The Mapmaker's Eye: David Thompson on the Columbia Plateau

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The Mapmaker's Eye: David Thompson on the Columbia Plateau

Amazing epic tale of a life rich with discovery and analysis

Amazing epic tale of a life rich with discovery and analysis

The Mapmaker's Eye: David Thompson on the Columbia Plateau
Jack Nisbet
Manufacturer: Washington State University
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Sources of the River: Tracking David Thompson Across Western North America

Visible Bones: Journeys Across Time in the Columbia River Country

Epic Wanderer: David Thompson and the Mapping of the Canadian West

The Journals of Alexander MacKenzie: Exploring Across Canada in 1789 & 1793

Singing Grass, Burning Sage: Discovering Washington's Shrub-Steppe

ASIN: 0874222850

Customer Reviews:

The Mapmaker's Eye: David Thompson on the Columbia Plateau .......2006-04-11

David Thompson was a fur trader, explorer, and meticulous geographic surveyor. He was, and is, the English and Canadian counterpart of Lewis and Clark. He visited the Mandan villages on the Missouri River in 1798. He crossed the Continental Divide in 1807 and spent five winters on the west side of the divide trading with the Indians. He explored the Columbia River from its origin to the Pacific Ocean. He kept complete journals. He was a better writer than Meriwether Lewis, although not Lewis' equal as a naturalist. He took astronomical readings and did his own computations of both latitude and longitude. Because of this, his maps were much more accurate than those of William Clark. Later in his life, Thompson helped survey the boundary between Canada and the United States. Thompson's story is also the story of Charlotte, his half-Indian wife of 57 years who bore him 13 children. She and the first few children traveled with him in his explorations, including his first crossing of the Continental Divide. Jack Nisbet is also the author of "Sources of the River," another book about David Thompson. "The Mapmaker's Eye" is a bit more readable and is better illustrated

Amazing epic tale of a life rich with discovery and analysis.......2005-11-08

Mapmaker's Eye is the amazing biographical chronicle of the adventures of David Thompson, a Canadian fur trader, explorer, and cartographer respected as a hero in Canada yet largely unknown in the United States. From 1801 to 1812, Thompson established two effective trade routs across the Rocky Mountains in Canada and surveyed the 1,250 mile course of the Columbia River. Following his exploration days he transformed the mathematical notations from his dozens of journal notebooks into the first accurate maps of the northwest quadrant of North America. Some of his mapwork was even used by the Lewis and Clark expedition. Award-winning author Jack Nisbet presents Thompson's story in detail yet fully accessible to lay readers, along with a handful of black-and-white and color illustrations. Amazing epic tale of a life rich with discovery and analysis.

Amazing epic tale of a life rich with discovery and analysis.......2005-11-08

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Wonderful!
A terrific novel with a "you are there" approach for readers

The Accidental Indies
Robert Finley
Manufacturer: McGill-Queen's University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Customer Reviews:

Wonderful!.......2004-04-07

I'm not just saying that because I know the author. He's an amazing writer, and this is an amazing book.

A terrific novel with a "you are there" approach for readers.......2000-09-05

This tale of Christopher Columbus provides a vivid story of his expedition to the Caribbean, providing a fictionalized account of his earliest explorations and including a healthy dose of poetic description. A unique "you are there" approach brings the experience to life: "It is not disappointment, but surprise to find so little of what he had been thinking of, ghosting in on the making tide to a broad and shining bay. The bosun sounds the still water. At every fall the lead marks its own centre; ripples widening outward link with those before and after, the ship's course marked by this light chain."

Hudson's Bay Company Adventures: The Rollicking Saga of Canada's Fur Traders (Amazing Stories)

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Exciting Canadian fur-trading history

Hudson's Bay Company Adventures: The Rollicking Saga of Canada's Fur Traders (Amazing Stories)
Elle Andra-Warner
Manufacturer: Altitude Publishing (Canada)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Empire of the Bay: The Company of Adventurers that Seized a Continent

ASIN: 1551539586

Book Description

This sizzling, action-packed account of Canada's riotous early days recounts the schemes and schemers that launched a famous trading empire. From its earliest days, the Hudson's Bay Company battled everyone and everything just to survive.

Customer Reviews:

Exciting Canadian fur-trading history.......2004-07-14

The early fur-trading history of Canada was not about exploring as much as it was about making money...and the author has brought to the book some of the most exciting stories and adventurers of that era. I liked how the author included stories about Native peoples and their importance to the fur-trade in early Canada.

