Never mind his Bunyan-like face and cropped hair; he has a very powerful mind, and a singular faculty of picture-making. He can create a wilderness and people it with warring savages, or climb the Rocky Mountains with you in a snow-storm, so clearly and palpably, that only shut your eyes and you hear the crack of the rifle, or feel the snow-flakes melt on your cheeks as he talks."
The qualities that Bigsby noted in Thompson's conversation are preeminently to be found in the prose of David Thompson's Narrative of His Explorations in Western America, 1784-1812 (1916). A later version, based mainly on the same manuscripts but with both additions and omissions, is called Travels in Western North America, 1784-1812 (1971); Thompson always called the book his "Travels." In it Thompson displays his unsurpassed direct knowledge; his ability to go directly to the heart of events, scenes, situations, or characters; his imagination, perhaps Celtic; and the overtones of his speaking voice, that of a skilled raconteur who has perfected his phrasing through scores of tellings.
David Thompson was born in London, England, on 30 April 1770 to parents almost certainly Welsh. His father, also named David, died when Thompson, the older of two sons, was two, leaving the widowed mother, Ann, to raise the two infants.
This is a free page. This page contains 194 words. This
biography contains 3,709 words (approx. 12 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our David Thompson Access Pass.
