The Young Voyageurs

CHAPTER ONE.

THE FUR COUNTRIES.

Boy reader, you have heard of the Hudson's Bay Company? Ten to one, you
have worn a piece of fur, which it has provided for you; if not, your
pretty little sister has--in her muff, or her boa, or as a trimming for
her winter dress. Would you like to know something of the country
whence come these furs?--of the animals whose backs have been stripped
to obtain them? As I feel certain that you and I are old friends, I
make bold to answer for you--yes. Come, then! let us journey together
to the "Fur Countries;" let us cross them from south to north.

A vast journey it will be. It will cost us many thousand miles of
travel. We shall find neither railway-train, nor steamboat, nor
stage-coach, to carry us on our way. We shall not even have the help of
a horse. For us no hotel shall spread its luxurious board; no road-side
inn shall hang out its inviting sign and "clean beds;" no roof of any
kind shall offer us its hospitable shelter. Our table shall be a rock,
a log, or the earth itself; our lodging a tent; and our bed the skin of
a wild beast. Such are the best accommodations we can expect upon our
journey. Are you still ready to undertake it? Does the prospect not
deter you?

No--I hear you exclaim. I shall be satisfied with the table--what care
I for mahogany? With the lodging--I can tent like an Arab. With the
bed--fling feathers to the wind!

Enough, brave boy! you shall go with me to the wild regions of the
"North-west," to the far "fur countries" of America. But, first--a word
about the land through which we are going to travel.

Take down your Atlas. Bend your eye upon the map of North America.
Note two large islands--one upon the right side, Newfoundland; another
upon the left, Vancouver. Draw a line from one to the other; it will
nearly bisect the continent. North of that line you behold a vast
territory. How vast! You may take your scissors, and clip fifty
Englands out of it! There are lakes there in which you might _drown_
England, or make an island of it! Now, you may form some idea of the
vastness of that region known as the "fur countries."

Will you believe me, when I tell you that all this immense tract is a
wilderness--a howling wilderness, if you like a poetical name? It is
even so. From north to south, from ocean to ocean,--throughout all that
vast domain, there is neither town nor village--hardly anything that can
be dignified with the name of "settlement." The only signs of
civilisation to be seen are the "forts," or trading posts, of the
Hudson's Bay Company; and these "signs" are few and far--hundreds of
miles--between. For inhabitants, the country has less than ten thousand
white men, the _employes_ of the Company; and its native people are
Indians of many tribes, living far apart, few in numbers, subsisting by
the chase, and half starving for at least a third part of every year!
In truth, the territory can hardly be called "inhabited."