Middleton had done his work well, and had made some important discoveries. But he was subjected to an unjustifiable attack[100] from Mr Dobbs, the projector, who accused the explorer of stating that the Wager River was only a river when he knew it to be a strait. Dobbs had sufficient influence to enable him to raise funds for a second expedition. Two vessels, the Dobbs and the California, were fitted out and despatched under the command of Captain Moore, who fully confirmed Middleton’s report. Mr Ellis wrote the history of this voyage, and pointed to Chesterfield Inlet as a possible passage. Accordingly Captain Christopher was sent to settle the question in the sloop Churchill in 1761, and again with Captain Norton in 1762, when the survey of Chesterfield Inlet was completed.
Hudson Bay.
The next expedition of the servants of the Hudson’s Bay Company was by land, and was conducted by Samuel Hearne, who had been a naval officer. Through the Indians who traded with the Company’s factories rumours were received of a tribe which possessed copper mines on a river which emptied itself into a northern sea, and the Governor of Fort Prince of Wales on the Churchill river resolved to despatch an expedition to ascertain the truth of these rumours.
Hearne made two false starts. In the first journey he was robbed by Indians, in the second, when some months on the way, he had to return owing to an accident to his great Cotton’s quadrant. At last he set out in December, 1770, under the guidance of a remarkable Indian chief, named Matonabi, and without any European companion. This guide was the son of a northern Indian by a slave woman. His father had died, and the boy was adopted and brought up by the Governor of Fort Prince of Wales, who employed him as a hunter. He was a fine man, of nearly six feet, and possessed of many good moral qualities. He had been on an embassy to a powerful tribe, establishing peace and trade, and had also visited the Coppermine river. It was indeed owing to his report that the expedition was undertaken. Matonabi’s influence was so great that he was made Chief of the northern Indians, and caused great quantities of furs to be brought to the Churchill factory.
The method of travelling was for each man to drag his own little sledge. These one-man sledges were 8 to 9 feet long by 12 to 14 inches wide, made of boards a quarter of an inch thick sewn together with thongs of deer-skin, with wooden cross-bars on the upper side. The fore part was turned up so as to form a semicircle, to prevent the sledge from diving into soft snow. The trace was a strip of leather with a loop across the shoulders. The snow-shoes were 4½ feet long by 13 inches broad.
The country crossed by Hearne and Matonabi, accompanied by a large party of Indians with their wives and children, was fairly well supplied with game. In May, 1771, a lake was reached where they began to build canoes and were joined by more Indians, eager to rob and massacre the Eskimos.
The women and children were left behind, and the party of Indians, in company with Hearne and Matonabi, entered the Arctic regions, and began the descent of the Coppermine River on July 14th, 1771. Then five Eskimo tents came in sight on the left bank. The Indians put on their war-paint, formed an ambuscade, and approached stealthily. The wretched Eskimos were completely taken by surprise, and Hearne was an unwilling witness of a horrible massacre. One young girl clung to Hearne’s legs, writhing in agony while the Indians drove their spears into her.
Hearne continued his voyage down the Coppermine River with his bloodthirsty companions, until he reached the mouth on July 18th, 1771. He found that it was full of islets and shoals, with many seals on the ice outside. For 30 miles there had been nothing but barren hills and marshes. Above that distance there were stunted pines and dwarf willows on the river banks. In returning, he visited one of the surface copper mines. He gives an interesting account of the musk oxen, deer, wild geese, salmon, and other sources of food-supply, and of the building habits of beavers, and describes the Eskimo weapons and mode of life.
