in fiction; that much may be said; and for the rest, Time is the test,
and Time will have its way with me as with the rest.




NOTE:

It is possible that a Note on the country portrayed in these stories may
be in keeping. Until 1870, the Hudson's Bay Company--first granted its
charter by King Charles II--practically ruled that vast region stretching
from the fiftieth parallel of latitude to the Arctic Ocean--a handful of
adventurous men entrenched in forts and posts, yet trading with, and
mostly peacefully conquering, many savage tribes. Once the sole master
of the North, the H. B. C. (as it is familiarly called) is reverenced by
the Indians and half-breeds as much as, if not more than, the Government
established at Ottawa. It has had its forts within the Arctic Circle; it
has successfully exploited a country larger than the United States. The
Red River Valley, the Saskatchewan Valley, and British Columbia, are now
belted by a great railway, and given to the plough; but in the far north
life is much the same as it was a hundred years ago. There the trapper,
clerk, trader, and factor are cast in the mould of another century,
though possessing the acuter energies of this. The 'voyageur' and
'courier de bois' still exist, though, generally, under less picturesque
names.

The bare story of the hardy and wonderful career of the adventurers
trading in Hudson's Bay,--of whom Prince Rupert was once chiefest,--and
the life of the prairies, may be found in histories and books of travel;
but their romances, the near narratives of individual lives, have waited