MAHLEMUT MAN
Owing to Indian reports of rich deposits of native copper and an abundance of fur-bearing animals, Samuel Hearne, once a midshipman in the Royal Navy, was sent by the company in 1769 to explore to the west and north. After a journey of thirteen hundred miles to the west he found the Coppermine River and the Great Slave Lake, and he traced the river to its mouth and emerged on the northern shore, being the first known white man to see the Arctic Ocean between the Boothia Peninsula and Bering Strait. Among other things he was instructed to discover a north-west passage, and he certainly did something definite towards it by showing there was open water so much further west; but, though he suspected it, he was unable to prove that the northernmost point of the continent was in the unexplored country between the Coppermine and Hudson Bay.
In 1783 the North West Fur Company was formally established, and after a severe struggle obtained, owing mainly to the efforts of Alexander Mackenzie, a fair share of the trade in the west of the region controlled by the Hudson's Bay people. Mackenzie was at Fort Chippewyan, on Lake Athabasca, and thence he was sent in 1789 on an exploring voyage to the north. In four birch-bark canoes, one of his party being an Indian known as English Chief, who had been with Hearne on his journey to the Coppermine, he started down the Great Slave River into the Great Slave Lake. After spending twenty days in crossing and exploring this vast sheet of water, he entered the large river now bearing his name, and down it amid many dangers and difficulties, overcome by skill, persuasion, force, good humour or good fortune, he reached the sea on the 14th of July. He camped on Whale Island, the name being given owing to one of the men sighting a great many animals in the water, which he at first supposed to be pieces of ice. "However," says Mackenzie, "I was awakened to resolve the doubts which had taken place respecting this extraordinary appearance. I immediately perceived that they were whales; and having ordered the canoe to be prepared, we embarked in pursuit of them. It was indeed a very wild and unreflecting enterprise, and it was a very fortunate circumstance that we failed in our attempt to overtake them, as a stroke from the tail of one of these enormous fish would have dashed the canoe to pieces. We may, perhaps, have been indebted to the foggy weather for our safety, as it prevented us from continuing our pursuit. Our guide informed us that they are the same kind of fish which are the principal food of the Eskimos, and they were frequently seen as large as our canoe. The part of them which appeared above the water was altogether white, and they were much larger than the largest porpoise"—being evidently belugas (Delphinapterus leucas).
Satisfied with a short canoe voyage on the sea, he returned to the river and made his way back to the fort, arriving there in the middle of September. He had thus proved the existence of the sea twenty degrees further west than Hearne had done. Three years afterwards he started on his notable journey to the Pacific at Cape Menzies, facing Princess Royal Island, being the first white man to cross the Rocky Mountains, and, as he had reached Fort Chippewyan by way of Montreal, the first to cross North America above the Gulf of Mexico.
Another of Hearne's Indians accompanied Franklin on his first land journey in 1819, the object of which was to explore the coast between Hearne's farthest and Hudson Bay, thus filling in the gap in which the assumed northern promontory was to be found. Franklin, who was sent out by the British Government, had with him, as surgeon and naturalist, Dr., afterwards Sir, John Richardson, to whom as a boy Robert Burns had lent Spenser's Faerie Queene, a naval surgeon with a distinguished record, who while on half-pay had studied botany and mineralogy at Edinburgh. Like another member of the expedition, George Back, who had been with Franklin in the Trent and Dorothea voyage, he was destined to gain a great reputation among Arctic explorers. With Back was another midshipman, Robert Hood, whose fate it was to be murdered by an Iroquois half-breed who, through want of food, betook himself to cannibalism.
Landing at York Factory, in Hudson Bay, after an exciting voyage, on the 30th of August, Franklin, disregarding local advice, pushed on across the continent during the winter, arriving at Fort Chippewyan on the 26th of March, the losses and trying experiences of the long journey being mainly due to the rigours of the climate at that time of year; and thence, in July, the party followed Mackenzie's route to Fort Providence on Great Slave Lake. Here they were joined by Mr. Wentzel, of the North West Company.
Starting for the north on the 2nd of August in four canoes, they were joined next day at the mouth of the Yellow Knife by a band of Indians, under a chief named Akaitcho, in seventeen canoes. The Indians were to guide the party and supply them with food by hunting and fishing on the way, but game and fish proved scarce—and scarcer owing to the poorness of the Indian marksmanship—provisions were short and portages long, so that the journey, which soon led across a series of lakes, was pursued under toilsome and hazardous conditions until it ended at Winter Lake in 64° 30´, where it became necessary to winter in a log house built by Wentzel, and named Fort Enterprise. The site was delightful: a hillside amid trees three feet in diameter at the roots, the view in front bounded at a distance of three miles by round-backed hills, to the eastward and westward the Winter and Roundrock Lakes connected by the Winter River, its banks clothed with pines and ornamented with a profusion of mosses, lichens, and shrubs.
WINTER TRAVELLING ON THE GREAT SLAVE LAKE
In a few weeks, however, the weather became so severe that, according to Franklin, the trees froze to their very centres and became as hard as stones, on which some of the axes were broken daily, until but one was left. And though at first the reindeer appeared in numbers, their visits lasted only for a short time, and the party, short of tobacco for the Canadian voyageurs and of ammunition for the Indians, had so poor an outlook that it became necessary to accept Back's proposal to return to the forts and bring on supplies which had not been forwarded as promised; the failure being due to the journey, unlike the successful ventures of Hearne and Mackenzie, being pushed on regardless of climatal conditions, and, in some degree, to the rivalry between the two fur companies which were amalgamated while the expedition was in progress.