EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 3 



the fort. At the Company's request Mr. H. went out the year fol- 

 lowing, saw it rebuilt,^ and the new Governor settled in his habitation 

 (which they took care to fortify a little better than formerly), and 

 returned to England in 1787. He had saved a few thousands, the 

 fruits of many years' industry, and might, had he been blessed with 

 prudence, have enjoyed many years of ease and plenty ; but he had 

 lived so long where money was of no use that he seemed insensible of 

 its value here, and lent it with little or no security to those he was 

 scarcely acquainted with by name. Sincere and undesigning himself, 

 he was by no means a match for the duplicity of others. His disposi- 

 tion, as may be judged by his writing, was naturally humane ; what he 

 wanted in learning and polite accomplishments he made up in native 

 simplicity and innate goodness ; and he was so strictly scrupulous with 

 regard to the property of others that he was heard to say a few days 

 before his death, ' He could lay his hand on his heart and say he had 

 never wronged any man of sixpence.' 



" Such are the outlines of Mr. Hearne's character, who, if he had 

 some failings, had many virtues to counterbalance them, of which 

 charity was not the least. He died of the dropsy, November 1792, 

 7" 



aged 47." 



He seems to have entered the service of the Hudson's Bay 

 Company and to have been sent to Fort Prince of Wales, the 

 great stone fortification on the low bare rocky point at the 

 mouth of the Churchill River on Hudson Bay, when he was 

 about twenty years old. For several years he was engaged in 

 the fur trade with the Eskimos, up and down the coast of 

 Hudson Bay, north of Churchill River. One little glimpse 

 is caught of him, on July i, 1767, for on that day he chiselled 

 his name on the smooth hard rock of Sloops Cove, on the west 

 side of Churchill harbour. When I visited the place, in 1894, 

 the name was as fresh and plain as if his hammer and chisel 

 had just been laid aside. 



Being possessed of much more than the average amount of 



ability and enthusiasm, he was chosen by Moses Norton, the 



energetic Governor of Fort Prince of Wales, to go out with the 



Indians into the vast, and as far as that was then known, limit- 



1 This is an error, as the fort was neither rebuilt nor refortified. 



