242 DEASE AND SIMPSON'S DISCOVERIES. 



ing for it but to run her, with all possible speed, toward 

 home. She was utterly crazy, and broken, and leaky ; 

 and not even her perilous tumbling among the ice-masses 

 around the dismal Cape Comfort and the horrid Sea- 

 horse Point were more perilous than the struggling, 

 staggering, water-logged voyage which she made across 

 the northern Atlantic. She at last reached the north- 

 west coast of Ireland, gradually sinking by the head, 

 and was run ashore in Lough Swilly on the 3d of Sep- 

 tember ; and, had she been three hours longer at sea, 

 she would certainly have gone to the bottom. Her 

 whole frame proved to be strained and twisted ; many 

 of her bolts were either loosened or broken ; her fore- 

 foot was entirely gone ; and upwards of twenty feet of 

 her keel, together with ten feet of her stern-post, had 

 been driven over more than three feet and a half on one 

 side, leaving a frightful opening astern for the free 

 ingress of water. Well, therefore, might her crew, 

 when they afterwards looked on her as she lay dry on 

 the beach at low water, express astonishment that ever 

 they had floated back in hei*to British shores ; and ample 

 occasion had they to cherish adoring gratitude to the 

 all-powerful and all-benevolent Being who had preserved 

 them. 



Almost simultaneously with Back's expedition in the 

 Terror, in 1836, the Hudson's Bay Company resolved on 

 completing, if possible, the survey of those portions of 

 the northern coast which Franklin and Back had failed 

 to reach. This service was intrusted to Messrs. Dease 

 and Simpson, two of their employees, with a party of 

 twelve men, who were instructed to descend the Mac- 

 kenzie River, and, on arriving at the sea, endeavor to 

 follow the coast to the westward, either by land or water, 

 as weather and other circumstances permitted, to the 

 point at which Beechey turned back. They were after- 



