A Journey from Prince of Wales's Fort in Hudson's Bay to the Northern Ocean Part 5

Accordingly, in the middle of the night, or rather in the morning, the French came before the Fort, marched up to the gate, and demanded entrance. Mr. Barlow, who was then on the watch, told them that the Governor was asleep, but he would get the keys immediately. The French, hearing this, expected no opposition, and flocked up to the gate as close as they could stand. Barlow took the advantage of this opportunity, and instead of opening the gate, only opened two port holes, where two six-pounders stood loaded with grape shot, which were instantly fired. This discharge killed great numbers of the French, and among them the Commander, who was an Irishman.

Such an unexpected reception made the remainder retire with great precipitation; and the Master of the sloop hearing the guns, made the best of his way up to the Fort; but some of the French who lay concealed under the banks of the river killed him, and all the boat's crew.

The French retired from this place with reluctance; for some of them were heard shooting in the neighbourhood of the Fort ten days after they were repulsed; and one man in particular walked up and down the platform leading from the gate of the Fort to the Launch for a whole day. Mr.

Fullarton, who was then Governor at Albany, spoke to him in French, and offered him kind quarters if he chose to accept them; but to those proposals he made no reply, and only shook his head. Mr. Fullarton then told him, that unless he would resign himself up as a prisoner, he would most a.s.suredly shoot him; on which the man advanced nearer the Fort, and Mr. Fullarton shot him out of his chamber window. Perhaps the hards.h.i.+ps this poor man expected to encounter in his return to Canada, made him prefer death; but his refusing to receive quarter from so humane and generous an enemy as the English, is astonis.h.i.+ng.

[E] I have seen the remains of those houses several times; they are on the West side of the harbour, and in all probability will be discernible for many years to come.

It is rather surprising, that neither Middleton, Ellis, Christopher, Johnston, nor Garbet, who have all of them been at Marble Island, and some of them often, ever discovered this harbour; particularly the last-mentioned gentleman, who actually sailed quite round the island in a very fine pleasant day in the Summer of 1766. But this discovery was reserved for a Mr. Joseph Stephens! a man of the least merit I ever knew, though he then had the command of a vessel called the _Success_, employed in the whale-fishery; and in the year 1769, had the command of the _Charlotte_ given to him, a fine brig of one hundred tons; when I was his mate.

[F] The conditions offered me on this occasion cannot be better expressed than in the Company's own words, which I have transcribed from their private letter to me, dated 25th May 1769:

"From the good opinion we entertain of you, and Mr. Norton's recommendation, we have agreed to raise your wages to ----[18] _per annum_ for two years, and have placed you in our Council at Prince of Wales's Fort; and we should have been ready to advance you to the command of the _Charlotte_, according to your request, if a matter of more immediate consequence had not intervened.

"Mr. Norton has proposed an inland Journey, far to the North of Churchill, to promote an extension of our trade, as well as for the discovery of a North West Pa.s.sage, Copper Mines, &c.; and as an undertaking of this nature requires the attention of a person capable of taking an observation for determining the longitude and lat.i.tude, and also distances, and the course of rivers and their depths, we have fixed upon you (especially as it is represented to us to be your own inclination) to conduct this Journey, with proper a.s.sistants.

"We therefore hope you will second our expectations in readily performing this service, and upon your return we shall willingly make you any acknowledgment suitable to your trouble therein.

"We highly approve of your going in the _Speedwell_, to a.s.sist on the whale-fishery last year, and heartily wish you health and success in the present expedition.

"We remain your loving Friends,

"BIBYE LAKE, Dep. Gov.

"JOHN ANTHONY MERLE.

"ROBERT MERRY.

"SAMUEL WEGG.

"JAMES WINTER LAKE.

"HERMAN BERENS.

"JOSEPH SPURREL.

"JAMES FITZ GERALD."

The Company had no sooner perused my Journals and Charts, than they ordered a handsome sum to be placed to the credit of my account; and in the two first paragraphs of their letter to me, dated 12th May 1773, they express themselves in the following words:

"Mr. SAMUEL HEARNE,

"SIR,--Your letter of the 28th August last gave us the agreeable pleasure to hear of your safe return to our Factory. Your Journal, and the two charts you sent, sufficiently convince us of your very judicious remarks.

"We have maturely considered your great a.s.siduity in the various accidents which occurred in your several Journies. We hereby return you our grateful thanks; and to manifest our obligation we have consented to allow you a gratuity of ----[19] for those services."

As a farther proof of the Company's being perfectly satisfied with my conduct while on that Journey, the Committee unanimously appointed me Chief of Prince of Wales's Fort in the Summer of 1775; and Mr. Bibye Lake, who was then Governor, and several others of the Committee, honoured me with a regular correspondence as long as they lived.

[18] Stated by Beckles Willson to be 130.

[19] Stated by Beckles Willson to be 200.

[G] By the Home-guard Indians we are to understand certain of the natives who are immediately employed under the protection of the Company's servants, reside on the plantation, and are employed in hunting for the Factory.[20]

[20] The Southern or Homeguard Indians here referred to were Crees, one of the most numerous tribes of the Algonquian family. The Northern Indians were Chipewyans, a tribe of the Tinne family.

[H] The Calimut is a long ornamented stem of a pipe, much in use among all the tribes of Indians who know the use of tobacco. It is particularly used in all cases of ceremony, either in making war or peace; at all public entertainments, orations, &c.

