Читать книгу Canadian Adventurers and Explorers Bundle - John Wilson - Страница 29

The sun had left the sky for many hours when David limped onto the frozen surface of Pine Island Lake. The ice-crusted hem of his buffalo robe dragged in the snow, leaving a track of brush-marked footprints that led far out from the dim lights of Cumberland House. He wanted to see all of the night sky. He cast the heavy robe fur-up onto the snow and lay upon it, gazing skyward. The stars in the immense blackness captivated him. Some were just faint imaginings, more like speculations than stars. Others, like beacons from a nearby shore, were brilliant and dazzling in the heavens. These were his signposts, especially Polaris, the gleaming North Star, and the two guiding constellations of Cassiopeia and Ursa Major, which flank Polaris east and west. “These stars will tell you latitude,” Philip Turnor had explained with enthusiasm early that morning.

David Thompson Taking an Observation. His trail by stars. Using a sextant, compass, and the stars in the sky, David Thompson mapped Canada’s vast wilderness.

David could hardly believe his turn of fortune. He had been a trading clerk for only two months and Tomison’s brigade had just recently departed when two canoes arrived unexpectedly at the post. Among the arrivals was Philip Turnor, the famed HBC surveyor and prominent man of science. He had helped compile the Nautical Almanac used by mariners around the globe for celestial navigation. Part of Turnor’s assignment in Rupert’s Land was to map the route to Lake Athabasca, but he was also to train a select few Hudson’s Bay men as company surveyors. These new surveyors were to meet the growing need for maps of the ever-expanding trade routes. If his leg continued to improve, David could be one of them.

“One of the greatest scientific advancements of our time is being able to describe where we are on the earth’s surface. James Cook’s voyages are celebrated not so much because of where he went, but because he was able to chart his voyage in latitude and longitude with exceeding accuracy. His charts help Britain dominate the world’s oceans,” explained Turnor, as the middle-aged scientist and David warmed themselves by the afternoon fire.

“If we wanted to send someone to Montreal, it would not be difficult because people know where Montreal is. It’s up the St. Lawrence River, one thousand and seventy-four miles from the river’s mouth. Or, it’s a two-day paddle east of the last portage on a well-travelled trade route. Closer to town, they could follow signs and roads. But what if, like us now, one sits on the edge of a vast wilderness with no roads, signposts, or maps? We can follow the rivers, which is what you and I have mostly done, or we could hire an Indian guide to take us to the next big water. But how do we tell the world how to retrace our steps? Well, we look to the stars.”

David knew all this, but somehow, with Turnor, it was like hearing it for the first time, and it filled him with a hunger to know more.

“The moon travels across the sky like the steady hand of a clock,” continued Turnor. “It moves approximately its own width every hour. Behind the moon like numbers on the clock’s face, are the stars. When the moon passes a known star, the time is told.”

The Astronomer Royal, Sir Nevil Maskelyne, had worked tirelessly at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich compiling tables that predicted the path of the moon and other heavenly bodies. Turnor had assisted him, as both scientists painstakingly tabulated the exact time at Greenwich when the moon passed certain stars. The tables were updated every year with new and more complete information and published as the Nautical Almanac. Earlier that day, Turnor had handed David his own first copy.

As David lay in the snow, he observed the moon on its journey, and he knew he would learn to calculate the time at Greenwich by referencing Maskelyne and Turnor’s tables. He could find the exact local time by resetting his watch each day by the noon sun. The difference in time between zero longitude at Greenwich, England, and where he lay in the snow, would determine the longitude of Cumberland House. This is because the earth also turns like clockwork, as it rotates around its axis fifteen degrees of longitude for every hour.

It wasn’t quite that simple, of course. He thanked his old teacher Thomas Adams for drilling enough trigonometry into him so he could struggle through hours of exacting calculations. Performing the mathematical corrections for refraction and parallax that Turnor demanded was tedious work, but it was worth it. Surveying would be his escape from the company store, especially since his leg was getting stronger each day.

“Latitude is less problematic,” Turnor told him, “because there is a relatively painless method,” the astronomer added quickly, as his new student paled at the prospect of more calculations. “Latitude can be found by simply measuring the angle of Polaris above the horizon. The North Star is always over the North Pole no matter where in the world it is viewed from. The earth spins and swings like a ball on string suspended from Polaris and is therefore constant among the rush of stars travelling from east to west across the night sky. At dusk or dawn, when the horizon can still be seen in the dim light and Polaris is visible in the murk of the transitional sky, the angle read on the sextant is almost equal to the latitude on which the observer is standing. Some corrections have to be applied to get the exact latitude, but a very convenient method nonetheless.”

The next morning, David and the men of the post heaved the last few shovels of frozen earth onto the fresh mound that covered Mr. Hudson’s shallow grave behind the storehouse. Hudson, Turnor’s assistant, had been sick when their canoes arrived, and he had grown progressively weaker until finally the unknown ailment took the assistant’s life. That evening, David returned to his quarters and began practising refraction calculations, partly to forget about Hudson’s death. The grave could have easily been his own just a few months earlier. But he also studied to ready himself. Turnor would need a new assistant.

