Ice lay solid on the lakes in
July. Once, clambering up steep, bare heights, the travellers met a
herd of a hundred musk-oxen scrambling over the rocks with the agility
of squirrels, the spreading, agile hoof giving grip that lifted the
hulking forms over all obstacles. Down the bleak, bare heights there
poured cataract and mountain torrent, plainly leading to some near
river bed; but the thick gray fog lay on the land like a blanket. At
last a thunder-storm cleared the air; and Hearne saw bleak moors
sloping north, bare of all growth but the trunks of burnt trees, with
barren heights of rock and vast, desolate swamps, where the wild-fowl
flocked in myriads.
[Illustration: Fort Garry, Winnipeg, a Century Ago.]
All count of day and night was now lost, for the sun did not set.
Sometime between midnight and morning of July 12, 1771, with the sun as
bright as noon, the lakes converged to a single river-bed a hundred
yards wide, narrowing to a waterfall that roared over the rocks in
three cataracts. This, then, was the "Far-Off-Metal River." Plainly,
it was a disappointing discovery, this Coppermine River. It did not
lead to China. It did not point the way to a Northwest Passage. In
his disappointment, Hearne learned what every other discoverer in North
America had learned--that the Great Northwest was something more than a
bridge between Europe and Asia, that it was a world in itself with its
own destiny.[1]
But Hearne had no time to brood over disappointment.
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