The accuracy, or rather the fidelity of this report was denied by Mr. Dobbs, who contended that this opening is a strait, and not a fresh water river, and that Middleton, if he had examined it properly, would have found a passage through it to the Western American Ocean. The failure of this voyage, therefore, only served to furnish our zealous advocate for the discovery, with new arguments for attempting it once more; and he had the good fortune, after getting the reward of twenty thousand pounds established by act of parliament, to prevail upon a society of gentlemen and merchants to fit out the Dobbs and California; which ships, it was hoped, would be able to find their way into the Pacific Ocean, by the very opening which Middleton’s voyage had pointed out, and which he was believed to have misrepresented.
This renovation of hope only produced fresh disappointment. For it is well known, that the voyage of the Dobbs and California, instead of confuting, strongly confirmed all that Middleton had asserted. The supposed strait was found to be nothing more than a fresh water river, and its utmost western navigable boundaries were now ascertained, by accurate examination. But though Wager’s Strait had thus disappointed our hopes, as had also done Rankin’s Inlet, which was now found to be a close bay; and though other arguments, founded on the supposed course of the tides in Hudson’s Bay appeared to be groundless, such is our attachment to an opinion once adopted, that, even after the unsuccessful issue of the voyage of the Dobbs and California, a passage through some other place in that bay was, by many, considered as attainable; and, particularly, Chesterfield’s (formerly called Bowden’s) Inlet, lying between latitude 63° and 64°, succeeded Wager’s Strait, in the sanguine expectations of those who remained unconvinced by former disappointments. Mr. Ellis, who was on board the ships, and who wrote the history of the voyage, holds up this as one of the places where the passage may be sought for, upon very rational grounds, and with very good effects.[[44]] He also mentions Repulse Bay, nearly in latitude 67°; but as to this he speaks less confidently; only saying, that by an attempt there, we might probably approach nearer to the discovery.[[45]] He had good reason for thus guarding his expression; for the committee who directed this voyage, admitting the impracticability of effecting a passage at Repulse Bay, had refused allowing the ships to go into it, being satisfied as to that place.[[46]]
Setting Repulse Bay, therefore, aside, within which we have no reason for believing that any inlet exists, there remained no part of Hudson’s Bay to be searched, but Chesterfield’s Inlet, and a small track of coast between the latitude 62°, and what is called the South Point of Main, which had been left unexplored by the Dobbs and California.
But this last gleam of hope has now disappeared. The aversion of the Hudson’s Bay Company to contribute any thing to the discovery of a north-west passage, had been loudly reported by Mr. Dobbs; and the public seemed to believe that the charge was well founded. But still, in justice to them, it must be allowed, that, in 1720, they had sent Messrs. Knight and Barlow in a sloop on this very discovery; but these unfortunate people were never more heard of. Mr. Scroggs, who sailed in search of them, in 1722, only brought back proofs of their shipwreck, but no fresh intelligence about a passage, which he was also to look for. They also sent a sloop and a shallop, to try for this discovery, in 1737; but to no purpose. If obstructions were thrown in the way of Captain Middleton, and of the commanders of the Dobbs and California, the Governor and Committee of the Hudson’s Bay Company, since that time, we must acknowledge, have made amends for the narrow prejudices of their predecessors; and we have it in our power to appeal to facts, which abundantly testify, that every thing has been done by them, that could be required by the public, toward perfecting the search for a north-west passage.
In the year 1761, Captain Christopher sailed from Fort Churchill, in the sloop Churchill; and his voyage was not quite fruitless: for he sailed up Chesterfield’s Inlet, through which a passage had, by Mr. Ellis’s account of it, been so generally expected. But when the water turned brackish, which marked that he was not in a strait, but in a river, he returned.
To leave no room for a variety of opinion, however, he was ordered to repeat the voyage the ensuing summer, in the same sloop, and Mr. Norton, in a cutter, was appointed to attend him. By the favour of the Governor and Committee of the Company, the Journals of Captain Christopher, and of Mr. Norton, and Captain Christopher’s chart of the Inlet, have been readily communicated. From these authentic documents, it appears that the search and examination of Chesterfield’s Inlet was now completed. It was found to end in a fresh water lake, at the distance of about one hundred and seventy miles from the sea. This lake was found also to be about twenty-one leagues long, and from five to ten broad, and to be completely closed up on every side, except to the west, where there was a little rivulet; to survey the state of which, Mr. Norton and the crew of the cutter having landed, and marched up the country, saw that it soon terminated in three falls, one above another, and not water for a small boat over them; and ridges, mostly dry from side to side, for five or six miles higher.
