ART. VI.- Journal of the Arctic Land Expedition to the Mouth of the Great Fish River, and along the Shores of the Arctic Ocean, in the Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. By Captain Back, R.N. Commander of the Expedition. 1 vol. 8vo. London, Murray. Paris, Galignani. Brussels, Pratt & Barry. Leipsig, Black & Armstrong. Frankfort, Jügel. Philadelphia, Carey & Hart. 1836.

THIS

HIS is an honest book-the production of a plain, straightforward, veracious traveller-and that is saying a great deal. If Captain Back be not known to the reading world as an author, his name, at least, is familiar to all who have taken any interest in the northern expeditions of Franklin and Richardson, of whose perilous adventures he was the constant sharer and unflinching companion. In the course of these enterprises he distinguished himself on two occasions, the object being that of extending the geography of the sea-coast of the arctic regions of North America, and of confirming the accounts given by Hearne and Mackenzie, the first travellers who had reached these shores; and at the same time to endeavour to ascertain the continuity or otherwise of a water-communication between Behring's Strait and Hudson's Bay. There is nothing perhaps on record more truly affecting than the simple and unadorned tale told by Sir John Franklin of the almost unparalleled sufferings which he and his companions were doomed to undergo from the fatigue of travelling hundreds of miles amidst frost and snow-storms, without shelter, without fire, and without food; so nearly at one time reduced to a state of absolute starvation, as to be driven to the last resource of devouring their own shoes and leather gun-cases, rendered somewhat perhaps more palatable by the addition of a miserably bitter lichen which they picked off the rocks. advert to these adventures now to show that Captain Back, in voluntarily undertaking the one here recorded, was fully aware of the dangers, the privations, and the hardships which it was all but certain it would be his lot again to suffer. It was with such a prospect before his eyes, that on hearing, when in Italy, in the year 1832, that the fate of Ross and his companions still remained uncertain, he hastened to England, with the intention of offering his services to government to conduct an expedition in search of them. He arrived here at the moment when such an expedition was in preparation; and it is almost unnecessary to add that the volunteer services of Captain (then Commander) Back were joyfully accepted.

We

After the accounts we have formerly given of the expeditions. under Sir John Franklin and Dr. Richardson in the northern re

gions of America, it would be idle in us to enter into a particular description of the incidents in Captain Back's. In his own nervous and picturesque narrative, the details of even the first part of his travels are most interesting: the best analysis we could afford would seem a mere repetition.

Captain Back left London on the 17th February, 1833, accompanied by Mr. King, a surgeon, and three men, two of whom had gained experience under Sir John Franklin. At New York they received every possible attention and hospitality; and a steamvessel was offered for their conveyance to Albany. Nothing could exceed the kindness and exertions of Governor Simpson and all the servants of the Hudson's Bay Company. A sufficient number of voyageurs were procured at La Chine; and Captain Back was ready to leave Norway House on the 28th June with sixteen persons, consisting of steersmen, carpenters, artillery-men, fishermen, and voyageurs, to whom were afterwards added nine others.

This,' says the Captain, was a happy day for me; and as the canoe pushed off from the bank, my heart swelled with hope and joy. Now, for the first time, I saw myself in a condition to verify the kind anticipations of my friends. The preliminary difficulties had been overcome: I was fairly on the way to the accomplishment of the benevolent errand on which I had been commissioned; and the contemplation of an object so worthy of all exertion, in which I thought myself at length free to indulge, raised my spirits to a more than ordinary pitch of excitement.'-p. 57.

At Pine Portage he met with Mr. M'Leod, one of the Hudson's Bay Company's servants, and though this gentleman was on his way to Canada for the re-establishment of his health, no sooner did he learn the humane object of the mission, than he determined at once to sacrifice his own plans to the pleasure of becoming the companion of Back; by which disinterested act, six personsMr. M'Leod, his wife, three children, and a servant—were added to the eight, who with their baggage had already pretty well filled the single canoe. This, however, it appears, was nothing unusual, and not to be compared with the compact way in which the Indians stow themselves. A whole fleet of their canoes was met on the Slave River descending from the Great Slave Lake: the description of one of them is as follows:

'It was small even for a canoe; and how eight men, women, and children contrived to stow away their legs in a space not more than large enough for three Europeans, would have been a puzzling pro blem to one unacquainted with the suppleness of an Indian's unbandaged limbs. There, however, they were, in a temperature of 66°, packed heads and tails, like Yarmouth herrings-half naked-their hair in elf-locks, long and matted-filthy beyond description-and all squalling together. To complete the picture, their dogs, scarce

one

one degree below them, formed a sort of body-guard on each side of the river, and as the canoe glided away with the current, all the animals together, human and canine, set up a shrill and horrible yell.' ―p. 79.

From the chief of these people, who went by the name of ' Le Camarade de Mandeville,' Captain Back received important information, which he afterwards ascertained to be correct, of two great rivers beyond the Great Slave Lake, the Teh-lon and the Thlew-ee-choh, the latter of which he was destined to navigate to its source. On the 8th August the party reached Great Slave Lake, and were received at Fort Resolution, a station of the Hudson's Bay Company, by Mr. M'Donnell, the gentleman in charge. Determined to lose no time in search of the river that was to conduct him to the sea, Captain Back set out on the 11th, in an old canoe, with his servant, an Englishman, a Canadian, two halfbreeds, and two Indians, on an exploring expedition. All was plain-sailing as far as the eastern portion of Great Slave Lake, into which fell an unknown river, with a steep and rocky bed, to which the name of Hoar-frost River was given. We have a beautiful print of Beverley's Fall, near the mouth of this river, which will convey an idea of what these falls, so very numerous in all the rivers of North America, are. Indeed, this particular river was so encumbered with cascades and rapids, that not only their baggage and provisions but the canoe also had to be carried up the high, steep, and rugged ridges, over swamps of thick stunted firs, and open spaces barren and desolate, on which crag was piled upon crag to a height of two thousand feet from the base.' The labour was excessive; but, says our traveller

