Bristol; six gold snuff-boxes from Russia, Holland, Denmark, Austria, London, and Baden; a sword valued at 100 guineas from the Patriotic Fund, for his sufferings, having been wounded thirteen times in three different actions during the war; and one of the value of 2001. from the King of Sweden, for service in the Baltic and the White Sea. On the 8th of March, 1839, he was appointed to the lucrative post of British consul at Stockholm, which he held for six years.

CAPTAIN BACK'S LAND JOURNEY, 1833-1835.

FOUR years having elapsed without any tidings being received of Capt. Ross and his crew, it began to be generally feared in England that they had been added to the number of former sufferers, in the prosecution of their arduous undertaking.

Dr. Richardson, who had himself undergone such frightful perils in the Arctic regions with Franklin, was the first to call public attention to the subject, in a letter to the Geographical Society, in which he suggested a project for relieving them, if still alive and to be found; and at the same time volunteered his services to the Colonial Secretary of the day, to conduct an exploring party.

Although the expedition of Captain Ross was not undertaken under the auspices of the Government, it became a national concern to ascertain the ultimate fate of it, and to make some effort for the relief of the party, whose home at that time might be the boisterous sea, or whose shelter the snow hut or the floating iceberg. Dr. Richardson proposed to proceed from Hudson's Bay, in a north-west direction to Coronation Gulf, where he was to commence his search in an easterly direction. Passing to the north, along the eastern side of this gulf, he would arrive at Point Turnagain, the eastern point of his own former discovery. Having accomplished this, he would continue his search towards the eastward until he reached Melville Island, thus perfecting geographical discovery in that quarter, and a continued coast line might be laid down from the Fury and Hecla Strait to Beechey Point, leaving only the small space between Franklin's discovery and that of the Blossom unexplored. The proposal was favourably received; but owing to the political state of the country at that time, the offer was not accepted.

A meeting was held in November, 1832, at the rooms of the Horticultural Society, in Regent-street, to obtain funds,

and arrange for fitting out a private relief expedition, as the Admiralty and the Government were unable to do this officially, in consequence of Capt. Ross's expedition not being a public one. Sir George Cockburn took the chair, and justly observed that those officers who devoted their time to the service of science, and braved in its pursuit the dangers of unknown and ungenial climates, demanded the sympathy and assistance of all. Great Britain had taken the lead in geographical discovery, and there was not one in this country who did not feel pride and honour in the fame she had attained by the expeditions of Parry and Franklin ; but if we wished to create future Parrys and Franklins, if we wished to encourage British enterprise and courage, we must prove that the officer who is out of sight of his countrymen is not forgotten; that there is consideration for his sufferings, and appreciation of his spirit. This reflection will cheer him in the hour of trial, and will permit him, when surrounded by dangers and privations, to indulge in hope, the greatest blessing of man. Capt. George Back, R.N., who was in Italy when the subject was first mooted, hastened to England, and offered to lead the party, and his services were accepted. A subscription was entered into to defray the necessary expenses, and upwards of 60007. was raised; of this sum, at the recommendation of Lord Goderich, the then secretary of state, the Treasury contributed 20007.

After an interview with the king at Brighton, to which he was specially summoned, Capt. Back made preparations for his journey, and laid down his plan of operations. In order to facilitate his views, and to give him greater control over his men, special instructions and authority were issued by the Colonial Office, and the Hudson's Bay Company granted him a commission in their service, and placed every assistance at his disposal throughout their territory in North America.

Everything being definitively arranged, Capt. Back, accompanied by Dr. Richard King as surgeon and naturalist, with three men who had been on the expedition with Franklin, left Liverpool on the 17th of Feb. 1833, in one of the New York packet ships, and arrived in America after a stormy passage of thirty-five days. He proceeded on to Montreal, where he had great difficulty in preventing two of the men from leaving him, as their hearts began to fail them at the prospect of the severe journey, with its attendant difficulties, which they had to encounter.

Four volunteers from the Royal Artillery corps here

joined him, and some voyageurs having been engaged, the party left, in two canoes, on the 25th of April. Two of his party deserted from him in the Ottawa river.

On the 28th of June, having obtained his complement of men, he may be said to have commenced his journey. They suffered dreadfully from myriads of sand-flies and musquitoes, being so disfigured by their attacks that their features could be scarcely recognised. Horse-flies, appropriately styled "bull dogs," were another dreadful pest, which pertinaciously gorged themselves like the leech, until they seemed ready to burst.

"It is in vain to attempt to defend yourself against these puny bloodsuckers; though you crush thousands of them, tens of thousands arise to revenge the death of their companions, and you very soon discover that the conflict which you are waging is one in which you are sure to be defeated. So great at last are the pains and fatigue in buffeting away this attacking force, that in despair you throw yourself, half suffocated, in a blanket, with your face upon the ground, and snatch a few minutes of sleepless rest." Captain Back adds that the vigorous and unintermitting assaults of these tormenting pests conveyed the moral lesson of man's helplessness, since, with all our boasted strength, we are unable to repel these feeble atoms of creation. How," he says, can I possibly give an idea of the torment we endured from the sand-flies? we dived into the confined and suffocating chasms, or waded through the close swamps, 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."

