without much interest to the general reader; still as it was one chief
design of the writer to draw a faithful picture of the Indian trader's
life,--its toils, annoyances, privations, and perils, when on actual
service, or on a trading or exploring expedition; its loneliness,
cheerlessness, and ennui, when not on actual service; together with
the shifts to which he is reduced in order to combat that ennui;--such
incidents, trifling though they may appear to be, he conceives may yet
convey to the reader a livelier idea of life in the Hudson's Bay
Company's territories than a more ambitious or laboured description
could have done. No one, indeed, who has passed his life amid the busy
haunts of men, can form any just idea of the interest attached by the
lonely trader to the most trifling events, such as the arrival of a
stranger Indian,--the coming of a new clerk,--a scuffle among the
Indians,--or a sudden change of weather. No one, unaccustomed to their
"short commons," can conceive the intense, it may be said fearful,
interest and excitement with which the issue of a fishing or hunting
expedition is anticipated.

Should his work contribute, in any degree, to awaken the sympathy of
the Christian world in behalf of the wretched and degraded Aborigines
of this vast territory; should it tend in any way to expose, or to
reform the abuses in the management of the Hudson's Bay Company, or to
render its monopoly less injurious to the natives than hitherto it has
been; the writer's labour will have been amply compensated. Interested
as he still is in that Company, with a considerable stake depending on
its returns, it can scarcely be supposed that he has any intention,
wantonly or unnecessarily, to injure its interests.

GUELPH, CANADA WEST,
_1st March, 1849._