There were rapids day by day affording almost every possible chance of wreck except that due to driftwood; the two worst being one where the stream descends for three-quarters of a mile in a deep but narrow and crooked channel which it has cut through the foot of a hill of five hundred or six hundred feet high, confined between perpendicular cliffs resembling stone walls varying in height from eighty to a hundred and fifty feet, on which lies a mass of fine sand; the body of the river pent within this narrow chasm dashing furiously round the projecting rocky columns as it discharges itself at the northern extremity in a sheet of foam. The other being where the river flows between lofty stone cliffs, reddish clay rocks and shelving banks of white clay, and is full of shoals. Franklin's people had entered this rapid before they were aware of it, and the steepness of the cliffs prevented them from landing, so that they owed their preservation to the swiftness of their descent. Two waves made a complete breach over the canoes; a third would probably have filled and overset them, which would have proved fatal to all on board. This Escape Rapid, as it was named, was, as it were, the gate into the territory of the Eskimos who were soon met with in small parties all the way down to the sea. It was passed on the 15th of July; three days afterwards the Indians bade farewell to the expedition in the morning, and in the afternoon the canoes were afloat on the Arctic Ocean. [Illustration: KUTCHIN INDIANS] From the river mouth Wentzel returned, as arranged, with despatches, taking with him a number of voyageurs and others, thus reducing the party to twenty in all in two canoes. In these Franklin, nearly two years after he had landed in America, went on his voyage to the eastward to enter at last on the work he had been sent to do. But the survey of this lofty rocky coast was no easy matter; the sea was rough, the weather tempestuous, the canoes were lightly built and only suited for river work, and, in short, it was a most risky enterprise. Tracing the shore of Coronation Gulf and coasting up and out of Bathurst Inlet, Franklin reached Point Turnagain in 109° 25´ W., at the entrance of Dease Strait, on the 16th of August, 1821. Though the voyage had extended over only six and a half degrees of longitude, he had sailed 555 geographical miles; and then, as his resources did not permit of his going further or of his returning to the Coppermine, and in his own words "Our scanty stock of provisions rendering it necessary to make for a nearer place," he, on the 22nd, turned back to ascend the Hood River.