Wuat Lies Beyonp tur Mountains? 37

sea and later by land as well. No one had
succeeded, nor had any, indeed, come near
to success; the outline of the sea-coast had
been filled in on the Atlantic side, in Hudson
Bay, and for part of the way up the Pacific
shore; Hearne nearly twenty years before
had reached the Arctic Ocean at the Copper-
mine River; but the Rockies had barred the
way of travellers across the prairies, and no
white man had penetrated their defiles.

The British government was interested
in securing an answer to the riddle. After
the failure of many attempts to find the
entrance to a North-West Passage from the
Atlantic, Captain Cook had been despatched
to see whether the problem was soluble from
the Pacific side; and in 1778, a few months
before he met his tragic end at the hands of
the natives of Hawaii, he had discovered, far
up the west coast, what he thought was the
mouth of a great river. Later Captain Van-
couver was sent out, in 1791, to follow up
Cook’s work. On more than one occasion the
government had also tried to stir up the
Hudson’s Bay Company from its lethargy, to