PREFATORY NOTE : I wish to acknowledge the great debt which I owe to Mr. J. B. Tyrrell for the use of material contained in his edition of Thompson's Narrative. It was Mr. Tyrrell who first rescued the name of Thompson from the undeserved oblivion into which it had sunk. Those who are familiar with his introduction and notes, will recognize how largely I have borrowed from them in preparing this short life.

C. N. C. (June 1924.)

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On the 30th of December, 1783, the Governors of the Grey Coat School at Westminster, England, received from the secretary of the Hudson's Bay Company a request for four boys, trained in navigation, to be apprenticed to the Company for service at their posts in America. At that time, there were in the school but two boys so qualified—Samuel John McPherson and David Thompson. The one was so terrified by the prospect of perils and hardships unknown, that within a week he ran away from the school and was heard of no more. The other accepted the destiny for which he had been marked out, and became one of the greatest land surveyors that the British race has ever produced.

When David Thompson was called before the Headmaster to be informed of his fate, he was in his fourteenth year, and had been for nearly seven years a pupil in the school. No description exists of the poor charity boy as he then was; but from accounts given of him in later life, it is possible to imagine his appearance. Though he was short of stature, his sturdy frame already gave promise of the strength that was to enable him to drive his canoe through the currents and eddies of the western waterways, or trudge at the head of his men across the plains in the teeth of a December blizzard. His complexion was ruddy, though his smooth cheeks were not as yet tanned and furrowed by a life of exposure to the sun and wind of the great North West. The straight, black hair which hung down over his forehead combined with a stub nose to give him an odd look. Yet there must have been already evident, in his expression, the animation and kindliness which in after years distinguished him, and suggested at once the boldness and fire of Curran the Irish orator, and the strength and piety of the puritan Bunyan, both of whom he is said to have greatly resembled.

Thompson's parents were Welsh, and had borne the name of ApThomas until they had come to live in London. It was there in the parish of St. John the Evangelist, that David was born on the last day of April, in the year 1770. While yet a mere child, he was left an orphan by the death of his father. So poor was the family that the dead man had to be buried at the expense of the parish, and the widow, with David and a still younger infant, was left alone to face the hardships of life in the metropolis. The boy, however, must have shown unusual promise; because, while still quite young, he attracted the attention of a certain Abram Acworth. Through the recommendation of this otherwise unknown benefactor, he was at the age of seven accepted as a scholar by the Governors of the Grey Coat School.

The Grey Coat School was a royal foundation "the principall designe of which" was "to educate poor children in the principles of piety and virtue, and thereby lay the foundations for a sober and Christian life". Almost within the shadow of Westminster Abbey, the old building is still to be seen—-a red brick house, built in the Elizabethan manner, its walls covered with grape-vine and Virginia creeper, standing in the midst of a large garden and playground.

In the school, Thompson found himself a member of the class in mathematics, and received such training in geography, algebra, mechanics, and the art of navigation as was possible with the aid of texts, many of which were at that time a century old. In those days books were scarce and dear; and, for their general reading, the boys had to be satisfied with such miscellaneous works as came their way. These were passed eagerly from hand to hand, and as eagerly read and discussed. Youthful imaginations were excited by the romantic adventures of the Persian and Arabian tales, or by the travels of Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver in strange lands and among strange peoples.

Within five minutes' walk of the school was the Abbey and its cloisters. His hours of recreation David spent mainly in wandering through the venerable pile, reading the history of England on the monuments of her heroic dead, and drinking in the beauty of the architecture, especially that of the noble Henry VII Chapel. On other occasions, when chance offered, he would stroll through the Strand and Fleet Street as far east as London Bridge or westward to Chelsea, rich in historical memories and famous for its beautiful lawns. Other favourite haunts were St. James' Park and Spring Gardens in Vauxhall, across the Thames. Forty years of wandering through rock and forest, by plain and mountain, served merely to render yet more vivid his boyish recollection of the city and its parks "where all was beauty to the eye and verdure to the feet."

Thompson's school days, however, were now to be cut short. By the 20th of May, 1784, the formalities were completed by which he was bound apprentice to the Hudson's Bay Company for seven years; and he at once embarked from the Port of London on the Company's ship, Prince Rupert, en route for North America. The lines were cast off, and the vessel with its cargo of goods for the Indian trade drifted lazily down stream with the tide, carrying Thompson away for ever from the sights and sounds of London, which he knew and loved so well.