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At the Pine portage Captain Back engaged the services of A. R. McLeod, in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company, and who had been fixed upon by Governor Simpson, to aid the expedition. He was accompanied by his wife, three children, and a servant; and had just returned from the Mackenzie River, with a large cargo of furs. The whole family were attached to the party, and after some detentions of a general and unimportant character, they arrived at Fort Chipewyan on the 29th of July. Fort Resolution, on Great Slave Lake, was reached on the 8th of August.

The odd assemblage of goods and voyageurs in their encampment are thus graphically described by the traveller, as he glanced around him.

"At my feet was a rolled bundle in oil-cloth, containing some three blankets, called a bed; near it a piece of dried buffalo, fancifully ornamented with long black hairs, which no art, alas! can prevent from insinuating themselves between the teeth, as you laboriously masticate the tough, hard flesh; then a tolerably clean napkin, spread by way of table-cloth, on a red piece of canvas, and supporting a tea-pot, some biscuits, and a salt-cellar; near this a tin plate, close by a square kind of box or safe of the same material, rich with a pale, greasy hair, the produce of the colony at Red River; and the last the far-renowned pemmican, unquestionably the best food of the country for expeditions such as ours. Behind me were two boxes containing astronomical instruments, and a sextant lying on the ground, whilst the different corners of the tent were occupied by a washing apparatus, a gun, an Indian shot-pouch, bags, basins, and an unhappy-looking japanned pot, whose melancholy bumps and hollows seemed to reproach me for many a bruise endured upon the rocks and portages between Montreal and Lake Winnipeck. Nor were my crew less motley than the furniture of the tent. It consisted of an Englishman, a man from Stornaway, two Canadians, two Metifs or half-breds, and three Iroquois Indians. Babel could not have produced a worse confusion of unharmonious sounds than was the conversation they kept up."

Having obtained at Fort Resolution all possible information, from the Indians and others, relative to the course of the northern rivers of which he was in search, he divided his crew into two parties, five of whom were left as an escort for Mr. McLeod, and four were to accompany himself in search of the Great Fish River, since appropriately named after Back himself.

On the 19th of August they began the ascent of the Hoar Frost River, whose course was a series of the most fearful cascades and rapids. The woods here were so thick as to render them almost impervious, consisting chiefly of stunted firs, which occasioned infinite trouble to the party to force their way through; added to which, they had to clamber over fallen trees, through rivulets, and over bogs and swamps, until the difficulties appeared so appalling as almost to dishearten the party from prosecuting their journey. The heart of Captain Back was, however, of too stern a cast to be dispirited by difficulties, at which less

persevering explorers would have turned away discomfited, and cheering on his men, like a bold and gallant leader, the first in the advance of danger, they arrived at length in an open space, where they rested for awhile to recruit their exhausted strength. The place was, indeed, one of barrenness and desolation; crag was piled upon crag to the height of 2000 feet from the base, and the course of the river here, in a state of contraction, was marked by an uninterrupted line of foam.

However great the beauty of the scenery may be, and however resolute may be the will, severe toil will at length relax the spirits, and bring a kind of despondency upon a heart naturally bold and undaunted. This was found particularly the case now with the interpreter, who became a dead weight upon the party. Rapid now succeeded rapid; scarcely had they surmounted one fall than another presented itself, rising like an amphitheatre before them to the height of fifty feet. They, however, gained at length the ascent of this turbulent and unfriendly river, the romantic beauty and wild scenery of which were strikingly grand, and after passing successively a series of portages, rapids, falls, lakes, and rivers, on the 27th Back observed from the summit of a high hill a very large lake full of deep bays and islands, and which has been named Aylmer Lake, after the GovernorGeneral of Canada at that time. The boat was sent out with three men to search for the lake, or outlet of the river, which they discovered on the second day, and Captain Back himself, during their absence, also accidentally discovered its source in the Sand Hill Lake, not far from his encampment. Not prouder was Bruce when he stood on the green sod which covers the source of the Nile, than was Captain Back when he found that he was standing at the source of a river, the existence of which was known, but the course of which was a problem no traveller had yet ventured to solve. Yielding to that pleasurable emotion which discoverers, in the first bound of their transport, may be pardoned for indulging, Back tells us he threw himself down on the bank and drank a hearty draught of the limpid water.

"For this occasion," he adds, "I had reserved a little grog, and need hardly say with what cheerfulness it was shared amongst the crew, whose welcome tidings had verified the notion of Dr. Richardson and myself, and thus placed beyond doubt the existence of the Thlew-eechoh, or Great Fish River."

On the 30th of August they began to move towards the