bout six hundred persons in the party. Each morning as they
broke camp and set out on the march 'the whole ground for a large space
around,' wrote Hearne, 'seemed to be alive with men, women, children,
and dogs.'

The country through which Hearne travelled, or wandered, in this
mid-summer of 1770, {46} between the rivers Kazan and Dubawnt, was
barren indeed. There were no trees and no vegetation except moss and
the plant called by the Indians wish-a-capucca--the 'Labrador tea' that
is found everywhere in the swamps of the northern forests. Animal life
was, however, abundant. The caribou roaming the barren grounds in the
summer, to graze on the moss, were numerous. There was ample food for
all the party, and the animals were, indeed, slaughtered recklessly,
merely for the skins and the more delicate morsels of the flesh.

The Dubawnt river midway in its course expands into Dubawnt Lake, a
great sheet of water some sixty-five miles long and forty miles broad.
It lies in the same latitude as the south of Greenland. No more
desolate scene can be imagined than the picture revealed by modern
photographs of the country. The low shores of the lake offer an
endless prospect of barren rock and broken stone. In the century and a
half that have elapsed since Hearne's journey, only one or two intrepid
explorers have made their way through this region. It still lies and
probably will lie for centuries unreclaimed and unreclaimable for the
uses of civilization.

Hearne and his Indian hunters moved {47} westward and southward,
passing in a circle round the west shore of Lake Dubawnt, though at a
distance of some miles from it. The luckless travellers had now but
little chance of reaching the object of their search. They were
hundreds of miles away even from the head waters of the Coppermine.
The season was already late: the Indian guides were quite unmanageable,
while the natives whom Hearne met clamoured greedily for European
wares, ammunition and medicine, and cried out in disgust at his
inability to supply their wants.

Then came an accident, fortunate perhaps, that compelled Hearne to
abandon his enterprise. While he was taking his noon observations,
which showed him to be in latitude 63 deg. 10' north, he left his quadrant
standing and sat down on the rocks to eat his dinner. A sudden gust of
wind dashed the delicate instrument to the ground, where it lay in
fragments. This capped the climax. Unable any longer t