Barren Grounds of Northwestern Canada.
A dangerous voyage by ship through Hudson Straits brought Franklin and his companions, Dr. Richardson, Midshipmen Hood and Back, and Seaman Hepburn to York Factory, Hudson Bay, at the end of August, 1819. Contrary to the advice of the local agents, he started northward, and after a hazardous journey in the opening winter—involving a trip of seven hundred miles of marches, canoeing, and portages—reached Cumberland House.
With unreasonable ambition this indomitable man of iron pushed northward in mid-winter with Back and Hepburn, on a journey to Fort Chipewyan, Athabasca Lake, of eight hundred and fifty-seven miles, during which the whole party barely failed of destruction. While dogs hauled the food and camp gear, the men travelling on snow-shoes were pushed to keep up with the dogs. Being mangeurs de lard (novices or tenderfeet), they suffered intolerable pain in their swollen feet, besides suffering horribly from the blizzards and extreme cold, the temperature at times failing to ninety degrees below the freezing-point.
The sledges were of the Hudson Bay pattern, differing from those used elsewhere. They are made of two or three boards, the front curving upward, fastened by transverse cleats above. They are so thin that a heavily laden sledge undulates with the irregularities of the snow. Less than two feet wide as a rule, they are about nine feet long, and have around the edges a lacing by which the load is secured.
By a journey of fifteen hundred and twenty miles Franklin verified Hearne's discovery of the Coppermine, though finding its latitude and longitude very far out, and later he built and wintered at Fort Enterprise. It is interesting to note that the only complaint that he makes of his summer journey were the insect pests—the bull-dog fly that carries off a bit of flesh at each attack, the irritating sand-fly, and the mosquito. Of the latter he says: "They swarmed under our blankets, goring us with their envenomed trunks and steeping our clothes in blood. The wound is infinitely painful, and when multiplied an hundred-fold for many successive days becomes an evil of such magnitude that cold, famine, and every other concomitant of an inhospitable climate must yield pre-eminence to it. The mosquito, irritating to madness, drives the buffalo to the plains and the reindeer to the sea-shore."
In the summer of 1821 Franklin descended the Coppermine River, and in a canoe voyage of five hundred and fifty miles to the eastward discovered the waters and bordering lands of Bathurst Inlet, Coronation Gulf, and as far as Dease Inlet. The very day that he was forced by failing food to turn back, Captain Parry, R.N., in the Fury, sailed out of Repulse Bay five hundred and forty miles to the east.
With the utmost reluctance Franklin saw the necessity for a speedy return. It was now the 22d of August, the nights were fast lengthening, the deer were already migrating, and the air was full of honking wild geese flying in long lines to the south. Both canoes were badly damaged, one having fifteen timbers broken. The other was so racked and warped that repairs were impracticable, the birch bark being in danger of separating from the gunwales at any severe shock.
One man had frozen his thighs, and the others, shaken in mind and worn in body, unaccustomed to the sea, were in such a demoralized state that two of them threw away deer meat, sadly needed, to lighten the boats. Sudden cold set in with snow, a fierce blizzard blew up a high sea, and the inland pools froze over. Return by sea was clearly impossible, and the only chance of saving their lives was to ascend Hood River and reach Fort Enterprise by a land journey across the barren grounds, so dreaded and avoided by the Indians and the Eskimos.
With the subsiding gale they put to sea along the coast, and in three days entered Hood River, though at times with utmost difficulty escaping foundering, as says Franklin: "The waves were so high that the masthead of our canoe was often hid from the other, though it was sailing within hail."
Once landed on the river bank, the mercurial voyageurs, unmindful of the difficult and dangerous march before them, were in most joyful mood. They spent a gay evening before a large camp-fire, bursting into song, reciting the novel perils of the sea now past, and exaggerating with quaint humor every little incident.