Reviews for Columbia journals

The average rating for Columbia journals based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-07-22 00:00:00 Brendan Repkoe What a fascinating book, about a British explorer in northern Canada who should be more famous than he is. Samuel Hearne begins his adventures at the age of 12, when his widowed mother travels with him to Portsmouth to be enlisted as a "captain's servant" for the commander of a ship. This is not quite what it sounds; in this capacity, the "Young Gentleman" was more a "captain's protege" than a servant, and his duties included lessons, with other young fellows, from an onboard teacher; his family was also required to provide him an allowance of 30 pounds annually. So it was more an apprenticeship than simply service. Young Samuel, a strapping, curious boy who disliked his studies, was insistent upon going to sea. Hearne proved an able sailor but found the navy to be ruthless and brutal. After nearly a decade he found himself working for the Hudson Bay Company, and thereafter begin his adventures exploring what sounds like some of the most hostile environs on Earth. He matured into a competent writer, learned several native languages, and detailed the customs and features of the American Indians, specifically, the Dene, Cree and Inuit; he was also an accomplished artist and his drawings and maps are very charming. He was also an observant and accurate naturalist and described the habits of the wildlife in the area, going so far as to wind up with a house full of pet squirrels, beavers and various other adoptees. Although too impatient as a boy for school, he became very literate and philosophical as he matured and his writings and actions reflect this. Rather than summarize the whole book, I will comment on 3 points that struck me, particularly. First, of course, is that I don't think many people of our era can comprehend the hardship and great risks these early explorers endured. These journeys involved backpacking in temperatures plunging well into the double-digits below zero, in areas with few if any trees, carting provisions but still dependent on hunting along the way ... Hearne and his parties, often only native Americans, went without food for days. During the "summer" seasons, snow, sleet and freezing rain still occurs, interspersed with temperatures, incredibibly, soaring to near 100 degrees, or dropping to near freezing or below, after having been rained on for days, unable to build a fire nor get dry, and with the added torment of clouds of mosquitoes. The misery sounds unimaginable. Interestingly, while European women were left home, the Indian women not only participated in these expeditions, but were regarded as necessities: although the men did the hunting, the women were responsible for just about everything else: turning dead game into food and turning skins into clothing and building snowshoes and serving as beasts of burden. In these societies, Hearne notes that men, even the lowliest in status, ate their fill before the women could have their share, and at times were left without a morsel. Starvation happened. At one point during their travels, an Indian woman spent 2 days in painful labor, while the party waited. Once she had the baby, onto her back it went and off she slogged with the expedition, through swamp and snow, moaning in pain and still toting her regular burden as well as her baby, although someone else did pull her sledge for one day after her travails. Hearne, still a gentleman, expresses some horror at the way women were treated in these societies. Haunting him for the rest of his life, according to his writings and accounts of witnesses, was a massacre of innocent Inuit by the Dene party who had been contracted to escort Hearne to a rumored rich copper mine and hopefully the northwest passage the British had been fervently hoping to find. Coming upon a small family of Inuit, the Dene warriors apparently unleashed their demons on them, brutally torturing and killing men, women, children and the elderly, seemingly for their own amusement. Hearne, the only European in the party, was powerless to stop them and was seen as weak for trying to dissuade them. The only thing he could do was document the massacre. Hearne, and other British travelers, were betrayed, robbed and abandoned by their native American cohorts quite often, it seems; casks of rum were hauled inland for trading expeditions (it was also customary to offer gifts) and by the time it was all over, it turned out the men in charge of the casks had consumed it themselves and replaced it with water. Politically incorrect it may sound now, but I can see where frictions might occur when the European and Indian cultures collided. The author's notes at the end of the book ... a section I usually tend to just skim through ... is in the case enlightening. The author revisits Hearne's childhood town, and the areas of London where he lived after his retirement, while working on his book, and finds out, disappointingly, that the noble and brilliant explorer has been all but forgotten. Hopefully this book will help to remedy that!

Review # 2 was written on 2016-09-28 00:00:00 Annemarie Cronin I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I loved reading about the trials and travails of this mear child who was thrust into the world to fight wars, who braved hostile environments, and who became this rough and rugged person surviving in a strange land with strange people, but who never seems to lose his gentlemanly character. I appreciated the simplest details that elicited my emotions. Like when Samual Hearne was attempting to use his fragile equipment to measure locations along his trek, we knew how important a mission it was to map out his travels, and when the wind blew and broke his equipment, the disappointment was palpable.  Likewise when he had been more than a year out on his first journey to find the Northern Sea, and he was forced to turn back, one could feel the exhaustion and the fear at the prospect of having to go through again what they had just experienced and without the experience of triumph for reaching their goal. I appreciated the author's matter-of-fact description of the event at bloody falls, without any judgements.  And I appreciated the difficulty in Hearne's decision to support Matanabbee, in spite of the seeming injustice of the attack. He accepted the Chipewyan leader's decision, even tried to understand it. Hearne was earnest in his approach to learning about native culture, language and lifestyle.  Hearne's constitution was further tested when the French arrived and threatened the Fort, and he showed himself capable of making a wise decision for the inhabitants of the fort.  By doing so, he probably saved lives, but at great sacrifice to himself.  The author finishes the book by following in Hearne's footsteps in England as well as Canada, and it was a gratifying end to the story for me. During the reading of the book I felt the desire to see the places described, and the author satisfied the need with pictures and descriptions of these places in modern times. It was somewhat sad to discover that Hearne's home town had not lauded him much more than history itself. He hadn't met a brutal death or been imprisoned or courtmarshalled upon return like other famous explorers.  If not for the famous poem by Colleridge, or in my case the song by Iron Maiden, many might never have heard about Hearne at all. Thanks to Ken McGoogan, many more can learn about him.