Accidental? David wondered. A circumstance of birth sent me to Grey Coat where it was predetermined that I study mathematics and navigation. An unavoidable injury suffered in the wilderness fated me to study under a famous astronomer. Now Hudson’s death means Mr. Turnor needs an assistant. Maybe I was never supposed to navigate a ship but was meant to be a map-maker and chart unexplored lands.

The prospect of being able to help map the vast unknown like the famous Captain Cook kept David studying under a flickering candle late into the winter nights. By winter’s end David’s eyes were inflamed from working under dim light. Still, he drove himself until Turnor made ready to leave Cumberland House for his mapping expedition. By that time David was near blindness, weakened by an infection, and unfit to go. He was forced to stay behind while Peter Fiddler, another young clerk, took his place at Turnor’s side.

Before Turnor left, he called David aside. “So, young man,” he said, “Do me a favour. Don’t try so hard next time. They tell me you’re being sent back to York Factory as soon as your eyesight recovers. Your leg has healed nicely so I’ve sent a letter to the factor recommending you as a surveyor. Keep faith that your time will come. And use this,” said Turnor, handing David a brass sextant. “The radius is small but it was made by Peter Dolland, one of the finest makers in England. You can use it ’til we meet at York Factory next year. All the best, Mr. Thompson,” the astronomer said, handing David the sextant’s storage box.

Turnor’s party shoved off, leaving David standing at the lake’s rocky shore with his dreams held in that small wooden box. One day, he hoped, the Company might ask him to cross the mountain range to the west. Then, when one of the creek beds he’d been following for days dwindled to nothing and it was the end of some river and the edge of nowhere, he’d make his own map and his own choices. Maybe the company would tell him to push west, but only he could decide whether to first go northward or south. He’d be the one to choose whether to follow some untravelled valley and hope to pick up the beginnings of a new river or perhaps crest some distant ridge into another drainage. Whatever his choices, right or wrong, he could trust the stars and his sextant, and they would help him show others where he had gone.

“June 9th, 1790 – Cumberland House – north latitude 53 degrees, 56 minutes and 44 seconds; west longitude 102 degrees and 13 minutes,” David muttered as he pencilled the first entry into his journal. “Wind, sou-sou east, overcast, 54 degrees F.” Each day over the coming months on his way back to York Factory, David entered similar data into his journal. Joseph Colen, the new factor; will be impressed , thought David, when the route from Cumberland House to York Factory was completely surveyed for mapping.

Colen, however, was a man of business with little patience for meteorology or map-making. He was under pressure from the North West Company, whose traders had penetrated his territory and were siphoning off valuable HBC furs. Colen’s future and chances for promotion in the company depended on how well he was able to compete with the rival company for market share. When Thompson arrived, Colen immediately set him to work in the warehouse overseeing the grading and bundling of furs. When that work was completed, he sent him by the same route back to Cumberland House to collect more furs for the factory.

Even Turnor, when he arrived a year later, could not persuade the ambitious fur merchant to see the value of a map. With Turnor’s influence, however, David was appointed surveyor. He was at the end of his seven-year apprenticeship, and the directors in London gave instructions that he was to survey another trade route to the rich Athabasca country. But Colen knew how to sidestep orders from London. He could make sure his newest recruit wasn’t wasted on mapping Athabasca, but was used as he needed him – for fur production and the commerce of the factory.

For the next five years Thompson was sent trading into the Muskrat Country, the well-known, waterlogged, bug-ridden region between York Factory and Reindeer Lake. He took astronomical observations and fixed positions as he travelled, but routine company business, piled on by Colen, occupied most of his time. Finally, in 1796, Colen couldn’t stall London any longer, and he reluctantly gave Thompson permission to map a new route to the Athabasca. Colen could still influence the outcome, however, and he knew that without good men and sufficient supplies the expedition would likely fail, thus putting an end to London’s incessant demands. Colen also had Thompson’s most recent editions of the Nautical Almanac from London. For the last two years he had somehow forgotten to send them forward. What Colen didn’t count on, though, was the determination of the young surveyor.

On June 10, Thompson headed north on the Reindeer River. He was spared no company men and given no canoe. Undeterred, he hired two inexperienced Chipewyan youths as guides and constructed a birchbark canoe himself. The meagre ration allowed him meant his small party would have to rely on a fishnet and a musket for food as they advanced toward the treeless northern barrens. Secured in the belly of his five-metre canoe were his surveying instruments and notebook, a small tent and bedding, thirty rounds of ball ammunition for caribou, two kilograms of shot for geese and ducks, two kilograms of gunpowder, and three spare flints.

