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Updated: May 11, 2025
The commission to despatch explorers to the inland country proved the sensation of a century at the fort. Round the long mess-room table gathered officers and traders, intent on the birch-bark maps drawn by old Indian chiefs of an unknown interior, where a "Far-Off-Metal River" flowed down to the Northwest Passage. Huge log fires blazed on the stone hearths at each end of the mess room.
That was the way Matonabbee had won the Athabascans for the Hudson's Bay Company. Officers of the garrison, bluff sea-captains, spinning yarns of iceberg and floe, soldiers and traders, made up the rest of the company. Among the white men was one eager face, that of Samuel Hearne, who was to explore the interior and now scanned the birch-bark drawings to learn the way to the "Far-off-Metal River."
What was the real reason of the Indian eagerness to conduct the white man to the "Far-Off-Metal River"? The white man was not taken into the confidence of the Indian council; but he could not fail to draw his own conclusions. Scouts were sent cautiously forward to trail the path of the aliens who had lighted the far moss fire.
Men must travel light of hand, trusting to chance game for food. Women were needed to snare rabbits, catch partridges, bring in game shot by the braves, and attend to the camping. And then in a burst of enthusiasm, perhaps warmed by Hearne's fine tobacco, Matonabbee, who had found the way to the Athabasca, offered to conduct the white man to the "Far-Off-Metal River" of the Arctic Circle.
On midday of November 25, 1770, after eight months' absence, in which he had not found the "Far-Off-Metal River," Hearne reached shelter inside the fort walls. Beating through the gales of sleet and snow on the homeward march, Hearne had careened into a majestic figure half shrouded by the storm.
All count of day and night was now lost, for the sun did not set. Sometime between midnight and morning of July 12, 1771, with the sun as bright as noon, the lakes converged to a single river-bed a hundred yards wide, narrowing to a waterfall that roared over the rocks in three cataracts. This, then, was the "Far-Off-Metal River." Plainly, it was a disappointing discovery, this Coppermine River.
For one caribou caught in the pound by Hearne's Indians, a hundred of the herd escaped; for the caribou crossed the Barrens in tens of thousands, and Matonabbee's braves obtained enough venison for the trip to the "Far-Off-Metal River." The farther north they travelled the scanter became the growth of pine and poplar and willow.
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