Narrative of the Arctic Land Expedition to the Mouth of the Great Fish River: And Along the Shores of the Arctic Ocean, in the Years 1833, 1834 and 1835 |
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Common terms and phrases
Akaitcho animal appearance arch arrived Artillery Lake aurora Back's banks barren boat bright cache Canada goose canoe Captain Back Chipewyan Clear blue sky Cloudy coast Coppermine River course crew deer direction distance drift east eastern eastward encamped Esquimaux expedition Faint fall feet fish Fort Reliance Fort Resolution Franklin fur countries gale Gloomy goose Gulf of Boothia hills Hudson's Bay Hudson's Bay Company Indians Inlet islands journey King Lake Winipeg land latitude longitude M'Leod mass Maufelly meat miles Misty morning motion mountains Musk-Ox N.E. Calm needle night northward Norway House observations Overcast party passed pemmican portage rapid reindeer Reliance rocks rocky Ross round route sand sand-hills Saskatchewan season seen shore side Slave Lake Slave River snow soon species specimens Squally stream temperature tent thermometer Thlew-ee-choh tion weather western westward wind winter woods York Factory zenith
Popular passages
Page 180 - LORD, by whom we escape death. 21 GOD shall wound the head of his enemies, and the hairy scalp of such a one as goeth on still in his wickedness. 22 The LORD hath said, I will bring my people again, as I did from Basan, mine own will I bring again, as I did sometime from the deep of the sea.
Page 58 - It was small even for a canoe ; and how eight men, women, and children contrived to stow away their legs in a space not more than large enough for three Europeans, would have been a puzzling problem to one unacquainted with the suppleness of an Indian's unbandaged limbs. There, however, they were, in a temperature of 66°, packed heads and tails, like Yarmouth herrings — half naked — their hair in elf-locks, long and matted — filthy beyond description — and all squalling together. To complete...
Page 130 - There was not the stern beauty of Alpine scenery, and still less the fair variety of hill and dale, forest and glade, which makes the charm of a European landscape. There was nothing to catch or detain the lingering eye, which wandered on, without a check, over endless lines of round backed rocks, whose sides were rent into indescribably eccentric forms.
Page 130 - can I possibly give an idea of the torment we endured from the sand-flies ? As we dived into the confined and suffocating chasms, or waded through the close swamps, they rose in clouds, actually darkening the air; to see or to speak was equally difficult, for they rushed at every undefended part, and fixed their poisonous fangs in an instant. Our faces streamed...
Page 121 - ... in it, to certain destruction. Nothing could exceed the self-possession and nicety of judgment with which he guided the frail thing along the narrow line between, the high waves of the torrent and the returning eddy. A foot in either direction would have been fatal ; but, with the most perfect ease, and, I may add, elegant and graceful action, his keen eyes fixed upon the run, he kept her true to her course through all its rapid windings.
Page 163 - The skin of the hands became dry, cracked and opened into unsightly and smarting gashes, which we were obliged to anoint with grease. On one occasion, after washing my face within three feet of the fire, my hair was actually clotted with ice before I had time to dry it.
Page 46 - ... and supporting a tea-pot, some biscuits, and a salt-cellar ; near this a tin plate, close by a square kind of box or safe of the same material, rich with a pale, greasy hair, the produce of the colony at Red River; and the last the far-renowned pemmican, unquestionably the best food of the country for expeditions such as ours.
Page 103 - Yielding to that pleasurable emotion which discoverers, in the first bound of their transport, may be pardoned for indulging, Back tells us he threw himself down on the bank and drank a hearty draught of the limpid water.
Page 185 - was the miserable end of poor Augustus, a faithful, disinterested, kind-hearted creature, who had won the regard, not of myself only, but I may add, of Sir J. Franklin and Dr. Richardson also, by qualities which, wherever found, in the lowest as in the highest forms of social life, are the ornament and charm of humanity.
Page 284 - This, then, may be considered as the mouth of the Thlew-ee-choh, which, after a violent and tortuous course of five hundred and thirty geographical miles, running through an iron-ribbed country without a single tree on the whole line of its banks, expanding into fine large lakes with clear horizons, most embarrassing to the navigator, and broken into falls, cascades, and rapids, to the number of no less than eighty-three in the whole, pours its waters into the Polar Sea in latitude 67° 11' 00" N.,...