the Great Chief who resided in England to send for the original!"

The diet of the party in their winter abode consisted almost entirely of reindeer meat, varied twice a week by fish, and occasionally by a little flour, but they had no vegetables of any kind. On Sunday morning they had a cup of chocolate; but their greatest luxury was tea, which they regularly had twice a day, although without sugar. Candles were formed of reindeer fat and strips of cotton shirts; and Hepburn acquired considerable skill in the manufacture of soap from the wood ashes, fat and salt. The stores were anxiously looked for, and it was hoped they would have arrived by New Year's Day, (1821,) so as to have kept the festival. As it was, they could only receive a little flour and fat, both of which were considered great luxuries.

On the 15th, seven of the men arrived with two kegs of rum, one barrel of powder, sixty pounds of ball, two rolls of tobacco, and some clothing.

"They had been twenty-one days on their march from Slave Lake, and the labor they underwent was suffi ciently evinced by their sledge collars having worn out the shoulders of their coats. Their loads weighed from sixty to ninety pounds each, exclusive of their bedding and provisions, which at starting must have been at least as much more. We were much rejoiced at their arrival, and proceeded forthwith to pierce the spirit cask, and issue to each of the household the portion of rum which had been promised on the first day of the year. The spirits, which were proof, were frozen; but after standing at the fire for some time they flowed out, of the consistence of honey. The temperature of the liquid, even in this state, was so low as instantly to convert into ice the moisture which condensed on the surface of the dram-glass. The fingers also adhered to the glass, and would doubtless have been speedily frozen had they been kept in contact with it; yet each of the voyageurs swallowed his dram without experiencing the slightest inconvenience, or complaining of toothache."

It appeared that the Canadians had tapped the rum

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cask on their journey, and helped themselves rather freely.

On the 27ta, Mr. Wentzel and St. Germain arrived, with two Esquimaux interpreters who had been engaged, possessed of euphonious names, representing the belly and the ear, but which had been Anglicised into Augustus and Junius, being the months they had respectively arrived at Fort Churchill. The former spoke English. They brought four dogs with them, which proved of great use during the season in drawing in wood for fuel.

Mr. Back, at this time, the 24th of December, had gone on to Chipewyan to procure stores. On the 12th of February, another party of six men was sent to Fort Providence to bring up the remaining supplies, and these returned on the 5th of March. Many of the caches of meat which had been buried early in the winter were found destroyed by the wolves; and some of these ani mals prowled nightly about the dwellings, even ventur ing upon the roof of their kitchen. The rations were reduced from eight to the short allowance of five ounces of animal food per day.

On the 17th of March, Mr. Eack returned from Fort Chipewyan, after an absence of nearly five months, during which he had performed a journey on foot of more than eleven hundred miles on snow shoes, with only the slight shelter at night of a blanket and a deer skin, with the thermometer frequently at 40° and once at 57°, and very often passing several days without food.

Some very interesting traits of generosity on the part of the Indians are recorded by Mr. Back. Often they gave up and would not taste of fish or birds which they caught, with the touching remark, "We are accustomed to starvation, and you are not."

Such passages as the following often occur in his narrative:-"One of our men caught a fish, which, with the assistance of sorne weed scraped from the rocks, (tripe de roche) which fortis a glutinous substance, made ns a tolerable supp: it was not of the most choice kind,

While we were eat

yet good enough for hungry men. ing it, I perceived one of the women busily employed scraping an old skin, the contents of which her husband presented us with. They consisted of pounded meat, fat, and a greater proportion of Indian's and deer's hair than either; and, though such a mixture may not appear very alluring to an English stomach, it was thought a great luxury after three days' privation in these cheerless regions of America."

To return to the proceedings of Fort Enterprise. On the 23d of March, the last of the winter's stock of deer's meat was expended, and the party were compelled to consume a little pounded meat, which had been saved for making pemmican. The nets scarcely produced any fish, and their meals, which had hitherto been scanty enough, were now restricted to one in the day.

The poor Indian families about the house, consisting principally of sick and infirm women and children, suffered even more privation. They cleared away the snow on the site of the Autumn encampment to look for bones, deer's feet, bits of hide, and other offal. "When (says Franklin) we beheld them gnawing the pieces of hide, and pounding the bones for the purpose of extracting some nourishment from them by boiling, we regretted our inability to relieve them, but little thought that we should ourselves be afterward driven to the necessity of eagerly collecting these same bones, a second time from the dung-hill.'

