IT may have occurred to some reader to ask, What is this company whose name so often appears upon these pages? Who are the men composing it, and what are the objects it has in view? You have glanced at its early history, its rivalries, and its discoveries, but now, now at this present time, while our giant rush of life roars and surges along, what is the work done by this Company of Adventurers trading into the Bay of Hudson? Let us see if we can answer. Of the two great monopolies which the impecuniosity of Charles II. gave birth to, the Hudson Bay Company alone survives, but to-day the monopoly is one of fact, and not of law. All men are now free to come and go, to trade and sell and gather furs in the great Northern territory, but distance and climate raise more formidable barriers against strangers than law or protection could devise. Bold would be the trader who would carry his goods to the far away Mackenzie River; intrepid would be the voyageur who sought a profit from the lonely shores of the great Bear Lake. Locked in their fastnesses of ice and distance, these remote and friendless solitudes of the North must long remain, as they are at present, the great fur preserve of the Hudson Bay Company. Dwellers within the limits of European states can ill comprehend the vastness of territory over which this Fur Company holds sway. I say holds sway, for the north of North America is still as much in the possession of the Company, despite all cession of title to Canada, as Crusoe was the monarch of his island, or the man must be the owner of the moon. From Pembina on Red River to Fort Anderson on the Mackenzie is as great a distance as from London to Mecca. From the King's Posts to the Pelly Banks is farther than from Paris to Samarcand, and yet today throughout that immense region the Company is king. And what a king! no monarch rules his subjects with half the power of this Fur Company. It clothes, feeds, and utterly maintains nine-tenths of its subjects. From the Esquimaux at Ungava to the Loucheaux at Fort Simpson, all live by and through this London Corporation. The earth possesses not a wilder spot than the barren grounds of Fort Providence; around lie the desolate shores of the great_ Slave Lake. _Twice in the year news comes from the outside world-news many, many months old--news borne by men and dogs through 2000 miles of snow; and yet even there the gun that brings down the moose and the musk-ox has been forged in a London smithy; the blanket that covers the wild Indian in his cold camp has been woven in a Whitney loom; that knife is from Sheffield; that string of beads from Birmingham. Let us follow the ships that sail annually from the Thames bound for the supply of this vast region. It is early in June when she gets clear of the Nore; it is mid-June when the Orkneys and Stornaway are left behind; it is August when the frozen Straits of Hudson are pierced; and the end of the month has been reached when the ship comes to anchor off the sand-barred mouth of the Nelson River. For one year-the stores that she has brought lie in the warehouses of York factory; twelve months later they reach Red River; twelve months later again they reach Fort Simpson on the Mackenzie. That rough flint-gun, which might have done duty in the days of the Stuarts, is worth many a rich sable in the country of the Dogribs and the Loucheaux, and is bartered for skins whose value can be rated at four times their weight in gold; but the gun on the banks of the Thames and the gun in the pine woods of the Mackenzie are two widely different articles. The old rough flint, whose bent barrel the Indians will often straighten between the cleft of a tree or the crevice of a rock, has been made precious by the labour of many men; by the trackless wastes through which it has been carried; by winter-famine of those who have to vend it; by the years which elapse between its departure from the work shop and the return of that skin of sable or silver-fox for which it has been bartered. They are short-sighted men who hold that because the flint-gun and the sable possess such different values in London, these articles should also possess their relative values in North America, and argue from this that the Hudson Bay Company treat the Indians unfairly; they are short-sighted men, I say, and know not of what they speak. That old rough flint has often cost more