By the 5th of August, they had reached the Back River and then explored Melville Sound and Bathurst Inlet. Having reached Point Turnagain, and meeting with no Eskimos who could replenish their provisions, Franklin was obliged to turn back, having sailed nearly six hundred geographical miles in tracing the irregular shore of Coronation Gulf from the Coppermine River. [Sidenote: _STARVATION_] Reduced to the last extremity for want of food, the last bit of pemmican and arrowroot having formed a scanty supper, and without means of making a fire, the forlorn party spent the fifth day of September in bed while a snowstorm raged above them and drifted into their tent, covering their thin blankets several inches. Of this day writes Franklin:— “Our suffering from cold, in a comfortless canvas tent in such weather with the temperature at 20°, and without fire, will easily be imagined; it was, however, less than that which we felt from hunger.” For two days they lived on a lichen known as _tripe de roche_, and on the 10th “they got a good meal by killing a musk-ox. To skin and cut up the animal was the work of a few minutes. The contents of its stomach were devoured upon the spot; raw intestines, which were next attacked, were pronounced by the most delicate amongst us to be excellent.” The effects of suffering and famine began to show themselves in the improvidence and indifference of the men. Three fishing-nets were left behind, and one of the canoes broken and abandoned. Mosses, an occasional partridge, _tripe de roche_, bits of singed hide, and such marrow as could be extracted from finds of bones of animals formed their only diet. Though weak and lame, Back pushed forward in search of relief. One by one the starving men fell by the wayside. Hood, suffering from the effects of _tripe de roche_, which never agreed with him, became too exhausted to proceed, and Dr. Richardson volunteered to remain with him. As one by one the various members dropped down with fatigue, only five besides Franklin were left in the advance party. These continued their weary pilgrimage, cheered with the hope that at Fort Enterprise would be found shelter and the much-needed supplies which had been promised them. Alas! their grief and disappointment may be imagined upon entering this wretched depot to find it desolate and without a vestige of provisions. “It would be impossible,” says Franklin, “to describe our sensations after entering this miserable abode, and discovering how we had been neglected; the whole party shed tears, not so much for our own fate as for that of our friends in the rear whose lives depended entirely on our sending immediate relief from this place.”