LIFE IN THE HUDSON BAY TERRITORY. 367 



their return to civilization, they in perhaps the majority 

 of cases seem to have experienced this strange 

 longing, of which we have spoken, which impelled 

 them to return to the wilds again ; and many of them 

 actually did so. We have repeatedly heard this 

 subject discussed by officers and others belonging to 

 the Company, when we were in the Hudson Bay 

 Territories, and all were unanimous in maintaining that 

 such was the case, and we can have no doubt whatever 

 of its truth. 



Dr. Gordon speaking on this subject says : 



" The spell of the Hudson Bay Company's service seems as 

 vague, though as powerful, as that which binds a sailor to 

 his sea-faring life, which he may often abuse, but never 

 abandon. Its agents may be attracted by the utter freedom 

 it gives, and the opportunities of sport which most of them 

 delight in. Ask them what fascination they find in it, and 

 they can hardly tell you, and they have scarcely a good word 

 for the service; only when an outsider finds fault with it, 

 they speak in its defence. And yet let them leave it for 

 a time and they long to come back to it." * 



This coincides precisely with what we have heard and 

 known while out there, and similar testimony might 

 be cited from the works of various writers to the 

 same effect. Colonel Butler, a well-known writer on 

 military and sporting subjects, for instance, in speaking 

 of his recollections of some of his journeys through 

 these territories during the most severe season of the 

 year, says 



" The camp, the lonely meadow, the dim pine woods, the 



* Mountain and Prairie, a journey from Victoria to Winnipeg, by 

 the Revd. Daniel M. Gordon, D.D., 1880, p. 137. 