They travelled fast under the light load for the first week, but eventually the rivers lost depth and they began tracking. When the waterways shallowed further, they carried their canoe and pack for eighty kilometres over rocks and mosquito-infested marshes before finally reaching Lake Wollaston on June 23. Over the next two nights, while his guides rested, Thompson was busy with sextant and pencil completing notes for the survey.

They paddled across windswept Lake Wollaston for several days before finally descending the treacherous rapids of the Black River to Lake Athabasca. Six hours onto the lake they came to a protected shore well suited for a canoe camp. To their surprise, the site had been used before. Here, on a blazed pine tree, Thompson discovered the survey marking of his old master. It read “Philip Turnor – 1791.” Finally, after five years of frustration, David had mapped another route to the fur rich Athabasca region. Now he faced a bigger challenge: the long journey home.

Trail weariness had crept up on the men, depleting their strength imperceptibly each day, until they were exhausted. Such fatigue, unheeded, compounds even small problems. In this weakened state their judgment was impaired and their reactions were slowed. That is how it was when Thompson tried to line his canoe homeward up a stretch of rapids. The young Chipewyan guides, weary and unmindful, allowed the river’s current to shear the canoe crosscurrent. Thompson, slow with his paddle, corrected too late and was now faced with the threat of capsizing. He sprang forward and cut the bowline with his knife, but he had forgotten the falls behind him. By the time the sluggish crew noticed the line was slack, Thompson was plunging headlong nearly four metres over the cataract. He was battered brutally against the rocks below the falls but managed to surface, grasp the canoe, and swim to shore. He lay gasping, his body bruised and the flesh torn from the heel of his left foot, while what few provisions they had were carried off and lost in the river.

The crew later recovered the cork-lined box containing Thompson’s instruments and notebook but they could not find the fishnet and ammunition. Once Thompson’s foot was bandaged with tent canvas and the canoe was repaired with spruce gum, they struck out again for home. The men knew that with only berries for food, they would soon die. In desperation, one of the Chipewyan stole two young eaglets from a treetop nest. The fledglings put up a fearsome struggle and sank their talons deep into the young man’s arm before he could kill them. The men ate the birds’ yellow fat and saved the meat for future rations. The fat, however, was contaminated and produced severe gastroenteritis. Thompson and his men spent the night and the next few days disabled by vomiting, diarrhea, and intestinal cramps. Weak, and with no extra clothes or fire to warm them, they could not continue. Death seemed inevitable as the cold of the night closed in.

Fortunately, in the morning a passing band of Chipewyan discovered the near-lifeless men and fed them some nourishing broth. In a few days the Chipewyan moved on, but they left behind a small cache that included powder and ammunition. The men, now recovered, could hunt for food.

Some weeks later Thompson and his crew arrived at Fairford House, weak and emaciated but alive. By August, a new brigade had arrived with trade goods, and over the winter, Thompson persuaded the brigade to accompany him on his new route to the Athabasca. This time he had a party of seventeen experienced men, four canoes, and plenty of supplies. Still, the outcome was almost as disastrous as the first trip. The route, although shorter than Turnor’s route, was not practical for the fur trade. The waterways were often too shallow and the eighty-kilometre portage made the movement of heavy canoe loads overwhelming.

The expedition was forced to a standstill late in the season and had to winter in a makeshift log hut, which they named Bedford House. The winter was hard. Game was scarce, temperatures plummeted to record lows, and worse still, trade for fur was unprofitable. When word reached York Factory, Joseph Colen finally had what he wanted. Thompson’s mapping expedition had failed to produce commercially useful results, and the young surveyor was ordered to return to the business of trading full time.

David Thompson was now twenty-seven years old, and he was angry. His second term of service with the company was up, and until this point he had done everything they had asked of him. His years of hard travel had made him as lean and tough as any veteran fur trader. He was a crack shot and a fine hunter. He could speak the language of the Chipewyan, Cree, and Peigan and they respected him. He could not only read and write at a time when most men could do neither, but he had also mastered the mathematics and astronomy needed to map the wilderness. He felt that for the first time in his life he was free to choose his future, and he knew he had become a valuable commodity.

Yes, the company had offered to promote him to chief trader with the title “Master to the Northward,” but to him this was a sentence to years of mundane administrative duties. It would mean overseeing staff, reviewing budgets, and working for higher productivity. Who would care how many furs the “Master to the Northward” had traded in his career? Would it matter to anyone but a handful of wealthy London shareholders how much he increased the company’s profit? He wanted his contribution to be more substantial than that. He wanted to map the new wilderness, to contribute something that would endure and benefit many.

He had all his savings in the Hudson’s Bay Company bank set aside, with instructions to send regular payments to his mother in England. He sent a letter to Joseph Colen asking that his Nautical Almanac and survey instruments be forwarded. That done, on May 23, 1797, Thompson set out for the nearest North West Company (NWC) post at Fraser House, 120 kilometres away. The North West Company needed an explorer and surveyor. Now they would have one.

At the Portage. Over and over again. Each man packed heavy forty-kilogram loads strapped to his back as the canoes were transported over land from one waterway to the next.