay, the steersman, was endeavouring to clear a fall
and some sunken rocks on the left, but the man to whom he spoke
misunderstood him, and did exactly the reverse; and then, seeing the
danger, the steersman swept the stern round; instantly the boat was
caught by an eddy to the right, which, snapping an oar, twirled her
irresistibly broadside on; so that for a moment it seemed uncertain
whether the boat was to be hurled into the hollow of the fall, or dashed
stern foremost on the sunken rocks. Of how it happened no account can be
given, but her head swung inshore towards the beach and thereby gave an
opportunity for some of the men to spring into the water and by their
united strength rescue her from her perilous position. Had the man to
whom the first order was given understood and acted on it no human power
could have saved the crew from being buried in the abyss. Nor yet could
any blame be justly attached to the steersman, who had never been so
situated before and whose coolness and self-possession never in this
imminent peril forsook him. At the awful moment of suspense, when one of
the crew with less nerve than his companions began to cry aloud to
Heaven for aid, McKay in a still louder voice exclaimed, "Is this a time
for praying? Pull your starboard oar." Never could a reminder that
_laborare est orare_ have been more opportune.
On the 1st of August Montreal Island was reached. Nine days afterwards a
log of driftwood, nine feet long and nine inches in diameter, jocularly
described as a piece of the North Pole, was found on the beach, which,
as there are no trees on the Fish River or the Coppermine, Captain Back
was of opinion must have come from the Mackenzie and drifted eastward,
so that he was on the main line of the land. The inference, confirmed by
the appearance of a whale, was correct, but, misled, perhaps, by hilly
islands, he missed the channel through which it had come, blocking it,
in the manner of John Ross, with a range of mountains that does not
exist. Though he reached Mount Barrow and mistook the head of Simpson
Strait for an inlet, thus failing to find one of the north-west
passages, he discovered and named King William Land and sighted Point
Booth at its eastern extremity. An attempt to reach Point Turnagain to
the westward and thus link up with Franklin's farthest east, in which he
might have discovered the passage, proving impracticable owing to the
bogginess of the ground, Back began his return from King William Land in
latitude 68° 13´, longitude 94° 58´, and entered on a wearisome journey
up the river and lakes he had come down, meeting with a party from Fort
Reliance on the 17th of September.
A week after, when within a couple of days of the fort, on that "small
but abominable river" the Ah-hel-dessy from Artillery Lake, Back
discovered the Anderson Falls. Toiling along over the mountains, every
man with a seventy-five-pound package on his back, he had not proceeded
more than six or seven miles when, observing the spray rising from
another fall, he was induced to visit it and was well consoled for
having left the boat behind. "From the only point," says Back, "at which
the greater part of it was visible, we could distinguish the river
coming sharp round a rock, and falling into an upper basin almost
concealed by intervening rocks; whence it broke in one vast sheet into a
chasm between four and five hundred feet deep, yet in appearance so
narrow that we fancied we could almost step across it. Out of this the
spray rose in misty columns several hundred feet above our heads; but as
it was impossible to see the main fall from the side on which we were,
in the following spring I paid a second visit to it, approaching from
the western bank. The road to it, which I then traversed in snow-shoes,
was fatiguing in the extreme, and scarcely less dangerous; for, to say
nothing of the steep ascents, fissures in the rocks, and deep snow in
the valleys, we had sometimes to creep along the narrow shelves of
precipices slippery with the frozen mist that fell on them. But it was a
sight that well repaid any risk. My first impression was of a strong
resemblance to an iceberg in Smeerenberg Harbour, Spitsbergen. The whole
face of the rocks forming the chasm was entirely coated with blue,
green, and white ice, in thousands of pendent icicles; and there were,
moreover, caverns, fissures, and overhanging ledges in all imaginable
varieties of form, so curious and beautiful as to surpass anything of
which I had ever heard or read. The immediate approaches were extremely
hazardous, nor could we obtain a perfect view of the lower fall, in
consequence of the projection of the western cliffs. At the lowest
position we were able to attain, we were still more than a hundred feet
above the level of the river beneath; and this, instead of being narrow
enough to step across, as it had seemed from the opposite heights, was
found to be at least two hundred feet wide. The colour of the water
varied from a very light to a very dark green; and the spray, which
spread a dimness above, was thrown up in clouds of light grey. Niagara,
Wilberforce Falls on Hood River, the falls of Kakabikka near Lake
Superior, the Swiss or Italian falls—although they may each charm the
eye with dread—are not to be compared to this for splendour of effect.
It was the most imposing spectacle I had ever witnessed; and, as its
berg-like appearance brought to mind associations of another scene, I
bestowed upon it the name of our celebrated navigator, Sir Edward Parry,
and called it Parry's Falls."
Back, like Franklin, owed much of the success of his expedition to the
cordial help of the Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, George,
afterwards Sir George, Simpson. Ever the fastest of travellers in the
north, Simpson had, in 1828, made a 3260-mile canoe voyage from Hudson
Bay to the Pacific, passing the Rockies through canyons previously
untried, and slipping down mountain torrents and through unknown rapids
at such speed that hostile Indians let him pass in sheer amazement; and
all his life he was distinguished for similar energy and celerity. When
it became clear that the British Government had no immediate intention
of completing the survey of the northern coast, Simpson organised an
expedition at the Company's expense to undertake the task, and entrusted
the leadership to Dease, who had done such excellent work for Franklin;
and with Dease he associated his own nephew, Thomas Simpson, in no way
inferior to his uncle in energy, speediness, or decision of character,
being in fact one of our very best explorers, Arctic or otherwise.
