, did I escape out of bondage.
To be just, it was my own fault that I should ever have been sold into
it, but authors are proverbially guileless when they are anxious to
publish their books, and a piece of printed paper with a few additions
written in a neat hand looks innocent enough. Now no such misfortunes
need happen, for the Authors' Society is ready and anxious to protect
them from themselves and others, but in those days it did not exist.

[Illustration: THE FARM]

This is the history of how I drifted into the writing of books. If it
saves one beginner so inexperienced and unfriended as I was in those
days from putting his hand to a 'hanging' agreement under any
circumstances whatsoever, it will not have been set out in vain.

The advice that I give to would-be authors, if I may presume to offer
it, is to think for a long while before they enter at all upon a career
so hard and hazardous, but having entered on it, not to be easily cast
down. There are great virtues in perseverance, even though critics sneer
and publishers prove unkind.

'_HUDSON'S BAY_'

BY R. M. BALLANTYNE

Having been asked to give some account of the commencement of my
literary career, I begin by remarking that my first book was not a tale
or 'story-book,' but a free-and-easy record of personal adventure and
every-day life in those wild regions of North America which are known,
variously, as Rupert's Land--The Hudson's Bay Territory--The Nor' West,
and 'The Great Lone Land.'

[Illustration: WHERE I WROTE MY FIRST BOOK

(_A Sketch by the Author_)]

The record was never meant to see the light in the form of a book. It
was written solely for the eye of my mother, but, as it may be said that
it was the means of leading me ultimately into the path of my life-work,
and was penned under somewhat peculiar circumstances, it may not be out
of place to refer to it particularly here.

The circumstances were as follows:--

After having spent about six years in the wild Nor' West, as a servant
of the Hudson's Bay Fur Company, I found myself, one summer--at the
advanced age of twenty-two--in charge of an outpost on the uninhabited
northern shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence named Seven Islands. It was
a dreary, desolate spot; at that time far beyond the bounds of
civilisation. The gulf, just opposite the establishment, was about fifty
miles broad. The ships which passed up and down it were invisible, not
only on account of distance, but