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On 22 Mar 2007 at 18:23, Bill wrote:

> Along the same lines, I Googled "Hyperborean Sea" for a quarter of an hour
> to find its location before I concluded it was a historical reference.  A
> footnote would have been a help to me.

Boreas was the Greek god of the North wind. The Hyperborean Sea was the
English name for the Arctic Ocean in the 18th century. If you travel North
of the prairies in Canada you will find yourself in the Boreal forest, and
you might see a glow in the night sky that is called the Aurora Borealis.

> Nonetheless, the gist of message did
> come through: --A land surveyor/explorer can do a lot more than lay out
> subdivisions. --The mouth of Mackenzie's river was not on the Pacific
> Ocean.

Mason and Dixon probably gave land surveyors a bad name by laying out the
mother of all subdivisions with that damnably straight line. Note that
Mackenzie did reach the Pacific Ocean, by land, in 1793; 11 years earlier
than Lewis and Clark. Fortunately he had learned celestial navigation by
then so he was able to give a better account of this trip than the
previous one to the Arctic Ocean.

Ken Muldrew.

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