THE RAPIDS OF THE COPPERMINE 153 



difficult owing to the sextant having changed its error 

 and the glasses lost their parallelism from the contrac- 

 tion of the brass, a circumstance, combined with the 

 crystallisation of the mercury of the artificial horizon, 

 that might account for some of the diversity of results 

 obtained by Arctic navigators. And Richardson had 

 to tell him of an early discovery that when fishing and 

 the hands get cold by hauling in the line, the best way 

 to warm them is to put them in the water ; and how the 

 fish had frozen as they were taken out of the water so 

 that by a blow or two of the hatchet they were easily 

 split open, leaving the intestines removable in one lump, 

 and yet that these much -frozen fish retained their 

 vitality so that he had seen a thawed carp recover so 

 far as to leap about with much vigour after it had been 

 frozen for thirty-six hours. 



On the 14th of June Fort Enterprise was left, and 

 on the 25th the expedition began to cross Point Lake 

 on the way to the Coppermine, the river being reached 

 through Rocknest Lake on the 30th. Down the river 

 they paddled, taking the rapids as they went in one 

 place three miles of them on end. " We were carried 

 along with extraordinary rapidity, shooting over large 

 stones, upon which a single stroke would have been 

 destructive to the canoes ; and we were also in danger 

 of breaking them, from the want of the long poles 

 which lie along their bottoms and equalise their cargoes, 

 as they plunged very much, and on one occasion the 

 first canoe was almost filled with the waves ; but there 

 was no receding after we had once launched into the 

 stream, and our safety depended on the skill and dex- 

 terity of the bowmen and steersmen." 



