BLACK ROCK

A TALE OF THE SELKIRKS


By Ralph Connor




INTRODUCTION


I think I have met "Ralph Conner." Indeed, I am sure I have--once in a
canoe on the Red River, once on the Assinaboine, and twice or thrice on
the prairies to the West. That was not the name he gave me, but, if I
am right, it covers one of the most honest and genial of the strong
characters that are fighting the devil and doing good work for men
all over the world. He has seen with his own eyes the life which he
describes in this book, and has himself, for some years of hard and
lonely toil, assisted in the good influences which he traces among its
wild and often hopeless conditions. He writes with the freshness and
accuracy of an eye-witness, with the style (as I think his readers will
allow) of a real artist, and with the tenderness and hopefulness of a
man not only of faith but of experience, who has seen in fulfillment the
ideals for which he lives.

The life to which he takes us, though far off and very strange to our
tame minds, is the life of our brothers. Into the Northwest of Canada
the young men of Great Britain and Ireland have been pouring (I was