162 THE AMERICAN MAINLAND 



her irresistibly broadside on ; so that for a moment it 

 seemed uncertain whether the boat was to be hurled 

 into the hollow of the fall, or dashed stern foremost on 

 the sunken rocks. Of how it happened no account can 

 be given, but her head swung inshore towards the beach 

 and thereby gave an opportunity for some of the men 

 to spring into the water and by their united strength 

 rescue her from her perilous position. Had the man 

 to whom the first order was given understood and acted 

 on it no human power could have saved the crew from 

 being buried in the abyss. Nor yet could any blame be 

 justly attached to the steersman, who had never been so 

 situated before and whose coolness and self-possession 

 never in this imminent peril forsook him. At the 

 awful moment of suspense, when one of the crew with 

 less nerve than his companions began to cry aloud to 

 Heaven for aid, McKay in a still louder voice ex- 

 claimed, " Is this a time for praying ? Pull your star- 

 board oar." Never could a reminder that laborare est 

 orare have been more opportune. 



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 in- 

 ference, 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 



