INTRODUCTION 



It was in childhood that the primitive spirit first came 

 whispering to me. It was then that I had my first day- 

 dreams of the Northland — of its forests, its rivers and lakes, 

 its hunters and trappers and traders, its fur-runners and 

 mounted police, its voyageurs and packeteers, its missionaries 

 and Indians and prospectors, its animals, its birds and its 

 fishes, its trees and its flowers, and its seasons. 



Even in childhood I was for ever wondering . . . what 

 is daily going on in the Great Northern Forest? . . . not 

 just this week, this month, or this season, but what is actually 

 occurring day by day, throughout the cycle of an entire year? 

 It was that thought that fascinated me, and when I grew into 

 boyhood, I began delving into books of northern travel, but 

 I did not find the answer there. With the years this ever- 

 present wonder grew, until it so possessed me that at last it 

 spirited me away from the city, while I was still in my teens, 

 and led me along a path of ever-changing and ever-increasing 

 pleasure, showing me the world, not as men had mauled and 

 marred it, but as the Master of Life had made it, in all its 

 original beauty and splendour. Nor was this all. It led me to 

 observe and ponder over the daily pages of the most profound 

 and yet the most fascinating book that man has ever tried to 

 read; and though, it seemed to me, my feeble attempts to de- 

 cipher its text were always futile, it has, nevertheless, not only 

 taught me to love Nature with an ever-increasing passion, but 

 it has inspired in me an infinite homage toward the Almighty; 

 for, as Emerson says: "In the woods we return to reason and 

 faith. Then I feel that nothing can befall me in life — no dis- 



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