﻿1848. 



FORT SIMPSON. 163 



Cache, and in an hour and a half more came to 

 Hare-skin River. The rate at which we passed 

 the land must have been at least seven geographical 

 miles an hour; but the distances in this part of 

 Sir John Franklin's chart are too great, and Fort 

 Simpson, which was laid down by him from dead 

 reckoning, is placed twenty miles too far north. 



The river having, through the increase of the 

 wind, become too rough for the use of oars, we 

 worked down under sail, and made good progress, 

 arriving at Fort Simpson at five in the after- 

 noon. The position of this place, as ascertained 

 by Mr. Thomas Simpson in 1836, is in latitude 

 61° 6V 25'' N. ; and longitude, deduced from lunar 

 distances, 121° 51' 15" W.* 



Between Desmarais's Fishery, on Slave Lake, and 

 Fort Simpson, the direct distance is about one 

 hundred and fifty-five geographical miles. In the 



* From this it appears that, by some means, an error of 

 twenty miles of latitude had crept into the reckoning of Sir 

 George Back and Lieut. Kendall in 1825, between the old fort, 

 in long. 120°, where the latitude was obtained by these officers, 

 and Fort Simpson ; but, on the other hand, they assigned too 

 little departure, so that the mistake was in the courses as much 

 as in the distance. And in correcting the chart, to give Fort 

 Simpson its proper geographical position, a corresponding 

 alteration must be made in the course and length of the river 

 between that fort and the great bend below it, where the 

 latitude and longitude were again ascertained by the observa- 

 tions of Back and Kendall. 



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