Les Sauvages Am?ricains: Representations of Native Americans in French and English Colonial Literature

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Les Sauvages Am?ricains: Representations of Native Americans in French and English Colonial Literature
Gordon M. Sayre
Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Coded Encounters: Writing, Gender, and Ethnicity in Colonial Latin America
Postcolonial Theory
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Tropic of Orange: A Novel

ASIN: 080784652X
Release Date: 1997-08-06

Book Description

Algonquian and Iroquois natives of the American Northeast were described in great detail by colonial explorers who ventured into the region in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Beginning with the writings of John Smith and Samuel de Champlain, Gordon Sayre analyzes French and English accounts of Native Americans to reveal the rhetorical codes by which their cultures were represented and the influence that these images of Indians had on colonial and modern American society. By emphasizing the work of Pierre François-Xavier Charlevoix, Joseph-François Lafitau, and Baron de Lahontan, among others, Sayre highlights the important contribution that French explorers and ethnographers made to colonial literature.

Book Description

Timed to coincide with the anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition is this remarkable account of Alexander Mackenzie--the explorer who beat Lewis and Clark across the North American continent. Mackenzie accomplished this feat an astounding twelve years before the Corps of Discovery. Drawing extensively on the journals of Mackenzie and other turn-of-the-century explorers--and featuring historical and contemporary photographs, illustrations, and maps--Hayes presents a lively portrait of the explorer who both preceded Lewis and Clark and provided an impetus for their expedition.

Customer Reviews:

First Crossing.......2007-09-25

This book is a welcome collection of facts about the stupendous exploits of Alexander Mackenzie's Canadian exploration. But the words are curiously bleak & dispassionate, and separate panels of information on the pages, intrude into the flow of the narrative.
What is needed now is for someone to take on the story, light it up with the raw romance of the period, paint the picture of the landscape, add colour photos of the places in the text, tell us about the man, and keep the size of the book down to normal.
Let us see the landscapes in all their glory.
The raw detailed story of the man remains to be told.

Illustrated throughout with maps and photographs.......2003-04-14

First Crossing by historian Derek Hayes is the amazing story of Alexander Mackenzie, and his trailblazing journey across the North American continent before civilized society conquered the North American wilderness. Illustrated throughout with maps and photographs in black-and-white and color, the deftly researched and meticulously reported details of Mackenzie's voyage vividly reconstruct an 18th Century expedition of truly insurmountable bravery and pivotally important discovery.

Not much new!.......2001-10-04

OK, there is some new information here. Mostly it seems that Hayes has helped illustrate the travels of Mackenzie, something that was not available previously. Barry Gough's book is notoriously lacking in any illustration of Mackenzie's voyages and Mackenzie's own book is virtually without useful illustration. Maybe having read the previous two books makes me jaded but Mackenzie's voyages can only be retold so many times.
Hayes has presented us with a slightly new take on telling the story with pictures, maps and historical vignettes but I hunger for a more thorough job. Perhaps more in the nature of Moulton's "Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition". Finding someone willing to wade through Mackenzie's rather impenetrable prose may be a challenge.
Notwithstanding the above this is probably the best explanation of Mackenzie's voyages since the original journals.

Following the Boulder Train: Travels with Prospectors and Rock Doctors

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An interesting tale, well told

Following the Boulder Train: Travels with Prospectors and Rock Doctors
Tom Henry
Manufacturer: Harbour Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1550173774

Book Description

Mining is BC's second largest industry but you'd never know it to visit any BC bookstore. Books on logging, fishing, and tourism are there in abundance, but the subject of mining is practically untouched. As Tom Henry proves beyond a doubt in this lively volume, it is not for any lack of wonderful stories about the men and women who have been bitten by the rock-chipping bug over the years. Henry ctually took a course in exploration geology and experienced first hand the unique way of looking at the world peculiar to mineral hunters. Every rock is an "outcrop" with a story to tell about the forces that formed the local landscape, and what mineral treasures may be hidden beneath.

Following the Boulder Train is full of remarkable life histories of legendary prospectors who made fortunes but couldn't take enough time away from bushwhacking to enjoy them, and of others who enjoyed them too much, making and losing so many fortunes they can't remember them all. The book offers memorable insights into the driven, obsessed world of mineral exploration and the mining industry in BC.

