From the hills beside the Bloody Falls, as the cataract is called, the eye could discern at a distance of some eight miles the open water of the Arctic and the glitter of the ice beyond. Hearne followed the river along its precipitous and broken course till he stood upon the shore of the sea. One may imagine with what emotion he looked out upon that northern ocean to reach which he had braved the terrors of the Arctic winter and the famine of the barren grounds. He saw before him about three-quarters of a mile of open sea, studded with rocks and little islands: beyond that the clear white of the ice-pack stretched to the farthest horizon. Hearne viewed this scene in the bright sunlight of the northern day: but while he still lingered, thick fog and drizzling rain rolled in from the sea and shut out the view. For the sake of form, as he said, he {63} erected a pile of stones and took possession of the coast in the name of the Hudson's Bay Company. Then, filled with the bitterness of a vain quest, Hearne turned his face towards the south to commence his long march to the settlements. Up to this point nothing had been seen of the supposed mountains of copper which formed the principal goal of Hearne's undertaking. The eagerness of the Indians had led them to hasten directly to the camp of the Eskimos regardless of all else. But on the second day of the journey home, the guides led Hearne to the site of this northern Eldorado. It lay among the hills beside the Coppermine river at a spot thirty miles from the sea, and almost directly south of the mouth of the river. The prospect was strange. Some mighty force, as of an earthquake, seemed to have rent asunder the solid rock and strewn it in a confused and broken heap of boulders. Through these a rivulet ran to join the Coppermine. Here, said the Indians, was copper so great in quantity that it could be gathered as easily as one might gather stones at Churchill. Filled with a new eagerness, Hearne and his companions searched for four hours among the rocks. Here and there a few splinters of native {64} copper were seen. One piece alone, weighing some four pounds, offered a slight reward for their quest. This Hearne carried away with him, convinced now that the mountain of copper and the inexhaustible wealth of the district were mere fictions created by the cupidity of the savages or by the natural mystery surrounding a region so grim and inaccessible as the rocky gorge by which the Coppermine rushes to the cold seas of the north.