in spring flood, but skill and nerve brought the party through. We extract the following passage:—
“The day was bright and lovely as we shot down rapid after rapid; in many of which we had to pull for our lives to keep out of the suction of the precipices, along whose base the breakers raged and foamed with overwhelming fury. Shortly before noon we came in sight of the Escape Rapid of Franklin, and a glance at the overhanging cliffs told us that there was no alternative but to run down with full cargo. In an instant we were in the vortex; and, before we were aware, my boat was borne towards an isolated rock which the boiling surge almost concealed. To clear it on the outside was no longer possible; our only chance of safety was to run between it and the lofty eastern cliff. The word was passed, and every breath was hushed. A stream, which dashed down upon us over the brow of the precipice more than a hundred feet in height, mingled with the spray that whirled upwards from the rapid, forming a terrific shower-bath. The pass was about eight feet wide, and the error of a single foot on either side would have been instant destruction. As, guided by Sinclair’s consummate skill, the boat shot safely through those jaws of death, an involuntary cheer arose.”—p. 258.
If it had appeared strange to Mr. Simpson, with his thermometer at 50°, that people should perish of cold in England, during this performance he must have been equally at a loss to account for the destruction of life which so often used to attend the shooting of Old London Bridge.
From the 1st to the 17th of July the party were detained by the ice at the mouth of the Coppermine. From the latter date to the 19th of August they were occupied in struggling along the coast to the point reached by Franklin in 1821, and here the prospect before them showed that they had drawn a blank in the lottery of arctic summers. On the 16th of August Franklin had seen a perfectly open sea from this point. Before them now, to the eastward, lay an unbroken barrier of ice, glittering with snow, evidently destined soon to unite with the new formation of approaching winter. Behind them the disjointed masses through which they had forced their way kept closing in under the pressure of violent gales. Mr. Simpson, under these discouraging circumstances, again decided on the experiment of a pedestrian journey of exploration for some ten days with seven of the party, to be followed by Mr. Dease with the remaining five men in one of their two boats, should wind and weather so far change as to permit. This enterprise was well rewarded. Franklin’s furthest point was passed on the 21st. From a cape named after that officer, a little beyond that point, land was seen twenty or twenty-five miles to the northward, and stretching from west to north-east. Was this land insular or continental,—were the party coasting a bay or the shore of a continuous sea? This interesting question was solved on the 23d, on which day Mr. Simpson writes:—
“The coast led somewhat more to the northward. The travelling was exceedingly painful. We, however, advanced with spirit, all hands being in eager expectation respecting the great northern land, which seemed interminable. Along its distant shore the beams of the declining sun were reflected from a broad channel of open water; while on the coast we were tracing the ice lay still immovable, and extended many miles to seaward. As we drew near in the evening an elevated cape, land appeared all round, and our worst fears seemed confirmed. With bitter disappointment I ascended the height, from whence a vast and splendid prospect burst suddenly upon me. The sea, as if transformed by enchantment, rolled its free waves at my feet, and beyond the range of vision to the eastward. Islands, of various shape and size, overspread its surface; and the northern land terminated to the eye in a bold and lofty cape, bearing east-north-east, thirty or forty miles distant, while the continental coast trended away south-east. I stood in fact on a remarkable headland at the eastern outlet of an ice-obstructed strait. On the extensive land to the northward I bestowed the name of our most gracious sovereign, Queen Victoria. Its eastern visible extremity I called Cape Pelly, in compliment to the governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and the promontory where we encamped Cape Alexander, after an only brother, who would give his right hand to be the sharer of my journeys.”
With these discoveries Mr. Simpson for this season was forced to content himself:—
“They were not in themselves,” he observes, “unimportant; but their value was much enhanced by the disclosure of an open sea to the eastward, and the suggestion of a new route—along the southern coast of Victoria Land—by which that open sea might be attained while the shores of the continent were yet environed by an impenetrable barrier of ice, as they were this season.”—p. 300.
On the 29th they rejoined Mr. Dease and his party, who had continued ice-bound till the day previous, when he wisely judged it too late to attempt progress by sea to the eastward.
The course now adopted by the party is best explained and vindicated in Mr. Simpson’s own words:—
“The bad weather and advanced season now rendered every one anxious to return to winter quarters, and I reluctantly acquiesced in the general sentiment; but for doing so I had reasons peculiar to myself. I considered that we could not now expect to reach Backs Great Fish River; that by exploring a part only of the unknown coast intervening, our return to the Coppermine must be so long protracted as to preclude the possibility of taking the boats up that bad river; and that by abandoning them on the coast to the Esquimaux we excluded the prospect of accomplishing the whole by a third voyage, with the benefit perhaps of a more propitious season. Three great travellers, Hearne, Franklin, and Richardson, had successively pronounced the ascent of the Coppermine, above the Bloody Fall, to be impracticable with boats; and our people, recollecting only the violence amid impetuosity of our descent, entertained the same opinion. Fully aware of the great importance of this point to any future operations, I had with a careful eye inspected every part of the river, and formed in my own mind the following