The laborious duty which had been thus satisfactorily performed was rendered doubly severe by the combined attack of myriads of sandflies and mosquitos, which made our faces stream with blood. There is certainly no form of wretchedness, among those to which the chequered life of a voyageur is exposed, at once so great and so humiliating, as the torture inflicted by these puny blood-suckers. To avoid them is impossible; and as for defending himself, though for a time he may go on crushing by thousands, he cannot long maintain the unequal conflict; so that at last, subdued by pain and fatigue, he throws himself in despair with his face to the earth, and, half suffocated in his blanket, groans away a few hours of sleepless rest.'-p. 117.

The mild and gentle character of the gallant Franklin is generally well known; but Back mentions an anecdote, of which he was reminded by an old Indian, of his patient and humane forbearance even to the meanest and most tormenting of God's

creatures:

'It was the custom of Sir John Franklin never to kill a fly, and, though teased by them beyond expression, especially when engaged

in taking observations, he would quietly desist from his work, and patiently blow the half-gorged intruders from his hands-" the world was wide enough for both." This was jocosely remarked upon at the time by Akaitcho and the four or five Indians who accompanied him; but the impression, it seems, had sunk deep, for on Maufelly's seeing me fill my tent with smoke, and then throw open the front and beat the sides all round with leafy branches, to drive out the stupified pests before I went to rest, he could not refrain from expressing his surprise that I should be so unlike the old chief, who would not destroy so much as a single mosquito.'-p. 180.

It would almost seem that these creatures are imperishable; at least they survive a second year. If we recollect rightly, it is Ellis, in his account of the doleful voyage of Captain James, who says, he carried a frozen mass of what he thought peat, and laid it before the fire, when shortly the whole room was filled with a cloud of mosquitos; they had clustered together, and become a frozen mass, like bees when about to cast their swarms. Many other of the inferior and cold-blooded classes of animals freeze in the winter and revive in the spring. The swarms of sand-flies-called brulots by the Canadians-seem to be fully as annoying as the mosquitos.

As 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. Whenever we halted, which the nature of the country compelled us to do often, the men, even Indians, threw themselves on their faces, and moaned with pain and agony. My arms being less encumbered, I defended myself in some degree by waving a branch in each hand; but even with this and the aid of a veil and stout leather gloves, I did not escape without severe punishment. For the time, I thought the tiny plagues worse even than mosquitos.'-p. 179.

The river became more rocky, and cataract succeeded cataract in quick succession, so as to render it perfectly unnavigable. At length

One or two more rapids, and a narrow fall of twenty feet, terminated the ascent of this turbulent and unfriendly river. Nothing, however, can be more romantically beautiful than the wild scenery of its course. High rocks beetling over the rapids like towers, or rent into the most diversified forms, gay with various-coloured mosses, or shaded by overhanging trees-now a tranquil pool, lying like a sheet of silver-now the dash and foam of a cataract,-these are a part only of its picturesque and striking features.'-p. 119.

Here

Here a poor Indian came up, who had left the party some days before with only two charges of powder, which he had lost, imploring something for his family to eat. 'Had there been only my wife with me,' he said in a faint voice, I would not have troubled the chief, for we could have lived upon berries; but when I looked upon my child, and heard its cries, my heart failed me, and I sought for relief.' More rapids were to be passed, and more fatiguing portages to be surmounted, much to the annoyance of the crew. At length, however, they gained the summit.

Beyond this was a lake with some dark fir-trees on its margin, and farther on another of very considerable dimensions to which Back gave the name of Walmesley. But it now became evident that the guide was completely at fault, and he admitted that he had not been in this part of the country since he was a boy. They continued, however, to paddle away along the edge of a sheet of old ice. The thermometer was down to 31°, yet the mosquitos and the brulots swarmed innumerable, and were most tormenting. At the spot where they encamped no living thing besides these was seen or heard; the air was calm, the lake unruffled- it seemed,' says our traveller, as if Nature had fallen into a trance, for all was silent and motionless as death.' At length the guide discovered some sand-hills, and beyond them a great lake, at the sight of which his countenance lighted up, and he said, doubtingly, These places look familiar to me.' The canoe was dragged among the sand-hills, and having navigated Clinton-Golden Lake, they entered the largest that had yet occurred. To this splendid sheet of water Captain Back gave the name of Aylmer, in honour of the late governor-general of Canada. On the high sand-hills at the eastern extremity of this lake Captain Back observed some little rills of water, which took a northerly direction towards a small lake, which, though the height of the land, intervening between it and the lake he had just left, was not a great many feet, he was willing to hope might be the source of the river he had long been in search of; and so it turned out to be. To this source he gave the name of Sussex, in honour of the Royal Duke. Back soon satisfied himself that he had now discovered the Thlew-ee-choh, or, as the Geographical Society have very properly called it, and as we shall hereafter do-Back's River. month of August had expired, and having made this important discovery, he deemed it prudent and indeed imperative on him to return. This he effected by a different route, and by a different river, which, falling into a large sheet of water, named by him the Artillery Lake, led to the eastern extremity of Great Slave Lake, near the spot where Mr. M'Leod had been sent to establish their

The

winter