ready to assist him in {62} going on to the mouth
of the river. The desolate scene was left behind--the broad rock
strewn with mangled bodies of the dead and the broken remnants of their
poor belongings. Half a century later the explorer Franklin visited
the spot and saw the skulls and bones of the Eskimos still lying about.
One of Franklin's Indians, then an aged man, had been a witness of the
scene.

From the hills beside the Bloody Falls, as the cataract is called, the
eye could discern at a distance of some eight miles the open water of
the Arctic and the glitter of the ice beyond. Hearne followed the
river along its precipitous and broken course till he stood upon the
shore of the sea. One may imagine with what emotion he looked out upon
that northern ocean to reach which he had braved the terrors of the
Arctic winter and the famine of the barren grounds. He saw before him
about three-quarters of a mile of open sea, studded with rocks and
little islands: beyond that the clear white of the ice-pack stretched
to the farthest horizon. Hearne viewed this scene in the bright
sunlight of the northern day: but while he still lingered, thick fog
and drizzling rain rolled in from the sea and shut out the view. For
the sake of form, as he said, he {63} erected a pile of stones and took
possession of the coast in the name of the Hudson's Bay Company. Then,
filled with the bitterness of a vain quest, Hearne turned his face
towards the south to commence his long march to the settlements.

Up to this point nothing had been seen of the supposed mountains of
copper which formed the principal goal of Hearne's undertaking. The
eagerness of the Indians had led them to hasten directly to the camp of
the Eskimos regardless of all else. But on the second day of the
journey home, the guides led Hearne to the site of this northern
Eldorado. It lay among the hills beside the Coppermine river at a spot
thirty miles from the sea, and almost directly south of the mouth of
the river. The prospect was strange. Some mighty force, as of an
earthquake, seemed to have rent asunder the solid rock and strewn it in
a confused and broken heap of boulders. Through these a rivulet ran to
join the Coppermine. Here, said the Indians, was copper so great in
quantity that it could be gathered as easily as one might gather stones
at Churchill. Filled with a new eagerness, Hearne and his companions
searched for four hours among the rocks. He