It was 7 o'clock the following morning before we started. The weather
was pleasant, and the thermometer 12° below zero. Having taken
possession of our discoveries with the usual formalities, we traced the
inlet eastward, the shores of which were steep and rugged, in some
places precipitous. When we had walked four miles the land on our left
turned up to the northward, leaving an opening in that direction more
than two miles wide, bounded on the south-east by one or more islands.
This inlet I named after that celebrated navigator and discoverer Sir
John Franklin, whose protracted absence in the Arctic Sea is at present
exciting so much interest and anxiety throughout England. The most
distant visible point was called Cape Thomas after a relative. The land
on our right still trended to the east for two miles, and then turned to
the south. After walking seven miles in this last direction, and passing
two small bays and as many points, we stopped for the night. Here we
were fairly puzzled about the proper route, there being so many inlets
and small bays that it was impossible to tell which was the one we ought
to follow. The day had become very warm, the thermometer rising as high
as +26° in the sun, and as we were now travelling south, we found the
reflection from the snow much more painful to the eyes than when
proceeding north. The latitude of our snow house was 69° 22' N.,
longitude 91° 3' W., both by account. The thermometer -19° in the
evening; cold water and pemmican for supper, and kettles of snow for
bedfellows.
The morning of the 20th was cold, but calm; thermometer -24°. We
commenced our day's march at 2h. 30m. A.M., and in twenty minutes
arrived at the head of the inlet where I hoped to find a passage. Seeing
that it would be madness to trace all the indentations of this most
irregular coast, (for had a couple of days' stormy weather ensued we
should all have run the risk of starving,) I struck over land towards
our snow hut of the 17th.
This was the most fatiguing and at the same time the most ludicrous
march we had experienced. As our route lay across several ranges of
hills, we had no sooner climbed up one side than we had to slide down
the other. To descend was not always an easy matter, as there were often
large stones in the way, past which we required to steer with great
care, or if a collision was unavoidable, to manage so as not to injure
ourselves. Corrigal appeared to be an old hand at this sort of work, and
I had had some practice, but poor Flett, who had begun to suffer much
from inflammation of the eyes, got many queer falls, and was once or
twice placed in such situations with his head down hill, his heels up,
and the strap of his bundle round his neck, that it would have been
impossible for him to get up by his own unaided exertions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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