762 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MTSEVM. vol. xxvin. 



These, out of many available and interesting extracts, will now end 

 with one from a former noted Winnipeg divine, the Rev. D. M. Gor- 

 don, D. D., now principal of the Kingston University, Canada: 



Indeeil it is difficnlt to discover what attractions many of the agents of the com- 

 pany find in their secluded and lonely life. Familiar, in many instances, in earlier 

 days with comfortalile and even luxurious homes, and able to procure positions in 

 civilized life when^ a competence, if not a fortune, was assured, they have chosen 

 instead a life that in many cases cuts them off for a large portion of the year from 

 any intercourse with the outer world, or any companionship worthy the name, and 

 from all or almost all that we are accustomed to regard as the advantages of civiliza- 

 tion. When sickness comes they are dependent upon themselves or on their Indian 

 neighbors. When their children grow up they must send them away to school, 

 often at an expense which their incomes can not well afford. Their promotion 

 comes slowly at the best, for it is a service in which men live long, and promotion 

 may mean the charge of a post or district farther away from civilization, while the 

 prospect of becoming a chief factor or of being able to retire with a competency is 

 distant and shadowy. Many missionaries will undergo all this and even more than 

 this, but they are supposed to be animated by a clear and lofty purjjose that nerves 

 them for exile and hardship if they can but fulfill their aim. Gold hunters will 

 undergo much, but they, too, have a definite object; but the spell of the Hudson's 

 Bay Comjjany's service seems as vague and quite as i^owerful as that which binds 

 the sailor to his seafaring life, which he may often abuse, but which he can not aban- 

 don. Its agents may be attracted by the freedom fnnn the conventionalities and arti- 

 ficial restraints of society, by the authority which they enjoy over Indians and half- 

 breeds, as well as by the scope for adventure and the opportunity for sport which 

 most of them delight in. Ask them what fascination they find in it and they can 

 hardly tell you. Listen to them when several of them are together "talking mus- 

 quash " (to use their own term for discussing the business of the company) and they 

 have not many good words for the service; only when an outsider finds fault with it 

 will they sjaeak up sti'ongly in its defense, and yet let them leave it for a time and 

 many of them long to come back to it. One of them, a young Irish gentleman who 

 had spent years in the service on the Upper Ottawa River and went home to Ire- 

 land, informed some of his Canadian friends that he found Dublin awfully dull after 

 Temiscamingue. But, withal, among the othcers of the Hudson's Bay Company 

 you find men of cMhu'ation and refinement, competent to fill places of importance in 

 society had they chosen the more settled walks of life. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



The following are the principal works and articles relating to, or 

 containing some references to, the mammals of northern North Amer- 

 ica, consulted by the writer in the preparation of these notes: 



1821. Parry (William Edward). — ■lournal of a \'oyage for the Discovery of a 



North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific; performed in the years 



1819-20. 

 182;>. Franklin (.John). — Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea in 



the Years 1819, 1820, 1821, and 1822. 

 183-'^. Ross (James Clark). — Appendix to the Narrative of a Second Voyage in Search 



of a North-West Passage, * * * during the Years 1829, 1880, 18:^1, 18:^2, 



and 183.3 by Sir John Ross. 

 1S3H. Back (George). — Narrative of the Arctic Land Expeilition to the Mouth of 



the Great Fish River, and along the Shores of the Arctic Ocean, in the Years 



1833, 18:54, and 1835. 



