HEARNE AND MACKENZIE 147 



of aiding their rivals the French to the south, who 

 were fostering the trade in the region of the great 

 lakes ; and not until the French dominion ended in 

 1763 and the Frenchmen's interests were passing to 

 an opposition British company was any effort made to 

 explore the coast of the Polar Sea. 



Owing to Indian reports of rich deposits of native 

 copper and an abundance of fur-bearing animals, 

 Samuel Hearne, once a midshipman in the Royal 

 Navy, was sent by the company in 1769 to explore 

 to the west and north. After a journey of thirteen 

 hundred miles to the west he found the Coppermine 

 River and the Great Slave Lake, and he traced the 

 river to its mouth and emerged on the northern shore, 

 being the first known white man to see the Arctic 

 Ocean between the Boothia Peninsula and Bering 

 Strait. Among other things he was instructed to dis- 

 cover a north-west passage, and he certainly did some- 

 thing definite towards it by showing there was open 

 water so much further west ; but, though he suspected 

 it, he was unable to prove that the northernmost point 

 of the continent was in the unexplored country between 

 the Coppermine and Hudson Bay. 



In 1783 the North West Fur Company was formally 

 established, and after a severe struggle obtained, owing 

 mainly to the efforts of Alexander Mackenzie, a fair 

 share of the trade in the west of the region controlled 

 by the Hudson's Bay people. Mackenzie was at Fort 

 Chippewyan, on Lake Athabasca, and thence he was 

 sent in 1789 on an exploring voyage to the north. In 

 four birch -bark canoes, one of his party being an 

 Indian known as English Chief, who had been with 



