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Updated: May 7, 2025
The exact results of this land expedition are not yet fully and clearly known; but it is generally understood, that after having undergone infinite hardships and sufferings, they have been enabled to confirm Hearne and Mackenzie's discoveries or conjectures respecting the Coppermine River, and to ascertain other points connected with the geography and natural history of these remote and almost inaccessible regions, though the most important and leading points of the expedition have not been settled.
Ships and boats had made their way from Bering Strait to the Coppermine. North of this they had gone from Baffin Bay through Lancaster Sound and on westward to a great sea called Melville Sound, a body of water larger than the Irish Sea. The two lines east and west overlapped widely. All that was needed now was to find a channel north and south to connect the two.
In it, all furred and feathered life and all hoof and horn along the edge of the Barren Lands from Aberdeen Lake to the Coppermine was swallowed up.
According to his account, Chesterfield Inlet is not the north-west passage, and the American continent stretches very considerably to the north-west of Hudson's Bay. The whole extent of his journey was about thirteen hundred miles. It was however doubted, whether what he deemed to be the mouth of the Coppermine River was actually such.
He had wandered north, lived on the Coppermine River for a long time, and at length had come down among the warring tribes at the Lake of Silver Shallows. Pierre was for direct attack. They crossed the lake in their canoes, at a point about five miles from the Fort, and, so far as they could tell, without being seen. Then ammunition went round, and they marched upon the Fort.
Undeterred by difficulties, Franklin set out from Fort Providence to make his way to the Arctic seas at the mouth of the Coppermine. The expedition reached the height of land between the Great Slave Lake and the Coppermine, on the borders of the country which had been the scene of Hearne's exploits. The northern forest is here reduced to a thin growth of stunted pine and willow.
Here in the darkness of the prehistoric night there arose as the oldest part of the surface of the earth the great rock bed that lies in a huge crescent round the shores of Hudson Bay, from Labrador to the unknown wilderness of the barren lands of the Coppermine basin touching the Arctic sea.
As it fortunately turned out, however, game was very plentiful on the green banks of the river, and enough musk oxen were killed to feed the whole party. The mouth of the Coppermine was reached on the 18th July, when the Indians, afraid of meeting their enemies, the Esquimaux, at once returned to Fort Enterprise, whilst the Canadians scarcely dared to launch their frail boats on the angry sea.
In it, all furred and feathered life and all hoof and horn along the edge of the Barren Lands from Aberdeen Lake to the Coppermine was swallowed up.
English Chief, we may remark in passing, was one of the followers of the chief who conducted Hearne on his expedition to the Coppermine River; since which event he had been a principal leader of his countrymen who were in the habit of carrying furs to the English fur-traders at Churchill, on Hudson's Bay, and was much attached to the interest of the Hudson Bay Company, which, at that time, was in opposition to the Canadian or Nor'-West Company.
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