CH. XIX] 
Hearm 
169 
pines and dwarf willows on the river banks. In returning, 
he visited one of the surface copper mines. He gives an 
interesting account of the musk oxen, deer, wild geese, 
salmon, and other sources of food-supply, and of the 
building habits of beavers, and describes the Eskimo 
weapons and mode of life. 
On June 29th, 1772, Hearne returned to Fort Prince 
of Wales, and was soon afterwards rewarded by being 
made Governor. But in 1782 a French Expedition under 
La Perouse destroyed the fort, carrying off Hearne and 
the other Company's servants as prisoners. Hearne was 
several years a prisoner of war, and only returned to 
London to die. This disaster so affected the faithful 
Matonabi that he committed suicide. 
It was 18 years after Hearne's discovery of the mouth 
of the Coppermine that a young man named Alexander 
Mackenzie undertook to trace the course of another 
river, flowing north from the Great Slave Lake. This ex- 
plorer was not one of the Hudson's Bay Company's ser- 
vants, but at an early period of life he had been led, with 
commercial views, to the vast region north-west of Lake 
Superior. His voyage down the river which received his 
name was undertaken in six canoes, chiefly manned 
by French Canadians. Starting in June, 1789, he 
reached the numerous channels which form the estuary 
of the Mackenzie river on July 13th, and thus was the 
second European to reach the American polar ocean. 
The river journey was over 1000 miles in length. 
Mackenzie was knighted in recognition of the value of 
his discovery. 
It was in a year between the dates of the two river 
mouth discoveries that Captain Cook, during his third 
voyage, made his researches in the Arctic Sea between 
the two continents of Asia and America. The Resolution 
under the command of the great navigator himself, and 
the Discovery under Captain Clerke, were commissioned 
in 1776, but it was not until August, 1778, that they 
crossed the Arctic Circle. The first Lieutenant of the 
Discovery was James Burney, so well known to geo- 
graphers as the historian of voyages in the Pacific, and 
the writer of an interesting account of Cook's Arctic 
discoveries. 
