BOAT VOYAGE OF FRANKLIN AND RICHARDSON. 501 
boat-voyage of discovery along the coasts of the Icy Ocean. An 
idea of the difficulties of this undertaking may be formed, when 
I mention that the travellers started from Fort York, in Hudson’s 
Bay, on the 30th of August, 1819, and after a voyage of 700 
miles up the Saskatchewan, reached Fort Cumberland, where 
they spent the first winter. The next found them 700 miles 
further on their journey, established during the extreme cold at 
Fort Enterprise. During the summer of 1821 they accomplished 
the remaining 334 miles, and on the 21st of July commenced 
their exploration of the Polar Sea in two birch-bark canoes. 
In these frail shallops they skirted the desolate coast of the 
American continent, 555 miles to the east of the Coppermine, 
as far as Point Turnagain, when the rapid decrease of their 
provisions and the shattered state of the canoes imperatively 
compelled their return. And now began a dreadful land-journey 
of two months, accompanied by all the horrors of famine. A 
lichen, called by the Canadians tripe de roche (rock-tripe), 
afforded them for some time a wretched subsistence, and, that 
failing, they were glad to satisfy their hunger with scraps of 
roasted leather or burnt bones, from prey which the wolves 
might have abandoned. On reaching the Coppermine a raft 
had to be framed, a task accomplished with the utmost difficulty 
by the exhausted party. One or two of the Canadians had 
already fallen behind, and never rejoined their comrades, and 
now three or four sank down, and could proceed no farther. 
Back, with the most vigorous of the men, had already pushed 
on to send help from Fort Enterprise; and Richardson, Hood, 
and Hepburn volunteered to remain with the disabled men, 
near a supply of the rock-tripe, while Franklin pursued his 
journey with the others capable of bearing him company. On 
reaching Fort Enterprise this last party found that wretched 
tenement completely deserted, and a note from Back stating that 
he had gone in pursuit of the Indians. Some cast-off deer-skins 
and a heap of bones, provisions worthy of the place, sustained 
their flickering life-flame, and after eighteen miserable days, 
they were joined in their dreary quarters by Richardson and 
Hepburn, the sole survivors of their party. At length, when on 
the point of sinking under their sufferings, three Indians sent 
by Back brought them timely succour. After a while they were 
Lu? 
