Early the following morning, they were aroused from sleep by the lookout man calling “a sail,” but though they made every effort to reach this ship, it passed them by unobserved. At ten o’clock they sighted another vessel which was becalmed. By hard rowing they reached her and found her to be the Isabella of Hull, a ship in which Ross had made his first voyage to those seas. The captain and mate could hardly believe their eyes when Ross announced that he and his party were the survivors of the Victory, which had been given up for lost more than two years previously. Ross describes the scene on board that followed:—
“The ludicrous soon took the place of all other feelings; in such a crowd, and such confusion, all serious thought was impossible, while the new buoyancy of our spirits made us abundantly willing to be amused by the scene which now opened. 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, shaving, dressing, 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.
“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 civilization. Long accustomed, however, to a cold bed on the hard snow or the bare rocks, few could sleep amid the comfort of our new 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 inure us once more to the usages of our former days.”
After five years in the Arctic, Captain Ross and his crew were homeward bound, carrying with them a record unprecedented in Arctic history. Boothia Felix had been discovered; the connecting isthmus had been crossed to the mainland of America and explorations made in the direction of Franklin Passage, Victoria Strait, and King William Sound; the Magnetic Pole had been located; and a series of most valuable observations kept during the entire period.
Previous to his arrival in England, the prolonged absence of Captain Ross had caused great anxiety to his countrymen, and, although his expedition had been a private affair in no way connected with the Admiralty, the government nevertheless felt it to be a national concern that his fate and that of the crew should be ascertained if possible.
LAND JOURNEY OF CAPTAIN BACK
Subscriptions were raised to promote a relief expedition, liberally added to from the public treasury, and an expedition fitted out in charge of Captain Back, who had volunteered his services, accompanied by the surgeon and naturalist, Dr. Richard King. With three men, they left Liverpool, February 17, 1833, on a packet-ship bound for New York, where they landed after a rough voyage of thirty-five days. From New York they went to Montreal, where they secured four more volunteers from the Royal Artillery Corps and some other assistants, and embarked on the St. Lawrence in two canoes. Making a brief stop at Sault Ste. Marie, for the purpose of purchasing a third canoe, they directed their course to the northern shores of Lake Superior.
On May 20, they arrived at Fort William. By the first week in June, the canoes reached Fort Alexander at the southern extremity of Lake Winnipeg. Coasting this lake, Captain Back made for Norway House, where he secured his full complement of men, eighteen in all, and they started in high spirits for Fort Resolution, the eastern shore of the Great Slave Lake. The chief annoyance experienced on this long canoe trip was the torment from myriads of sand-flies and mosquitoes, of which Captain Back writes:—
“How can I possibly give an idea of the torment we endured from the sand-flies? As we dived into the confined and suffocating chasms, they rose in clouds, actually darkening the air; to see or to speak was equally difficult, for they rushed at every undefended part, and fixed their poisonous fangs in an instant. Our faces streamed with blood, as if leeches had been applied, and there was a burning and irritating pain, followed by immediate inflammation, and producing giddiness, which almost drove us mad, and caused us to moan with pain and agony.”