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