The Project Gutenberg EBook of Hudson Bay, by R.M. Ballantyne

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Title: Hudson Bay

Author: R.M. Ballantyne

Release Date: June 7, 2007 [EBook #21758]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HUDSON BAY ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

HUDSON BAY, BY R.M. BALLANTYNE.

PREFACE.

In publishing the present work, the Author rests his hopes of its
favourable reception chiefly upon the fact that its subject is
comparatively new. Although touched upon by other writers in narratives
of Arctic discovery, and in works of general information, the very
nature of those publications prohibited a lengthened or minute
description of that EVERYDAY LIFE whose delineation is the chief aim of
the following pages.

PREFACE TO FOURTH EDITION.

Since this book was written, very considerable changes have taken place
in the affairs and management of the Hudson Bay Company. The original
charter of the Company is now extinct. Red River Settlement has become
a much more important colony than it was, and bids fair to become still
more important--for railway communication will doubtless, ere long,
connect it with Canada on the one hand and the Pacific seaboard on the
other, while the presence of gold in the Saskatchewan and elsewhere has
already made the country much more generally known than it was when the
Author sojourned there. Nevertheless, all these changes--actual and
prospective--have only scratched the skirt of the vast wilderness
occupied by the fur-traders; and as these still continue their work at
the numerous and distant outposts in much the same style as in days of
yore, it has been deemed advisable to reprint the book almost without
alteration, but with a few corrections.

R.M. Ballantyne.

CHAPTER ONE.

APPOINTMENT TO THE SERVICE OF THE HUDSON BAY COMPANY--THE "PRINCE
RUPERT"--THE ANNUAL DINNER OF THE "H.B.C."--FELLOW-VOYAGERS--THREATENING
WEATHER--A SQUALL--ISLAND OF LEWIS.

Reader,--I take for granted that you are tolerably well acquainted with
the different modes of life and travelling peculiar to European nations.
I also presume that you know something of the inhabit