Thus ends Chesterfield’s Inlet, and all Mr. Ellis’s expectations of a passage through it to the Western Ocean. The other part of the coast, from latitude 62°, to the South Point of Main, within which limits hopes were also entertained of finding a passage, have, of late years, been thoroughly explored. It is here that Pistol Bay is situated; which the author who has writ last in this country, on the probability of a north-west passage[[47]], speaks of as the only remaining part of Hudson’s Bay where this western communication may exist. But this has been also examined; and, on the authority of Captain Christopher, we can assure the reader, that there is no inlet of any consequence in all that part of the coast. Nay, he has, in an open boat, sailed round the bottom of what is called Pistol Bay, and, instead of a passage to a western sea, found it does not run above three or four miles inland.
Besides these voyages by sea, which satisfy us that we must not look for a passage to the South of 67° of latitude; we are indebted to the Hudson’s Bay Company for a journey by land which has thrown much additional light on this matter, by affording what may be called demonstration, how much farther north, at least in some part of their voyage, ships must hold their course, before they can pass from one side of America to the other. The Northern Indians, who come down to the Company’s forts for trade, had brought to the knowledge of our people, the existence of a river; which, from copper abounding near it, had got the name of the Copper-mine River. We read much about this river in Mr. Dobbs’s publications, and he considers the Indian accounts of it as favourable to his system. The Company being desirous of examining the matter with precision, ordered their Governor of Prince of Wales’s Fort, to send a proper person to travel by land, under the escort of some trusty Northern Indians, with orders to proceed to this famous river, to take an accurate survey of its course, and to trace it to the sea, into which it empties itself. Mr. Hearne, a young gentleman in their service, who, having been an officer in the navy, was well qualified to make observations for fixing the longitude and latitude, and make drawings of the country he shall pass through, and of the river which he was to examine, was appointed for this service.
Accordingly, he set out from Fort Prince of Wales, on Churchill River, in latitude 58° 50ʹ, on the 7th of December, 1770; and the whole of his proceedings, from time to time, are faithfully preserved in his written Journal. The publication of this would not be an unacceptable present to the world, as it draws a plain artless picture of the savage modes of life, the scanty means of subsistence, and indeed of the singular wretchedness, in every respect, of the various tribes, who, without fixed habitations, pass their miserable lives, roving throughout the dreary deserts, and over the frozen lakes of the immense track of continent through which Mr. Hearne passed, and which he may be said to have added to the geography of the globe. His general course was to the north-west, in the month of June, 1771, being then at a place called Conge catha wha Chaga, he had, to use his own words, two good observations, both by meridian and double altitudes, the mean of which determines this place to be in latitude 68° 46ʹ north, and, by account, in longitude 24° 2ʹ west of Churchill River. On the 13th of July (having left Conge catha wha Chaga by the 2d, and travelling still to the west of north) he reached the Copper-mine River: and was not a little surprized to find it differ so much from the descriptions given of it by the natives at the fort; for, instead of being likely to be navigable for a ship, it is, at this part, scarcely navigable for an Indian canoe; three falls being in sight, at one view, and being choked up with shoals and stony ridges.
Here Mr. Hearne began his survey of the river. This he continued till he arrived at its mouth, near which his Northern Indians massacred twenty-one Esquimaux, whom they surprized in their tents. We shall give Mr. Hearne’s account of his arrival at the sea, in his own words. “After the Indians had plundered the tents of the Esquimaux of all the copper, &c. they were then again ready to assist me in making an end to the survey; the sea then in sight from the north-west by west to the north-east, distant about eight miles. It was then about five in the morning of the 17th, when I again proceeded to survey the river to the mouth, still found, in every respect, no ways likely, or a possibility of being made navigable, being full of shoals and falls: and, at the entrance, the river emptying itself over a dry flat of the shore. For the tide was then out, and seemed, by the edges of the ice, to flow about twelve or fourteen feet, which will only reach a little within the river’s mouth. That being the case, the water in the river had not the least brackish taste. But I am sure of its being the sea, or some part thereof, by the quantity of whale-bone and seal-skins the Esquimaux had at their tents; as also the number of seals which I saw upon the ice. The sea, at the river’s mouth, was full of islands and shoals, as far as I could see, by the assistance of a pocket telescope; and the ice was not yet broken up, only thawed away about three quarters of a mile from the shore, and a little way round the islands and shoals.