Another of Hearne's Indians accompanied Franklin on his first land journey in 1819, the object of which was to explore the coast between Hearne's farthest and Hudson Bay, thus filling in the gap in which the assumed northern promontory was to be found. Franklin, who was sent out by the British Government, had with him, as surgeon and naturalist, Dr., afterwards Sir, John Richardson, to whom as a boy Robert Burns had lent Spenser's _Faerie Queene_, a naval surgeon with a distinguished record, who while on half-pay had studied botany and mineralogy at Edinburgh. Like another member of the expedition, George Back, who had been with Franklin in the _Trent_ and _Dorothea_ voyage, he was destined to gain a great reputation among Arctic explorers. With Back was another midshipman, Robert Hood, whose fate it was to be murdered by an Iroquois half-breed who, through want of food, betook himself to cannibalism. Landing at York Factory, in Hudson Bay, after an exciting voyage, on the 30th of August, Franklin, disregarding local advice, pushed on across the continent during the winter, arriving at Fort Chippewyan on the 26th of March, the losses and trying experiences of the long journey being mainly due to the rigours of the climate at that time of year; and thence, in July, the party followed Mackenzie's route to Fort Providence on Great Slave Lake. Here they were joined by Mr. Wentzel, of the North West Company. Starting for the north on the 2nd of August in four canoes, they were joined next day at the mouth of the Yellow Knife by a band of Indians, under a chief named Akaitcho, in seventeen canoes. The Indians were to guide the party and supply them with food by hunting and fishing on the way, but game and fish proved scarce—and scarcer owing to the poorness of the Indian marksmanship—provisions were short and portages long, so that the journey, which soon led across a series of lakes, was pursued under toilsome and hazardous conditions until it ended at Winter Lake in 64° 30´, where it became necessary to winter in a log house built by Wentzel, and named Fort Enterprise. The site was delightful: a hillside amid trees three feet in diameter at the roots, the view in front bounded at a distance of three miles by round-backed hills, to the eastward and westward the Winter and Roundrock Lakes connected by the Winter River, its banks clothed with pines and ornamented with a profusion of mosses, lichens, and shrubs. [Illustration: WINTER TRAVELLING ON THE GREAT SLAVE LAKE]