The power of the water so far exceeded whatever had been witnessed on any of the other rivers that the precautions used elsewhere were weak and unavailing. McKay, the steersman, was endeavouring to clear a fall and some sunken rocks on the left, but the man to whom he spoke misunderstood him, and did exactly the reverse; and then, seeing the danger, the steersman swept the stern round; instantly the boat was caught by an eddy to the right, which, snapping an oar, twirled her irresistibly broadside on; so that for a moment it seemed uncertain whether the boat was to be hurled into the hollow of the fall, or dashed stern foremost on the sunken rocks. Of how it happened no account can be given, but her head swung inshore towards the beach and thereby gave an opportunity for some of the men to spring into the water and by their united strength rescue her from her perilous position. Had the man to whom the first order was given understood and acted on it no human power could have saved the crew from being buried in the abyss. Nor yet could any blame be justly attached to the steersman, who had never been so situated before and whose coolness and self-possession never in this imminent peril forsook him. At the awful moment of suspense, when one of the crew with less nerve than his companions began to cry aloud to Heaven for aid, McKay in a still louder voice exclaimed, "Is this a time for praying? Pull your starboard oar." Never could a reminder that _laborare est orare_ have been more opportune. On the 1st of August Montreal Island was reached. Nine days afterwards a log of driftwood, nine feet long and nine inches in diameter, jocularly described as a piece of the North Pole, was found on the beach, which, as there are no trees on the Fish River or the Coppermine, Captain Back was of opinion must have come from the Mackenzie and drifted eastward, so that he was on the main line of the land. The inference, confirmed by the appearance of a whale, was correct, but, misled, perhaps, by hilly islands, he missed the channel through which it had come, blocking it, in the manner of John Ross, with a range of mountains that does not exist. Though he reached Mount Barrow and mistook the head of Simpson Strait for an inlet, thus failing to find one of the north-west passages, he discovered and named King William Land and sighted Point Booth at its eastern extremity. An attempt to reach Point Turnagain to the westward and thus link up with Franklin's farthest east, in which he might have discovered the passage, proving impracticable owing to the bogginess of the ground, Back began his return from King William Land in latitude 68° 13´, longitude 94° 58´, and entered on a wearisome journey up the river and lakes he had come down, meeting with a party from Fort Reliance on the 17th of September.