EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 15 



of his surroundings in their true perspective. Though, like 

 Robert Louis Stevenson and many others, he had not been 

 a brilliant student at school, he possessed the literary ability 

 to present what he saw or knew in an interesting and attractive 

 form. In the ordinary quietude of his tent or office, when 

 thinking of nothing but the subject Vv^hich he was describing, 

 he undoubtedly recorded his observations with accuracy. But 

 in the warmth of dispute, when endeavouring to overcome the 

 criticisms or objections of others, he was liable to be carried 

 beyond the points of strict accuracy and, in order to strengthen 

 his argument, to fill in blanks in his record from his imagina- 

 tion. He says, for example, that the sun was above the 

 horizon at midnight at the mouth of the Coppermine River. 

 But it is certain either that, on the night which he spent there, 

 the weather was too cloudy to permit of seeing the sun, if it 

 had been above the horizon, or that, even if the weather was 

 clear, the sun must necessarily have been below the horizon at 

 the time. His sketch of Moses Norton also has the appear- 

 ance of being highly coloured by his evident personal dislike 

 of the man. No one can justly accuse Hearne of lack of 

 personal courage, for the annoyances, hardships, and sufferings, 

 which he endured without complaining, put the thought of 

 personal cowardice entirely out of the question. He had 

 acquired the stoicism of the Indian and he suffered quietly, 

 just as an Indian is prepared to suffer. During the years 

 which Hearne spent among the Indians, living on what they 

 were able to obtain from day to day, as well as in his general 

 intercourse with them as a trader bartering for the furs which 

 they were able to collect and bring to him, he had learned to 

 endure privations, to compromise rather than to fight, and to 

 accomplish his purpose by politic and peaceful, rather than by 

 warlike, methods. Naturally of a complaisant disposition, he 

 had learned to give whatever was demanded of him, no matter 

 who made the demand. Nothing could be more typical of the 

 habits which he had thus acquired than the little experiences 



