388 



A JOURNEY TO THE SHORES 



less than the direct distance between the Copper-Mine River and 

 Repulse Bay ; supposing the latter to be in the longitude assigned 

 to it by Middleton. 



When the many perplexing incidents which occurred during the 

 survey of the coast are considered in connexion with the shortness 

 of the period, during which operations of the kind can be carried on, 

 and the distance we had to travel before we could gain a place of 

 shelter for the winter, I trust it will be judged that we prosecuted 

 the enterprise as far as was prudent, and abandoned it only under 

 a well-founded conviction that a further advance would endanger 

 the lives of the whole party, and prevent the knowledge of what had 

 been done from reaching England. The active assistance I received 

 from the officers, in contending with the fears of the men, demands 

 my warmest gratitude. 



Our researches, as far as they have gone, seem to favour the 

 opinion of those who contend for the practicability of a North-West 

 Passage. The general line of coast probably runs east and west, 

 nearly in the latitude assigned to Mackenzie's River, the Sound into 

 which Kotzebue entered, and Repulse Bay; and very little doubt 

 can, in my opinion, be entertained of the existence of a continued 

 sea, in or about that line of direction. The existence of whales too, 

 on this part of the coast, evidenced by the whalebone we found in 

 Esquimaux Cove, may be considered as an argument for an open 

 sea ; and a connexion with Hudson's Bay is rendered more probable 

 from the same kind of fish abounding on the coasts we visited, and on 

 those to the north of Churchill River. I allude more particularly 

 to the Capelin or Salmo Arcticus, which we found in large shoals in 

 Bathurst's Inlet, and which not only abounds, as Augustus told us, 

 in the bays in his country, but swarms in the Greenland firths*. 



* Arctic Zoology, vol. ii, p. 394. 



