Round About the North Pole

by W. J. Gordon

On the 1st of August Montreal Island was reached. Nine days afterwards a log of driftwood, nine feet long and nine inches in diameter, jocularly described as a piece of the North Pole, was found on the beach, which, as there are no trees on the Fish River or the Coppermine, Captain Back was of opinion must have come from the Mackenzie and drifted eastward, so that he was on the main line of the land. The inference, confirmed by the appearance of a whale, was correct, but, misled, perhaps, by hilly islands, he missed the channel through which it had come, blocking it, in the manner of John Ross, with a range of mountains that does not exist. Though he reached Mount Barrow and mistook the head of Simpson Strait for an inlet, thus failing to find one of the north-west passages, he discovered and named King William Land and sighted Point Booth at its eastern extremity. An attempt to reach Point Turnagain to the westward and thus link up with Franklin's farthest east, in which he might have discovered the passage, proving impracticable owing to the bogginess of the ground, Back began his return from King William Land in latitude 68° 13´, longitude 94° 58´, and entered on a wearisome journey up the river and lakes he had come down, meeting with a party from Fort Reliance on the 17th of September.

A week after, when within a couple of days of the fort, on that "small but abominable river" the Ah-hel-dessy from Artillery Lake, Back discovered the Anderson Falls. Toiling along over the mountains, every man with a seventy-five-pound package on his back, he had not proceeded more than six or seven miles when, observing the spray rising from another fall, he was induced to visit it and was well consoled for having left the boat behind. "From the only point," says Back, "at which the greater part of it was visible, we could distinguish the river coming sharp round a rock, and falling into an upper basin almost concealed by intervening rocks; whence it broke in one vast sheet into a chasm between four and five hundred feet deep, yet in appearance so narrow that we fancied we could almost step across it. Out of this the spray rose in misty columns several hundred feet above our heads; but as it was impossible to see the main fall from the side on which we were, in the following spring I paid a second visit to it, approaching from the western bank. The road to it, which I then traversed in snow-shoes, was fatiguing in the extreme, and scarcely less dangerous; for, to say nothing of the steep ascents, fissures in the rocks, and deep snow in the valleys, we had sometimes to creep along the narrow shelves of precipices slippery with the frozen mist that fell on them. But it was a sight that well repaid any risk. My first impression was of a strong resemblance to an iceberg in Smeerenberg Harbour, Spitsbergen. The whole face of the rocks forming the chasm was entirely coated with blue, green, and white ice, in thousands of pendent icicles; and there were, moreover, caverns, fissures, and overhanging ledges in all imaginable varieties of form, so curious and beautiful as to surpass anything of which I had ever heard or read. The immediate approaches were extremely hazardous, nor could we obtain a perfect view of the lower fall, in consequence of the projection of the western cliffs. At the lowest position we were able to attain, we were still more than a hundred feet above the level of the river beneath; and this, instead of being narrow enough to step across, as it had seemed from the opposite heights, was found to be at least two hundred feet wide. The colour of the water varied from a very light to a very dark green; and the spray, which spread a dimness above, was thrown up in clouds of light grey. Niagara, Wilberforce Falls on Hood River, the falls of Kakabikka near Lake Superior, the Swiss or Italian falls—although they may each charm the eye with dread—are not to be compared to this for splendour of effect. It was the most imposing spectacle I had ever witnessed; and, as its berg-like appearance brought to mind associations of another scene, I bestowed upon it the name of our celebrated navigator, Sir Edward Parry, and called it Parry's Falls."

Back, like Franklin, owed much of the success of his expedition to the cordial help of the Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, George, afterwards Sir George, Simpson. Ever the fastest of travellers in the north, Simpson had, in 1828, made a 3260-mile canoe voyage from Hudson Bay to the Pacific, passing the Rockies through canyons previously untried, and slipping down mountain torrents and through unknown rapids at such speed that hostile Indians let him pass in sheer amazement; and all his life he was distinguished for similar energy and celerity. When it became clear that the British Government had no immediate intention of completing the survey of the northern coast, Simpson organised an expedition at the Company's expense to undertake the task, and entrusted the leadership to Dease, who had done such excellent work for Franklin; and with Dease he associated his own nephew, Thomas Simpson, in no way inferior to his uncle in energy, speediness, or decision of character, being in fact one of our very best explorers, Arctic or otherwise.

Thomas Simpson, Master of Arts of Aberdeen and a winner of the Huttonian, began characteristically by starting off to Fort Garry—now Winnipeg—with a view, as he says, "to refresh and extend my astronomical practice which had for some years been interrupted by avocations of a very different nature"; and thence, in the winter, making his way to Fort Chippewyan, a journey of 1277 miles, joining Dease there more than a month before he was expected. Two boats were built, light clinker craft of 24 ft. keel and 6 ft. beam, adapted for shallow navigation by their small draught, both alike and honoured with the classical names of the heavenly twins, Castor and Pollux, each boat provided with a small oiled canvas canoe and portable wooden frame. Of one, the steersman was the redoubtable James McKay—"Pull your starboard oar!"—and of the other, George Sinclair, Back's bowman; and one of the bowmen was Felix, who had been with Franklin in 1826. All told, the expedition numbered fourteen.

