PREFACE 



By sir EDMUND WALKER 



President of the Champlain Society 



WHEN the Champlain Society was first organised 

 in 1905 one of the works on its list of proposed 

 publications was the Journal of Samuel Hearne. 

 This book, written with great literary charm, is the first 

 account preserved to us of an attempt to explore the interior 

 of far-northern Canada from a base on Hudson Bay. The 

 natives had brought to Fort Prince of Wales glowing reports 

 of a vast store of copper at the mouth of a river which flowed 

 into the Arctic Ocean. An attempt to find it was inevitable. 

 Twice Hearne failed, but his third effort succeeded and, after 

 a laborious journey, he reached the mouth of the Coppermine 

 River. Soon after he was promoted to command at Fort 

 Prince of Wales, nov/ Churchill, on Hudson Bay. France 

 had joined Britain's revolted colonies in their war on the 

 mother land, and one day, in 1782, a French squadron, under 

 the well-known seaman, La Perouse, dropped anchor before 

 Fort Prince of Wales. Hearne, mightier with the pen than 

 with the sword, surrendered meekly enough in spite of his 

 massive walls from thirty to forty feet thick. Thus in- 

 gloriously he dies out of history. 



Hearne's Journal, published after his early death, has 

 become a rather rare book. Besides the narrative of what 

 he did, it contains copious notes on the natural history of 

 the region which he was the first white man to make known. 



