522 Our North Land. 



— the distance from Cape Chidley to Churchill — that is so com- 

 pletely free from shoals, reefs, sunken rocks, sand islands and such 

 like dangers to the navigator. Lieutenant Gordon did not learn 

 to his cost, nor to his profit, neither did he learn at all that there 

 are " hundreds of sunken rocks " and " small islands " unnoted on 

 the charts. In attempting to make a harbour on Resolution Island, 

 while in one of the bays on the south-west coast of that island, and 

 while within less than two hundred yards of the visible rocks of the 

 shore, and at nearly flood tide the Neptune struck upon the hidden 

 rocks. Nothing could be more natural. It was in no way an 

 evidence of sunken rocks or shoals in the Strait. Indeed the Nep- 

 tune did what Captain Sopp says could not have been done any- 

 where else in the world — coasted along both sides of the Strait, dis- 

 covered and safely anchored in five harbours without striking the 

 ship's bottom against anything. Hudson Strait is peculiarly free 

 from all such dangers to navigation, and it is a piece of gross injustice 

 for any journal to malign its character as the Mail has done. There 

 are many other false statements in the article referred to, but I have 

 not the space to speak at length of them here. 



That journal did not stop by any means with the one effort. 

 On the contrary a systematic opposition has been kept up by the 

 publication of occasional articles depreciating the chances of the 

 route. One of the most recent of these was occasioned by a contri- 

 bution to a Brock ville journal from the pen of Hon. W. J. Christie 

 of that city, and is as follows: 



the Hudson's bay route. 



The voyage of the Neptune to Churchill and back this summer threw 

 some degree of light upon the Hudson's Bay problem. Mr. Christie, an 

 old Hudson's Bay officer, by way of supplementing the records of the 

 Neptune Expedition, sends to the Brockville Monitor an account of the 

 trip of the Prince of Wales, one of the company's vessels which started 

 out of the Bay about a month after the departure of the Neptune. This 

 vessel did not arrive at Moose Factory, James' Bay, on her annual voyage 

 from London until September 26, being detained by pack-ice in the Straits. 

 On the return voyage she left Moose Factory early in October, reaching 

 the entrance to Hudson Strait on October 21. Here she encountered a 

 solid barrier of ice extending as far the eye could see. It was heavy 



