in publishing the present work, the author rests his hopes of its favourable reception chiefly upon the fact that its subject is comparatively new. although touched upon by other writers in narratives of arctic discovery, and in works of general information, the very nature of those publications prohibited a lengthened or minute description of that everyday life whose delineation is the chief aim of the following pages.

preface to fourth edition.

since this book was written, very considerable changes have taken place in the affairs and management of the hudson bay company. the original charter of the company is now extinct. red river settlement has become a much more important colony than it was, and bids fair to become still more important—for railway communication will doubtless, ere long, connect it with canada on the one hand and the pacific seaboard on the other, while the presence of gold in the saskatchewan and elsewhere has already made the country much more generally known than it was when the author sojourned there. nevertheless, all these changes—actual and prospective—have only scratched the skirt of the vast wilderness occupied by the fur-traders; and as these still continue their work at the numerous and distant outposts in much the same style as in days of yore, it has been deemed advisable to reprint the book almost without alteration, but with a few corrections.

r.m. ballantyne.