ch. xix] The Hudson s Bay Company 167 
settle the question in the sloop Churchill in 1761, and 
again with Captain Norton in 1762, when the survey of 
Chesterfield Inlet was completed. 
The next expedition of the servants of the Hudson's 
Bay Company was by land, and was conducted by 
Samuel Hearne, who had been a naval officer. Through 
the Indians who traded with the Company's factories 
rumours were received of a tribe which possessed copper 
mines on a river which emptied itself into a northern 
Hudson Bay. 
sea, and the Governor of Fort Prince of Wales on the 
Churchill river resolved to despatch an expedition to 
ascertain the truth of these rumours. 
Hearne made two false starts. In the first journey 
he was robbed by Indians, in the second, when some 
months on the way, he had to return owing to an acci- 
dent to his great Cotton's quadrant. At last he set out 
in December, 1770, under the guidance of a remarkable 
Indian chief, named Matonabi, and without any European 
companion. This guide was the son of a northern Indian 
by a slave woman. His father had died, and the boy 
