l899-'00 TRANSACTIONS 47 



it in every direction, lies like a world- Venice with the sea for 

 streets — Greater Britain."* 



Under these conditions England had little time and inclin- 

 ation to push those "western sailings of hardy navigators which 

 are our title deeds' ' to our Northern Island Fringe. 



While British troops were occupying Boston in 1769, Samuel 

 Hearne of the Hudson Ba^^ Company was making his first at- 

 tempt to find copper on the Coppermine River, an attempt, in 

 which at the end of three years, during which he travelled 1,000 

 miles on foot or in canoes, he was to achieve success and to be 

 the first white man to look upon the Arctic waters from the in- 

 terior. As he describes the occasion, the weather was decidedly 

 unfit for extended observation; a thick fog and a drizzling rain 

 greeted him as he stood on a small eminence near the mouth of 

 the river, cutting his name on a board in sign of the extension of 

 the Hudson Bay Company's possessions to that point, else he 

 might possibly have looked across the waters and seen the great 

 island now called Prince Albert I^and and included in the 

 District of Franklin. 



Though the English were not much in evidence in Polar 

 seas during the i8th century for the reason that it was a fighting 

 century with 194 battles as its record, Davis Strait did not lack 

 visitors. The Dutch prosecuted the whale fisheries so vigorously 

 that between 17 19 and 1775 they had made nearly 6,400 voyages, 

 an average of over 100 vessels a year. 



The second decade of the century now nearly run out had 

 not wholly passed when the English began to bestir themselves. 



The Peace of 18 14 had freed England from her American 

 entanglement. With the battle of Waterloo had ended Na- 

 poleon's career as a conqueror. 



Barrow is a frequent place-name in our Arctic possessions 

 and along our northern littoral. Barrow Strait ; Cape Barrow in 

 Victoria Land ; in Grinnell Eand ; in Coronation Gulf and near 



*Professor Seeley: "'Expansion of the Empire, 



