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 assist in the whale-fishery last year, and heartily wish you health and success in the present expedition. We remain your loving friends, Bibye Lake, Deputy Governor. John Anthony Merle. Robert Merry. Samuel Wegg. James Winter Lake. Herman Berens. Joseph Sparrel. James FitzGerald. [72] "No man," says Hearne, "either English or Indian, ever found a bit of copper in that country to the south of the seventy-first degree of latitude, unless it had been accidentally dropped by some of the far northern Indians on their way to the Company's factory." [73] "This leader," says Hearne, "when a youth, resided several years at the above Fort and was not only a perfect master of the Southern Indian language, but by being frequently with the Company's servants had acquired several words of English and was one of the men who brought the latest accounts of the Coppermine River. It was on his information, added to that of one I-dot-le-ezry (who is since dead), that this expedition was set on foot." [74] "I cannot sufficiently regret," wrote Hearne in 1796, "the loss of a considerable vocabulary of the northern Indian language, containing sixteen folio pages, which was lent to the late Mr. Hutchins, then corresponding secretary to the Company, to copy for Captain Duncan, when he went on discoveries to Hudson's Bay in the year 1790. But Mr. Hutchins dying soon after, the vocabulary was taken away with the rest of his effects and cannot now be recovered, and memory, at this time, will by no means serve to replace it." [75] The Company had previously written thus to its servant, 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 convinces us of your very judicious remarks. We have, naturally, considered your great assiduity in the various accidents which occurred in your several journeys. We hereby return you our grateful thanks, and to manifest our obligation we have consented to allow you a gratuity of £200 for those services. [76] "Mr. Dalrymple, in one of his pamphlets relating to Hudson's Bay, has been so very particular in his observations on my journey, as to remark that I have not explained the construction of the quadrant which I had the misfortune to break in my second journey to the North. It was a Hadley quadrant, with a bubble attached to it for a horizon, and made by Daniel Scatlif, of Wapping."--_Hearne._ CHAPTER XXVI. 1773-1782.