Richardson and Hood now joined Franklin, and the party increased by sixteen Canadian voyageurs, a Chipewyan woman, and two interpreters, made their way northward. It was now the middle of July, and their whole stock of provisions consisted of hardly more than one day’s supply. Fortunately they soon added a buffalo, and at Moose Deer Island they got some supplies from the Hudson Bay and Northwest Company officers.
About the last of July they reached Fort Providence. From the Indian chief Akaitcho they secured guides, the party having been increased to twenty-nine, exclusive of three children. A journey of five hundred and fifty-two miles was accomplished, with no little hardship. Lack of food and other privation caused the Canadian voyageurs to break out in open mutiny. At Fort Enterprise winter quarters were established.
WINTER AT FORT ENTERPRISE
Early in October, Back and a party returned to Fort Providence to arrange for the transportation of stores expected from Cumberland House. The stores were anxiously awaited, and it was hoped they would arrive by New Year’s Day, 1821. In the meantime the party were subsisting for the most part on reindeer meat, fish twice a week, and a little flour. The middle of January seven of Back’s party returned, bringing with them as many stores as they could haul.
A little later Back returned, having performed on foot the remarkable journey of more than eleven hundred miles on snow-shoes, sleeping in the open, with only the protection of a blanket and a deerskin, the thermometer frequently at 40° and once at 57° below zero,—and passing several days without food.
The failure of the great fur companies to keep their contracts had resulted in almost no provisions being secured. At Fort Enterprise it was now found necessary to curtail rations to the most meagre amount, and many of the Indian families camped about the house were obliged to satisfy the cravings of hunger with bones, deer’s feet, and bits of other offal.
“When,” says Franklin, “we beheld them gnawing the pieces of hide, and pounding the bones for the purpose of extracting some nourishment from them by boiling, we regretted our inability to relieve them, but little thought that we ourselves should be afterwards driven to the necessity of eagerly collecting these same bones, a second time, from the dung-hill.”
In July, 1821, the expedition having dragged canoes and baggage with fifteen days’ provisions to the bank of the Coppermine, embarked upon the main object of the enterprise. By the 25th they had doubled Cape Barrow, and its eastern side they named Inman Harbor. The dangers and discouragements that beset Arctic travellers soon fell to their lot. Their stock of food, replenished with a few deer, soon became exhausted, and the ration issued to each man was a meagre handful of pemmican and a small portion of soup.
By the 5th of August, they had reached the Back River and then explored Melville Sound and Bathurst Inlet. Having reached Point Turnagain, and meeting with no Eskimos who could replenish their provisions, Franklin was obliged to turn back, having sailed nearly six hundred geographical miles in tracing the irregular shore of Coronation Gulf from the Coppermine River.
STARVATION