INTRODUCTION 11 



What American authors failed to do was ac- 

 complished by a young English sportsman and 

 explorer who lived among the trappers as one of 

 themselves and acquired their point of view. Al- 

 though not a professional writer, he was blest with 

 a knack of putting his experiences, and those of 

 his companions, so clearly before his readers that 

 one can visualize both men and deeds without 

 conscious effort. This man was George Freder- 

 ick Ruxton, formerly a lieutenant in her Maj- 

 esty's 89th Regiment. 



In Blackwood's Magazine of 1848 there ap- 

 peared a serial by Ruxton entitled " Life in the 

 Far West." This story excited so much inter- 

 est that it was reprinted in book form, and went 

 through two editions. These are out of print, 

 and so the work is practically unknown to our 

 reading public. 



" Life in the Far West " * is written in the form 

 of a thinly veiled romance; but the actors were 

 real, the incidents were real, and they were strung 

 together in a connected plot simply because that 

 was the most effective way to show character in 

 action. The story is not history, of course, but 

 neither is it fable. Nearly every page gives con- 

 vincing evidence of the author's intimate personal 

 knowledge of the scenes and characters portrayed. 

 He had scoured the continent from Canada to 



* Here published as " In the Old West." 



