Had it not been for the timely assistance of Akaitcho, a friendly Indian chief who had arrived with a supply of men and who brought them game, their sufferings might have had a disastrous ending, but this old brave expressed his sentiments in the noble words:—
“The great chief trusts us, and it is better that ten Indians perish than one white man should perish through our negligence and breach of faith.”
With the approach of spring, Captain Back began preparations for his intended journey to the sea-coast, but on April 25 a messenger arrived with the welcome news that Captain Ross and the survivors of the Victory were alive and had arrived safely in England. Extracts from the Times and Herald were shown Captain Back to confirm the news.
“In the fulness of our hearts, we assembled and humbly offered up our thanks to that merciful Providence, which, in the beautiful language of the Scripture, hath said, ‘Mine own will I bring again, as I did some time from the deeps of the sea.’ The thoughts of so wonderful a preservation overpowered for a time the common occurrences of life. We had just sat down to breakfast: but our appetite was gone, and the day was passed in a feverish state of excitement. Seldom, indeed, did my friend Mr. King or I indulge in a libation, but on this joyful occasion, economy was forgotten, a treat was given to the men, and for ourselves the social sympathies were quenched by a generous bowl of punch.”
The four months spent in the remarkable journey of Captain Back and his men to the Polar Sea are one continual recital of hairbreadth escapes in the falls, rapids, and cataracts of the Thleu-ee-choh, and of the incredible suffering and hardship bravely endured by all hands. In describing one of their narrow escapes, where the boat was obliged to be lightened to shoot the rapids, Captain Back writes:—
“I stood on a high rock, with an anxious heart, to see her run it. Away they went with the speed of an arrow, and in a moment, the foam and rocks hid them from view. I heard what sounded in my ear like a wild shriek; I followed with an agitation which may be conceived, and to my inexpressible joy, found that the shriek was the triumphant whoop of the crew, who had landed safely in a small bay below.”
VICTORIA LAND
On the 29th, while threading their course down the great river, they saw headlands to the north which gave them the assurance that the coast was not far distant. To this majestic promontory, Back gave the name Victoria.
“This then,” he writes, “may be considered as the mouth of the Thleu-ee-choh, which after a violent and tortuous course of five hundred and thirty geographical miles, running through an iron ribbed country, without a single tree on the whole line of its banks, expanding into five large lakes, with clear horizon most embarrassing to the navigator, and broken into falls, cascades, and rapids, to the number of eighty-three in the whole, pours its water into the Polar Sea, in latitude 67° 11´ N., and longitude 94° 30´ W., that is to say, about thirty-seven miles more south than the mouth of the Coppermine River, and nineteen miles more south than that of Back’s River, at the lower extremity of Bathhurst’s Inlet.”