hearne's route. 145 



Journal, whereby he discovered so great a dis- 

 crepancy between the outward and homeward 

 journeys as caused him to reject the higher lati- 

 tudes altogether, or greatly to reduce them ; and, 

 in doing so, he was undoubtedly right, though 

 Hearne complains bitterly in his preface of the 

 injustice done to him. The fact is, that, when 

 we consider the hardships which Hearne had 

 to endure, the difficult circumstances in which 

 he was frequently placed, the utter insufficiency 

 of his old and cumbrous Elton's quadrant as 

 an instrument for ascertaining the latitude, par- 

 ticularly in the winter, with a low meridian 

 sun, and a refraction of the atmosphere greatly 

 beyond what it was supposed to be by the best 

 observers of the period, and the want of any 

 means of estimating the longitude, except by 

 dead reckoning ; this reckoning requiring an 

 exact appreciation of distances, as well as cor- 

 rect courses, circumstances evidently unattain- 

 able by one accompanying an Indian horde in 

 a devious march through a wooded and moun- 

 tainous country ; we shall not be inclined to 

 view with severity the errors committed, but 

 rather to think that the traveller's credit would 

 have been strengthened and not impaired by his 

 acknowledging the uncertainty of the position of 

 the places most distant from Churchill. Unfor- 

 tunately, however, Hearne himself thought dif- 



L 



