It may be guessed that the sudden eruption of "the peddlers," these bush banditti, these Scotch soldiers of fortune with French bullies for fighters, roused the ancient and honorable Hudson's Bay Company from its half-century slumber of peace. Anthony Hendry, who had gone up the Saskatchewan far as the Blackfoot country of the foothills, they had dismissed as a liar in the fifties because he had reported that he had seen _Indians on horseback_, whereas the sleepy factors of the bay ports knew very well they never saw any kind of Indians except Indians in canoes; but now in the sixties it is noted by the company that not so many furs are coming down from the Up Country. It is voted "the French Canadian peddlers of Montreal" be notified of the company's exclusive monopoly to the trade of these regions. One Findley is sent to Quebec to look after the Hudson's Bay Company's rights; but while the English company _talks_ about its rights, the Nor'westers go in the field and _take_ them. The English company rubs its eyes and sits up and scratches its heavy head, and passes an order that Mr. Moses Norton, chief {296} factor of Churchill, send Mr. Samuel Hearne to explore the Up Country. Hearne has heard of Far-Away-Metal River, far enough away in all conscience from the Canadian peddlers; and thither in December, 1770, he finds his way, after two futile attempts to set out. Matonabbee, great chief of the Chippewyans, is his guide,--Matonabbee, who brings furs from the Athabasca, and is now accompanied by a regiment of wives to act as beasts of burden in the sledge traces, camp servants, and cooks. Hearne sets out in midwinter in order to reach the Coppermine River in summer, by which he can descend to the Arctic in canoes. Storm or cold, bog or rock, Matonabbee keeps fast pace, so fast he reaches the great caribou traverse before provisions have dwindled and in time for the spring hunt. Here all the Indian hunters of the north gather twice a year to hunt the vast herds of caribou going to the seashore for summer, back to the Up Country for the winter, herds in countless thousands upon thousands, such multitudes the clicking of the horns sounds like wind in a leafless forest, the tramp of the hoofs like galloping cavalry. Store of meat is laid up for Hearne's voyage by Matonabbee's Indians; and a band of warriors joins the expedition to go down Coppermine River. If Hearne had known Indian customs as well as he knew the fur trade, he would have known that it boded no good when Matonabbee ordered the women to wait for his return in the Athabasca country of the west. Absence of women on the march meant only one of two things, a war raid or hunt, and which it was soon enough Hearne learned. They had come at last, on July 12, 1771, on Coppermine River, a mean little stream flowing over rocky bed in the Barren Lands of the Little Sticks (Trees), when Hearne noticed, just above a cataract, the domed tepee tops of an Eskimo camp.