6 EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 



before the fort and demanded its capitulation, Hearne sur- 

 rendered at discretion, without firing a shot. He was at once 

 taken on board the French ships, and allowed to retain all his 

 private papers and effects, while the furs and other property of 

 the Hudson's Bay Company were either confiscated or burnt. 

 After pillaging and destroying the fort. La Perouse sailed 

 southward to York Factory, which also surrendered to him as 

 soon as he appeared before it, and then, with all his prisoners 

 on board, including the Governors of Fort Prince of Wales, 

 York, and Severn, he sailed for France. 



Hearne does not appear to have been treated by La 

 Perouse as an enemy who had been taken prisoner at the 

 capture of a hostile fort, but rather as a literary man whom he 

 was anxious to encourage and patronise. While a prisoner on 

 board the French ships he was treated with every consideration, 

 and his generous captor, who was one of the foremost geo- 

 graphers of his time, read his manuscript journal with evident 

 interest, and returned it to him on the express condition that 

 he would print and publish it immediately on his arrival in 

 England. 



On the signing of peace with the French in the following 

 year, Hearne was sent back by the Hudson's Bay Company to 

 Churchill. He made no attempt to live again in the fort, 

 which was very unfavourably situated for obtaining both wood 

 and water, but took up his residence on the site of the original 

 trading-post of the Hudson's Bay Company, five miles south of 

 Fort Prince of Wales, where the buildings of the Company 

 stand at the present day. 



In 1784, while Hearne was at Churchill, there arrived from 

 England a boy, fourteen years old, named David Thompson, 

 who afterwards became the great geographer of North- 

 We stern America. Thompson remained at Churchill for only 

 one year, during which time he copied some of Hearne's 

 Journal, and though he did not carry away any very friendly 

 feelings towards his superior officer, the knowledge which he 