Customer Reviews:

An interesting tale, well told.......2007-06-21

I purchased Following the Boulder Train because I have a small interest in geology, a curiosity about prospectors, and a fascination with "finding the hidden thing." I enjoyed Tom Henry's tale of prospectors and geologist in British Columbia because it exposes at least part of the story of how we get, for example, the copper pipes under the bathroom sink. What makes this yarn really fun is that all of the folks involved in the search for valuable minerals (or learning to search for them) are interesting, quirky characters, and therein lies the tale. I found this book had two minor faults. (1) it would have been greatly improved by the inclusion of a few charts or diagrams to given a better idea of the land involved. (2) In a few places, Henry absolutely aced me with some Canadian slang that I found absolutely incomprehensible.

I recommend this book. Read it and you'll never look at a rock the same way again.

Sailor on Snowshoes: Tracking Jack London's Northern Trail

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A look at the creative roots and adventures of the legendary author
Jack London Exposed
2006 is the 100th anniversary of the publication of Jack London's White Fang
Fascinating true historical detective story

Sailor on Snowshoes: Tracking Jack London's Northern Trail
Dick North
Manufacturer: Harbour Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Great Writers - Jack London
The Mad Trapper of Rat River: A True Story of Canada's Biggest Manhunt
The Call of the Wild (Whole Story)

ASIN: 1550173847
Release Date: 2005-12-01

Book Description

In 1897, a 21-year-old unemployed Californian named Jack London borrowed funds so he could make his fortune in the Klondike. His life prior to the gold rush had been a story of toil and lean days. He knew how to pitch a tent, start a fire with minimal effort and how to go without either a fire or a blanket if circumstances required. He had lived in close quarters with sailors before the mast, tramps on the road and even convicts in jail.

Though London set sail for the Klondike to accumulate gold rather than write about it, in the back of his mind lurked a resolve to become a writer. Everywhere he wandered, his alert intellect absorbed the experiences and observations he would later organize into mesmerizing stories. His masterpieces about the gold rush--The Call of the Wild and White Fang--remain to this day the finest record of the atmosphere, the overlay of the cold, the romance and the stark nature of survival in the wilderness.

Sailor on Snowshoes is at once a regional history, page-turning mystery and Yukon yarn--a ramble through Jack London's gold rush to find and preserve its tangible relics. In particular, it is the story of the search for a holy grail--the Yukon bush cabin in which London wrote his name--expertly narrated by northern historian and journalist Dick North, for whom an idle conversation in a saloon turned into a life's work. Through his painstaking research and keen intellect, North offers new insight into London as a young man and the far-off land that inspired his fame.

Customer Reviews:

A look at the creative roots and adventures of the legendary author.......2007-05-17

I probably wouldn't have purchased this book if I didn't know the author. That would have been my loss. This is an enjoyable book for anyone who likes adventure, is interested in Jack London, Alaska, the Yukon and its gold rush history. The book is well researched and the author's enthusiasm for Jack London and Alaska and his search for London's cabin in the Yukon makes for a very enjoyable read. Dick's style reminds me of another participatory journalist, George Plimpton.

Jack London Exposed.......2007-03-09

This is a great book... author Dick North actually trod the same trails as the immortal Jack London, found Jack's old cabin in the Far North, and introuces us to many of the men who actually worked and suffered with London. Complete with many stunning pictures, this is a remarkable story of one of the world's greatest writers (who, incredibly, lived only to age 40). Thank the Lord that author North has lived a bit longer than that! Long enough to bring us this intimate review of London and his works...

2006 is the 100th anniversary of the publication of Jack London's White Fang.......2006-10-04

2006 is the 100th anniversary of the publication of Jack London's White Fang, but few may realize many of his masterpieces about the gold rush stemmed from a pioneer who envisioned making his own fortune in the Klondike in 1897. SAILOR ON SNOWSHOES: TRACKING JACK LONDON'S NORTHERN TRAIL is indispensable for any who would understand London's world: it surveys his gold rush experiences, his search for riches, and also chronicles a search for the Yukon bush cabin where London lived. Northern historian and journalist Dick North retraces London's footsteps and adds plenty of historical background and literary reference to bring his times to life.

Fascinating true historical detective story.......2006-07-25

Dick North is a veteran Jack London researcher and a fine former newspaperman in the U.S. and Yukon Territory. This new book is an excellent companion volume to Franklin Walker's Jack London in the Klondike (1966).

