[HARRINGTON ] GEORGE MERCER DAWSON 185 
{his occasion made the passage in a sailing ship, he and another young 
man being the only passengers. During the voyage he amused himself 
making observations on the surface life of the ocean , and the phen- 
omend of phosphorescence. He also studied navigation under the 
captain, and the knowledge then acquired afterwards stood him in good 
stead when he had to navigate a schooner along the dangerous coasts 
of British Columbia and the Queen Charlotte Islands. 
At the School of Mines he took the full course of study, extending 
over three years, and passed as an associate. At the end of his second 
year, he carried off the Duke of Cornwall’s scholarship, given by the 
Prince of Wales, and on graduation stood first in his class, obtaining 
the Edward Forbes Medal and Prize in Paleontology and Natural His- 
tory, and the Murchison Medal in Geology. During his course he paid 
special attention to the study of geology under Ramsay, Huxley and 
Etheridge, but also devoted much time to chemistry and metallurgy, 
under Frankland and Percy respectively, and to mining under War- 
rington Smyth. Even in his holidays he was never altogether idle, and 
during most of the summer of 1871 he was attache to the British Geo- 
logical Survey, and worked with the late J. Clifton Ward in the Cum- 
berland Lake-District. While in England he made many warm friends, 
with some of whom he corresponded regularly for years afterwards. 
On returning to Canada in 1872, he was engaged for some months 
examining and reporting upon mineral properties in Nova Scotia, and 
subsequently went to Quebec, where he delivered a course of lectures 
on chemistry at Morrin College, which was attended by a large and 
appreciative class. In 1873 he was appointed Geologist and Botanist to : 
Her Majesty’s North American Boundary Commission, which had been 
constituted to fix the boundary line between British North America 
and the United States, from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky 
Mountains, and which had been carrying on its labours for about a 
year. From early boyhood Dawson had been keenly interested in 
travel and exploration, and in the Canadian Northwest he saw a region 
ready to yield up a rich harvest of discovery. There was the charm of 
novelty afforded by a well-nigh untrodden field, and the many hard- 
ships to be encountered only seemed to lend attractions to the expedi- 
tion. In those days no Canadian Pacific trains rolled across the con- 
tinent. Fort Garry, now the fast-growing city of Winnipeg, with more 
than 40,000 inhabitants, was then practically the last outpost of civiliza- 
tion, and the great prairies had to be traversed on horseback or on 
foot, provisions and equipment of every kind being carried in Red River 
carts, drawn by oxen or ponies with shaganappy harness. The two 
years of Dawson’s connection with the Boundary Commission were for 
