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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.