COMMITTEE BA Y DISCO VERED. 401 



up the stream above mentioned. Late at night the men returned after anr 

 absence of fourteen hours. With great labour they had succeeded in drag- 

 ging the boat three miles up the stream through a succession of rapids, in 

 which the channel was so obstructed with boulders that most of the party 

 were almost constantly up to the waist in ice-cold water extricating the boat 

 from among the rocks. The worst part of the stream, however, had now 

 been passed, and the boat had been left at a point only a mile and a half 

 from the lake from which it issued. Early next morning the men were 

 sent away, each carrying a load, to where the boat lay, and the leader him- 

 self, having left two men to guard the property on the shore, followed after 

 mid-day. 



Eae was now engaged in the exploration of hitherto unknown land. His 

 route was north-north-west, alternately poling or tracking along successive 

 lakes, or carrying the provisions and dragging the boats over intervening 

 portages. On the 29th, he came upon the largest lake he had yet seen, and 

 named it Christie Lake. On the same day he had the equally great gratifi- 

 cation of shooting a fine buck with an inch and a half of fat on his haunches ; 

 and in the evening, after a fatiguing walk over hill and dale, he obtained the 

 first glimpse of the. sea of which he was in search, and which he found 

 covered everywhere with solid ice. The advance during the next two days 

 was slow and laborious; but on the afternoon of the 1st August, after 

 traversing a lake, the shores of which were covered with rich pasturage* 

 and a great variety of flowers, the " North Pole " was dragged over many 

 shallows to high-water mark of the unknown Arctic Sea, in lat. 67° 13' N., 

 long. 87° 30' W. ; and Eae beheld before him a wide expanse of icy ocean 

 that had never before been seen by any civilised man. The native name of 

 this immense bay on the west side of Melville Peninsula is Akkoolee. It 

 is now known as Committee Bay, the southernmost arm of Prince Regent 

 Inlet. 



Early next morning as Eae was trying to force a passage along the ice- 

 encumbered shore, he passed a small point on which were two Eskimo tents. 

 He landed with an interpreter, and called once or twice outside the door of 

 one of the tents, when an old woman, apparently just out of bed, made 

 . her appearance, drawing on her great boots. She showed no symptoms of 

 alarm though Eae was the first European she had ever seen. Her husband 

 soon appeared, and their report of the state of the ice in Committee Bay was 

 anything but encouraging. " From a chart drawn by the woman, who, as is 

 usual (at least among the Eskimos), was much the more intelligent of the 

 two," writes gallant Dr Eae, " I was led to infer that there was no opening 

 leading into the large bay but through the Strait of the Fury and Hecla, 

 and Prince Eegent Inlet." 



Eae spent a number of days at the head of Committee Bay, in the vain 

 8 3e 



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