vered in the
Arctic. {99} The North-West Passage, ice-blocked and useless, was
still a geographical fact. Eager in the pursuit of his investigations
he went on eastward as long as he dared--too long in fact. Food was
running low. His voyageurs had lost heart, appalled at the immense
spaces of ice and sea through which their frail canoes went onward into
the unknown. Reluctantly, Franklin decided to turn back. But it was
too late to return by water. The northern gales drove the ice in
against the coast. Franklin and his men, dragging and carrying one of
the canoes, took to the land, in order to make their way across the
barren grounds. By this means they hoped to reach the upper waters of
the Coppermine and thence Fort Enterprise, where supplies were to have
been placed for them during the summer. Their journey was disastrous.
Bitter cold set in as they marched. Food failed them. Day after day
they tramped on, often with blinding snow in their faces, with no other
sustenance than the bitter weed called _tripe de roche_ that can here
and there be scraped from the rocks beneath the snow. At times they
found frozen remnants of deer that had been killed by wolves, a few
bones with putrid meat adhering to them. These they eagerly devoured.
But {100} often day after day passed without even this miserable
sustenance. At night they lay down beside a clump of willows, trying,
often in vain, to make a fire of the green twigs dragged from under the
snow. So great was their famine, Franklin says, that the very
sensation of hunger passed away, leaving only an exhaustion too great
for words. Lieutenant Back, gaunt and emaciated, staggered forward
leaning on a stick, refusing to give in. Richardson could hardly walk,
while Lieutenant Hood, emaciated to the last degree, was helped on by
his comrades as best they could. The Canadians and Indians suffered
less in body, but, lacking the stern purpose of the officers, they were
distraught with the horror of the death that seemed to await them. In
their fear they had refused to carry the canoe, and had smashed it and
thrown it aside. In this miserable condition the party reached, on
September 26, the Coppermine river, to find it flowing still unfrozen
in an angry flood which they could not cross. In vain they ranged the
banks above and below. Below them was a great lake; beside and above
them a swift, deep current broken by rapids. There was no crossing.
They tried to