Читать книгу Arctic Searching Expedition (Sir John Richardson) - comprehensive & illustrated - (Literary Thoughts Edition) онлайн

24 страница из 94

Mr. John Rae, a Chief Trader in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company, left Fort Churchill in the beginning of the summer of 1846, with two boats, for the express purpose of completing the survey of Regent's Inlet. He arrived in Repulse Bay in the month of August of that year, and immediately crossed an isthmus, forty-three miles wide, to the inlet, taking one boat with him. Finding that the season was too far advanced for him to complete the survey that year, he determined, with a boldness and confidence in his own resources that has never been surpassed, to winter in Repulse Bay, and to finish his survey of Regent's Inlet on the ice next spring; so that he might be able to return to Churchill and York Factory by open water in the summer of 1847. He therefore recrossed the isthmus again with his boat, and set about collecting provisions and fuel for a ten months' winter. To one less experienced and hardy, the desolate shores of Repulse Bay would have forbidden such an attempt. They yielded neither drift-wood nor shrubby plants of any kind; but Mr. Rae employed part of his men to gather the withered stems of the Andromeda tetragona, a small herbaceous plant which grew in abundance on the rocks, and to pile it in cocks like hay: others he set to build a house of stone and earth, large enough to shelter his party, amounting in all to sixteen; whilst he himself and his Eskimo interpreter were occupied in killing deer for winter consumption. He succeeded in laying up a sufficient stock of venison, and kept his people in health and strength for next year's operations, though not in comfort, for the chimney was so badly constructed for ventilation, that when the fire was lighted it was necessary to open the door, and thus to reduce the temperature of the apartment, nearly to that of the external air. The fire was, therefore, used as seldom as possible, and only for cooking or melting snow to drink. In the spring he completed the survey of Prince Regent's Inlet on foot, thereby proving that no passage existed through it, and confirming the Eskimo report, first made to Sir Edward Parry and afterwards to Sir John Ross. A party of Eskimo, who resided near Mr. Rae in the winter, informed him, through his interpreter, that they had not seen Franklin's ships, thereby excluding the Gulf of Boothia from the list of places to be searched.