John's Reviews > Ancient Mariner

This book is more of a 3.5 rating. There are lots of interesting stories and information but as someone else pointed out the author's imagined dialogue as opposed to real quotes was a bit annoying. But I could see how the author would like to suppose the dialogue would have played out.

I remember studying (and promptly forgetting about) Hearne in school. But then it was all about memorizing names, dates and treaties. Why can't they make history in school as interesting as it is in this book? It really took some strength, mental and physical, to walk the 3,500 miles from Churchill Manitoba to the Arctic Ocean at the mouth of the Coppermine River. The cold and damp and hunger that Hearne and his Indigenous guides had to deal with was amazing.

He was an interesting man; sailor, Hudson's Bay Company man, explorer, naturalist and many more things; all of which he recorded only to be published after his death.