32 PREFACE 



my Charts relative to this Journey. With this assistance I have 

 been enabled to rectify some inaccuracies that had, by trusting 

 too much to memory, crept into this copy ; and I now offer it 

 to the Public under authentic dates and the best authorities, 

 however widely some publications may diifer from it. 



I have taken the liberty to expunge some passages which 

 were inserted in the original copy, as being no ways interesting 

 to the Public, and several others have undergone great altera- 

 tions ; so that, in fact, the whole may be said to be new- 

 modelled, by being blended with a variety of Remarks and 

 Notes that were not inserted in the original copy, but which 

 my long residence in the country has enabled me to add. 



The account of the principal quadrupeds and birds that 

 frequent those Northern regions in Summer, as well as those 

 which never migrate, though not described in a scientific 

 manner, may not be entirely unacceptable to the most scientific 

 zoologists ; and to those who are unacquainted with the 

 technical terms used in zoology, it may perhaps be more useful 

 and entertaining, than if I had described them in the most 

 classical manner. But I must not conclude this Preface, with- 

 out acknowledging, in the most ample manner, the assistance 

 I have received from the perusal of Mr Pennant's Arctic 

 Zoology, which has enabled me to give several of the birds 

 their proper [x] names ; for those by which they are known in 

 Hudson's Bay are purely Indian, and of course quite unknown 

 to every European who has not resided in that country. 



To conclude, I cannot sufficiently regret the loss of a consi- 

 derable Vocabulary of the Northern Indian Language, containing 

 sixteen folio pages, which was lent to the late Mr. Hutchins, 

 then Corresponding Secretary to the Company, to copy for 

 Captain Duncan, when he went on discoveries to Hudson's 

 Bay in the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety. But 

 Mr. Hutchins dying soon after, the Vocabulary was taken away 

 with the rest of his effects, and cannot now be recovered ; and 

 memory, at this time, will by no means serve to replace it. 



