PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 77 



point of view the services to science in Canada of Dr. Jolm J. Bigsby, wlio had been 

 commissioned in 1819 to report on the geology of Upper Canada,%iiid became in 

 1822 Secretary to the Boundary Connnlssion already mentioned, aie more interest- 

 ing. While Colonel Bouchette travelled about tlie'more settled province.s, investi- 

 gating seigniory boundaries, statistical conditions, and matters mainly incident to 

 the settlement of the country. Dr. Bigsby pushed liis way into tlie wihler jiarts. 

 He appears to have examined Avith more or less detail the geology of Lakes Huron, 

 Superior, Simcoe and Nipissing, and the main river systems in con'necticm therewitlu 

 The twenty-seven papers written after his return to England and contributed to 

 scientific journals, as shown by the Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers, 

 down to 1873, treat almost entirely of North American geology. He published in 

 1852 a popular illustrated book in two volumes about Canada, and it is safe to say 

 that in the northern part of Lake Huron he laid the foundation of the knowledge 

 which resulted half a century later in his Thesaurus Siluricus.* His "Notes on 

 the Geography and Geology of Lake Huron," London, 1824, appears to be the first 

 geological rejiort of an official character regarding any part of Canada. 



Before dealing with a later period in Eastern Canada we must turn to that 

 great western territory which only came under our control after the Confederation 

 of 1867. Year by year we are becoming acquainted with it, but for a hundred 

 years before the members of our Geological Survey began to thread its wilds it 

 had appealed to the imagination of a few by its very remoteness from civilization, 

 and the vohimes published by the most famous of its explorers are therefore fairly 

 well known in literature. 



In 1769 the Hudson's Bay Company issued a letter of instructions to Samuel 

 Hearne ordering him to undertake an "expedition by land towards latitude 70° 

 north, in order to gain a knowledge of the Northern Indians' country," etc. P^rom 

 1769 to 1772 inclusive, Hearne made several journeys, the main object being the 

 discovery of copper mines and to try once more for the North-West Passage, so- 

 long and anxiously sought. Before his day, as since, the Company had been 

 accused of being lacking in enterprise and disposed merely to buy furs and keep 

 the country as much a terra incognita as possible, but this idea Hearne in the 

 introduction to the account of his travels, endeavours to refute. The published 

 accountf shows that in 1770 after a short journey in 1769, Hearne travelled from. 

 Churchill into the not far distant country of the Doobaunt and Kazan rivers and 

 back, thus covering part of the barren-lands country through which J. B. Tyrrell 

 travelled on behalf of the Dominion Geological Survey in 1893-94. :|: On his return 

 Hearne immediately set out again and travelling first westward, thus avoiding the 

 barren-lands country, and then northward, he eventually reached the Coppermine 

 River. He recorded little of geological interest but devotes an entire chapter to 

 the description of the animal and vegetable life observed by him. For various 

 reasons his geographical work is out of its reckoning, but apart from the mapping- 

 done by Tyrrell it constitutes all that we know about an enormous area of Canada 

 west of Hudson Bay. 



In 1789 the active competitor of the Hudson's Bay Company, the North-West 

 Fur Company, sent Alexander Mackenzie who had been for some years factor at 

 Fort Chippewyan on Lake Athabasca, on a journey of exploration, doubtless 

 suggested by himself. We all know that he followed the Mackenzie River to its 

 mouth and returning set out from Lake Athabasca again in 1792, this time up the 

 Peace River to its source, crossing the height of land and reaching the Pacific 

 Ocean at about the fifty-second parallel. Sir Alexander jNIackenzie was neither 

 geographer nor naturalist, indeed he was only a trader, but he was one of the men 

 who subdue empire and enrich their country in the cfiibrt to enrich themselves. 

 His observation of natural resources and of the highways possible for commerce 

 was very keen and whether it has a reasonable connection with my subject or not, 

 I cannot forbear quoting some remarkably prophetic words, from the closing pages 



* " Thesaurus Sduricus. The Flora and Fauna of the SiU.rian Period." John J. Bigsby. London. 1868. 



t "Journey from Prince of Wales' Fort in Hudson's Bay to the Northern Ocean," etc. Samuel Hearne, 

 London, 1795. 



: "Report of the Doobaunt, Kazan and Ferguson Rivers .ind the North-xvest coast of Hudson Bay." etc. J 

 Burr Tvrrell. Gaol. Surv. Can. Annual Report Vol. IX. 1896. (Published m 1897.) 



