Beverly's Falls, Mouth of Hoarfrost River

One of Sir George Back's most picturesque images from Narrative of the Arctic Land Expedition, "Beverly's Falls" also subtly challenges that convention with its lowered viewpoint, the realistic scale of its subjects, and Back's sublime-inflected description of the scene in the accompanying narrative.

Two men on the far right of the frame stand near a campfire and tent on the banks of Hoarfrost River. The closer man stands with his back to the viewer, next to a basket and what appears to be a wannigan (a wooden box for food). Stepped rocky cliffs in the left background are divided by Beverly's Falls from the pine forest on the right. The falls flow into the river, which stretches from the center to the lower left corner of image. The day appears bright and sunny.

The Royal Geographic Society (RGS) was established in 1830. It "increasingly took responsibility for both promoting polar research and publishing the results"; furthermore, "one of the first expeditions the Society supported was that of Sir George Back to the Canadian Arctic in 1832” (David 63-6). The RGS also produced the Proceedings Journal and then the Geographical Journal in order to record expeditions, provide illustrations, and provide information for new explorers, as well as to provide interim reports on those expeditions (David 63-6).

Stuart C. Houston notes that:

The world’s greatest naval power and its underemployed navy after the end of the Napoleonic Wars found the continued presence of large blank areas on the world map an irresistible challenge. John Barrow, the powerful second secretary to the Admiralty, had strong backing from the newly important scientific community to renew the search for the Northwest Passage after a long wartime hiatus. (xiv)

In addition to simply providing visual aids for a travel narrative, then, Back’s images must be seen as integral to the literal illustration of those “large blank areas” that Britain wanted to conquer. Expedition imagery during the Romantic period addressed other needs as well, including the translation of “otherness”—which the Arctic so easily exemplified in its comparatively uninhabited starkness—into a culturally understandable, and thus accessible, space for national expansionism and the application of identity. Furthermore, in ostensibly drawing accurate portrayals of the landscape (which Franklin frequently confirms), Back created scientific records designed to both titillate and inform the British public and scientific community.

On the one hand, Beverly's Falls is one of Back's most classically picturesque images, easily adhering to I.S. Maclaren's gloss of that form:

Although they would often add unique ideas to their descriptions and depictions, travelers understood as well that the essence of the picturesque was . . . a small-scale topography—no huge land-forms and no endless vistas—that divided itself into a foreground, middle ground, and background . . . The mood was one of repose, the tone pastoral. Usually, this consummate picturesque effect demanded a foreground animated by people (staffage) or domesticated animals; thereby the scene was endowed with a human presence and a human scale. (288)

There are dissenting features, however, that are worth noting. They include the lowered perspective—we view the land from a point even below the humans—and the fact that the men are realistically scaled. Furthermore, Back writes the accompanying text using markedly sublime language:

We now learned from the Indians that the fall, to which, after my enterprising friend Beverley, the companion of Sir E. Parry in his attempt to reach the Pole, I have given the name of Beverley's Falls, was the commencement of a series of appalling cascades and rapids, which, according to their account, were the distinguishing characteristics of Hoar Frost River. (Narrative 113-14)

This image thus exemplifies the difficulty of depicting the Canadian Arctic within any single, theoretical or aesthetic framework.