annals. Self-taught, and rising from the lowest rank by his merits alone, temperate and hardy, clear-sighted and intrepid, he was ever foremost in the path of danger or of duty. His friends allow that he was prone to sudden starts of anger, yet these were tempered, and as it were disarmed, by a disposition the most kindly and humane.*

The remains of Captain Cook could not be recovered for interment without great difficulty and much more of bloodshed. That melancholy rite being performed, and a reconciliation effected with the natives, the ships again departed from these islands. Captain Clarke, on whom the principal command had now devolved, applied himself with scarcely less of energy to the same object as his predecessor. Through the whole summer he made repeated but fruitless attempts to discover through the ice and snow an outlet to the East. Coming back from this service at the close of the season, he died along the coasts of Kamtschatka. His disease was consumption, beneath which he had pined for many months. "He knew," these are the words of one of his gallant comrades,— “he "knew that by delaying his return to a warmer climate "he was giving up the only chance that remained for "his recovery. Yet, careful and jealous to the last

degree that a regard to his own situation should never "bias his judgment to the prejudice of the public service, "he persevered in the search of a passage till it was the 66 opinion of every officer in both ships that it was im"practicable." t

On the death of this high-minded man, the surviving officers, proceeding by way of Canton and the Cape, brought back the ships to England. The period of their absence was upwards of four years and two months. Such were the skill and judgment of Captain Cook in the precautions he had used, that there had not appeared the slightest symptom of the scurvy in either vessel during the whole voyage.

*In the circumstances of Cook's death, as elsewhere, I follow Captain James King. (Third Voyage, vol. iii. pp. 40-46.) There are, however, several Variantes in the narrative of Mr. Samwell, surgeon of the Discovery.

†Third Voyage, vol. iii. (by Captain King), p. 281.

The efforts of the British Government at this period were not confined to the Pacific Ocean and to the Southern Hemisphere. The Northern also, and the coasts of the Atlantic, were in some degree explored. In 1773 Lord Mulgrave was sent with two ships to determine how far navigation might be practicable towards the North Pole. Lord Mulgrave showed both skill and courage in pursuing his object, but, like all his predecessors, was baffled by "the realm of frost." In 1776 and 1777 there were other expeditions into Baffin's Bay, less well conducted, by Lieutenant Pickersgill and Lieutenant Young. But, as it proved, the most important enterprise in that quarter was not undertaken by the Admiralty; it was due to a private Association. The Northern Indians, who came down to trade at Fort Prince of Wales, belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company, had brought to the knowledge of the English the existence of a distant river, which, from copper abounding near it, was called the Coppermine. The Company now resolved to send some competent person to explore the course of this river, and trace it to its termination. For that purpose they pitched on Samuel Hearne, a young gentleman in their service, who had been an officer in the navy, and had already made two shorter expeditions to the inland country.

Accordingly, in December, 1770, Mr. Hearne set forth on his journey. His guides and companions were a party of the Northern Indians; some of those various tribes which, without fixed habitations, rove along the dreary deserts or the frozen lakes of that immense tract of continent. Mr. Hearne found that he had little or no control over the party with which he travelled. They did not always pursue the straight or shortest course, and often halted as inclination or necessity might prompt, to supply themselves with food by the chase. It was the first time that any European had ever advanced nearly so far in that direction. Cheerfully bearing every hardship, and encountering every toil, during more than twelve hundred miles of march, Mr. Hearne at length, in July, 1771, reached the expected place on the Coppermine_River. He gazed upon it with no small surprise. The Indians at the Fort, with the usual exaggeration of uneducated tribes, had described the stream as likely to be navigable

for ships; Mr. Hearne perceived, on the contrary, that, besides its shoals and falls, it could scarcely bear one of their own canoes.

At that spot the English traveller witnessed, without being able to prevent, an act of atrocious cruelty in his Indian guides. They surprised by night, and put to death, without mercy, a party of poor Esquimaux along the stream. Mr. Hearne felt more especial pity for one girl who, as it chanced, was butchered at his side, and who, in her dying convulsions, grasped his knees. He earnestly entreated her life, but the Indians only answered him with ridicule, asking if he wanted an Esquimaux wife. "Nor," adds Mr. Hearne, "did they pay the " smallest regard to the shrieks and agony of the poor "wretch, who was twining round their spears like an "eel!"* A few leagues onwards, still following the northern course of the stream, Mr. Hearne fonnd the rise and fall of tides, and gazed with eager eyes upon the open

sea.

