How few school-boys, newly emancipated from the manual remonstrances of their respective Cleishbothams, but would welcome with overflowing delight the prospect of a distant and adventurous voyage, no matter whither or on what errand! How few but would prefer a cruise in the far Pacific, a broil amidst Arabian sands, or a freeze in the Laplander's icy regions, to the scholastic toga, the gainful paths of commerce, or even to the gaudy scarlet, so ardently aspired to by many youthful imaginations! But to how very few, in this iron age of toil, is it given to roam at the time of life when roaming is most delightful—when the heart is light and the body strong, when the spirits are high, and thoughts unclogged by care, and when novelty and locomotion constitute keen and real enjoyment! A book by one of the fortunate minority is now before us, and a very pleasant book it is, but as yet unknown to the public; since, for some unexplained reason, whose goodness we incline to doubt, it has been printed for the perusal of friends, instead of being boldly entered to run for the prize of popular approval. If timidity was the cause, the feeling was groundless; the colt had more than a fair chance of the stakes. We would have wagered odds upon him against nags of far greater pretensions. To drop the equine metaphor, we daily see books less meritorious, and infinitely less entertaining, than Mr Ballantyne's "Hudson's Bay," confidently paraded before a public, whose suffrages do not always justify the authors' presumption. Our readers shall judge for themselves in this matter. Favoured with a copy of the privately circulated volume, we propose giving some account of it, and making a few extracts from its varied pages.
First, as regards the author. It is manifest, from various indications in his book, that he is still a very young man; and although he does not explicitly state his age, we conjecture him to have been about fifteen or sixteen years old when, in the month of May 1841, he was thrown into a state of ecstatic joy by the receipt of a letter, appointing him apprentice-clerk in the service of the Honourable Hudson's Bay Company. At first sight there certainly does not appear any thing especially exhilarating in such an appointment, which to most ears is suggestive of a gloomy office in the city of London, of tall stools, canvass sleeves, and steel pens. A most erroneous notion! There is not more difference between the duties of an African Spahi and a member of the city police, than between those of a Hudson's Bay Company's clerk and of the painstaking individual who accomplishes two journeys per diem between his lodging at Islington and his counting-house in Cornhill. Whilst the latter draws an invoice, effects an insurance, or closes an account-current, the Hudson's Bay man shoots bears and rapids, barters peltry with painted Indians, and traverses upon his snow-shoes hundreds of miles of frozen desert. We might protract the comparison, and show innumerable points of contrast, but these will appear as we proceed. Before we draw on our blanket coats, and the various wrappers rendered necessary by the awful severity of the climate, and plunge with Mr Ballantyne into the chill and dreary wilds to which he introduces us, we will give, for the benefit of any of our readers who may chance to have few definite ideas of the Hudson's Bay Company, beyond stuffed carnivora and cheap fur-shops, his brief account of the origin of that association.
"In the year 1669, a company was formed in London, under the direction of Prince Rupert, for the purpose of prosecuting the fur trade in the regions surrounding Hudson's Bay. This company obtained a charter from Charles II., granting to them and their successors, under the name of 'The Governor and Company of Adventurers trading into Hudson's Bay,' the sole right of trading in all the country watered by rivers flowing into Hudson's Bay. The charter also authorised them to build and fit out men-of-war, establish forts, prevent any other company from carrying on trade with the natives in their territories; and required that they should do all in their power to promote discovery. Armed with these powers, then, the Hudson's Bay Company established a fort near the head of James's Bay. Soon afterwards, several others were built in different parts of the country; and before long, the company spread and grew wealthy, and extended their trade far beyond the chartered limits."
Of what the present limits are, as well as of the state, aspect, arrangements, and population of the Hudson's Bay territory, a very clear and distinct notion is given by the following paragraph.
"Imagine an immense extent of country, many hundred miles broad and many hundred miles long, covered with dense forests, expanded lakes, broad rivers, and mighty mountains, and all in a state of primeval simplicity, undefaced by the axe of civilised man, and untenanted save by a few roving hordes of red Indians, and myriads of wild animals. Imagine, amid this wilderness, a number of small squares, each enclosing half-a-dozen wooden houses, and about a dozen men, and between each of these establishments a space of forest varying from fifty to three hundred miles in length, and you will have a pretty correct idea of the Hudson's Bay territories, and of the number of, and distance between, their forts. The idea, however, may be still more correctly obtained, by imagining populous Great Britain converted into a wilderness, and planted in the middle of Rupert's Land; the company, in that case, would build three forts in it—one, at the Land's End, one in Wales, and one in the Highlands; so that in Britain there would be but three hamlets with a population of some thirty men, half a dozen women, and a few children! The company's posts extend, with these intervals between, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, and from within the Arctic Circle to the northern boundaries of the United States.
"Throughout this immense country, there are probably not more ladies than would suffice to form half-a-dozen quadrilles; and these, poor banished creatures! are chiefly the wives of the principal gentlemen connected with the fur trade. The rest of the female population consist chiefly of half-breeds and Indians—the latter entirely devoid of education, and the former as much enlightened as can be expected from those whose life is spent in such a country. Even these are not very numerous; and yet without them the men would be in a sad condition; for they are the only tailors and washerwomen in the country, and make all the mittens, moccassins, fur caps, deer-skin coats, &c., &c., worn in the land."
