At a late hour I reached our snow hut, an excellent roomy one, in which we could lie in any position; no trifling comfort after a walk of more than forty miles over a rough road.
It was 7 o'clock the following morning before we started. The weather was pleasant, and the thermometer 12° below zero. Having taken possession of our discoveries with the usual formalities, we traced the inlet eastward, the shores of which were steep and rugged, in some places precipitous. When we had walked four miles the land on our left turned up to the northward, leaving an opening in that direction more than two miles wide, bounded on the south-east by one or more islands. This inlet I named after that celebrated navigator and discoverer Sir John Franklin, whose protracted absence in the Arctic Sea is at present exciting so much interest and anxiety throughout England. The most distant visible point was called Cape Thomas after a relative. The land on our right still trended to the east for two miles, and then turned to the south. After walking seven miles in this last direction, and passing two small bays and as many points, we stopped for the night. Here we were fairly puzzled about the proper route, there being so many inlets and small bays that it was impossible to tell which was the one we ought to follow. The day had become very warm, the thermometer rising as high as +26° in the sun, and as we were now travelling south, we found the reflection from the snow much more painful to the eyes than when proceeding north. The latitude of our snow house was 69° 22' N., longitude 91° 3' W., both by account. The thermometer -19° in the evening; cold water and pemmican for supper, and kettles of snow for bedfellows.
The morning of the 20th was cold, but calm; thermometer -24°. We commenced our day's march at 2h. 30m. A.M., and in twenty minutes arrived at the head of the inlet where I hoped to find a passage. Seeing that it would be madness to trace all the indentations of this most irregular coast, (for had a couple of days' stormy weather ensued we should all have run the risk of starving,) I struck over land towards our snow hut of the 17th.
This was the most fatiguing and at the same time the most ludicrous march we had experienced. As our route lay across several ranges of hills, we had no sooner climbed up one side than we had to slide down the other. To descend was not always an easy matter, as there were often large stones in the way, past which we required to steer with great care, or if a collision was unavoidable, to manage so as not to injure ourselves. Corrigal appeared to be an old hand at this sort of work, and I had had some practice, but poor Flett, who had begun to suffer much from inflammation of the eyes, got many queer falls, and was once or twice placed in such situations with his head down hill, his heels up, and the strap of his bundle round his neck, that it would have been impossible for him to get up by his own unaided exertions.