364 SniFSON'S EXPLOEATIONS—183Q-S9. 



regions the heat of the body is only to be maintained by a liberal supply of 

 food, and during the winter of 1837-38, at Fort Confidence, the season was 

 exceptionally severe. On the 11th February, at five A.M., the greatest cold 

 registered during the winter was experienced. A spirit thermometer by 

 DoUond stood at 60° below zero, while an older instrument stood at -66°. 

 " This intense cold," writes Simpson, " was accompanied by a fresh westerly 

 breeze, which several of our people had to face that morning, returning with 

 meat from M'Tavish Bay. Spite of their deer-skin robes and capotes, their 

 faces bore palpable marks of the weather; and when they reached the house, 

 not a man was able to unlash his sledge till he had first thoroughly warmed 

 his shivering frame." 



During the spring of 1838, Simpson made an excursion north-east from 

 Fort Confidence by Dease River and the Dismal Lakes to the vicinity of 

 the Coppermine, travelling, in all, over a thousand miles. His object was 

 to ascertain the character of the intervening country, in preparation for 

 the great voyage which he was now about to undertake to the Polar Sea, 

 and eastward along its shores to Great Fish River. This little reconnoi- 

 tring trip of a thousand miles taxed the energies and endurance even of 

 Simpson, who must be regarded as, among all Arctic explorers, the swiftest 

 and most indefatigable pedestrian. " I had formerly walked," he says, " in 

 the depth of winter, from York Factory, on Hudson's Bay, to Red River, 

 and again from Red River to Athabasca — a distance little short of two 

 thousand miles — wearing only an ordinary cloth capote, and have accom- 

 plished fifty miles in a day. Here, however, myself and my companions soon 

 found that the wanderer within the unsheltered precincts of the Polar circle 

 must be far otherwise provided. Accordingly, on our distant excursions, 

 we usually assumed capotes of dressed moose-skin, impervious to the wind, 

 or of reindeer hide, with the hairy side outwards ; and were provided with 

 robes of the latter light and warm material for a covering at night, when, to 

 increase the supply of animal heat, our dogs couched close around us. Yet, 

 in a stormy, barren, mountainous country, where, in many parts, a whole 

 day's journey intervenes between one miserable clump of pines and the next, 

 we were often exposed to great suff'ering, and even danger, from the cold ; 

 and several of our dogs were at various times frozen to death." 



The time had now come when it was necessary to hurry on the prepara- 

 tions for the great voyage. Summer was now at hand. On the 15th May 

 a solitary goose flew over the house away to the northward, and was fol- 

 lowed two days after by swans and ducks of difierent species. About the 

 same period the rapids, in the lower part of Dease River (near its mouth in 

 Great Bear Lake), broke up, and the sea-boats, which had been thoroughly 

 repaired and strengthened, were dragged over the ice to its mouth, to be in 

 readiness for the moment that the ascent of the stream should become prac- 



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