On the 29th, while threading their course down the great river, they saw headlands to the north which gave them the assurance that the coast was not far distant. To this majestic promontory, Back gave the name Victoria.
“This then,” he writes, “may be considered as the mouth of the Thleu-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 five large lakes, with clear horizon most embarrassing to the navigator, and broken into falls, cascades, and rapids, to the number of eighty-three in the whole, pours its water into the Polar Sea, in latitude 67° 11´ N., and longitude 94° 30´ W., that is to say, about thirty-seven miles more south than the mouth of the Coppermine River, and nineteen miles more south than that of Back’s River, at the lower extremity of Bathhurst’s Inlet.”
The following days were a succession of incredible hardships, the result of the damp weather, the barrenness of the coast, and the soft snow and slush into which the men plunged knee-deep at every step. No fire could be lighted, and in consequence they had no means of securing warmth or cooked food; the men became low-spirited and discouraged. The country was flat and desolate, an “irregular plain of sand and stones; and had it not been for a rill of water, the meandering of which relieved the monotony of the sterile scene, one might have fancied one’s self in one of the parched plains of the East, rather than on the shore of the Arctic Sea.”
Making a heroic advance, Back discovered and named Point Ogle and Point Richardson, caught a sight of Boothia Felix, and then having reached latitude 68° 13´ 57´´ N., longitude 94° 58´ 1´´ W., he unfurled the British flag and took formal possession in the name of His Majesty, William IV, amid the enthusiastic cheers of his comrades. They left the cold Arctic shores the middle of August, and not until the 17th of September did they meet Mr. McLeod at Sandy Hill Bay, according to appointment, and with him reached Fort Reliance on the 27th.
A second winter was passed in the wilderness of the inhospitable north, devoted by Back and Dr. King to writing their journals, mapping their discoveries, and arranging their scientific data, the crew occupying themselves in hunting and fishing expeditions.