Barrow's Strait was found from repeated surveys to be one impenetrable mass of ice. After lingering here till the third week in September, it was unanimously agreed that their only resource was to fall back again on the stores at Fury Beach, and spend their fourth winter in that dreary solitude. Here they sheltered their canvass tent with a wall of snow, and setting up an extra stove made themselves tolerably comfortable until the increasing severity of the winter, and the rigour of the cold, added to the tempestuous weather, made them perfect prisoners, and sorely tried their patience. Scurvy now began to appear, and several of the men fell victims to the scourge. At the same time cares for the future darkened the gloom of their situation, for, if they were not liberated in the ensuing summer, their diminishing food gave them but little hope of surviving another year.
It may be imagined how anxiously the aspect of the sea was watched during the ensuing summer, and with what beating hearts they at length embarked on the 15th of August. The spot which the year before they had attained after the most strenuous exertions was soon passed, and slowly winding their way through the ice-blocks with which the inlet was encumbered, they now saw the wide expanse of Barrow's Strait open before them. With spirits invigorated by hope they push on, alternately rowing and sailing, and on the night of the 25th rest in a good harbour on the eastern shore of Navy Board Inlet. "A ship in sight!" is the joyful sound that awakens them early on the following morning; and never have men more hurriedly and energetically set out, never have oars been more indefatigably plied. But the elements are against them, calms and currents conspire against their hopes, and to their inexpressible disappointment the ship disappears in the distant haze.
But after a few hours of suspense the sight of another vessel lying to in a calm relieves their despair. This time their exertions are crowned with success; and, wonderful! the vessel which receives them on board is the same "Isabella" in which Ross made his first voyage to these seas.
They told him of his own death, and could hardly be persuaded that it was really he and his party who now stood before them. But when all doubts were cleared away, you should have heard their thrice-repeated thundering hurrahs!
The scene that now followed cannot better be told than in Ross's own words:—
"Every man was hungry, and was to be fed; all were ragged, and were to be clothed; there was not one to whom washing was not indispensable; nor one whom his beard did not deprive of all human semblance. All, everything, too was to be done at once. It was washing, dressing, shaving, eating, all intermingled; it was all the materials of each jumbled together; while in the midst of all there were interminable questions to be asked and answered on both sides; the adventures of the "Victory," our own escapes, the politics of England, and the news, which was now four years old.
"But all subsided into peace at last. The sick were accommodated, the seamen disposed of, and all was done for us which care and kindness could perform.
"Night at length brought quiet and serious thoughts; and I trust there was not a man among us who did not then express, where it was due, his gratitude for that interposition which had raised us all from a despair which none could now forget, and had brought us from the very borders of a most distant grave to life and friends and civilisation. Long accustomed, however, to a cold bed on the hard snow or the bare rock, few could sleep amid the comfort of our accommodations. I was myself compelled to leave the bed which had been kindly assigned me, and take my abode in a chair for the night, nor did it fare much better with the rest. It was for time to reconcile us to this sudden and violent change, to break through what had become habit, and to inure us once more to the usages of our former days."
I have no time to relate how Ross was received in England, and what honours were heaped upon him; honours conferred with all the better grace that the nation had not forgotten him during his long-protracted absence, and had no cause to blush for culpable neglect. For Britain has ever considered it her duty to help and assist the men who venture their lives in the cause of science and for the advancement of her glory; nor will she allow the officer who carries her standard into unknown lands, and there falls a victim to nature or to man, to perish without feeling his last moments gladdened by the conviction, that, however distant his grave, the eye of his country rests upon him.
Thus when Back, that noble Paladin of Arctic research, volunteered to lead a relief expedition in quest of Ross, £4000 were immediately raised by public subscription to defray the expenses of the undertaking. While deep in the American wilds Back was gratified with the intelligence that the object of his search had safely arrived in England, but, instead of returning home, the indefatigable explorer resolved to trace the unknown course of the Thlu-it-scho, or Great Fish River, down to the distant outlet where it pours its waters into the polar seas. It would take a volume to recount his adventures in this wonderful expedition, the numberless falls, cascades, and rapids that obstructed his progress; the storms and snow-drifts that vainly conspired to repel him; the horrors of that iron-ribbed desert, without a single tree on the whole line of his passage; and how heroically he persevered to the very last, and added Back's River, as the Thlu-it-scho has most deservedly been called, to the geographical conquests of which England may well be proud.