and you may be sure all the pupils preferred hunting and fishing. The seamen turned carpenters and built boats.
No one was sorry when spring came and the journey could be continued. On June 24, 1826, the company divided into two parties and started down the Mackenzie river. At the mouth of the river they separated; one party under command of Franklin proceeded to the west, the other party under Dr. Richardson, to the east. Each had provisions enough to last from eighty to one hundred days.
Franklin and his men soon fell in with an Eskimo tribe numbering about three hundred. These Eskimos proved themselves such thieves that it seemed likely that they might presently murder Franklin and his companions and take all they had. Lieutenant Back ordered the men in his boat to point their muskets at the Eskimos; whereupon they ran away and left the white men in peace.
The journey along the coast was made through blocks of ice, heavy fogs, and high winds, with a temperature often below freezing. Yet this was midsummer!
But the party kept bravely on their way, taking observations of the sun, watching the magnetic needle of the compass, studying tides, stones, plants, and animals. Among the greatest hardships that the men suffered were attacks from swarms of mosquitoes; they dreaded these more than cold or ice packs.
After three hundred and seventy-four miles of coast had been explored, Franklin decided that if he continued the journey, he would not have enough provisions. They had made half the distance between the mouth of the Mackenzie river and Icy cape. To the most western point visited, they gave the name Beechey point. On returning to Fort Franklin they found that the other party, led by
