nter in the {97}
north. It was a season of great hardship. With the poor materials at
their hand it was impossible to make their huts weatherproof. The wind
whistled through the ill-plastered seams of the logs. So intense was
the winter cold that the trees about the fort froze hard to their
centres. In cutting firewood the axes splintered as against stone. In
the officers' room the thermometer, sixteen feet from the log fire,
marked as low as fifteen degrees below zero in the day and forty below
at night. For food the party lived on deer's meat with a little fish,
tea twice a day (without sugar), and on Sunday a cup of chocolate as
the luxury of the week to every man. But, undismayed by cold and
hardship, they kept stoutly at their work. Richardson investigated the
mosses and lichens beneath the snow and acquainted himself with the
mineralogy of the neighbourhood. Franklin and the two lieutenants
carried out observations, their fingers freezing with the cold of
forty-six below zero at noon of the brief three-hour day in the heart
of winter. Sunday was a day of rest. The officers dressed in their
best attire. Franklin read the service of the Church of England to his
assembled company. For the French-Canadian Roman Catholics, Franklin
did the best he {98} could; he read to them the creed of the Church of
England in French. In the leisure part of the day a bundle of London
newspapers was perused again and again.

The winter passed safely; the party now entered upon the most arduous
part of their undertaking. Canoes were built and dragged on improvised
sledges to the Coppermine. Franklin descended the river, surveying its
course as he went. He passed by the scene of the massacre witnessed by
Hearne, and found himself, late in July of 1821, on the shores of the
Arctic. The distance from Fort Enterprise was three hundred and
thirty-four miles, for one hundred and seventeen of which the canoes
and baggage had been hauled over snow and ice.

Franklin and his followers, in two canoes, embarked on the polar sea
and traced the course of the coast eastward for five hundred and fifty
miles. The sailors were as men restored to their own element. But the
Canadian voyageurs were filled with dread at the great waves of the
open ocean. All that Franklin saw of the Arctic coast encouraged his
belief that the American continent is separated by stretches of sea
from the great masses of land that had been already disco