Creation Date
1836
Height
16 cm
Width
10 cm
Medium
Genre
Description
One of Sir George Back's most unusual landscapes, Portage in Hoarfrost River is a vertically-oriented image that depicts several men trying to drag their canoe out of the river and up an extremely steep incline. If this image is picturesque, it is only insofar as the landscape allows it to be, and while it conveys a sense of awe, there is no mystery involved. Instead, it is a thoroughly pragmatic, realistic scene of the struggle inherent to wilderness expeditions.
The frame is vertically oriented and presents the viewer with an elevated perspective. A cliff on the left shadows the river, which moves down the left third of the image. Three men are pushing a canoe at the stream's edge up a steep, brushy incline or mountain. A fourth man stands halfway up this incline next to a dead tree, with a log frame on his back (presumably for carrying equipment).
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.
Portage in Hoarfrost River is simultaneously a pragmatic, and thus typical, depiction of the intense physical difficulty of Arctic travel in the nineteenth century, and a mildly picturesque portrayal of a variegated, carefully composed vertical landscape. It is particularly notable for this vertical orientation, which emphasizes the steepness of the hillside dropping to the descending river and further facilitates the general sense of motion. The dead tree extending from the upper portion of the hill is a classic trope of the picturesque—and yet, here it does not seem contrived. Musing rather appreciatively on the river despite the difficulties it posed to the expedition, Back observes that
The course of the river could be traced N.N.E. about three miles, in which, though there was evidently a strong current, nothing appeared to break the glassiness of the surface. It was bounded on each side by steep shelving rocks, cheerful with vegetation, and thinly clad with birth, firs, and willows. (Narrative 117)
Locations Description
The Hoarfrost River is approximately 60 miles ENE of the town of Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories.
Publisher
John Murray
Collection
Accession Number
Thordarson T 183
Additional Information
Bibliography
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