200 DISCOVERIES OF 17® tGf 



After this piece of wantonness " we sat down,'* 

 Hearne says, " and made a good meal of fresh 

 salmon.'* He adds, " It was then about five o'clock 

 in the morning of the 17th, the sea being in sight 

 from the north-v/est by west to the north-east, 

 about eight miles distant; I therefore set instantly 

 about commencing my survey, and pursued it to 

 tlie mouth of the river, which I found all the way 

 so full of shoals and falls that it v/as not navigable 

 for a boat, and that it emptied itself into the sea 

 over a ridge or bar."* The tide, he says, was 

 then out ; but he judged from the marks on the 

 edo-e of the ice that it flowed about twelve or 

 fourteen feet ; that, the tide being out, the water 

 in the river was perfectly fresh ; but, he continues, 

 " I am certain of its being the sea, or some branch 

 of it, by the quantity of whalebone and seal's 

 skins which the Esquimaux had at their tents, 

 and also by the number of seals which I saw on 

 the ice." He says moreover, that at the mouth of 

 the river " the sea is full of islands and shoals" as 

 far as he could see with the assistance of a good 

 pocket telescope. 



It has been doubted whether Hearne ever reach- 

 ed the sea-coast, on the ground that the water in 

 the mouth of the river being perfectly fresh^ when 

 the tide was out, is inconsistent with the flood rising 



* Journey from Hudson s Bay to the Northern Ocean, by Samuel 

 Hearne, p. l62. 



