for ships; Mr. Hearne perceived, on the contrary, that, besides its shoals and falls, it could scarcely bear one of their own canoes.

At that spot the English traveller witnessed, without being able to prevent, an act of atrocious cruelty in his Indian guides. They surprised by night, and put to death, without mercy, a party of poor Esquimaux along the stream. Mr. Hearne felt more especial pity for one girl who, as it chanced, was butchered at his side, and who, in her dying convulsions, grasped his knees. He earnestly entreated her life, but the Indians only answered him with ridicule, asking if he wanted an Esquimaux wife. "Nor," adds Mr. Hearne, "did they pay the "smallest regard to the shrieks and agony of the poor "wretch, who was twining round their spears like an "eel!"* A few leagues onwards, still following the northern course of the stream, Mr. Hearne fonnd the rise and fall of tides, and gazed with eager eyes upon the open

sea.

At a later period, full eighteen years afterwards, the same track of discovery still further to the westward was explored by another hardy wanderer, Alexander Mackenzie. Like Hearne, he was engaged in the service of a trading company; like Cook, he had not the advantages of early education. But his energy and perseverance were displayed even before his toilsome journey had commenced. In his own words: -"I felt myself de❝ficient in the sciences of astronomy and navigation; I "did not hesitate, therefore, to undertake a winter's voyage to England to acquire them. That object being accomplished, I returned."

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In the prosecution of his perilous enterprise, Mr. Mackenzie derived some aid not merely from the native tribes of Indians, but from the Europeans who had freely joined them. "It is not necessary for me," thus he writes, "to examine the cause, but experience proves that it "requires much less time for a civilised people to deviate "into the manners and customs of savage life, than for savages to rise into a state of civilisation." Such was

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* Journey to the Northern Ocean by Samuel Hearne, p. 154. ed.

the case with not a few of the French or English men who accompanied the natives on their hunting and trading parties; for so attached did they become to the Indian mode of life, as to lose all relish for their former habits, and their native homes. Hence they derived the name of COUREURS DES BOIS, and became a ready link of intercourse, of great use to the merchant employed in the fur trade, as well as to the traveller. And strange as it may seem to us to find men thus eager to discard civilisation and embrace a savage life, yet the same strong impulse has been constantly observed among the South Sea Islands, where it needs the utmost vigilance of the commanders to prevent desertion of the crews.

A march of no slight risk or labour brought Mr. Mackenzie and his guides towards the centre of the Northern Continent to Chepewyan on the south side of the "Lake "of the Hills." There, in a canoe constructed of birch bark, he commenced his voyage of discovery. First he steered into and around another vast expanse which is called the "Great Slave Lake," and which even then, in the month of June, was for the most part frozen over. Here he suffered from another hardship, which at first sight might be deemed scarcely consistent with the former. "We were pestered," says he "by musquitoes, though in "a great measure surrounded by ice." From this lake he entered a river flowing northward, which received from him, and which still retains, his own name of Mackenzie. "The current," he remarks, "is very strong, and the "banks are covered with large quantities of burned wood, lying on the ground, and young poplar trees that have sprung up since the fire that destroyed the larger wood. "It is a very curious and extraordinary circumstance "that land covered with spruce pine and white birch, "when laid waste by fire, should subsequently produce "nothing but poplars where none of that species of tree were previously to be found."*

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Proceeding on his voyage, Mackenzie allowed himself during the day to be carried forward by the stream, but at night he always landed and set up his tents until the dawn, justly dreading the perils of falls and rapids as well

* Mackenzie's Journal, June 19. and 29. 1789.

as many others in a tract of country as yet wholly new to Europeans. The Indians of his party provided food by fishing, shooting, or hunting: this, however, was not his sole reliance, as he had some store in his canoe. Large, indeed, were the daily supplies which he required. According to his own account, his party, consisting of ten men and four women, had, within a period of six days, consumed two rein-deer, four swans, forty-five geese, and a considerable quantity of fish! "I have always observed," adds Mackenzie, "that the North-men possessed very hearty appetites, but they were very much exceeded by "those with me, since we entered this river; and I should "really have thought it absolute gluttony in my people, "if my own appetite had not increased in a similar proportion." Among the fish which they caught most frequently was one well known to the Canadians, but still retaining among them the name which the first discoverers had given it: POISSON INCONNU.