The voyage was uneventful, except for the usual incidents that attended the westward journey of the Company's annual fleet. Not a detail, however, escaped the keen eye of the young traveller, unaccustomed as he was to anything but the quiet life of the school, and thirsting to see something of the world, which he knew only in the pages of Gulliver and Robinson Crusoe. The ship sailed up the North Sea to Stromness in the Orkneys, there to wait three weeks for the two vessels which were to accompany her across the Atlantic, and to receive final instructions and sailing orders. As they lay in the harbour of Stromness, Thompson's keen eyes noted the strange life of the kelp-burners on shore, men, women, and children who, half-naked, gathered the dripping sea-weed in baskets, and lugged it on their shoulders to the kilns. Gazing at the rocky shore line and the low, dark cottages with their smoky peat fires, which dotted the barren hills, he was smitten with regret for the rich meadows and woods of England, and for a moment he wished himself back amid the scenes of his school life. Yet in his rambles ashore, the lad found much to interest him. He observed with amusement the quaint habits of the cottagers, who combined a brisk trade in smuggled liquor with lengthy and solemn weekly devotions at the old-fashioned Kirk by the shores of the harbour.

Sailing orders finally arrived from London, and the little fleet was soon off on its hazardous journey across the stormy North Atlantic. Presently the sight of icebergs drifting south with the Arctic current, warned the crews that they were nearing Hudson Straits. It was a month before they had worked their way through the floating ice of the Straits; after which the three ships separated, one for the factories at Moose and Albany rivers, the second for York, while the Prince Rupert, with Thompson aboard, headed for Churchill, the most northerly of the Company's settlements on the west side of the Bay. Before long, they sighted the granite coast, which they followed southward. This ended at Churchill in a low point of rock and sand, surmounted by the grim stone battlements of Fort Prince of Wales, which two years before had been gutted by the French in their raid on the Bay. Rounding this point, they found themselves in the mouth of the Churchill, a noble stream, almost a mile in breadth. Up the river they made their way for a distance of five miles to a small bay at the head of the estuary, where they cast anchor before the log huts of the still unfinished new fort.

The arrival of the annual ship was the event of the year. Hurried preparations were made for discharging the cargo of provisions for the factory and supplies for the Indian trade, and taking on board the year's accumulation of furs, which were destined to adorn the persons of the fashionable world of England and the Continent. In the midst of this confusion, the new apprentice was taken ashore, and within ten days the Prince Rupert sailed away, leaving him to face the rigours of his new life on the dismal shores of Hudson Bay.

It was indeed a new life in which David Thompson found himself. Apart from the officers, there was a staff of sixty artisans and servants in the fort. These were all busy from dawn till dark; for, besides conducting their trade with the Indians, they had to maintain themselves as a community in an utterly barren land. At six each morning in summer, and eight in winter, the duty bell summoned to their toil, accountant, steward, armourer, shipwright, carpenter, cooper, blacksmith, mason, tailor, and labourers. Assisted by his officers, the governor, gorgeous in scarlet tunic and ruffles, his sword and pistols in his belt, supervised the labours of the factory.

By the early part of October, the myriads of wild geese and ducks which each summer lived in the vast swamps to the south of Churchill had winged their way to warmer climes. The middle of the month saw the marshes stiff with frost, and snow lying on the ground. The polar bear made his appearance, waiting for the ice to extend some distance from the shore, when he left to prey on the seal, his favourite food. By the fifteenth of November, the broad and deep river was frozen solid from bank to bank, not to break up until the middle of June in the following year. Till the end of December, the staff were able to keep the yard of the fort clear of snow. At that time, a three days' blow from the north-east filled the fort with snow to a depth of six feet, with drifts as high as the stockades. Thereafter it was enough if they could keep paths cleared from one hut to another.

The cold was intense. The noise of rocks split by the frost broke the silence of the night with a sound like that of a cannon shot. On the interior walls of the still unfurnished huts, the rime collected to a depth of four inches, and on this the shivering inhabitants threw pails of water in order that it might form a coat of ice to increase the warmth of the houses. Owing to the haste with which the huts had been thrown up, there had been no time to lay in a sufficient supply of firewood for the winter; and all the wood that could be gathered for fuel allowed only one fire in the morning and one in the evening. During the rest of the day, if the weather was bad, Thompson, with the others, had to pace the guard room floor, muffled to the eyes in his beaver coat, in order to keep himself from freezing. On clear days, however, he passed his time in shooting grouse, and this activity he enjoyed except for the tumbles in the snow and the sore feet and ankles that resulted from his eager efforts to walk in snow-shoes.

