Chap. X. FRANKLIN AND RICHARDSON'S JOURNEY. 373 



sea-coast at the mouth of the Copper Mine River, 

 it being" only nine miles from the Bloody Fall. The 

 Canadian voyagers were amused with their first 

 view of the sea, and the seals swimming about, but 

 soon gave way to despondency ; they were terrified 

 at the idea of a voyage through an icy sea in bark 

 canoes. Hepburn's remarks, however, and the way 

 in which he held up to them the delights of his 

 accustomed element, made them ashamed of their 

 fears. The party who proceeded amounted to 

 twenty persons. The travelling distance from Fort 

 Enterprise to the mouth of the river is said to be 

 about three hundred and thirty-four miles. The 

 canoes and baggage were dragged over snow and 

 ice for one hundred and seventeen miles of this dis- 

 tance. They encamped at ten on the western bank, 

 at its junction with the sea. The river is here 

 about a mile wide, but very shallow. High and 

 numerous islands to seaward fill the horizon in 

 several points of the compass ; the water was de- 

 cidedly salt, and Franklin thinks that Hearne could 

 have tasted it only at the mouth of the river, as he 

 pronounced it merely brackish. 



The embarkation in two birch-bark canoes for a 

 navigation along the southern coast of the Polar 

 Sea to the eastward, and the commencement of the 

 voyage, took place on the 21st of July , their dried 

 meat and other provisions amounting only to fifteen 

 days' consumption. They paddled all day along 



