In a few weeks, however, the weather became so severe that, according to Franklin, the trees froze to their very centres and became as hard as stones, on which some of the axes were broken daily, until but one was left. And though at first the reindeer appeared in numbers, their visits lasted only for a short time, and the party, short of tobacco for the Canadian voyageurs and of ammunition for the Indians, had so poor an outlook that it became necessary to accept Back's proposal to return to the forts and bring on supplies which had not been forwarded as promised; the failure being due to the journey, unlike the successful ventures of Hearne and Mackenzie, being pushed on regardless of climatal conditions, and, in some degree, to the rivalry between the two fur companies which were amalgamated while the expedition was in progress. Back set out accompanied by Wentzel and two Canadians and two Indians and their wives, crossing lakes frozen just hard enough to bear them, going wide circuits to avoid those which were open, amid mist and fog and storm, over rugged, bare country, through dense woods and snow-covered swamps, rafting across a river with pine branches for paddles, until Fort Providence was reached. From here he sent back Belanger with letters and a hundred bullets he procured on loan. Belanger arrived at Fort Enterprise on the 23rd of October alone; he had walked constantly for the last six-and-thirty hours through a storm, his locks were matted with snow, and he was encrusted with ice from head to foot, so that he was scarcely recognised when he slipped in through the doorway. At Fort Providence Back had to wait until the Great Slave Lake was frozen over. On the 18th of November he observed two mock moons at equal distances from the central one, the whole encircled by a halo, the colour of the inner edge of the large circle a light red inclining to a faint purple; and two days afterwards two parhelia were observable, with a halo, the colours of the inner edge of the circle a bright carmine and red-lake intermingled with a rich yellow forming a purplish orange, the outer edge being a pale gamboge. On the 7th of December he left, sledging across the lake before the wind, for the North West fort on Moose Deer Island, and finding at the Hudson's Bay fort, also on the island, five packages of belated supplies and two Eskimo interpreters on their way to Franklin.