The dreary winter seemed endless, when, in the middle of June, summer burst with the suddenness of dawn in the Tropics, bringing with it torments which made Thompson regret even the discomforts of winter. "Hudson Bay," he says in his narrative, "is certainly a country which Sinbad the sailor never saw, for he makes no mention of musketoes." These pests rose from the marshes in clouds, driving man and beast to distraction. The dogs in the fort howled in their agony, rolling themselves on the ground and hiding in the pools. Even the fox was in a fighting humour, barking and snapping; and, hungry though he was, he was forced to seek shelter in his hole.

Such was Thompson's first year on the Bay. He had expected, when he reached the Fort, to be employed as a clerk, but he soon found that his only business was to amuse himself, "in winter growling at the cold, and in the open season shooting gulls, duck, and plover and quarreling with musketoes and sand flies." Fortunately, however, he had for company three of the officers of the factory, the deputy governor, the sloop-master, and the surgeon. To these gentlemen he felt himself greatly indebted for the loan of various books on history and natural science, by reading which he was able to put his hours of idleness to profitable use.

The governor at that time was Samuel Hearne, a handsome giant with a rubicund face. It was Hearne who in 1782 had surrendered without a blow the great stone fort at the mouth of the river. That fort had cost the Company forty years to build, and it was barely completed when Hearne raised the white flag at the challenge of the French admiral, La Pérouse. To the mind of young Thompson, this act was enough to stamp the governor as a coward. It was, none the less, the same Hearne who had succeeded in penetrating as far North as the mouth of the Coppermine river, and was thus the first white man to reach the margin of the Arctic ocean. Nevertheless, Thompson disliked him. Like so many others at the close of the eighteenth century, Hearne was infected with the doctrines of Voltaire, and his atheism shocked the sensitive mind of the pious boy. To a lad of Thompson's ambition, the life of a hunter afforded no sort of satisfaction, and he dreaded lest he should succumb to the deadening influence of his surroundings. He complained to Hearne that his lack of clerical employment might lead to the loss of his penmanship, and was barely satisfied when the governor handed him an invoice or two to copy, and gave him occupation for a few days upon the manuscript of his Journey to the North.

The idleness of which Thompson complained was, however, to end before long. With the arrival of the annual ship in 1785, orders came that the young apprentice should proceed to York factory, the principal dépôt of the Company, situated near the mouth of the Hayes river, one hundred and fifty miles further up the Bay. South of the Churchill, the rim of granite which hems the coast recedes for some miles inland, leaving a vast waste of marshy alluvial between the hills and the water line. Trees there are none, and the monotony of the landscape is relieved only by boulders which the ice has scattered over the face of the land.

To journey on foot the length of this swamp, with two drunken Indians alone for company, was enough to test the courage and reliance of a boy of fifteen. Equipped with but a single blanket to protect him from the chill of the September nights, the young David was ferried across the river and put ashore on the south bank. The day was fine; but the Indians had been given their usual gallon of grog on leaving the fort, and they soon reduced themselves to a drunken stupor. A night in the open, however, restored them to their senses. The next morning the party made an early start, marching till evening without breakfast or dinner. During the day, the Indians had shot a goose and three ducks. When they finally came to something like a dry spot by the bank of a stream, the wild fowl were hastily cooked and eaten; and the wearied travellers, wrapped in their blankets, flung themselves on the ground to sleep.

Day after day, they trudged along the beach at high water mark, always wet and muddy. Innumerable creeks which drained the swamp crossed their path and interrupted their progress. Finally they came to the mighty Kissiskatchewan or Nelson river, on the north bank of which the Indians had laid up a canoe. Paddling across to the south shore, they crossed the tongue of low land that separates the mouth of the Nelson from that of the Hayes river; and were at last in York.

The governor to whom Thompson reported was the notorious Humphrey Marten. This old tyrant was now in his twenty-fourth year of service with the Company. Surrounded by his numerous native wives and a horde of half-breed children, he ruled the fort with a rod of iron. The Indians who visited the factory he would beat most cruelly, sending them away with revenge burning in their hearts. In the fort, his subordinates felt the weight of his unbridled temper; and they bowed to his brutality only because they feared his vindictiveness. Amid such surroundings and under such a taskmaster, Thompson passed the following year. He kept the accounts of the factory in his neat handwriting, and joined with the rest of the staff in the hunting necessary to supply the fort with food during the winter.