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Hudson Bay By: Robert Michael Ballantyne (1825-1894) |
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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 inhabitants of the East;
and, it may be, a good deal of the Americans in general. But I
suspect at least I would fain hope that you have only a vague and
indefinite knowledge of life in those wild, uncivilised regions of the
northern continent of America that surround the shores of Hudson Bay. I
would fain hope this, I say, that I may have the satisfaction of giving
you information on the subject, and of showing you that there is a body
of civilised men who move, and breathe (pretty cool air, by the way!),
and spend their lives in a quarter of the globe as totally different, in
most respects, from the part you inhabit, as a beaver, roaming among the
ponds and marshes of his native home, is from that sagacious animal when
converted into a fashionable hat. About the middle of May eighteen hundred and forty one, I was thrown
into a state of ecstatic joy by the arrival of a letter appointing me to
the enviable situation of apprentice clerk in the service of the
Honourable Hudson Bay Company. To describe the immense extent to which
I expanded, both mentally and bodily, upon the receipt of this letter,
is impossible; it is sufficient to know that from that moment I fancied
myself a complete man of business, and treated my old companions with
the condescending suavity of one who knows that he is talking to his
inferiors. A few days after, however, my pride was brought very low indeed, as I
lay tossing about in my berth on the tumbling waves of the German Ocean,
eschewing breakfast as a dangerous meal, and looking upon dinner with a
species of horror utterly incomprehensible by those who have not
experienced an attack of sea sickness. Miseries of this description,
fortunately, do not last long. In a couple of days we got into the
comparatively still water of the Thames; and I, with a host of
pale faced young ladies and cadaverous looking young gentlemen, emerged
for the first time from the interior of the ship, to behold the beauties
and wonders of the great metropolis, as we glided slowly up the crowded
river. Leave taking is a disagreeable subject either to reflect upon or to
write about, so we will skip that part of the business and proceed at
once to Gravesend, where I stood (having parted from all my friends) on
the deck of the good ship Prince Rupert , contemplating the boats and
crowds of shipping that passed continually before me, and thinking how
soon I was to leave the scenes to which I had been so long accustomed
for a far distant land... Continue reading book >>
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History |
Travel |
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