376 SIMPSON'S EXPLORATIONS— 18SQ-S9. 



fell, converted the sails, oars, cordage, the boats themselves and everything 

 in them, into shapeless masses of ice. ... In the body of the lake, be- 

 twixt Cape M'Donnell and the Scented Grass Mountain, white partridges 

 lay dead upon the waves, having been drowned in attempting to cross over 

 in the stormy weather." Fort Norman, on Mackenzie Eiver, was reached 

 on the 7th October, and Fort Simpson on the 14th. From that date 

 till the beginning of December, Simpson remained at the fort named, busily 

 engaged writing up and completing the narrative of his expedition, and 

 drawing the charts of his eastern discoveries. On the 2d December he set out 

 from Fort Simpson for his own station, Eed Kiver Settlement. The distance 

 is about 1900 statute miles, and the indefatigable traveller performed it in 

 sixty-one days, at the rate of over thirty miles a day, all stoppages included. 

 " Even this excessive toil," writes Simpson's brother and biographer, " was 

 insufficient to exhaust the energies, of such tried travellers as were himself 

 and M'Kay and Sinclair, the picked men of the party, who followed him 

 with unshrinking confidence through all dangers and privations. After a 

 day's march of seventy miles, they revelled on the morrow in the delights of 

 a ball and tea supper." On the 2d February, Simpson arrived at Red River 

 Colony, after an absence of three years and two months. 



At this point ends the history of Simpson's brilliant achievements as an 

 Arctic explorer ; but the circumstances of his premature, tragic, and violent 

 death, which occurred a few months after his return from the far north, 

 must detain us yet a little while, especially as it has been suspected by some 

 that the spirit in which his services were regarded by his relative. Sir George 

 Simpson, then Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, may have been in- 

 directly the cause of the melancholy event which it is now our duty to 

 chronicle. It is only necessary to premise that though Sir George Simpson 

 was a relative, he was not regarded as a stanch weU-wisher or zealous /Hgwc? 

 by the young explorer. 



The season of 1837, in which Thomas Simpson discovered and surveyed 

 the coast-line of North America, from Return Reef to Point Barrow, was 

 one of uncommon severity, and Governor Simpson, writing in that year to 

 the leaders of the expedition, gave them authority to devote two summers 

 if necessary, to the exploration of this tract of coast ; and afterwards to 

 devote a third summer to the coast-line to the east of Point Turnagain. 

 This letter, however, did not reach the explorers till after they had completed 

 the exploration of the western tract of the coast ; but the additional autho- 

 rity was eagerly assumed by Simpson for the completion of the exploration 

 of the eastern tract. Writing to Sir George Simpson, the young explorer 

 says : " Fully aware of the imprudence of making statements in public 

 documents which unforeseen circumstances may overthrow, I have not in 

 our reply to their honours' despatch, proposed any specific plan for coni- 



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