SUMMARY OF ARCTIC EXPLORING EXPEDITIONS. 745 



and his party had been rescued. Hence arose the punning phrase, that although Back 

 had not got Ross, Ross had got back. Back, however, resolved to accomplish some- 

 thing, and pushed north-eastward. On the 28th of June he struck a great river con- 

 siderably to the east of any which had been explored. The natives called it the 

 Thlew-ee-choh, or Great Fish. It is since styled Back's Great Fish river, and has a 

 melancholy interest in connection with the fate of the last survivors of Franklin's ex- 

 pedition. Back followed this river to its mouth in a deep narrow bay which he vainly 

 hoped would lead directly into the Polar sea. He explored a part to the east, but 

 was finally obliged to put back about the middle of August. He reached England in 

 September, 1835, and in the following June again set out in the Terror, hoping to fill 

 up some blanks in Ross's surveys of the coasts lying west of Prince Regent's Inlet. 

 But the expedition was fruitless. The vessel was so badly disabled by ice that they 

 were obliged to put back before even entering upon their proposed field. ^ 



Simultaneously with this, the Hudson's Bay Company sent two of their factors, 

 Dease and Simpson, on an overland expedition. They were to strike Mackenzie 

 River and follow it to the sea. In three successive seasons they traversed a long line 

 of coast lying between the eastern point as yet reached from Bering's Straits, and the 

 western point reached from Hudson's Bay." Their discoveries in a geographical point 

 of view were of considerable importance. They discovered two large rivers, which 

 they named the Garry and the Colville, and saw to the north of them a great tract of 

 land which they called Victoria Land ; from an icy promontory of which they saw 

 what appeared to them an open sea free of ice, stretching north-eastward, while the 

 coast of the continent tended south-eastward. Their explorations nearly filled up the 

 great gaps already left, and by the close of 1839, different parties of explorers, by dif- 

 ferent routes, had traversed the whole space between Baffin's Bay and Bering's 

 Straits. Simpson, the hero of the expedition, did not live to receive the rewards 

 which he had fairly won. While traveling overland from the Red River to the head 

 waters of the Mississippi, on his way to England, he was murdered by one of his 

 Indian guides.^ 



In 1846, the Hudson Bay Company sent out Dr. John Rae, of whom we shall hear 

 more, to settle some points in geography, which had been left undecided by Ross. 

 The main thing established by this expedition was that the part known as Boothia 

 was a peninsula belonging to the continent, and not an island of the northern archi- 

 pelago, and that consequently there is no outlet from Prince Regent's Inlet through 

 the Gulf of Boothia, towards the west. 



We now come, in order of time, to Sir John Franklin's last expedition, to which a 

 special interest is attached on account of its disastrous result. Franklin in 1845 was 

 a hale man verging upon threescore. He had reached high honor in his professioQ, 

 and was in possession of an ample fortune, derived only in part from his second wife, 

 Jane Grifiin, whom he had married in 1828. The achievement of a north-west passage 

 had been the dream of his life. His early efforts in that direction have been already 

 noted. He never forgot his aspirations while commanding a vessel in the Mediterra- 

 nean, nor afterward while governor of Van Dieman's Land almost at the opposite ex- 

 tremity of the globe. In 1844 the British government resolved to place under his 

 command what it was hoped would be the last expedition to solve the Arctic mystery, 



1 P. 355. 2 p. 355. 



48 



