tent of no service and were
compelled to lie shelterless with alternations of bitter cold and
drenching rain. For food they had to depend on such fish and game as
could be found. In most cases it was eaten raw, as they had nothing
with which to make a fire. {44} Worse still, for days together, food
failed them. Hearne relates that for four days at the end of June he
tramped northward, making twenty miles a day with no other sustenance
than water and such support as might be drawn from an occasional pipe
of tobacco. Intermittent starvation so enfeebled his digestion that
the eating of food when found caused severe pain. Once for seven days
the party had no other food than a few wild berries, some old leather,
and some burnt bones. On such occasions as this, Hearne tells us, his
Indians would examine their wardrobe to see what part could be best
spared and stay their hunger with a piece of rotten deer skin or a pair
of worn-out moccasins. As they made their way northward, the party
occasionally crossed small rivers running north and east, but of so
little depth that they were able to ford them. Presently, however, one
great river proved too deep to cross on foot. It ran north-east.
Hearne's Indians called it the Cathawachaga, and the Canadian explorer
Tyrrell identifies it with the river now called the Kazan. Here the
party fell in with a band of Indians who carried them across the river
in their canoes. On the northern side of the Cathawachaga, Hearne and
his men rested for a week, finding {45} a few deer and catching fish.
As the guides now said that in the country beyond there were other
large rivers, Hearne bought a canoe from one of the Indians, and gave
in exchange for it a knife which had cost a penny in England.

In July the travellers moved on north-westward with better fortune.
Deer became plentiful. Bands of roving Indian hunters now attached
themselves to the exploring party. Hearne's guide declared that it
would be impossible to reach the Coppermine that season, and that they
must spend a winter in the Indian country. The truth was that Hearne's
followers had no intention of going farther to the north, but preferred
to keep company with the bands of hunters. It was useless for Hearne
to protest. He and his Indians drifted along to the west with the
hunting parties, now so numerous that by the end of July about seventy
deer-skin tents were pitched so as to form a little village. There
were a