igii] The Coppermine Country 219 



River as far as the portage to Great Bear Lake in his journey from 

 Hudson Bay to the Mackenzie River, and he has mentioned in his 

 account that one of his men named Sandy, while tracking up the river, 

 "was nearly tripped up by a chunk of native copper on the shore. It 

 weighed about twelve pounds."* 



Though Hanbury gives us little or no information about the copper- 

 bearing rocks in the immediate vicinity of the Coppermine River, he 

 gives us very positive information about these rocks and the occurrence 

 of the metal in them, in and around Bathurst Inlet and Melville 

 Sound, 175 miles east of the Coppermine River, substantiating 

 Richardson's description of the country, and adding to it evidence of 

 the presence of native copper. 



The following is his description of the rocks and the occurrence of 

 copper: — 



"On the i6th (of June 1902) we reached Barry Island, which one of 

 my Eskimo had described as the best place for copper. He now said 

 copper was more plentiful on an island six or eight miles north of 

 Fowler Bay. However, two pieces of native copper were found in 

 the evening. 



"The next day we searched for copper on the north-west shore of the 

 island. 



"The main rock of the island is a fine-grained basalt which Dr. 

 Flett described as granular, holocrystalline, and non-porphyritic, and 

 a good deal decomposed. The rock, although hard, is easily broken in all 

 directions by a tap of the hammer. The summit of the island is, how- 

 ever, formed of a rock of the character of No. 6, which is described as 

 coarse-grained ophitic dolerite with plagioclase and augite, and perhaps 

 a few grains of olivine. The ophitic structure is very perfect. 



"The underlying basalt dips west at an angle of about 25°, and it is 

 in this rock that the native copper occurs. The copper is plentiful, for 

 the quantity we obtained was found after but a brief search, and on a 

 neighbouring island, Kun-nu-yuk, a mass of copper had just been found, 

 so large that a man could hardly lift it. There also copper is often found in 

 the tide-way. The wholeof the lower levels on Barry Island are covered 

 with debris from the basalt, and where the rock has been disintegrated 

 by weathering, copper has fallen out, so that flakes of the metal may be 

 found along the sea-shore. In many places, too, green patches indicate 

 that nuggets or flakes of copper have recently fallen out from their 

 matrix. 



• Sport and Travel in the Northland of Canada, by David Hanbury, 1904, p. 206, 



