[Illustration: Eskimo using Double-bladed Paddle.]
The question now was whether to wait till spring or set out in the teeth of midwinter. If Hearne left the fort in spring, he could not possibly reach the Arctic Circle till the following winter; and with the North buried under drifts of snow, he could not learn where lay the Northwest Passage. If he left the fort in winter in order to reach the Arctic in summer, he must expose his guides to the risks of cold and starvation. The Indians told of high, rocky barrens, across which no canoes could be carried. They advised snow-shoe travel. Obtaining three Chipewyans and two Crees as guides, and taking no white servants, Hearne once more set out, on February 23, 1770, for the "Far-Away-Metal River." This time there was no cannonading. The guns were buried under snow-drifts twenty feet deep, and the snow-shoes of the travellers glided over the fort walls to the echoing cheers of soldiers and governor standing on the ramparts. The company travelled light, depending on chance game for food. All wood that could be used for fire lay hidden deep under snow. At wide intervals over the white wastes mushroom cones of snow told where a stunted tree projected the antlered branches of topmost bough through the depths of drift; but for the most part camp was made by digging through the shallowest snow with snow-shoes to the bottom of moss, which served the double purpose of fuel for the night kettle and bed for travellers. In the hollow a wigwam was erected, with the door to the south, away from the north wind. Snared rabbits and partridges supplied the food. The way lay as before—west-northwest—along a chain of frozen lakes and rivers connecting Hudson Bay with the Arctic Ocean. By April the marchers were on the margin of a desolate wilderness—the Indian region of "Little Sticks,"—known to white men as the Barren Lands, where dwarf trees project above the billowing wastes of snow like dismantled masts on the far offing of a lonely sea. Game became scarcer. Neither the round footprint of the hare nor the frost tracery of the northern grouse marked the snowy reaches of unbroken white. Caribou had retreated to the sheltered woods of the interior; and a cleverer hunter than man had scoured the wide wastes of game. Only the wolf pack roamed the Barren Lands. It was unsafe to go on without food. Hearne kept in camp till the coming of the goose month—April—when birds of passage wended their way north. For three days rations consisted of snow water and pipes of tobacco. The Indians endured the privations with stoical indifference, daily marching out on a bootless quest for game. On the third night Hearne was alone in his tent. Twilight deepened to night, night to morning. Still no hunters returned. Had he been deserted? Not a sound broke the waste silence but the baying of the wolf pack. Weak from hunger, Hearne fell asleep. Before daylight he was awakened by a shout; and his Indians shambled over the drifts laden with haunches of half a dozen deer. That relieved want till the coming of the geese. In May Hearne struck across the Barren Lands. By June the rotting snow clogged the snow-shoes. Dog trains drew heavy, and food was again scarce. For a week the travellers found nothing to eat but cranberries. Half the company was ill from hunger when a mangy old musk-ox, shedding his fur and lean as barrel hoops, came scrambling over the rocks, sure of foot as a mountain goat. A single shot brought him down. In spite of the musky odor of which the coarse flesh reeked, every morsel of the ox was instantly devoured. Sometimes during their long fasts they would encounter a solitary Indian wandering over the rocky barren. If he had arms, gun, or arrow, and carried skins of the chase, he was welcomed to camp, no matter how scant the fare. Otherwise he was shunned as an outcast, never to be touched or addressed by a human being; for only one thing could have fed an Indian on the Barren Lands who could show no trophies of the chase, and that was the flesh of some human creature weaker than himself. The outcast was a cannibal, condemned by an unwritten law to wander alone through the wastes.
Snow had barely cleared from the Barren Lands when Hearne witnessed the great traverse of the caribou herds, marching in countless multitudes with a clicking of horns and hoofs from west to east for the summer. Indians from all parts of the North had placed themselves at rivers across the line of march to spear the caribou as they swam; and Hearne was joined by a company of six hundred savages. Summer had dried the moss. That gave abundance of fuel. Caribou were plentiful. That supplied the hunters with pemmican. Hearne decided to pass the following winter with the Indians; but he was one white man among hundreds of savages. Nightly his ammunition was plundered. One of his survey instruments was broken in a wind storm. Others were stolen. It was useless to go on without instruments to take observations of the Arctic Circle; so for a second time Hearne was compelled to turn back to Fort Prince of Wales. Terrible storms impeded the return march. His dog was frozen in the traces. Tent poles were used for fire-wood; and the northern lights served as the only compass. On midday of November 25, 1770, after eight months' absence, in which he had not found the "Far-Off-Metal River," Hearne reached shelter inside the fort walls.
