368 THE GREAT NORTHERN WILDERNESS. 



snow-capped mountains, the mighty hush of Nature, as the 

 great solitude sunk at sunset into the sleep of night, all 

 came back to me in a thousand scenes of memory. I would 

 go back to it again. Ts there anything on earth better than 

 this wilderness? Is there aught in this short life of ours, 

 with less of that pleasure which is sure to turn to pain? 

 With less of those things which are sweet, while we toil 

 towards them, and bitter when they lie behind us on the 

 road of life?" * 



Mr. Warburton Pike also in his recent work " The 

 Barren Grounds of Northern Canada, " is most emphatic 

 in insisting on the same sentiments. 



" A man who has spent much of his time (he says) under 

 the influence of the charm which the North exercises over 

 everybody, wants nothing better than to finish his life in the 

 peace and quietness which reigns by the shores of the Great 

 Slave Lake. Ask the priest, when you meet him, struggling 

 against a head wind and driving snow, on his way to some 

 Indian encampment, whether he ever sighs for his sunny 

 France. 'No,' he will tell you. 'Here, I have everything 

 I want, and nothing to disturb my thoughts. I enjoy perfect 

 health, and feel no desire to go back to the worries of the 

 great world' and so it is with the fur trader: the myste- 

 rious charm has a firm hold on him, and if he is in charge 

 of a post where provisions are fairly plentiful, and the Indians 

 not troublesome, he has a happy life indeed." f 



Mr. Pike goes on to say that he "is writing these 

 concluding lines" of his book (quoted from above) in 

 a fashionable garret off St. James's Street, London, 

 surrounded by all the luxuries that only ultra-civiliza- 

 tion can give, without the necessity of tramping " many 



* Far-out Rowings, retold by Lt.-Col. (now Maj. -General Sir) W. F. 

 Butler, C.B., p. 20. 



j- The Barren Grounds of Northern Canada, by Warburton Pike, 

 1892, p. 213. 