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At length in July, 1789, after many hundred miles of navigation, the courageous perseverance of Mackenzie was rewarded, as he saw by degrees the river widen, and the Arctic Sea expand. So thickly was the ice piled along the coasts as to leave him for some time still uncertain whether that were indeed the ocean to which his course had tended; and his doubts were first dispelled by the sudden appearance in the current of huge white masses, which he discovered to be a troop of whales.* Toilsome as had been his progress, he found his return a matter of still far more labour and fatigue, since his canoe had to mount against a strong stream, which required constant exertion of paddling or of tracking with a line on shore. In one part of the river, where the breadth from bank to bank did not exceed three hundred yards, the depth of water was no less than fifty fathoms.†

"The part of them which appeared above the water was alto66 gether white. At first we supposed them to be pieces of ice."

(Journal, July 14. 1789.)

†This narrative of the voyage of Mackenzie, as also of another undertaken by him three years afterwards to the western coast of North America, was published by himself in 1801. A good summary of both appears in the Annual Register for that year.

(pp.

It may be said with truth, both of the voyage of Mackenzie and the journey of Hearne, that as regarding the Arctic Circle, no discoveries in that age tended more to the progress of discovery in ours. Proving as they did that the North American Continent by no means, as some persons had supposed, extended to the Pole, but was bounded by a Polar Sea, they revived the hopes of a North-west passage, and animated the exertions of a Parry or a Franklin. In these men the spirit of Cook and Hearne was in our own day worthily renewed. But to these men that spirit was not confined. In every part of the world that spirit has been displayed. Not merely in the Tropic islands, where safe within their coral-reefs, the islanders may listen to the outer Ocean's roaring surges not merely in the realm of eternal winter, where even the restless surges are bound fast by frost - but through the burning sands of Africa, the marshy jungles of Siam, or the tangled brush-woods of New South Wales

wherever the keel can glide, the sledge draw, or the camel carry, or the unassisted human footstep tread — in every clime, and on every soil, wherever in the quest of knowledge or of conquest there is glory to be won, there the indomitable spirit of Anglo-Saxon enterprise has overcome most obstacles, and is striving against all.

CHAPTER LX.

LITERATURE AND ART.

It seems no unfair pretension that some place in History, however humble, should be allotted to Historians. Those who have successfully chronicled great deeds, ought not themselves to be left unchronicled. On this supposition the Literature of the period now before us may deserve especial notice, since, so far as historical writers are concerned, it was in truth our Golden Era. Besides several of less distinction, as Dr. Watson and Lord Lyttleton, it comprised the three eminent names of Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon.

Of these three it is remarkable that two were natives of Mid-Lothian. David Hume was born at Edinburgh in 1711. He first attracted public favour such was then the temper of the times by a volume of sceptical Essays. These, if they did not induce, at least did not prevent, the choice which the Faculty of Advocates made of him for their Librarian. In that office he received little or no emolument, but had at his command a large and excellent collection of books, which suggested to him the design of writing the History of England. He commenced with the accession of the House of Stuart; and in 1754 published his first volume, continuing the narrative to the death of Charles the First. His volume was in quarto; which, till within these forty years, was the more common form of publication, both for Histories and Poems. present a smaller size is so universally preferred, that, as a popular writer of our own day remarks, the remains of a quarto, if discovered in a future age, may create no less astonishment than the remains of a Mammoth!

At

In his expectations of success, Hume at first was greatly disappointed. His tendency to palliate the errors of the Stuarts, or to lament their fate, raised a general