Leaving Fort Chippewyan on the 1st of June, 1837, they reached Bear Lake River on the 3rd of July, and six days afterwards were out on the sea. On the 23rd of July they camped at Return Reef, that is to say they had traversed the whole extent of Franklin's survey in a fortnight, and not without danger from the ice and losing much time by doubling the floes, however far they extended seawards. Once Simpson's boat, which was of course leading, was only saved from destruction by throwing out everything it contained upon the floating masses. By means of portages made from one fragment to another, the oars forming the perilous bridges, and after repeated risks of boats, men, and baggage being separated by the motion of the ice, they succeeded with much labour in collecting the whole equipment on one floe, which, being covered with water, formed a sort of wet dock. There they hauled up the boats, momentarily liable to be overwhelmed by the turning over of the ice, three miles from land, with the fog settled round them throughout the inclement night.

Continuing westwards along new country, they reached and named Cape George Simpson (after the Governor) and, a little further on, Boat Extreme, where, from the coldness of the weather and the interminable ice, the further advance of the boats appeared to be so hopeless that Dease agreed to stay in charge of them while Simpson with five men, including McKay and Felix, pushed ahead for Point Barrow on foot. Passing McKay Inlet and Sinclair River, named after the two steersmen, an Eskimo camp was reached, where Simpson exchanged his tin plate for a platter made out of a mammoth tusk, and borrowed an oomiak which floated in about half a foot of water. In this useful skin boat the journey was resumed to Point Barrow, and on the 4th of August the survey completed between Franklin's farthest and Elson's.

The winter was passed at the mouth of the Dease River, on Great Bear Lake, where Fort Confidence had been built ready for the expedition on its return. On the 6th of June, 1838, a start for the coast was made by the Coppermine route, that river being reached on the 22nd, and its descent accomplished, on the spring flood, in nine days. But it was a bad season, and the navigation was so hampered by ice that no start was made to the eastward until the 17th of July. At Boathaven, in 109° 20´, Simpson again left the boats and went ahead with Sinclair and six others who had not been to Point Barrow. Passing Franklin's farthest at Point Turnagain, he kept on for a hundred miles along the whole length of Dease Strait, discovering and naming Victoria Land, reaching Beaufort River beyond Cape Alexander, and sighting an open sea to the eastward. From here, in 106° 3´, the return began; and by many devices and the unfailing skill of McKay and Sinclair, the two boats were taken up the Coppermine stream, falls and rapids and all, to the nearest point to Fort Confidence, where they were hauled up in readiness for next year.

On the 22nd of June, 1839, the boats again left for the sea; and they were run down to Bloody Fall without a stoppage in eleven hours. Again there were fourteen all told in them, but this time one of the men was Ooglibuck, who had come specially from Ungava in Labrador, in the wonderful time of three months less eight days, to join the expedition which was to meet with great success and accomplish an Arctic boat journey of over sixteen hundred statute miles.

Entirely blocked until the 3rd of July, and hindered by ice difficulties all the way, the boats did not reach the previous year's farthest until the 28th of July. On the 11th of August, through an outlet only three miles wide, they passed into the much-desired eastern sea. "That glorious sight," says Simpson, after whom the strait is named, "was first beheld by myself from the top of one of the high limestone islands, and I had the satisfaction of announcing it to some of the men who, incited by curiosity, followed me thither. The joyful news was soon conveyed to Mr. Dease, who was with the boats at the end of the island, about half a mile off." On the continent and on King William Land, where Franklin's men were in time coming to perish of starvation, reindeer were seen browsing on the scanty herbage among the shingle. A terrible thunderstorm followed, and then, doubling a very sharp point on the 13th, Simpson landed and saw before him a sandy desert. It was Back's Point Sir C. Ogle that he had at length reached. Away in the distance was the Great Fish River, and three days afterwards the party were encamped on Montreal Island, where McKay led the way to the provisions and gunpowder deposited by Back among the rocks.

The expedition had performed its allotted task, and the men were consulted as to whether they would continue for a short distance to the eastward. To their honour they all assented without a murmur; but the cruel north-east wind forbade much progress in that direction, and their farthest east was reached at Castor and Pollux River. From there immediate return was imperative, as not a day could be spared. And so, from latitude 68° 28´ 23˝, longitude 94° 14´, they turned back on the 21st of August, leaving the survey of the north coast of the American mainland practically complete from Bering Strait to Boothia.