172 JOURNEY TO THE NORTHERN OCEAN 



I77I- course to the North West by West ; and after walking about 

 nine or ten miles, a 

 Copper-mine River.^ 



•^" ^' nine or ten miles, arrived at that long wished-for spot, the 



[^ He reached the Coppermine River at Sandstone Rapids, having travelled 

 one hundred and forty-five miles north-westward from Congecathawhachaga in 

 thirteen days, making an average of eleven miles a day, or, omitting the two 

 days on which the party did not travel, an average of thirteen miles a day. The 

 distance stated in the text is one hundred and eighty-eight miles. Considering 

 the very rough nature of the country over which he was travelling, this is not a 

 very extravagant estimate nor a very unreasonable error. While his estimate 

 of distance is not very bad, his direction should have been N. 58° W. instead of 

 N. 23° W., as shown on his map. Mr. Frank Russell, who crossed the Copper- 

 mine River in the spring of 1894 while on a hunt for musk oxen, says that its 

 present Chipewyan name is Tson Te (" Explorations in the Far North," 

 p. 112). 



In 1821 Sir John Franklin explored and surveyed this river from Point Lake 

 to the Arctic Ocean, a distance of about two hundred and seventy-five miles. 

 Its length above Point Lake is not known, but it is probably about two hundred 

 miles. A short distance below Point Lake Franklin says that it " is about two 

 hundred yards wide and ten feet deep, and flows very rapidly over a rocky 

 bottom " (" First Journey," p. 327). 



Sir John Richardson writes of the river farther north as follows : " The 

 river contracting to a width of a hundred and twenty yards at length forces 

 itself through the Rocky Defile^ a narrow channel which it has cut during a 

 lapse of ages in the shelving foot of a hill" (" First Journey," p. 527).] 



