A Journey from Prince of Wales's Fort in Hudson's Bay to the Northern Ocean in the Years 1769, 1770, 1771, and 1772 [Undertaken by Order of the Hudson's Bay Company. For the Discovery of Copper Mines, a North West Passage, &c.] [Northwest] (The Publicati…

xv, 437, viii pp. 8vo. 1968 facsimile of the 1911 limited edition of the work originally published in 1795. Seven fold-out maps follow text, black-and-white photographs and illustrations in text. Reprint of Sabin 31181. Stam's Books on Ice 1.5: "Samuel Hearn's account of harrowing polar travel stands alongside those of Franklin and Shackleton among the classics of polar survival... He joined the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) as mate aboard the Churchill in 1767, and helped solve the mystery of the disappearance of the James Knight expedition (1719-21) on Marble Island. Hearne was then assigned by the HBC to check Indian rumors of copper deposits west of Hudson Bay and to seek a Northwest Passage to the Pacific through the legendary Straits of Anian. From his assignment at Prince of Wales Fort (now Churchill, Manitoba) he made two unsuccessful journeys in 1769 and 1770 before setting off in December 1770 with his Chipweyan guide, Matonabbee. They reached the Coppermine River in July 1771. Traveling down the Coppermine to the Arctic with Hearne and Matonabbee were a large number of Chipweyans who massacred a group of fishing Inuit at a place now called Bloody Falls, an atrocity which Hearne recounts with stark vividness. Hearne found no copper and no passage to the Pacific, but he was the first European to travel the Coppermine River, see the Arctic Ocean, and cross Great Slave Lake. His return was equally difficult but he was rewarded by an HBC appointment in 1774 to establish Cumberland House on the Saskatchewan River, the Company's first interior post. The next year he was made governor of Prince of Wales Fort which he surrendered in 1782 to a French naval squadron under the famous explorer Jean-Francois de Galaup, comte de La Perouse. This was a great blow to the Indian traders, and the fact that he surrendered without a fight did equal damage to Hearne's reputation. Matonabbee committed suicide and Hearne left the HBC to write his adventures in this classic polar epic, posthumously published in 1795."