Thomas Simpson, Master of Arts of Aberdeen and a winner of the
Huttonian, began characteristically by starting off to Fort Garry—now
Winnipeg—with a view, as he says, "to refresh and extend my astronomical
practice which had for some years been interrupted by avocations of a
very different nature"; and thence, in the winter, making his way to
Fort Chippewyan, a journey of 1277 miles, joining Dease there more than
a month before he was expected. Two boats were built, light clinker
craft of 24 ft. keel and 6 ft. beam, adapted for shallow navigation by
their small draught, both alike and honoured with the classical names of
the heavenly twins, _Castor_ and _Pollux_, each boat provided with a
small oiled canvas canoe and portable wooden frame. Of one, the
steersman was the redoubtable James McKay—"Pull your starboard oar!"—and
of the other, George Sinclair, Back's bowman; and one of the bowmen was
Felix, who had been with Franklin in 1826. All told, the expedition
numbered fourteen.
Leaving Fort Chippewyan on the 1st of June, 1837, they reached Bear Lake
River on the 3rd of July, and six days afterwards were out on the sea.
On the 23rd of July they camped at Return Reef, that is to say they had
traversed the whole extent of Franklin's survey in a fortnight, and not
without danger from the ice and losing much time by doubling the floes,
however far they extended seawards. Once Simpson's boat, which was of
course leading, was only saved from destruction by throwing out
everything it contained upon the floating masses. By means of portages
made from one fragment to another, the oars forming the perilous
bridges, and after repeated risks of boats, men, and baggage being
separated by the motion of the ice, they succeeded with much labour in
collecting the whole equipment on one floe, which, being covered with
water, formed a sort of wet dock. There they hauled up the boats,
momentarily liable to be overwhelmed by the turning over of the ice,
three miles from land, with the fog settled round them throughout the
inclement night.
Continuing westwards along new country, they reached and named Cape
George Simpson (after the Governor) and, a little further on, Boat
Extreme, where, from the coldness of the weather and the interminable
ice, the further advance of the boats appeared to be so hopeless that
Dease agreed to stay in charge of them while Simpson with five men,
including McKay and Felix, pushed ahead for Point Barrow on foot.
Passing McKay Inlet and Sinclair River, named after the two steersmen,
an Eskimo camp was reached, where Simpson exchanged his tin plate for a
platter made out of a mammoth tusk, and borrowed an oomiak which floated
in about half a foot of water. In this useful skin boat the journey was
resumed to Point Barrow, and on the 4th of August the survey completed
between Franklin's farthest and Elson's.
The winter was passed at the mouth of the Dease River, on Great Bear
Lake, where Fort Confidence had been built ready for the expedition on
its return. On the 6th of June, 1838, a start for the coast was made by
the Coppermine route, that river being reached on the 22nd, and its
descent accomplished, on the spring flood, in nine days. But it was a
bad season, and the navigation was so hampered by ice that no start was
made to the eastward until the 17th of July. At Boathaven, in 109° 20´,
Simpson again left the boats and went ahead with Sinclair and six others
who had not been to Point Barrow. Passing Franklin's farthest at Point
Turnagain, he kept on for a hundred miles along the whole length of
Dease Strait, discovering and naming Victoria Land, reaching Beaufort
River beyond Cape Alexander, and sighting an open sea to the eastward.
From here, in 106° 3´, the return began; and by many devices and the
unfailing skill of McKay and Sinclair, the two boats were taken up the
Coppermine stream, falls and rapids and all, to the nearest point to
Fort Confidence, where they were hauled up in readiness for next year.
On the 22nd of June, 1839, the boats again left for the sea; and they
were run down to Bloody Fall without a stoppage in eleven hours. Again
there were fourteen all told in them, but this time one of the men was
Ooglibuck, who had come specially from Ungava in Labrador, in the
wonderful time of three months less eight days, to join the expedition
which was to meet with great success and accomplish an Arctic boat
journey of over sixteen hundred statute miles.
Entirely blocked until the 3rd of July, and hindered by ice difficulties
all the way, the boats did not reach the previous year's farthest until
the 28th of July. On the 11th of August, through an outlet only three
miles wide, they passed into the much-desired eastern sea. "That
glorious sight," says Simpson, after whom the strait is named, "was
first beheld by myself from the top of one of the high limestone
islands, and I had the satisfaction of announcing it to some of the men
who, incited by curiosity, followed me thither. The joyful news was soon
conveyed to Mr. Dease, who was with the boats at the end of the island,
about half a mile off." On the continent and on King William Land, where
Franklin's men were in time coming to perish of starvation, reindeer
were seen browsing on the scanty herbage among the shingle. A terrible
thunderstorm followed, and then, doubling a very sharp point on the
13th, Simpson landed and saw before him a sandy desert. It was Back's
Point Sir C. Ogle that he had at length reached. Away in the distance
was the Great Fish River, and three days afterwards the party were
encamped on Montreal Island, where McKay led the way to the provisions
and gunpowder deposited by Back among the rocks.
The expedition had performed its allotted task, and the men were
consulted as to whether they would continue for a short distance to the
eastward. To their honour they all assented without a murmur; but the
cruel north-east wind forbade much progress in that direction, and their
farthest east was reached at Castor and Pollux River. From there
immediate return was imperative, as not a day could be spared. And so,
from latitude 68° 28´ 23˝, longitude 94° 14´, they turned back on the
21st of August, leaving the survey of the north coast of the American
mainland practically complete from Bering Strait to Boothia.
Further, on their return journey they crossed to the southern shore of
King William Land and traced its coast for nearly sixty miles,
discovering and naming Cape Herschel, south-eastward of which, in
Simpson Strait, M'Clintock found the remains of one of Franklin's men.
They thus linked up with what was to be the route of the Franklin
expedition and were the first to find the North-West Passage for the
command of which the territory was given by Charles II to the Hudson's
Bay Company.