THE PARRY FALLS 163 



that does not exist. Though he reached Mount Barrow 

 and mistook the head of Simpson Strait for an inlet, 

 thus failing to find one of the north-west passages, he 

 discovered and named King William Land and sighted 

 Point Booth at its eastern extremity. An attempt to 

 reach Point Turnagain to the westward and thus link 

 up with Franklin's farthest east, in which he might 

 have discovered the passage, proving impracticable 

 owing to the bogginess of the ground, Back began his 

 return from King William Land in latitude 68 13', 

 longitude 94 58', and entered on a wearisome journey 

 up the river and lakes he had come down, meeting 

 with a party from Fort Reliance on the 17th of 

 September. 



A week after, when within a couple of days of the 

 fort, on that " small but abominable river " the Ah-hel- 

 dessy from Artillery Lake, Back discovered the Anderson 

 Falls. Toiling along over the mountains, every man 

 with a seventy-five-pound package on his back, he had 

 not proceeded more than six or seven miles when, observ- 

 ing the spray rising from another fall, he was induced to 

 visit it and was well consoled for having left the boat 

 behind. " From the only point," says Back, " at which 

 the greater part of it was visible, we could distinguish 

 the river coming sharp round a rock, and falling into 

 an upper basin almost concealed by intervening rocks ; 

 whence it broke in one vast sheet into a chasm between 

 four and five hundred feet deep, yet in appearance so 

 narrow that we fancied we could almost step across it. 

 Out of this the spray rose in misty columns several 

 hundred feet above our heads ; but as it was impossible 

 to see the main fall from the side on which we were, in 