On the 4th of June, 1821, a first party set off from the winter quarters for Point Lake, and the Coppermine River, under the charge of Dr. Richardson, consisting, in all, voyageurs and Indians, of twenty-three, exclusive of children. Each of the men carried about 80 lbs., besides his own personal baggage, weighing nearly as much more. Some of the party dragged their loads on sledges, others preferred carrying their burden on their backs. On the 13th, Dr. Richardson sent back most of the men; and on the 14th Franklin dispatched Mr. Wentzel and a party with the canoes, which had been repaired. Following the water-course as far as practi

cable to Winter Lake, Franklin followed himself wila Hepburn, three Canadians, two Indian hunters, and the two Esquimaux, and joined Dr. Richardson on the 22d. On the 25th they all resumed their journey, and, as they proceeded down the river, were fortunate in killing, occasionally, several musk ozen.

On the 15th they got a distinct view of the sea from the summit of a hill; it appeared choked with ice and full of islands. About this time they fell in with small parties of Esquimaux.

On the 19th Mr. Wentzel departed on his return for Slave Lake, taking with him four Canadians, who had been discharged for the purpose of reducing the expenditure of provisions as much as possible, and dispatches to be forwarded to England. He was also instructed to cause the Indians to deposit a relay of provisions at Fort Enterprise, ready for the party should they return that way. The remainder of the party, including officers, amounted to twenty persons. The distance that had been traversed from Fort Enterprise to the mouth of the river was about 334 miles, and the canoes had to be dragged 120 miles of this.

Two conspicuous capes were named by Franklin after Hearne and Mackenzie; and a river which falls into the sea, to the westward of the Coppermine, he called after his companion, Richardson.

On the 21st of July, Franklin and his party embarked in their two canoes to navigate the Polar Sea, to the eastward, having with them provisions for fifteen days.

On the 25th they doubled a bluff cape, which was named after Mr. Barrow, of the Admiralty. An opening on its eastern side received the appellation of Inman Harbor, and a group of islands were called after Professor Jameson. Within the next fortnight, additions were made to their stock of food by a few deer and one or two bears, which were shot. Being less fortunate afterward, and with no prospect of increasing their supply of provision, the daily allowance to each man was limited to a handful of pemmican and a small portion of portable soup.

On the morning of the 5th of August they came to the mouth of a river blocked up with shoals, which Franklin named after his friend and companion Back.

The time spent in exploring Arctic and Melville Sounds and Bathurst Inlet, and the failure of meeting with Esquimaux from whom provisions could be ob tained, precluded any possibility of reaching Repulse Bay, and therefore having but a day or two's provisions left, Franklin considered it prudent to turn back after reaching Point Turnagain, having sailed nearly 600 geographical miles in tracing the deeply indented coast of Coronation Gulf from the Coppermine River. On the 22d August, the return voyage was commenced, the boats making for Hood's River by the way of the Arctic Sound, and being taken as far up the stream as possible. On the 31st it was found impossible to proceed with them farther, and smaller canoes were made, suitable for crossing any of the rivers that might obstruct their progress. The weight carried by each man was about 90 lbs., and with this they progressed at the rate of a mile an hour, including rests.

On the 5th of September, having nothing to eat, the last picce of pemmican and a little arrow-root having formed a scanty supper, and being without the means of making a fire, they remained in bed all day. A severe snow-storm lasted two days, and the snow even drifted into their tents, covering their blankets several inches. "Our suffering (says Franklin) from cold, in a comfortless canvass tent in such weather, with the temperature at 20°, and without fire, will easily be imagined; it was, however, less than that which we felt from hunger.'

Weak from fasting, and their garments stiffened with the frost, after packing their frozen tents and bedclothes the poor travelers again set out on the 7th.

After feeding almost exclusively on several species of Gyrophora, a lichen known as tripe de roche, which scarcely allayed the pangs of hunger, on the 10th "they got a good meal by killing a musk ox. To skin and cut up the animal was the work of a few minutes. The