including a View of previous Discoveries . %37 
now appeared, that, after leaving the Atlantic, and before en- 
tering the Pacific, he would have above a fourth of the circum- 
ference of the globe of unknown sea to traverse. On seeing 
Hudson’s and Baffin’s Bays seemingly inclosed on all sides, and 
the coast from Behring’s Straits stretching north, the impression 
arose, of a mass of land stretching indefinitively towards the 
pole, or at least not terminating short of the 80th parallel of la- 
titude ; and, upon this principle, all the maps were for some 
time constructed. A new and opposite light, however, rose 
from an opposite quarter. Hearne declares, that whatever re- 
luctance against discovery the Hudson’s Bay Company might 
have formerly shewn, all that he had seen had been of a quite 
opposite tenor. He himself was employed by them on an im- 
portant land expedition to the north, partly in search of a cop- 
per mine reported to exist on a river there, and partly to ascer- 
tain whether, according to reports which came from various 
quarters, there was a sea in that direction. Hearne, being aid- 
ed by a party of Indians proceeding with a most savage pur- 
pose against the Esquimaux, actually succeeded in reaching the 
river, the copper mine, and finally the shore of the northern sea. 
He placed it in about 73° North Lat. ; but Mr Dairy mple, from 
Hearne’s own data, cut it down to 69° or 70°. In 1789, ad- 
ditional information was obtained. At Montreal a body of 
merchants had formed themselves into a firm called the North 
West Company, for the purpose of carrying on the fur trade. 
With the activity of freedom, they had succeeded in supplant- 
ing, to a great extent, the favoured and privileged exertions of 
the Hudson’s Bay Company. Their agent Mr Mackenzie, af- 
terwards Sir Alexander, was employed to make several explo- 
ratory journeys, in one of which he discovered the sea in near- 
ly the same latitude, and about twenty degrees to the westward 
of the mouth of Hearne’s River. These facts suggested a view 
of American geography quite different from that which had 
been first suggested by Cook’s discoveries. The sea being 
found at these two points, and at the Icy Cape of Cook, near- 
ly in the same latitude, there arose the strongest presumption 
- that, in or about that latitude, it washed and bounded the 
whole northern coast of America. 
