Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Arctic Ocean, in 1833, 1834, and 1835; Under the Command of Capt. Back, R.N.

£7,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

“Dr. King’s narrative is full of the details of Indian life, as it was presented to the members of Captain Back’s expedition. He looked at the same transactions with the natives, and the same phases of their character which Captain Back portrays, from a different point, and their coloring to his eye bears another tinge. His journal, filled with descriptions of interviews with the Chippewyans, Crees, Dog-Ribs, and Esquimaux, is therefore exceedingly interesting even after the perusal of Captain Back’s narrative. Although every chapter is largely devoted to incidents associated with the natives, and anecdotes illustrative of their character, Dr. King yields the whole of Chapter XII to an examination and relation of the present condition of the tribes inhabiting the Hudson’s Bay territories. King does not attempt to conceal the chagrin he felt, at the cool absorption of his own careful researches in the narrative of Captain Back. In the splendid work of that really eminent explorer, there appears a little, and but a little of that want of generosity which the relation of Dr. King insinuates. Both give the most minute narrations of the peculiar traits of the Northern Indians, their destructive wars, their wasting from disease, and famine, and debauchery, all of which are directly traceable to their communication with the whites. Dr. King, however, finds in them traces of some of the nobler, as well as the more tender emotions, the possession of which Captain Back somewhat superci

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