to put in the hands of that Dogrib hunter than the best finished central fire of Boss or Purdey. But that is not all that has to be said about the trade of this Company. Free trade may be an admirable institution for some nations-making them, amongst other things, very-much more liable to national destruction; but it by no means follows that it should be adapted equally well to the savage Indian. Unfortunately for the universality of British institutions, free trade has invariably been found to improve the red man from the face of the earth. Free trade in furs means dear beavers, dear martens, dear minks, and dear otters; and all these "dears" mean whisky, alcohol, high wine, and poison, which in their turn mean, to the Indian, murder, disease, small-pox, and death. There is no need to tell me that these four dears and their four corollaries ought not to be associated with free trade, an institution which is so pre-eminently pure; I only answer that these things have ever been associated with free trade in furs, and I see no reason whatever to behold in our present day amongst traders, Indian, or, for that matter, English, any very remarkable reformation in the principles of trade. Now the Hudson Bay Company are in the position of men who have taken a valuable shooting for a very long term of years or for a perpetuity,-and who therefore are desirous of preserving for a future time the game which they hunt, and also of preserving the hunters and trappers who are their servants. The free trader is as a man who takes his shooting for the term of a year or two and wishes to destroy all he can. He has two objects in view; first, to get the furs himself, second, to prevent the other traders from getting them. "If I cannot get them, then he shan't. Hunt, hunt, hunt, kill, kill, kill; next year may take care of itself." One word more. Other companies and other means have been tried to carry on the Indian trade and to protect the interests of the Indians, but all have failed; from Texas to the Saskatchewan there has been but one result, and that result has been the destruction of the wild animals and the extinction, partial or total, of the Indian race.
I remained only long enough at Fort Ellice to complete a few changes in costume which the rapidly increasing cold rendered necessary. Boots and hat were finally discarded, the stirrup-irons were rolled in strips of buffalo skin,-the large moose-skin "mittaines" taken into wear, and immense moccassins got ready. These precautions were necessary, for before us there now lay a great open region with treeless expanses that were sixty miles across them-a vast tract of rolling hill and plain over which, for three hundred miles, there lay no fort or house of any kind.
Bidding adieu to my host, a young Scotch gentleman, at Fort Ellice, my little party turned once more towards the North-west and, fording the Qu'Appelle five miles above its confluence with the Assineboine, struck out into a lovely country. It was the last day of October and almost the last of the Indian summer. Clear and distinct lay the blue sky upon the quiet sun-lit prairie. The horses trotted briskly on under the charge of an English half-breed named Daniel. Pierre Diome had returned to Red River, and Daniel was to bear me company as far as Carlton on the North Saskatchewan. My five horses were now beginning to show the effect of their incessant work, but it was only in appearance, and the distance travelled each day was increased instead of diminished as we journeyed on. I would not have believed it possible that horses could travel the daily distance which mine did without breaking down altogether under it, still less would it have appeared possible upon the food which they had to eat. We had neither hay nor oats to give them; there was nothing--but the dry grass of the prairie, and no time to eat that but the cold frosty hours of the night. Still we seldom travelled less than fifty miles a-day, stopping only for one hour at midday, and going on again until night began to wrap her mantle around the shivering prairie. My horse was a wonderful animal; day after day would I fear that his game little limbs were growing weary, and that soon he must give out; but no, not a bit of it; his black coat roughened and his flanks grew a little leaner, but still he went on as gamely and as pluckily as ever.
ACROSS THE PLAINS IN NOVEMBER.