Beating through the gales of sleet and snow on the homeward march, Hearne had careened into a majestic figure half shrouded by the storm. The explorer halted before a fur-muffled form, six feet in its moccasins, erect as a mast pole, haughty as a king; and the gauntleted hand of the Indian chief went up to his forehead in sign of peace. It was Matonabbee, the ambassador of the Hudson's Bay Company to the Athabascans, now returning to Fort Prince of Wales, followed by a long line of slave women driving their dog sleighs. The two travellers hailed each other through the storm like ships at sea. That night they camped together on the lee side of the dog sleighs, piled high as a wind-break; and Matonabbee, the famous courser of the Northern wastes, gave Hearne wise advice. Women should be taken on a long journey, the Indian chief said; for travel must be swift through the deadly cold of the barrens. Men must travel light of hand, trusting to chance game for food. Women were needed to snare rabbits, catch partridges, bring in game shot by the braves, and attend to the camping. And then in a burst of enthusiasm, perhaps warmed by Hearne's fine tobacco, Matonabbee, who had found the way to the Athabasca, offered to conduct the white man to the "Far-Off-Metal River" of the Arctic Circle. The chief was the greatest pathfinder of the Northern tribes. His offer was the chance of a lifetime. Hearne could hardly restrain his eagerness till he reached the fort. Leaving Matonabbee to follow with the slave women, the explorer hurried to Fort Prince of Wales, laid the plan before Governor Norton, and in less than two weeks from the day of his return was ready to depart for the unknown river that was to lead to the Northwest Passage.
The weather was dazzlingly clear, with that burnished brightness of polished steel known only where unbroken sunlight meets unbroken snow glare. On the 7th of December, 1770, Hearne left the fort, led by Matonabbee and followed by the slave Indians with the dog sleighs. One of Matonabbee's wives lay ill; but that did not hinder the iron pathfinder. The woman was wrapped in robes and drawn on a dog sleigh. There was neither pause nor hesitation. If the woman recovered, good. If she died, they would bury her under a cairn of stones as they travelled. Matonabbee struck directly west-northwest for some caches of provisions which he had left hidden on the trail. The place was found; but the caches had been rifled clean of food. That did not stop Matonabbee. Nor did he show the slightest symptoms of anger. He simply hastened their pace the more for their hunger, recognizing the unwritten law of the wilderness—that starving hunters who had rifled the cache had a right to food wherever they found it. Day after day, stoical as men of bronze, the marchers reeled off the long white miles over the snowy wastes, pausing only for night sleep with evening and morning meals. Here nibbled twigs were found; there the stamping ground of a deer shelter; elsewhere the small, cleft foot-mark like the ace of hearts. But the signs were all old. No deer were seen. Even the black marble eye that betrays the white hare on the snow, and the fluffy bird track of the feather-footed northern grouse, grew rarer; and the slave women came in every morning empty-handed from untouched snares. In spite of hunger and cold, Matonabbee remained good-natured, imperturbable, hard as a man of bronze, coursing with the winged speed of snow-shoes from morning till night without pause, going to a bed of rock moss on a meal of snow water and rising eager as an arrow to leave the bow-string for the next day's march. For three days before Christmas the entire company had no food but snow. Christmas was celebrated by starvation. Hearne could not indulge in the despair of the civilized man's self-pity when his faithful guides went on without complaint.
[Illustration: Eskimo Family, taken by Light of Midnight Sun.--C. W. Mathers.]
By January the company had entered the Barren Lands. The Barren Lands were bare but for an occasional oasis of trees like an island of refuge in a shelterless sea. In the clumps of dwarf shrubs, the Indians found signs that meant relief from famine—tufts of hair rubbed off on tree trunks, fallen antlers, and countless heart-shaped tracks barely puncturing the snow but for the sharp outer edge. The caribou were on their yearly traverse east to west for the shelter of the inland woods. The Indians at once pitched camp. Scouts went scouring to find which way the caribou herds were coming. Pounds of snares were constructed of shrubs and saplings stuck up in palisades with scarecrows on the pickets round a V-shaped enclosure. The best hunters took their station at the angle of the V, armed with loaded muskets and long, lank, and iron-pointed arrows. Women and children lined the palisades to scare back high jumpers or strays of the caribou herd. Then scouts and dogs beat up the rear of the fleeing herd, driving the caribou straight for the pound. By a curious provision of nature, the male caribou sheds its antlers just as he leaves the Barren Lands for the wooded interior, where the horns would impede flight through brush, and he only leaves the woods for the bare open when the horns are grown enough to fight the annual battle to protect the herd from the wolf pack ravenous with spring hunger. For one caribou caught in the pound by Hearne's Indians, a hundred of the herd escaped; for the caribou crossed the Barrens in tens of thousands, and Matonabbee's braves obtained enough venison for the trip to the "Far-Off-Metal River."
The farther north they travelled the scanter became the growth of pine and poplar and willow. Snow still lay heavy in April; but Matonabbee ordered a halt while there was still large enough wood to construct dugouts to carry provisions down the river. The boats were built large and heavy in front, light behind. This was to resist the ice jam of Northern currents. The caribou hunt had brought other Indians to the Barren Lands. Matonabbee was joined by two hundred warriors. Though the tribes puffed the calumet of peace together, they drew their war hatchets when they saw the smoke of an alien tribe's fire rise against the northern sky. A suspicion that he hardly dared to acknowledge flashed through Hearne's mind. Eleven thousand beaver pelts were yearly brought down to the fort from the unknown river. How did the Chipewyans obtain these pelts from the Eskimo? What was the real reason of the Indian eagerness to conduct the white man to the "Far-Off-Metal River"? The white man was not taken into the confidence of the Indian council; but he could not fail to draw his own conclusions.