BACK'S LAND EXPEDITION. 227 



This important promontory Back subsequently named 

 Victoria. " This, then," observes Back, " may be con- 

 sidered as the mouth of the Thlew-ee-choh, which, after 

 a violent and tortuous course of five hundred and thirty 

 geographical miles, running through an iron-ribbed 

 country, without a single tree on the whole line of its 

 banks, expanding into five large lakes, with clear horizon, 

 most embarrassing to the navigator, and broken into 

 falls, cascades, and rapids, to the number of eighty- 

 three in the whole, pours its water into the Polar Sea, 

 in lat. 61 11' N., and long. 94 30' W., that is to say, 

 about thirty-seven miles more south than the mouth of 

 the Coppermine River, and nineteen miles more south 

 than that of Back's River, at the lower extremity of 

 Bathurst's Inlet." 



For several days Back was able to make but slow 

 progress along the eastern shore, in consequence of the 

 solid body of drift-ice. A barren, rocky elevation of 

 eight hundred feet high was named Cape Beaufort. A 

 bJuff point on the eastern side of the estuary, which he 

 considered to be the northern extreme, he named Cape 

 Hay. Dease and Simpson, however, in 1839, traced the 

 shore much beyond this. The difficulties met with here 

 began to dispirit the men. They were almost without 

 water, without any means of warmth, or any kind of 

 warm or comforting food, and sinking knee-deep, as 

 they proceeded on land, in the soft slush and snow. 

 So damp was the weather that for ten days, while 

 encamped on Montreal Island, they could not light a 

 ppark of fire, or obtain a warm meal. 



The low, flat country was the picture of desolation. 

 " It was one irregular plain of sand and stones ; and, 

 had it not been for a rill of water, the meandering of 

 which relieved the monotony of the sterile scene, one 

 might have fancied one's self in one of the parched 



