s to
cross the lower reaches of the barren grounds as soon as possible and
proceed northward by way of the basin of the Great Slave Lake, where
they would find a wooded country reaching far to the north. A glance
at the map will show the immensity of the task before them. The
distance from Fort Churchill {52} to the Slave Lake, even as the crow
flies, is some seven hundred miles, and from thence to the Arctic sea
four hundred and fifty, and the actual journey is longer by reason of
the sinuous course which the explorer must of necessity pursue. The
whole of this vast country was as yet unknown: no white man had looked
upon the Mackenzie river nor upon the vast lakes from which it flows.
It speaks well for the quiet intrepidity of Hearne that he was ready
alone to penetrate the trackless waste of an unknown country, among a
band of savages and amid the rigour of the northern winter.

The journey opened gloomily enough. The month of December was spent in
toiling painfully over the barren grounds. The sledges were
insufficient, and Hearne as well as his companions had to trudge under
the burden of a heavy load. At best some sixteen or eighteen miles
could be traversed in the short northern day. Intense cold set in.
Game seemed to have vanished, and Christmas found the party plodding
wearily onward, foodless, moving farther each day from the little
outpost of civilization that lay behind them on the bleak shores of
Hudson Bay.

I must confess [wrote Hearne in his {53} journal] that I never spent so
dull a Christmas; and when I recollected the merry season which was
then passing, and reflected on the immense quantities and great variety
of delicacies which were then expending in every part of Christendom, I
could not refrain from wishing myself again in Europe, if it had only
been to have had an opportunity of alleviating the extreme hunger that
I suffered with the refuse of the table of one of my acquaintances.

At the end of the month (December 1770), they reached the woods, a
thick growth of stunted pine and poplar with willow bushes growing in
the frozen swamps. Here they joined a large party of Matonabbee's
band, for the most part women and children. The women were by no means
considered by the chief as a hindrance to the expedition. Indeed, he
attributed Hearne's previous failure to their absence. 'Women,' he
once told his English friend, 'were made for labour; one of them can
carry or haul as much as