AND NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE.
1885.
CONTENTS
[The Scottish Hunters of Hudson's Bay, (Hugh Miller)]
[The Professor's Tales, (Professor Thomas Gillespie)]
[The Wedding]
[Mike Maxwell and the Gretna Green Lovers, (Alexander Leighton)]
[Reuben Purves; or, the Speculator, (John Mackay Wilson)]
[The Sea-Storm, (Oliver Richardson)]
[The Heir of Inshannock, (James Maidment)]
[The Mosstrooper, (Alexander Campbell)]
[The Forger, (Alexander Campbell)]
[The Surgeon's Tales, (Alexander Leighton)]
[The Three Letters
] [The Glass Back]
[We'll Have Another, (John Mackay Wilson)]
[The Scottish Veteran, (John Howell)]
[The White Woman of Tarras, (Patrick Maxwell)]
WILSON'S TALES OF THE BORDERS, AND OF SCOTLAND.
THE SCOTTISH HUNTERS OF HUDSON'S BAY.
The gloom of a boisterous winter evening was settling over one of the wild, inhospitable tracts which lie to the north of the St Lawrence. The earth, far as the eye could reach, was covered, to the depth of many feet, by a continuous sheet of frozen snow; over which the bellying clouds, heavily charged with the materials of a fresh storm, hung in terrible array, fold beyond fold, as they descended on every side to mingle with the distant horizon. On the one hand, a frozen lake, deeply buried, like all the rest of the landscape, stretched its flat, unvaried surface for leagues along the waste; on the other, a winding shore, covered with stunted trees and bushes, alternately advanced into the level, in the form of low, long promontories, or retired into little hollow bays, edged with rock, and overhung by thickets of pine. All was sublimely wild and desolate. The piercing north wind went whistling in sudden gusts along the frozen surface of the lake, dashing against each other the stiff, brittle branches of the underwood, and shaking off their icicles, or whirling the lighter snow into huge columns, that ever and anon went stalking along the waste like giants, and seemed at times to thrust their foreheads into the very clouds. Not a single human habitation—not so much as the wigwam of an Indian, or aught that could give evidence of even the occasional visits of man—could be seen in the whole frozen circle, from the centre to the horizon. All seemed alike uninhabitable and uninhabited—a dreary unpeopled desert, the undisputed domain of solitude and winter.