At a later period, full eighteen years afterwards, the same track of discovery still further to the westward was explored by another hardy wanderer, Alexander Mackenzie. Like Hearne, he was engaged in the service of a trading company; like Cook, he had not the advantages of early education. But his energy and perseverance were displayed even before his toilsome journey had commenced. In his own words: "I felt myself de"ficient in the sciences of astronomy and navigation; I "did not hesitate, therefore, to undertake a winter's voyage to England to acquire them. That object being accomplished, I returned."

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In the prosecution of his perilous enterprise, Mr. Mackenzie derived some aid not merely from the native tribes of Indians, but from the Europeans who had freely joined them. "It is not necessary for me," thus he writes, "to examine the cause, but experience proves that it requires much less time for a civilised people to deviate "into the manners and customs of savage life, than for savages to rise into a state of civilisation." Such was:

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* Journey to the Northern Ocean by Samuel Hearne, p. 154. ed.

1795.

the case with not a few of the French or English men who accompanied the natives on their hunting and trading parties; for so attached did they become to the Indian mode of life, as to lose all relish for their former habits, and their native homes. Hence they derived the name of COUREURS DES BOIS, and became a ready link of intercourse, of great use to the merchant employed in the fur trade, as well as to the traveller. And strange as it may seem to us to find men thus eager to discard civilisation and embrace a savage life, yet the same strong impulse has been constantly observed among the South Sea Islands, where it needs the utmost vigilance of the commanders to prevent desertion of the crews.

A march of no slight risk or labour brought Mr. Mackenzie and his guides towards the centre of the Northern Continent to Chepewyan on the south side of the "Lake “of the Hills.” There, in a canoe constructed of birch bark, he commenced his voyage of discovery. First he steered into and around another vast expanse which is called the "Great Slave Lake," and which even then, in the month of June, was for the most part frozen over. Here he suffered from another hardship, which at first sight might be deemed scarcely consistent with the former. "We were pestered," says he "by musquitoes, though in a great measure surrounded by ice." From this lake he entered a river flowing northward, which received from him, and which still retains, his own name of Mackenzie. "The current," he remarks, "is very strong, and the "banks are covered with large quantities of burned wood, lying on the ground, and young poplar trees that have sprung up since the fire that destroyed the larger wood. "It is a very curious and extraordinary circumstance "that land covered with spruce pine and white birch, "when laid waste by fire, should subsequently produce "nothing but poplars where none of that species of tree were previously to be found."*

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Proceeding on his voyage, Mackenzie allowed himself during the day to be carried forward by the stream, but at night he always landed and set up his tents until the dawn, justly dreading the perils of falls and rapids as well

*Mackenzie's Journal, June 19. and 29. 1789,

as many others in a tract of country as yet wholly new to Europeans. The Indians of his party provided food by fishing, shooting, or hunting: this, however, was not his sole reliance, as he had some store in his canoe. Large, indeed, were the daily supplies which he required. According to his own account, his party, consisting of ten men and four women, had, within a period of six days, consumed two rein-deer, four swans, forty-five geese, and a considerable quantity of fish! "I have always observed," adds Mackenzie, "that the North-men possessed very hearty appetites, but they were very much exceeded by "those with me, since we entered this river; and I should "really have thought it absolute gluttony in my people, "if my own appetite had not increased in a similar pro"portion." Among the fish which they caught most frequently was one well known to the Canadians, but still retaining among them the name which the first discoverers had given it: POISSON INCONNU.

At length in July, 1789, after many hundred miles of navigation, the courageous perseverance of Mackenzie was rewarded, as he saw by degrees the river widen, and the Arctic Sea expand. So thickly was the ice piled along the coasts as to leave him for some time still uncertain whether that were indeed the ocean to which his course had tended; and his doubts were first dispelled by the sudden appearance in the current of huge white masses, which he discovered to be a troop of whales.* Toilsome as had been his progress, he found his return a matter of still far more labour and fatigue, since his canoe had to mount against a strong stream, which required constant exertion of paddling or of tracking with a line on shore. In one part of the river, where the breadth from bank to bank did not exceed three hundred yards, the depth of water was no less than fifty fathoms.†

"The part of them which appeared above the water was alto"gether white. . . At first we supposed them to be pieces of ice." (Journal, July 14. 1789.)

†This narrative of the voyage of Mackenzie, as also of another undertaken by him three years afterwards to the western coast of North America, was published by himself in 1801. A good summary of both appears in the Annual Register for that year. 545-558.)

(pp.