The young man was instructed to make his {40} way to the Athabaska country and thence to find if he could the river of the north whence the copper came, and to trace the river to the sea. He was to note the position of any mines, to prepare the way for trade with the Indians, and to find out from travel or enquiry whether there was a water passage through the continent. Two white men (a sailor and a landsman) were sent in Hearne's service. He had as guides an Indian chief, Chawchinahaw, with a small band of his followers. On November 6, 1769, the little party set out, honoured by a salute of seven guns from the huge fortress of Fort Prince of Wales, the massive ruins of which still stand as one of the strangest monuments of the continent. The country which the explorer was to traverse in this and his succeeding journeys may be ranked among the most inhospitable regions of the earth. The northern limit of the great American forest runs roughly in a line north-westward from Churchill to the mouth of the Mackenzie river. East and north of this line is the country of the barren grounds, for the most part a desolate waste of rock. It is broken by precipitous watercourses and wide lakes, and has no vegetation except the mosses and grasses which support great wandering {41} herds of caribou. A few spruce trees and hardy shrubs struggle northward from the limits of the great woods. Even these die out in the bitter climate, and then the explorer sees about him nothing but the wide waste of barren rock and running water or in winter the endless mantle of the northern snow.