Here he was told that nothing could be spared at Fort Chippewyan, that goods had never been transported so far in the winter season, that the same dogs could not go and return, and that from having to walk constantly on snow-shoes he would suffer a great deal of misery and fatigue. Nevertheless he undertook the journey in dog-sledges with a Canadian and an Indian, leaving Wentzel behind. At times the weather was so cold that they had to run to keep themselves warm, and, owing to the snow, the feet of the dogs became so raw that an endeavour was made to fit them with shoes. With legs and ankles so swollen that it was painful to drag the snow-shoes after him, Back hurried on, reaching Fort Chippewyan on the 2nd of January to find that he and all Franklin's party had been reported to have been killed by Eskimos. Here he had to wait a month, and then, with an instalment of what he wanted, he set out on his return, arriving at Fort Enterprise on St. Patrick's Day after a memorable journey of over a thousand miles. [Illustration: CROSSING POINT LAKE] During his absence he was told that the cold had been so severe that Hood had found accurate observing difficult owing to the sextant having changed its error and the glasses lost their parallelism from the contraction of the brass, a circumstance, combined with the crystallisation of the mercury of the artificial horizon, that might account for some of the diversity of results obtained by Arctic navigators. And Richardson had to tell him of an early discovery that when fishing and the hands get cold by hauling in the line, the best way to warm them is to put them in the water; and how the fish had frozen as they were taken out of the water so that by a blow or two of the hatchet they were easily split open, leaving the intestines removable in one lump, and yet that these much-frozen fish retained their vitality so that he had seen a thawed carp recover so far as to leap about with much vigour after it had been frozen for thirty-six hours. On the 14th of June Fort Enterprise was left, and on the 25th the expedition began to cross Point Lake on the way to the Coppermine, the river being reached through Rocknest Lake on the 30th. Down the river they paddled, taking the rapids as they went—in one place three miles of them on end. "We were carried along with extraordinary rapidity, shooting over large stones, upon which a single stroke would have been destructive to the canoes; and we were also in danger of breaking them, from the want of the long poles which lie along their bottoms and equalise their cargoes, as they plunged very much, and on one occasion the first canoe was almost filled with the waves; but there was no receding after we had once launched into the stream, and our safety depended on the skill and dexterity of the bowmen and steersmen."