d the sea coast
of the Arctic Ocean. The tide was then out, and a good deal of the sea
surface was covered with ice, on which he observed many seals lying
about. Along the sea coast and river banks were many birds; gulls,
divers or loons, golden plovers, green plovers, curlews, geese, and
swans. The country a little way inland was obviously inhabited by
numbers of musk oxen, reindeer, bears, wolves, gluttons, foxes, polar
hares, snowy owls, ravens, ptarmigans, gopher ground-squirrels, stoats
(ermines), and mice. In this region also he saw a bird which the
Copper Indians called the Alarm Bird. He tells us that in size and
colour it resembles a "Cobadekoock"; but as none of us know what that
is, we can only go on to imagine that the Alarm Bird was a kind of
owl, as Hearne says it was "of the owl genus". When it perceived
people or beasts it directed its way towards them immediately, and,
after hovering over them for some time, flew over them in circles or
went away with them in the same direction as they walked. All this
time the bird made a loud screaming noise like the cry of a child.
These owls were sometimes accustomed to follow the Indians for a whole
day, and the Copper Indians believed that they would in some way
conduct them to herds of deer and musk oxen, which without the birds'
assistance might never be found. They also warned Indians of the
arrival of strangers. The Eskimo, according to Hearne, paid no heed to
these birds, and it was thus that they allowed themselves to be
surprised and massacred, for if they had looked out from the direction
in which the Chipewayans were lying in ambush, they would have seen a
large flock of these owls continually flying about and making
sufficient noise to awaken any man out of the soundest sleep.

The country on either side of the estuary of the Coppermine River was
not without vegetation. There were stunted pines and tufts of dwarf
willows, and the ground was covered with a lichen or herb, which the
English of the Hudson's Bay Company knew by the name of
Wishakapaka,[7] and which they dried and used instead of tea. There
were also cranberry and heathberry bushes, but without fruit. The
scrub grew gradually thinner and smaller as one approached the sea,
and at the mouth of the river there was nothing but barren hills and
marsh.

[Footnote 7: _Ledum palustre_.]

The unfortunate Eskimo of this region, judging by the examples seen by
Hearne, were of low stature, with broad