The subtitle is actually Tracking Jack London's Northern Trail.

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A "natural" love story
A tale of two loves...but you'll want more of both.
Storm-tossed and falling in love - with a place and a woman

Bay of Spirits: A Love Story
Farley Mowat
Manufacturer: Carroll & Graf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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No Man's River
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High Latitudes: An Arctic Journey

ASIN: 078671994X

Book Description

This is the story of a love affair with a people and a place, of the summers Farley Mowat spent sailing the Newfoundland coast with his wife Claire. It is an affectionate, unforgettable portrait of a time, a people, and a place, as well as the indomitable spirit of this island province.

Customer Reviews:

A "natural" love story.......2007-09-08

Farley Mowat writes a moving story about how he met his wife Claire by accident while trying to escape a vicious dog, and, in doing so, also "kills two birds with one stone" by portraying the colorful, insular people of Newfoundland in the 1950's as well as the inhabitants of the almost unheard of French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic off the coast of St. John, NF. I would highly recommend this book to those who enjoy learning about new places and people, and at the same time would want to curl up with a well-written love story.

A tale of two loves...but you'll want more of both........2007-08-19

This is the tale of two love stories -- one covered extensively, one almost glossed over by books' end.

Farley Mowat came to Newfoundland in the early 1960s and fell in love, both with the land and its people, and with a young artist named Claire Wheeler. It's the former that Mowat dwells upon most in this book, and as a reader I left frustrated because we learn so comparatively little about Claire and about their life together. It takes 1/3 of the book for Mowat to reveal that he was married when he met Claire, and that he the tug of his family -- including two sons -- delayed his eventual divorce. His former family is dismissed in a paragraph.

Having faced the music, Mowat settles down with Claire aboard his famously unseaworthy boat, "Happy Adventure", the star the classic "The Boat Who Wouldn't Float." Readers of "The Boat" will be startled by anecdotes, names and dates changing from one book to another. It gives creedence to the charge leveled against Mowat that he never lets the facts get in the way of a good story.

Ultimately this lovely book covers a period of but seven years, and ends just after Mowat's futile attempt to stop the people of his adopted home of Burgeo from killing a whale that has become trapped in a tidal pond. The whale died, the locals were savaged by the press, and the Mowats decided it was time to leave Burgeo and venture in Happy Adventure to Expo 67 (a voyage that nearly ended many times, if "The Boat" is to be believed.)

This is a wonderful book but I wanted more -- what happened to Happy Adventure? What happened to Mowat's sons? Where did they settle after the Expo trip? Much has happened between 1967 and now! -- I hope to hear more about the Mowat's voyages though these most interesting times.

Storm-tossed and falling in love - with a place and a woman.......2007-06-01

Farley Mowat's notion of an idyllic day's sail more often than not involves heavy seas in shallow, rocky waters, accompanied by gale force winds, pelting rain and/or pea-soup fog, in a leaky boat with engine issues.

Therefore armchair adventurers will enjoy this memoir of Mowat's 1960s love affair with "a special woman and a special world" as much as romantic sorts looking for travel among the bygone fishing villages of Newfoundland.

Readers familiar with Mowat, however, will know there must be bitter with the sweet. The Newfie fishing communities, fiercely independent and attached to their way of life like limpets to a rock, were in serious decline by the 1960s. The teeming schools of fish had disappeared under the relentless onslaught of the big fishing operations and the government wanted to resettle the fishermen in factory towns, bringing Newfoundland (which had only joined Canada in 1949) squarely into the 20th century.

The book opens with Mowat's harrowing and exhilarating trip aboard a 200-foot coastal steamer, one of six (now gone), which took freight and passengers to the outposts of Newfoundland, their main contact with the world.

"Newfoundland is of the sea. A mighty granite stopper thrust into the mouth of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, its coasts present more than five thousand miles of rocky headlands, bays, capes, and fiords to the sweep of the Atlantic. Everywhere hidden reefs, which are called, with dreadful explicitness, sunkers, wait to rip open the bellies of unwary vessels."

Though Mowat saw little of the coast, due to foul weather and impenetrable fog, he was hooked. He bought a fish-slimed schooner, renamed it Happy Adventure and arranged to have it refitted for cruising.

But, flying in to reclaim his refurbished boat, he makes a dismaying discovery. "My wishes had conflicted with centuries of tradition, which dictated that space allotted to people aboard a boat must be kept to the irreducible minimum so as to leave as much room as possible for fish."

