The Journey to the Polar Sea Part 32

CONCLUSION OF MR. BACK'S NARRATIVE.

CONCLUSION.

I have little now to add to the melancholy detail into which I felt it proper to enter, but I cannot omit to state that the unremitting care and attentions of our kind friends Mr. McVicar and Mr. McAuley, united with our improved diet to promote to the restoration of our health, so that by the end of February the swellings of our limbs which had returned upon us entirely subsided, and we were able to walk to any part of the island.

Our appet.i.tes gradually moderated and we nearly regained our ordinary state of body before the spring. Hepburn alone suffered from a severe attack of rheumatism which confined him to his bed for some weeks. The usual symptoms of spring having appeared, on the 25th of May we prepared to embark for Fort Chipewyan. Fortunately on the following morning a canoe arrived from that place with the whole of the stores which we required for the payment of Akaitcho and the hunters. It was extremely gratifying to us to be thus enabled, previous to our departure, to make arrangements respecting the requital of our late Indian companions, and the more so as we had recently discovered that Akaitcho and the whole of his tribe, in consequence of the death of the leader's mother and the wife of our old guide Keskarrah, had broken and destroyed every useful article belonging to them and were in the greatest distress. It was an additional pleasure to find our stock of ammunition more than sufficient to pay them what was due, and that we could make a considerable present of this most essential article to every individual that had been attached to the Expedition.

We quitted Moose-Deer Island at five P.M. on the 26th, accompanied by Mr.

McVicar and Mr. McAuley and nearly all the voyagers at the establishment, having resided there about five months, not a day of which had pa.s.sed without our having cause of grat.i.tude for the kind and unvaried attentions of Mr. McVicar and Mr. McAuley. These gentlemen accompanied us as far as Fort Chipewyan where we arrived on the 2nd of June, here we met Mr. Wentzel and the four men who had been sent with him from the mouth of the Copper-Mine River, and I think it due to that gentleman to give his own explanation of the unfortunate circ.u.mstances which prevented him from fulfilling my instructions respecting the provisions to have been left for us at Fort Enterprise. (See below.)

In a subsequent conversation he stated to me that the two Indians who were actually with him at Fort Enterprise whilst he remained there altering his canoe were prevented from hunting, one by an accidental lameness, the other by the fear of meeting alone some of the Dog-Rib Indians.

We were here furnished with a canoe by Mr. Smith and a bowman to act as our guide and, having left Fort Chipewyan on the 5th, we arrived on the 4th of July at Norway House. Finding at this place that canoes were about to go down to Montreal I gave all our Canadian voyagers their discharges and sent them by those vessels, furnishing them with orders on the Agent of the Hudson's Bay Company for the amount of their wages. We carried Augustus down to York Factory where we arrived on the 14th of July, and were received with every mark of attention and kindness by Mr. Simpson the Governor, Mr. McTavish, and indeed by all the officers of the United Companies. And thus terminated our long, fatiguing, and disastrous travels in North America, having journeyed by water and by land (including our navigation of the Polar Sea) five thousand five hundred and fifty miles.

MR. WENTZEL'S EXPLANATION.

After you sent me back from the mouth of the Copper-Mine River and I had overtaken the Leader, Guides, and Hunters, on the fifth day, leaving the sea-coast, as well as our journey up the River, they always expressed the same desire of fulfilling their promises, although somewhat dissatisfied at being exposed to privation while on our return from a scarcity of animals for, as I have already stated in my first communication from Moose-Deer Island, we had been eleven days with no other food but tripe de roche. In the course of this time an Indian with his wife and child, who were travelling in company with us, were left in the rear and are since supposed to have perished through want, as no intelligence had been received of them at Fort Providence in December last. On the seventh day after I had joined the Leader, etc. etc., and journeying on together, all the Indians excepting Pet.i.t Pied and Bald-Head left me to seek their families and crossed Point Lake at the Crow's Nest, where Humpy had promised to meet his brother Ekehcho (Akaitcho the Leader) with the families but did not fulfil, nor did any of my party of Indians know where to find them, for we had frequently made fires to apprise them of our approach yet none appeared in return as answers. This disappointment as might be expected served to increase the ill-humour of the Leader and party, the brooding of which (agreeably to Indian custom) was liberally discharged on me, in bitter reproach for having led them from their families and exposed them to dangers and hardships which, but for my influence, they said they might have spared themselves. Nevertheless they still continued to profess the sincerest desire of meeting your wishes in making caches of provisions and remaining until a late season on the road that leads from Fort Enterprise to Fort Providence, through which the Expedition-men had travelled so often the year before, remarking however at the same time that they had not the least hopes of ever seeing one person return from the Expedition. These alarming fears I never could persuade them to dismiss from their minds; they always sneered at what they called my credulity. "If," said the Gros Pied (also Akaitcho) "the Great Chief (meaning Captain Franklin) or any of his party should pa.s.s at my tents, he or they shall be welcome to all my provisions or anything else that I may have." And I am sincerely happy to understand by your communication that in this he had kept his word, in sending you with such prompt.i.tude and liberality the a.s.sistance your truly dreadful situation required. But the party of Indians on whom I had placed the utmost confidence and dependence was Humpy and the White Capot Guide with their sons and several of the discharged hunters from the Expedition. This party was well-disposed and readily promised to collect provisions for the possible return of the Expedition, provided they could get a supply of ammunition from Fort Providence, for when I came up with them they were actually starving and converting old axes into ball, having no other subst.i.tute; this was unlucky. Yet they were well inclined and I expected to find means at Fort Providence to send them a supply, in which I was however disappointed, for I found that establishment quite dest.i.tute of necessaries, and then shortly after I had left them they had the misfortune of losing three of their hunters who were drowned in Marten Lake; this accident was of all others the most fatal that could have happened, a truth which no one who has the least knowledge of the Indian character will deny, and as they were nearly connected by relationship to the Leader, Humpy, and White Capot Guide, the three leading men of this part of the Copper Indian Tribe, it had the effect of unhinging (if I may use the expression) the minds of all these families and finally destroying all the fond hopes I had so sanguinely conceived of their a.s.sisting the Expedition, should it come back by the Annadesse River of which they were not certain.

As to my not leaving a letter at Fort Enterprise it was because by some mischance you had forgot to give me paper when we parted.*

(*Footnote. I certainly offered Mr. Wentzel some paper when he quitted us but he declined it, having then a notebook, and Mr. Back gave him a pencil.)

I however wrote this news on a plank in pencil and placed it in the top of your former bedstead where I left it. Since it has not been found there some Indians must have gone to the house after my departure and destroyed it. These details, Sir, I have been induced to enter into (rather unexpectedly) in justification of myself and hope it will be satisfactory.