retty long standing in the service, who,
having picked up a smattering of Indian, is consequently very useful in
trading with the natives. After the interpreter comes the postmaster;
usually a promoted labourer, who, for good behaviour or valuable
services, has been put upon a footing with the gentlemen of the service,
in the same manner that a private soldier in the army is sometimes
raised to the rank of a commissioned officer. At whatever station a
postmaster may happen to be placed, he is generally the most useful and
active man there. He is often placed in charge of one of the many small
stations, or outposts, throughout the country. Next are the apprentice
clerks--raw lads, who come out fresh from school, with their mouths
agape at the wonders they behold in Hudson Bay. They generally, for the
purpose of appearing manly, acquire all the bad habits of the country as
quickly as possible, and are stuffed full of what they call fun, with a
strong spice of mischief. They become more sensible and sedate before
they get through the first five years of their apprenticeship, after
which they attain to the rank of clerks. The clerk, after a number of
years' service (averaging from thirteen to twenty), becomes a chief
trader (or half-shareholder), and in a few years more he attains the
highest rank to which any one can rise in the service, that of chief
factor (or shareholder).

It is a strange fact that three-fourths of the Company's servants are
Scotch Highlanders and Orkneymen. There are very few Irishmen, and
still fewer English. A great number, however, are half-breeds and
French Canadians, especially among the labourers and _voyageurs_.

From the great extent, and variety of feature, in the country occupied
by the fur-traders, they subsist, as may be supposed, on widely
different kinds of food. In the prairie, or plain countries, animal
food is chiefly used, as there thousands of deer and bisons wander
about, while the woods are stocked with game and wild-fowl. In other
places, however, where deer are scarce and game not so abundant, fish of
various kinds are caught in the rivers and lakes; and in other parts of
the country they live partly upon fish and partly upon animal food.
Vegetables are very scarce in the more northern posts, owing to the
severity of the winter, and consequent shortness of summer. As the
Company's servants are liable, on the shortest notice, to be sent from
one end of the continent