Then, on its maiden voyage the boat sprung a leak, a serious leak. The bilge pump jammed, the fog rolled in, water engulfed the engine and they (Mowat and his friend and longtime publisher, Jack McClelland) luckily ran aground. Next trip out they realized they should have had the compass adjusted while fixing the leak.

It was while working on Happy Adventure that Mowat met Claire Wheeler, a Toronto artist. It was love at first sight, but after several mostly idyllic (including the requisite sprinkle of sudden storms, engine troubles and fog) the pair go their separate ways. Mowat was already married, with two small children, a fact he had previously failed to mention to the reader and which naturally casts a bit of a pall.

Though Mowat makes no excuses, his friends and family - and hers too - seem remarkably enthusiastic about the romance. Either his first marriage was something awful, which does not seem the case, or his memory has reshaped itself. Eventually Mowat tells his wife and goes off with Claire.

They take up residence in Burgeo, Newfoundland, and continue spending summers sailing the coast and meeting its people. While a few communities are insular and suspicious, most are immediately hospitable, inviting the couple into their homes for meals, drink, stories and, when called for, a bed.

Arriving in Francois (Fransway) during a Force 7 gale, he and Claire are taken in by a friend who fed them rabbit soup and roast caribou. Mowat then "learned that it would be necessary for Les to take us to visit every single one of the family connections to show he and Carol weren't trying to hoard us. Visitors had to be shared, just like everything else in an outpost."

The anecdotes and tall tales Mowat collects form an endlessly fascinating portrait of people's work lives, bravery, quirks, superstitions, and customs. These are seamlessly complemented by historical research and interviews, documenting the long and inexorable decline of a proud, hardscrabble way of life. There is regret and sadness, but no self-pity among the Newfies.

Mowat has written more than 40 books, mostly about the people, places, creatures and history of a rapidly disappearing natural world. While this book meanders more than some, his customary passion, humor and eloquence draw the reader into his world.

But it's a world in which he remains an outsider. He is reminded of this from time to time, but the senseless killing of a lone whale (documented in "A Whale for the Killing") stranded in a nearby lake, ends the book and the Mowats' happy sojourn in Burgeo. Though many disapproved of the louts who slaughtered the whale for sport, more disapproved of Mowats' actions in bringing the press down upon them.

A postscript lists other Mowat Newfoundland books, including "This Rock Within the Sea" "Sea of Slaughter," and "The Farfarers." "The Boat Who Wouldn't Float" describes his restoration of the Happy Adventure.

Frank Barr: Bush Pilot in Alaska and the Yukon (Caribou Classics)

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Frank Barr: Bush Pilot in Alaska and the Yukon (Caribou Classics)
Dermot Cole
Manufacturer: Graphic Arts Center Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Noel Wien: Alaska Pioneer Bush Pilot (Classic Reprint Series (Fairbanks, Alaska), No. 7.)
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Arctic Bush Pilot

ASIN: 088240525X

Book Description

Meet Frank Barr, who flew every early plane from the Jenny to the Super Cub, carrying passengers and freight to remote villages in Alaska and the Yukon.

Ancient Mariner: The Arctic Adventures of Samuel Hearne, the Sailor Who Inspired Coleridge's Masterpiece

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Truth is more amazing than fiction
A stroll in the woods

Ancient Mariner: The Arctic Adventures of Samuel Hearne, the Sailor Who Inspired Coleridge's Masterpiece
Ken McGoogan
Manufacturer: Carroll & Graf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Fatal Passage: The Story of John Rae, the Arctic Hero Time Forgot
ICE MASTER, THE: THE DOOMED 1913 VOYAGE OF THE KARLUK

ASIN: 0786713046

Book Description

Though immortalized by Samuel Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” few people know that eighteenth-century British adventurer Samuel Hearne became the first European to see the Arctic Ocean while standing on America’s northernmost shore. In Ancient Mariner, McGoogan demonstrates that Hearne was far more complex, accomplished, and influential than history has shown. A Royal Navy midshipman during the Seven Years’ War, Hearne moved to London, and in 1766, just twenty-one, joined the Hudson’s Bay Company. He embarked on an overland quest for rich veins of copper supposedly located “far to the northward where the sun don’t set”—and also to discover the Northwest Passage. Hearne’s posthumously published journal, the first book by a European explorer on the Arctic, describes a journey of 3,500 miles marked by hardship, and mitigated only by his friendship with the legendary Dene leader Matonabbee. His epic adventure culminated in the infamous and still-controversial massacre at “Bloody Falls”—a murderous battle between two native tribes that changed him forever. In a fascinating example of literary detective work, McGoogan determines that, having returned to London to live out his final days, Hearne met Samuel Taylor Coleridge, inspiring the poet to write “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