[I] No convenient opportunity offered during my last Journey, except one, on the 22d March 1771; and as nothing material had happened during that part of my Journey, I thought there was not any necessity for sending an extract of my Journal; I therefore only sent a Letter to the Governor, informing him of my situation with respect to lat.i.tude and longitude, and some account of the usage which I received from the natives, &c.

[J] By mistake in my former Journal and Draft called Arathapefcow.

[K] This was barely probable, as Matonabbee at that time had not any information of this Journey being set on foot, much less had he received orders to join me at the place and time here appointed; and had we accidentally met, he would by no means have undertaken the Journey without first going to the Factory, and there making his agreement with the Governor; for no Indian is fond of performing any particular service for the English, without first knowing what is to be his reward. At the same time, had I taken that rout on my out-set, it would have carried me some hundreds of miles out of my road. See my Track on the Map in the Winter 1770, and the Spring 1771.

[L] I was not provided with instruments for cutting on stone; but for form-sake, I cut my name, date of the year, &c., on a piece of board that had been one of the Indian's targets, and placed it in a heap of stones on a small eminence near the entrance of the river, on the South side.

[M] There is certainly no harm in making out all Instructions in the fullest manner, yet it must be allowed that those two parts might have been omitted with great propriety; for as neither Middleton, Ellis, nor Christopher were able to penetrate far enough up those inlets to discover any kind of herbage except moss and gra.s.s, much less woods, it was not likely those parts were so materially altered for the better since their times, as to make it worth my while to attempt a farther discovery of them; and especially as I had an opportunity, during my second Journey, of proving that the woods do not reach the sea-coast by some hundreds of miles in the parallel of Chesterfield's Inlet. And as the edge of the woods to the Northward always tends to the Westward, the distance must be greatly increased in the lat.i.tude of Wager Strait.

Those parts have long since been visited by the Company's servants, and are within the known limits of their Charter; consequently require no other form of possession.

[N] See the preceding Note.

[O] The Continent of America is much wider than many people imagine, particularly Robson, who thought that the Pacific Ocean was but a few days journey from the West coast of Hudson's Bay. This, however, is so far from being the case, that when I was at my greatest Western distance, upward of five hundred miles from Prince of Wales's Fort, the natives, my guides, well knew that many tribes of Indians lay to the West of us, and they knew no end to the land in that direction; nor have I met with any Indians, either Northern or Southern, that ever had seen the sea to the Westward. It is, indeed, well known to the intelligent and well-informed part of the Company's servants, that an extensive and numerous tribe of Indians, called E-arch-e-thinnews, whose country lies far West of any of the Company's or Canadian settlements, must have traffic with the Spaniards on the West side of the Continent; because some of the Indians who formerly traded to York Fort, when at war with those people, frequently found saddles, bridles, muskets, and many other articles, in their possession, which were undoubtedly of Spanish manufactory.

I have seen several Indians who have been so far West as to cross the top of that immense chain of mountains which run from North to South of the continent of America. Beyond those mountains all rivers run to the Westward. I must here observe, that all the Indians I ever heard relate their excursions in that country, had invariably got so far to the South, that they did not experience any Winter, nor the least appearance of either frost or snow, though sometimes they have been absent eighteen months, or two years.[21]

[21] In the year 1745 Anthony Hendry, under instructions from the Hudson's Bay Company, had travelled inland from York Factory to the upper waters of the Saskatchewan River, where he met the E-arch-e-thinnews or Blackfeet Indians.

[P] As to a pa.s.sage through the continent of America by the way of Hudson's Bay, it has so long been explored, notwithstanding what Mr.

Ellis has urged in its favour, and the place it has found in the visionary Map of the American Traveller, that any comment on it would be quite unnecessary. My lat.i.tude only will be a sufficient proof that no such pa.s.sage is in existence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A NORTH-WEST VIEW OF PRINCE OF WALES'S FORT IN HUDSON'S BAY, NORTH AMERICA By Samuel Hearne, 1777]

A JOURNEY TO THE NORTHERN OCEAN.

CHAP. I.

Transactions from my leaving Prince of Wales's Fort on my first expedition, till our arrival there again.

_Set off from the Fort--Arrive at Po-co-ree-kis-co River--One of the Northern Indians desert--Cross Seal River, and walk on the barren grounds--Receive wrong information concerning the distance of the woods--Weather begins to be very cold, provisions all expended and nothing to be got--Strike to the Westward, arrive at the woods, and kill three deer--Set forward in the North West quarter, see the tracks of musk-oxen and deer, but killed none--Very short of provisions--Chawchinahaw wants us to return--Neither he nor his crew contribute to our maintenance--He influences several of the Indians to desert--Chawchinahaw and all his crew leave us--Begin our return to the factory; kill a few partridges, the first meal we had had for several days--Villany of one of the home Indians and his wife, who was a Northern Indian woman--Arrive at Seal River, kill two deer; partridges plenty--Meet a strange Northern Indian, accompany him to his tent, usage received there; my Indians a.s.sist in killing some beaver--Proceed toward home, and arrive at the Fort._

[Sidenote: 1769. November 6th.]

[Sidenote: 1769. November.]

Having made every necessary arrangement for my departure on the sixth of November, I took leave of the Governor, and my other friends, at Prince of Wales's Fort, and began my journey, under the salute of seven cannon.

[Sidenote: 8th.]