1772. SAMUEL HEARNE. 301 



fourteen feet. It might certainly have been ex- 

 pected that, after so long and hazardous a journey, 

 Mr. Hearne would have taken every possible care 

 to have ascertained in the most unequivocal manner 

 whether he really had reached the northern shore 

 of North America, and stood on the borders of the 

 hyperborean sea. If the tide was out in the morn- 

 ing of the 17th, it must have been in on the middle 

 part of the same day; and as he never quitted the 

 margin of the river, or the shore of the supposed 

 sea, till the morning of the 18th, and consequently 

 was there ^during the flowing and ebbing of two 

 distinct tides, it is certainly very unsatisfactory to 

 state merely that he judged its rise to be fourteen 

 feet by some marks that he perceived on the ice ; 

 nor is it easy to comprehend how the water at the 

 mouth of a river, into wdaich the tide flows and 

 rises fourteen feet, could have been perfectly 

 fresh. 



Equally unsatisfactory is his statement as to the 

 latitude of the mouth of the Copper Mine River. 

 He says that a thick fog and drizzling rain came 

 on, and that " finding that neither the river nor 

 the sea were likely to be of any use, I did not 

 think it Avorth while to wait for fair Aveather to 

 determine the latitude exactly by an obsenation." 

 What then, it might be asked, did he go for ? He 

 tells us, and it appears by his instructions, that he 

 was selected for the expedition because he knew 



