152 A JOURNEY TO THE 



1771. was always answered, that it was certainly right to kill plenty, 



•'""^' and live on the best, when and where it was to be got, for that 

 it would be impossible to do it where every thing was scarce : 

 and they insisted on it, that killing plenty of deer and other 

 game in one part of the country, could never make them 

 scarcer in another. Indeed, they were so accustomed to kill 

 every thing that came within their reach, that few of them 

 could pass by a small bird's nest, without slaying the young 

 ones, or destroying the eggs. 



20th. From the seventeenth to the twentieth, we walked between 

 seventy and eighty miles to the North West and North North 

 West ; the greater part of the way by Cogead Lake ^ ; but 

 the Lake being then frozen, we crossed all the creeks and bays 

 of it on the ice. 



2ist. On the twenty-first we had bad rainy weather, with so 

 thick a fog that we could not see our way : about ten o'clock 

 at night, however, it became fine and clear, and the Sun shone 

 very bright ; indeed it did not set all that night, which was 

 a convincing proof, without any observation, that we were then 

 considerably to the North of the Arctic Polar Circle. 



22d. As soon as the fine weather began, we set out and walked 

 about seven or eight miles to the Northward, when we [119] 

 came to a branch of Conge-ca-tha-wha-chaga River ^ ; on the 



['■ Cogead Lake. — This lake has been identified by Sir J. Richardson with 

 Contwoy-to or Rum Lake of Franklin, the name which it bore in his day among 

 the Copper Indians. Sir J. Franklin says of it : "The lake is called by them 

 Contwoy-to or Rum Lake, in consequence of Mr. Hearne having here given 

 the Indians who accompanied him some of that liquor." It lies in N. latitude 

 65° 50', a long way south of the Arctic circle, and therefore Hearne is in error 

 in the next paragraph when he says that the sun " did not set all that night." 

 Mr. Frank Russell visited this district in 1894, and he speaks of a large lake 

 called by the Indians Ko-a-ka-tcai-ti which he thinks must be the Rum Lake 

 of Franklin, and consequently the Cogead Lake of Hearne (" Explorations in 

 the Far North," by Frank Russell, 1898, p. 113).] 



[* This place has also been identified by Sir John Franklin, who says : 

 "We subsequently learned from the Copper Indians that the part at which we 

 had crossed the (Anatessy) river was the Congecathawhachaga of Hearne, of 

 which I had little idea at the time" ("First Journey," p. 405). Sir John 



