Dundas, and in the distance a bold coast, which they named Banks's Land. As even a brisk gale from the east did not produce the slightest movement on the glassy face of the deep, they were led to believe that on the other side there must be a large body of land, by which it was held in a fixed state. On considering all circumstances, there appeared no alternative but to make their way homeward while yet the season permitted. Some additional observations were made, as they returned, on the two coasts extending along Barrow's Strait. Parry's arrival in Britain was hailed with the warmest exultation. To have sailed upwards of thirty degrees of longitude beyond the point reached by any former navigator; to have discovered so many new lands, islands, and bays; to have established the much-contested existence of a Polar Sea north of America; finally, after a wintering of eleven months, to have brought back his crew in a sound and vigorous state, were enough to raise his name above that of any other Arctic voyager. CHAPTER V. FRANKLIN'S FIRST LAND EXPEDITION. — INCIDENTS.—BACK'S JOURNEY. - YORK IN September of the same year that Parry sailed, an overland expedition started from York Factory, Hudson's Bay, under charge of Sir John Franklin, accompanied by Dr. (now Sir John) Richardson, two midshipmen, -Messrs. Back and Hood, -- and Hepburn, a seaman, with the object of exploring the north coast of America to its eastern extremity from the mouth of the Coppermine. There was a chance that Parry might make for the coast in his ships; and, if so, the two parties would have coöperated with mutual advantage. On the 19th of January, 1820, Franklin set out in company with Mr. Back, and a seaman named Hepburn, with provisions for fifteen days stowed in two sledges, on their journey to Fort Chipewyan. Dr. Richardson, . Mr. Hood, and Mr. Connolly, accompanied them a short distance. After touching at different posts of the company, they reached their destination safely on the 26th of March, after a winter's journey of eight hundred and fifty-seven miles. The greatest difficulty experienced by the travellers was the labor of walking in snowshoes, a weight of between two and three pounds being constantly attached to galled feet and swelled ankles. Of the state of the temperature during this journey there is no record, for a reason explained by Franklin, who says that "this evening (18th of January) we found the mercury of our thermometer had sunk into the bulb, and was frozen." On the 15th of April the first shower of rain fell; and on the 17th the thermometer rose to 77° in the shade. The return of the swans, geese, and ducks, now gave certain indications of spring. The warm weather, by the sudden melting of the snow and ice, deluged the face of the country. Mr. Hood says: "The noise made by the frogs which this inundation produced is almost incredible. There is strong reason to believe that they outlive the severity of winter. They have often been found frozen, and revived by warmth; nor is it possible that the multitude which incessantly filled our ears with their discordant notes could have been matured in two or three days." Captain Franklin also notices the resuscitation of fishes after being frozen: "It may be worthy of notice here, that the fish froze as they were taken out of the nets, and in a short time became a solid mass of ice, and by a blow or two of the hatchet were easily split open, when the intestines might be removed in one lump. If, in this completely frozen state, they were thawed before the fire, they recovered their animation. This was particularly the case with the carp; and we had occasion to observe it repeatedly, as Dr. Richardson occupied himself in examining the structure of the dif ferent species of fish, and was always, in the winter, under the necessity of thawing them before he could cut them. We have seen a carp recover so far as to leap about with much vigor after it had been frozen for thirty-six hours." It may be stated that the same effect is produced on the insect tribe. Franklin and his party, increased by the addition of sixteen Canadian voyageurs, interpreters, &c., left Fort Chipewyan in July, 1820, for Fort Enterprise, on Winter Lake, more than five hundred miles distant. Here, after walking eighty miles to get a look at the Coppermine, they wintered, while Mr. (now Sir George) Back returned on foot to Fort Chipewyan, to expedite the transit of stores required for the next year's operations. At the end of five months he rejoined his companions, after a journey which put his powers of endurance to a severe test. Some interesting instances of Indian generosity are recorded in the report of Back's long and perilous journey. "One of the women caught a fine pike, by making a hole in the ice, which she gave to us; the Indians positively refused to partake of it, from the idea (as we afterwards learned) that we should not have sufficient for ourselves. We are accustomed to starvation,' said they, 'but you are not.'" Back, in this dreadful journey, was not only exposed to starvation and the extremity of cold, but also to the danger of perishing in some of the lakes which they had to cross on foot. On a narrow branch of the Slave Lake he fell through the ice, but escaped without injury; on another occasion the ice bent so that it required the utmost speed to avoid falling through where it gave way, as it seems to have done at every step he took. In short, it was little less than miraculous, considering the season and the severity of the winter, that he ever returned safe; which, however, he had the good fortune to do on the 17th of March, when he arrived at Fort Enterprise, where, he says, "I had the pleasure of meeting my friends all in good health, after an absence of nearly five months, during which time I had travelled eleven hundred and four miles on snow-shoes, and had no other covering, at night, in the woods, than a blanket and deer-skin, with the thermometer frequently at-40°, and once at -57°, and sometimes passing two or three days without tasting food." Franklin gives the following statement in regard to the severity of the weather in December: "The weather during this month was the coldest we experienced during our residence in America. The thermometer sank on one occasion to 57° below zero, and never rose beyond 6° above it; the mean for the month was -29°-7. During these intense colds, however, the atmosphere was generally calm, and the wood-cutters and others went about their ordinary occupations without using any extraordinary precautions, yet without feeling any bad effects. The heat is abstracted most rapidly from the body during strong breezes; and most of those who have perished from cold in this country have fallen a sacrifice to their being overtaken on a lake, or other unsheltered place, by a storm of wind. The intense colds were, however, detrimental to us in another way. The trees froze to their very centres, and became as hard as stones, and more difficult to cut. Some of the axes were broken daily, and by the end of the month we had only one left that was fit for felling trees." The aurora borealis made its appearance frequently, with more or less brilliancy, but was not particularly remarkable; in the month of December it was visible twenty-eight of the long nights. The Indians, it appears, have nearly destroyed the fur-bearing animals; and so scarce is the beaver become, that in the whole journey to the shores of the Polar Sea and back, one single habitation, and one dam only, of that industrious and ingenious creature, were met with. Among the many interesting anecdotes that have been told of this animal, Dr. Richardson relates the following: |