To leave no room for a variety of opinion, however, he was ordered to repeat the voyage the ensuing summer, in the same sloop, and Mr Norton, in a cutter, was appointed to attend him.  By the favour of the governor and committee of the company, the journals of Captain Christopher, and of Mr Norton, and Captain Christopher’s chart of the inlet, have been readily communicated.  From these authentic documents, it appears that the search and examination of Chesterfield’s Inlet was now completed.  It was found to end in a fresh-water lake, at the distance of about one hundred and seventy miles from the sea.  This lake was found also to be about twenty-one leagues long, and from five to ten broad, and to be completely closed up on every side, except to the west, where there was a little rivulet; to survey the state of which, Mr Norton and the crew of the cutter having landed, and marched up the country, saw that it soon terminated in three falls, one above another, and not water for a small boat over them; and ridges, mostly dry from side to side, for five, or six miles higher.

Thus ends Chesterfield’s Inlet, and all Mr Ellis’s expectations of a passage through it to the western ocean.  The other parts of the coast, from latitude 62 deg., to the South Point of Main, within which limits hopes were also entertained of finding a passage, have, of late years, been thoroughly explored.  It is here that Pistol Bay is situated; which the author who has writ last in this country, on the probability of a north-west passage,[42] speaks of as the only remaining part of Hudson’s Bay where this western communication may exist.  But this has been also examined; and, on the authority of Captain Christopher, we can assure the reader, that there is no inlet of any consequence in all that part of the coast.  Nay, he has, in an open boat, sailed round the bottom of what is called Pistol Bay, and, in stead of a passage to a western sea, found it does not run above three or four miles inland.

[Footnote 42:  Printed for Jeffreys, in 1768.  His words are, “There remains then to be searched for the discovery of a passage, the opening called Pistol Bay, in Hudson’s Bay,” p. 122—­D]

Besides these voyages by sea, which satisfy us that we must not look for a passage to the south of 67 deg. of latitude, we are indebted to the Hudson’s Bay Company for a journey by land, which has thrown much additional light on this matter, by affording what may be called demonstration, how much farther north, at least in some part of their voyage, ships must hold their course, before they can pass from one side of America to the other.  The northern Indians, who come down to the company’s forts for trade, had brought to the knowledge of our people, the existence of a river, which, from copper abounding near it, had got the name of the Copper-mine River.  We read much about this river in Mr Dobbs’s publications, and he considers the Indian accounts of it as favourable