Often during the long day I would dismount and walk along leading him by the bridle, while the other two men and the six horses jogged on far in advance; when they had disappeared altogether behind some distant ridge of the prairie my little horse would commence to look anxiously around, whinnying and trying to get along after his comrades; and then how gamely he trotted on when I remounted, watching out for the first sign of his friends again, far-away little specks on the great wilds before us. When the camping place would be reached at nightfall the first care went to the horse. To remove saddle, bridle, and saddle-cloth, to untie the strip of soft buffalo leather from his neck and twist it well around his fore-legs, for the purpose of hobbling, was the work of only a few minutes, and then poor Blackie hobbled away to find over the darkening expanse his night's provender. Before our own supper of pemmican, half-baked bread, and tea had been discussed, we always drove the band of horses down to some frozen lake hard-by, and Daniel cut with the axe little drinking holes in the ever-thickening ice; then up would bubble the water and down went the heads-of the thirsty horses for a long pull at the too often bitter spring, for in this region between the Assineboine and the South Saskatchewan fully half the lakes and pools that lie scattered about in-vast variety are harsh with salt and alkalis. Three horses always ran loose while the other three worked in harness. These loose horses, one might imagine, would be prone to gallop away when they found themselves at liberty to do so: but nothing seems farther from their thoughts; they trot along by the side of their harnessed comrades apparently as though they knew all about it now and again they stop behind, to crop a bit of grass or tempting stalk of wild pea or vetches, but on they come again until the party has been reached, then, with ears thrown back, the jog-trot is resumed, and the whole band sweeps on over hill and plain. To halt and change horses is only the work of two minutes --out comes one horse, the other is standing close by and never stirs while the hot harness is being put upon him; in he goes into the rough shafts, and, with a crack of the half-breed's whip across his flanks, away we start again.
But my little Blackie seldom got a respite from the saddle; he seemed so well up to his work, so much stronger and better than any of the others, that day after day I rode him, thinking each day, "Well, to-morrow I will let him run loose;" but when to-morrow came he used to look so fresh and well, carrying his little head as high as ever, that again I put the saddle on his back, and another day's talk and companionship would still further cement our friendship, for I grew to like that horse as one only can like the poor dumb beast that serves us. I know not how it is, but horse and dog have worn themselves into my heart as few men have ever done in life and now, as day by day went by in one long scene of true companionship, I came to feel for little Blackie a friendship not the less sincere because all the service was upon his side, and I was powerless to make his supper a better one, or give him more cosy lodging for the night. He fed and lodged himself and he carried me--all he asks in return was a water-hole in the frozen lake, and that I cut for him. Sometimes the night came down upon us still in the midst of a great open treeless plain, without shelter, water, or grass, and then we would continue on in the inky darkness as though our march was to last eternally, and poor Blackie would step out as if his natural state was one of perpetual motion. On the 4th November we rode over sixty miles; and when at length the camp was made in the lea of a little clump of bare willows, the snow was lying cold upon the prairies, and Blackie and his comrades went out to shiver through their supper in the bleakest scene my eyes had ever looked upon.
About midway between Fort Ellice and Carlton a sudden and well-defined change occurs in the character of the country; the light soil disappears, and its place is succeeded by a rich dark loam covered deep in grass and vetches. Beautiful hills swell in slopes more or less abrupt on all sides, while lakes fringed with thickets and clumps of good-sized poplar balsam lie lapped in their fertile hollows.
This region bears the name of the Touchwood Hills. Around it, far into endless space, stretch immense plains of bare and scanty vegetation, plains seared with the tracks of countless buffalo which, until a few years ago, were wont to roam in vast herds between the Assineboine and the Saskatchewan. Upon whatever side the eye turns when crossing these great expanses, the same wrecks of the monarch of the prairie lie thickly strewn over the surface. Hundreds of thousands of skeletons dot the short scant grass; and when fire has laid barer still the level surface, the bleached ribs and skulls of long-killed bison whiten far and near the dark burnt prairie. There is something unspeakably melancholy in the aspect of this portion of the North-west. From one of the westward jutting spurs of the Touchwood Hills the eye sees far away over an immense plain; the sun goes down, and as he sinks upon the earth the straight line of the horizon becomes visible for a moment across this blood red disc, but so distant, so far away, that it seems dream like in its immensity. There is not a sound in the air or on the earth; on every side lie spread the relics of the great fight waged by man against the brute creation: all is silent and deserted--the Indian and the buffalo gone, the settler not yet come. You turn quickly to the right or left; over a hill-top, close by, a solitary wolf steals away. Quickly the vast prairie begins to grow dim, and darkness forsakes the skies because they light their stars, coming down to seek in the utter solitude of the blackened plains a kindred spirit for the night.