DAVID THOMPSON. 135 



A BRIEF NARRATIVE OF THE JOURNEYS OF 



DAYID THOMPSON IN NORTH-WESTERN 



AMERICA. 



BY J. B. TYRRELL, B. A., F.G.S. 



Field-Geologist of the Geological Survey of Canada. 



The following brief sketch of the journeys of David Thompson has 

 been drawn from his Field note-books and journals which are preserved 

 in the office of the Crown Land Department of Ontario. Unfortu- 

 nately some of the books in the series ai'e wanting, leaving blanks in 

 the record of his travels. Wherever any of these breaks occur the 

 fact is stated, but in some cases I have been able to partially fill them 

 in from records of astronomical observations evidently often dotted 

 down in the book that was most convenient, or sometimes tabulated 

 apart from his journal. This latter is esi)ecially the case in regard to 

 his later journeys in the mountains, for which time his joui-nal is not 

 among the books preserved, but there is a carefully tabulated series 

 ■of a great number of astronomical observations taken during these 

 years, from which his course can be followed with considerable cer- 

 tainty. 



For the dates of his birth, marriage and death, I am indebted to 

 the kindness of his daughter. Mis. Shaw, who is now living in the 

 town of Peterboro', Ontario. 



David Thompson was born in the parish of St. John, Westminster, 

 England, on the thirtieth of April, 1770. Of his early life, all that 

 I have been able to learn is that he was educated at Christ's Hospital, 

 or the " Blue Coat School," London, and was perhaps for a short time 

 a student at Oxford. When about nineteen years old he must have 

 entered the service of the Hudson's Bay Company, as in October, 

 1789, when in the middle of his twentieth year, his journal opens at 

 this Company's establishment at Cumberland House, on the south 



