Resuming his place by the blazing logs, Hubbard unfolded to me his
plan, then vague and in the rough, of exploring a part of the
unknown eastern end of the peninsula. Of trips such as this he had
been dreaming since childhood. When a mere boy on his father's
farm in Michigan, he had lain for hours out under the trees in the
orchard poring over a map of Canada and making imaginary journeys
into the unexplored. Boone and Crockett were his heroes, and
sometimes he was so affected by the tales of their adventures that
he must needs himself steal away to the woods and camp out for two
or three days.

It was at this period that he resolved to head some day an
exploring expedition of his own, and this resolution he forgot
neither while a student nor while serving as a newspaper man in
Detroit and New York. At length, through a connection he made with
a magazine devoted to out-of-door life, he was able to make several
long trips into the wild. Among other places, he visited the
Hudson Bay region, and once penetrated to the winter hunting ground
of the Mountaineer Indians, north of Lake St. John, in southern
Labrador. These trips, however, failed to satisfy him; his
ambition was to reach a region where no white man had preceded him.
Now, at the age of twenty-nine, he believed that his ambition was
about to be realised.

"It's always the way, Wallace," he said; "when a fellow starts on a
long trail, he's never willing to quit. It'll be the same with you
if you go with me to Labrador. You'll say each trip will be the
last, but when you come home you'll hear the voice of the
wilderness calling you to return, and it will lure you away again