Page:Narrative of the Discoveries on the North Coast of America.djvu/24

 of the half-caste natives—resulted the events which cut short the career of this enterprising young traveller.

If the other supposition should be true (and there is nothing save the contradictory statements of his attendants to support it); if, indeed, it pleased Providence to darken the spirit which had passed undaunted through so many trials; we can but acknowledge that the decrees of God are inscrutable to mortals, and join in these beautiful lines of Cowper:

Man is a harp whose chords elude the sight, Each yielding harmony disposed aright : The chords reversed (a task which, if He please, God in a moment executes with ease,) Ten thousand thousand strings at once go loose ; Lost, till He tune them, all their power and use.

Thus perished, before he had completed his thirty-second year, Thomas Simpson, a man of great ardour, resolution, and perseverance; one who had already achieved a great object, and who has left a name which will be classed by posterity with that of Cook, Parry, Lander, and Franklin.

The British Government, in the same month in which he died, intimated its intention of bestowing upon him a pension of £100 per annum