92 THE GREAT NORTH-WEST 



discouraging reports were the invariable rule, I was 

 advised to abandon this, to forego that, and to hasten 

 back to from whence I came. No stores or supplies 

 could be sold to me for money. The Company did not 

 trade in that way. I was offered the Indian rate of 

 barter for such furs as I had, but no regular purchase 

 and sale transaction would be entertained. I was even 

 refused two or three pounds of powder, to replace that 

 expended, by way of purchase ; though the gentlemen of 

 the depot afterwards gave me half-a-dozen pounds. And 

 so with every other class of store. If I asked to purchase 

 it I was told that the Company were not store-keepers ; 

 but I was never permitted to depart lacking what I had 

 asked for. The impression left on my mind was that the 

 gentlemen of the depots had an ungrateful task to per- 

 form, which their loyalty to their employers compelled 

 them to carry out to a certain extent, while their feelings, 

 as men and gentlemen, refused to let them endanger the 

 life of a fellow-man by thrusting him forth lacking those 

 things on which his safety, in great measure, depended. 

 Discouraging advice I received in abundance, but no 

 active opposition. 



Advice, however, good, bad, or indifferent, is a thing 

 I have never been much influenced by. I am a born 

 Bohemian, and the wildernesses of this splendid con- 

 tinent harbour a siren whose enchantments I never could 

 resist. Where many men have grumbled at their hard- 

 ships, and some talked of perishing, I have been in 

 paradise. Although to some extent a cripple (though 

 not seriously lame at this time), I have been all through 

 life a man of Herculean powers of endurance ; and the 

 solitude of the wilderness has for me the same allure- 

 ments that the sea is said to have for many natures. 

 Not but that I love the sea also — what Englishman does 

 not ? On this, my first extensive journey in the New 

 World, I was in such a state of delighted excitement 

 that no fear, no force, could have induced me to abandon 



