Laut describes the Governor as one of the most remarkable scoundrels known in the annals of the country, a tyrant who shrank not from murder, and that by the most cowardly of methods, the administering of poison.

At the fort was a zealous explorer, Samuel Hearne, who was eager to take up the quest. On November 6th, 1869, with two Indian guides, two hunters, and two English servants, he set out. For a month they averaged not ten miles a day; rations ran out; savages plundered the sleighs; the plan was abandoned two hundred miles from the fort. There was nothing to do but return. On February 3rd Hearne again set out with snowshoes and dog-teams, so as to reach the Arctic Circle in midsummer. By

April they reached the Barren Lands, Over which only the wolf pack roamed. For three days rations consisted of snow water and pipes of tobacco; but countless herds of caribou soon removed the fear of famine. The next winter Hearne spent with the northern Indians-one white man among hundreds of savages; but they plundered his ammunition and purloined his astronomical instruments. and again, after eight months' absence, he must return to Fort Prince of Wales. In two weeks, with recruited forces, he was off again. Christmas was celebrated by starvation, but again caribou came to the rescue. On June 21st he crossed the Arctic Circle, and the sun continued all night above the horizon.

On July 12th, 1771, the adventurers reached the far-off Metal River, or Great Coppermine River. "It was a disappointing discovery. It did not lead to China, nor did it point a way to the North-West passage. The great North-West was something more than a bridge between Europe and Asia; it was a world in itself, with its own destiny."

Hearne's rascally Indians attacked the sleeping Eskimo camp, most of whom they murdered. Horror of the massacre robbed Hearne of all an ex

eighteen months' absence. He had discovered Coppermine River, the Arctic Ocean, and the Athabasca country-a region in all as large as half European Russia. The infamous Norton having died miserably, Hearne became governor for the fort. For ten years nothing disturbed the calm of his rule. At length, in August, 1782, three great war-vessels flying the French flag appeared in the offing. Hearne had less than forty men to defend the fort against three warships of seventy to a hundred guns

house in Montreal, became a successful fur-trader in the North-West. "The reward of his success was to be exiled to the sub-arctics of the Atha

basca, six weeks' travel from any other fur post-not a likely field in which to play the hero. Yet Mackenzie emerged from the polar wil

TYPICAL MOUNTAIN TRAPPER.

derness bearing a name that ranks with Columbus and Cartier and La Salle."

Fort Chippewyan, his place of exile, received a mail but once in two years; yet his isolation could not subdue his enterprise. For fifty years the British. Government had offered a reward of £20,000 to any one who should discover a North-West passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific. The hope of such a passage had led many navigators on bootless voyages; and here was Mackenzie with the same bee in his bonnet.

In June, 1789, with a band of Indian guides and canoemen, he launched his canoe brigade down the current of the Athabasca. On they swept, past the Peace River, whose mouth was a mile wide, and reached the Great Slave Lake. Snow-capped mountains loomed to the west. Win

The Indians chased whales all day in their canoes. While skirting the shore, Mackenzie discovered the bank of the river to be on fire. It was the natural tar bed, which the Indians said had been burning for centuries, and is burning to-day, as when Mackenzie found it. The dauntless explorer had not found the North-West passage, but he had discovered the Mississippi of the north, the Mackenzie River.

Two years later he explored the great Peace River. With incredible toil he made his way with many portages, against the terrific current. Soon he crossed the Great Divide between the Atlantic and the Pacific and reached the sources of the Fraser. His frail craft was wrecked in its turbulent stream. Despite the mutiny of his voyageurs, he kept on. Rations were reduced to two meals a day. The canoes were abandoned and the start westward was begun on foot. After many hardships they reached at length a tidal estuary of the Pacific Ocean. "This was the sea-the Western Sea, that for three hundred years had baffled all search overland, and led the world's greatest explorers on a chase of a will-o'-the-wisp. What Cartier and La Salle and Verendrye failed to do, Mackenzie had accomplished." But his position was peri