miles south of
Hudson's Bay, and I went there as assistant factor--I had already worn
the company's uniform for three years.

At that time I was twenty years old--very tall, and built in proportion,
with light hair and eyes, and a mustache in which I took some pride. I
knew as much of the wilderness and the fur trade as any voyageur, and I
had been twice to Quebec and other towns of Lower Canada.

I liked the life at Fort Royal, and I liked the factor, Griffith Hawke.
We got on well together, and I performed my duties to his satisfaction.
Thus five years passed way, and the closing of that uneventful period
brings me to the opening proper of my story--to the mission that sent me
five hundred miles down country in the dead of winter to Fort Garry,
where the town of Winnipeg now stands, and thence more than a thousand
miles eastward to Quebec. Concerning the purpose of the journey I shall
speak later, but it was not a thing to my taste or experience.

Distinctly I recall that frosty morning of March in the year 1815. The
picture of life and color, breaking on a scene of wintry grandeur and
solitude, rises before my eyes. I see the frozen, snow-covered waste of
the Lake of the Woods, the surrounding evergreen forests and towering
hills, the low leaden sky overhead. Along the edge of the
scrubby-timbered shore, five husky dogs come at a trot, harnessed in
single file to a sledge. The dogs are short-legged and very hairy, with
long snouts, sharp-pointed ears, and the tails of wolves; the sledge is
a simple toboggan made of two pieces of birch nine feet in length, their
ends turned high in front. Buckskin thongs hold the load in place, and
at either side of this vehicle of the woods a brightly-clad figure on
snowshoes glides swiftly.

Of the two men, one was myself, and the other was my half-breed servant
Baptiste. I wore the winter uniform of the Hudson Bay Company--a furred
leather coat lined with flannel, a belt of scarlet worsted, breeches of
smoked buckskin, moccasins of moose-hide, and blue cloth leggings. A fur
cap was on my head, and a strip of Scotch plaid about my neck. Baptiste
was dressed like all the company's voyageurs and hunters, in a blue
capote, red flannel shirt, beaded corduroy trousers and fringed
leggings, and a cap decked out with feathers. We each carried a musket
and a hunting knife, a powder horn, and a bullet pouch.

Fort Garry, where we had stopped for a few days after a fortnight's
steady tr