The usual presentations of beads and nails formed a part of the introductory ceremonial. The recipients of these gifts were wont to display their gratitude in a manner that was not a little embarrassing, for when they were given anything they went off into fits of hysterical screaming or laughter, varied by the women with periods of weeping.

Apart from increasing their knowledge of the habits of the Eskimos, the explorers gained but little information that was of any value to them, and they learned nothing of that passage to the west for which they were seeking. One of the women was able to draw a rough map of the coast for some miles northward of Repulse Bay, and, in attempting to verify it, Captain Lyon very nearly lost his life in a snowstorm. Otherwise, however, the winter was marked by no event that need be recorded. On July 2, 1822, the two ships sailed out of their winter quarters and pursued their journey northward.

Occasionally the work of mapping out the coast, which, of course, occupied most of their attention, was varied by a little walrus-hunting, which proved to be excellent sport. Some idea of the strength of these creatures may be gathered from the fact that, in a big battue in which they indulged on July 15, one of the boats was seriously damaged by a walrus’s tusks, while another of the creatures, being accidentally touched by an oar, wrenched it out of the rower’s hand with its flippers and broke it in two. The largest of the animals killed on that day weighed fifteen hundredweight and a half.

In such a way as this was the whole of the summer spent, and the arrival of winter found them as far as ever from the discovery of the North-West Passage. Parry spent the dark months off the Island of Igloolik, intending to continue his work during the following summer. An outbreak of scurvy, however, compelled him to change his plans, and, cutting short his voyage, to return to England, which he reached early in October.

In the following year Parry started out on his third and last search for the North-West Passage. The plan of the expedition was to explore Prince Regent’s Inlet, but the ice was bad and the weather was unfavourable, with the result that he had barely reached the scene of his labours when winter set in. In the following year he was even more unfortunate, for the Fury was driven ashore in a gale and he was obliged to leave her to her fate, taking her men and such of her stores as he could find room for on board the Hecla. He had now no choice but to return home, as, with so many mouths to feed and so little to feed them with, he dared not risk another winter in the ice. It is worthy of mention, however, that the stores left behind on the ship and on the shore proved the salvation of several later expeditions.

THE WALRUS AS SEEN BY OLAUS MAGNUS

By no means the least valuable of the pieces of information brought back by Parry was that, while the eastern coast of any land in the Arctic regions is almost invariably encumbered with heavy ice, the western coast is, in ordinary years, comparatively free—a discovery of which navigators have taken the fullest advantage ever since.

CHAPTER VII
FRANKLIN’S SECOND LAND JOURNEY

In no way deterred by the terrible dangers which he had encountered in his first journey, Franklin had scarcely returned home when he laid before the Government a scheme for a second expedition which was, according to his idea, to proceed “overland to the mouth of the Mackenzie River and thence, by sea, to the north-western extremity of North America, with the combined object, also, of surveying the coast between the Mackenzie and Coppermine Rivers.” It was hoped at the same time that, if Parry’s party succeeded in winning through to the Polar Sea, the two expeditions might prove of mutual service to one another.