Customer Reviews:

Truth is more amazing than fiction.......2004-11-29

This book by Ken McGoogan recalls Peter C. Newman's fascinating books about the Hudson's Bay Company: Caesars of the Wilderness and The Company Adventurers. I think that schoolchildren should be reading these books rather than dry old history tomes. And, if all you have read are these history textbooks, then I suggest you give yourself a chance to revisit these amazing explorers. The story of Samuel Hearne is magnificently told by Ken McGoogan and it will have you thirsting for more stories of the amazing men and women (yes, women!) who lived, fought, loved in a cruel land. It was a book I could not put down.

A stroll in the woods.......2004-05-20

Exploration stories often focus on the tropics. David Livingstone, Albert Russel Wallace, Richard Burton and others are readily recalled. The polar quests of Amundsen, Cook, Peary and Byrd probably follow in popularity. The upper latitudes seem almost overlooked. With little land mass approaching Antarctica and its pole, Canada and Russia are left for investigation by the enquiring mind. Having offered the life of one such wanderer in John Rae, McGoogan now reaches further back in time and place to reveal the life of Samuel Hearne. It's a fine study of a dedicated man.

McGoogan's lively narrative traces Hearne's Royal Navy career, then follows him to the Hudson's Bay Company [HBC] station of Prince of Wales Fort. With the Canadian Arctic still a terra incognita, various quests were under consideration - the Northwest Passage and/or an inland sea leading to Asia being prime contenders. A more specific ambition arose with indications of a vast copper resource near the Arctic Sea. Hearne pursued this rumour by trekking across the Canadian tundra to find it. Various interludes occurred along the way.

Hearne's expeditions to the Arctic seem pre-ordained to failure. Having but a hazy notion of what confronted him wasn't a hindrance. Bureaucracy proved the more serious impediment. The British attitude toward indigenous peoples compounded faulty notions of requirements for such a trip. With no idea of how Native Peoples? societies were structured, British HBC agents blundered into one crisis after another. In today's world, for a man to suggest that women must accompany the expedition to perform specialised tasks would bring down the wrath of the Human Rights Commission. In the 18th Century rise of the HBC in Canada women performed essential roles. No Native Peoples? women meant no Native Peoples? men. No men, no expedition. McGoogan explains all these circumstances without apology or condemnation. It's a professional historian's approach, worthy of full praise.

The other aspect of British imperialism's shortsighted view is the relationships among Canada's Native Peoples. Hearne and others would counsel peace to those who had been warring when the British still painted themselves blue. These animosities were not easily quelled and might break out without warning nor discernible reason. Hearne was confronted with this near the mouth of the Coppermine River. McGoogan, relying on Hearne's own account, describes the massacre of an Inuit settlement leading to the naming of "Bloody Falls". The event remained fixed in Hearne's memory for the remainder of his life.

Hearne, seeking an ephemeral copper lode, traversed immense stretches of the Canadian North. With various teams, but particularly relying on a Dene negotiator, Matonabbee, Hearne viewed the Arctic Ocean, the first European to reach it overland. The copper wasn't there, nor, in Hearne's opinion, was there any possibility of a Northwest Passage. He saw the Great Slave Lake, but when he later reported on his journey, skeptics were confounded by how far west it lay. Canada's vastness overwhelmed chair-bounded geographers. Hearne wasn't simply seeking mineral wealth. He recorded copious observations on plant and animal life in the region, as well as collecting information on the native peoples. More than just an adventurer, Hearne is credited by McGoogan as being one of earliest naturalists.

Hearne's return to England was less than satisfactory. An account of his travels netted him not a penny - he died before publication. One event, a likely meeting with Coleridge at a boy's school, may have led Hearne to become the source of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. While the notion is McGoogan's speculative idea, it's plausible enough to be valid. It certainly provided a good, if unexpected, title for the life of an Arctic explorer. McGoogan presents that life vividly, with only minor, forgiveable, embellishments. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

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