the Clerk of the "California", a pseudonym which hides the name of Drage.[1]
The hope of a northwest passage from Hudson Bay was now mainly anchored to Chesterfield Inlet, which in 1761 was explored by Christopher. Next summer he and Norton found that Baker Lake has no outlet. There is no report of these voyages, but they are briefly referred to in the preface to James Cook & King's Voyage to the Pacific Ocean 1776–80.[2] In 1791–92 Charles Duncan explored Rankin Inlet and Chesterfield Inlet with Baker Lake but, it would seem, without anything being published of this voyage other than a few lines in Barrow.[3] As at the same time Vancouver proved that on the North Pacific coast no strait opened to Hudson Bay, whilst Hearne's and Mackenzie's journeys established the continuation of the American mainland north of the Arctic circle, all hope of a commercially important northwest passage had to be definitely abandoned.
We have followed the discoveries along the coast which bounds the territory of the Caribou Eskimos and the regions bordering upon it, and it will be clear that these voyages have not yielded much in the way of ethnographic material. Here we will for a moment discontinue the historical statement in favour of the general descriptions of Hudson Bay which saw the light in the 18th century. There are only a few, and of these Dobbs' has already been mentioned. The others are Robson's account of a six year's sojourn at York and Churchill between 1733 and 1747, Coats' work, which principally deals with navigation, and Umfreville's observations on the coast.[4] The authors had all been in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company, and it is true of them — at any rate of the first and the last — that they entertain no overwhelming love for their former employers. To a great extent their books contain a severe criticism of the company's policy, and they condemn, for instance, the casual manner in which trade was carried on with the Eskimos north of Churchill. This is naturally information of ethnographic value, but otherwise practically only the Indians are mentioned. Coats' description of the Eskimos obviously refers to Hudson Strait and the east side of the Bay.[5]
- ↑ Barrow 1818; 288.
- ↑ Cook & King, 1785; I xlv. A hand-made map from these voyages is preserved in the Admiralty in London. Cf. J. B. Tyrrell 1898; 38.
- ↑ Barrow 1818; 347.
- ↑ I have only seen Umfreville's book in German translation. A French account by Jérémie: Relation du detroit et de la baie de Hudson, 1720, has not been available to me.
- ↑ It is also the Eskimos of Hudson Strait that are mentioned in Bacqueville de la Potherie's Histoire de la nouvelle France, where besides d'Iberville's fights against the English in Hudson Bay are described at length.