To these desolate and inhospitable shores was bound the good ship Prince Rupert, on board of which Mr Ballantyne took his berth at Gravesend, converted in his own opinion, and by the simple fact of his appointment to the H. B. Company's service, from a raw school-boy into a perfect man of the world, and important member of society. He writes in a very lively style, and there is some quiet humour in his first impressions of the new scenes and associates into which he suddenly found himself thrust. He had not been many hours on board the Prince Rupert, when he beheld a small steamboat approach, freighted with a number of elderly gentlemen. He was enlightened as to who these were by the remark of a sailor, who whispered to a comrade, "I say, Bill, them's the great guns!" In other words, the committee of the Honourable Hudson's Bay Company come to visit the three fine vessels which were to sail the following morning for their distant dominions. Of course this was too good a pretext for a dinner to be lost sight of by Englishmen; and before the gentlemen of the committee left the ship, they duly invited the captain and officers, and also, to the new apprentice-clerk's astonishment and delight, begged him to honour them with his company.
"I accepted the invitation with extreme politeness; and, from inability to express my joy in any other way, winked to my friend W——, with whom I had become, by this time, pretty familiar. He, having been also invited, winked in return to me; and having disposed of this piece of juvenile freemasonry to our satisfaction, we assisted the crew in giving three hearty cheers as the little steamer darted from us, and proceeded to the shore." At the dinner "nothing intelligible was to be heard, except when a sudden lull in the noise gave a bald-headed old gentleman, near the head of the table, an opportunity of drinking the health of a red-faced old gentleman near the foot, upon whom he bestowed an amount of flattery perfectly bewildering; and, after making the unfortunate red-faced gentleman writhe for half an hour in a fever of modesty, sat down amid thunders of applause. Whether the applause, by the way, was intended for the speaker or the speakee, I do not know; but, being quite indifferent, I clapped my hands with the rest. The red-faced gentleman, now purple with excitement, then rose, and, during a solemn silence, delivered himself of a speech, to the effect, that the day then passing was certainly the happiest in his mortal career, and that he felt quite faint with the mighty load of honour just thrown upon his delighted shoulders by his bald-headed friend. The red-faced gentleman then sat down to the national air of Rat-tat-tat, played in full chorus, with knives, forks, spoons, nutcrackers, and knuckles, on the polished surface of the mahogany table."
The whole account of the voyage out is very pleasantly given; but such voyages have often been described with more or less success; and we therefore pass to dry land, and to men and manners in Hudson's Bay, which have been far less frequently written about. In his preface Mr Ballantyne affirms, and with reason, the novelty of his subject. "It is true," he says, "that others have slightly sketched it in books upon Arctic discovery, and in works of general information; but the very nature of these publications prohibited their entering into a lengthened or minute description of Every-Day Life,—the leading feature of the present work." To this "every-day life," strikingly different from life in any other country of the world, we are first introduced at York Factory, the principal depot of the Company's northern department, the whole country being divided into four departments, known by the distinctive names of North, South, Montreal, and Columbia. At this factory, after a passage in a small craft up the Hayes River, Mr Ballantyne landed. Any one less willing to rough it, and less determined to encounter all disagreeables with perfect good temper, would speedily have been disgusted with Hudson's Bay by a residence in this establishment. Mr Ballantyne does not conceal its disagreeables. "Are you, reader," he says, "ambitious of dwelling in 'a pleasant cot in a tranquil spot, with a distant view of the changing sea?' If so, do not go to York Factory. Not that it is such an unpleasant place—for I spent two years very happily there—but simply (to give a poetical reason, and explain its character in one sentence) because it is a monstrous blot on a swampy spot, with a partial view of the frozen sea." Having given it this unfavourable character, the counsel for the prosecution stands up for the defence, and begins to prove York Factory better than it looks. But, argue it as he may, the abominations of the place, and especially of the climate, force themselves into prominence. Spring, summer, and autumn are included in four months, from June to September, which leaves eight months winter—and such winter! It is difficult for stay-at-home people, who at the first ice-tree upon their windows creep into the chimney corner and fleecy hosiery, to imagine such in execrable temperature as that of Hudson's Bay, where, from October to April, the thermometer seldom rises to the freezing point, and frequently falls from 30° to 40°, 45°, and even 49° below zero of Fahrenheit. Luckily, however, this intense cold is less felt than might be supposed; for the reason that, whilst it lasts, the air continues perfectly calm. The slightest breath of wind would be destruction to noses, and, indeed, no man could venture out in it. This dry, still cold is very healthy, much more so than the heat of summer, which for a short time is extreme, engendering millions of flies, mosquitoes, and other nuisances, that render the country unbearable. It seems strange that, in a region where spirit of wine is the only thing that can be used in thermometers, because mercury would remain frozen nearly half the winter, mosquito nets are, for a portion of the year, as necessary as in the torrid zone. "Nothing could save one from the attacks of the mosquitoes. Almost all other insects went to rest with the sun: sandflies, which bit viciously during the day, went to sleep at night; the large bulldog, whose bite is terrible, slumbered in the evening; but the mosquito, the long-legged, determined, vicious, persevering mosquito, whose ceaseless hum dwells for ever in the ear, never went to sleep! Day and night the painful tender little pimples on our necks, and behind our ears, were being constantly retouched by these villanous flies." Worse even than midges by a Scottish burn; and those, heaven knows, are bad enough. The young gentlemen at York Factory, however, thought it effeminate to combat the bloodsuckers with the natural defensive weapon of a gauze canopy, and, in spite of various ingenious expedients, such as rendering their rooms unbearable by bonfires of damp moss and puffs of gunpowder, they were preyed upon by the mosquitoes, until frost put a period to their sufferings, and to the existence of their persecutors.