not fail to draw his own
conclusions.

Scouts were sent cautiously forward to trail the path of the aliens who
had lighted the far moss fire. Women and children were ordered to head
about for a rendezvous southwest on Lake Athabasca. Carrying only the
lightest supplies, the braves set out swiftly for the North on June 1.
Mist and rain hung so heavily over the desolate moors that the
travellers could not see twenty feet ahead. In places the rocks were
glazed with ice and scored with runnels of water. Half the warriors
here lost heart and turned back. The others led by Hearne and
Matonabbee crossed the iced precipices on hands and knees, with gun
stocks strapped to backs or held in teeth. On the 21st of June the sun
did not set. Hearne had crossed the Arctic Circle. The sun hung on
the southern horizon all night long. Henceforth the travellers marched
without tents. During rain or snow storm, they took refuge under rocks
or in caves. Provisions turned mouldy with wet. The moss was too
soaked for fire. Snow fell so heavily in drifting storms that Hearne
often awakened in the morning to find himself almost immured in the
cave where they had sought shelter. 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 N