TRAVELS IN THE CALIFORNIAS. 
11 
torrents with boats laden with furs, and in the other bold 
enterprises of these daring traders. 
From him we obtained a description of some portions of 
that vast country occupied by the Hudson’s Bay Company; 
and some information on other topics connected with it. 
Life in the Company’s service was briefly described. Their 
travelling is performed in various ways at different seasons of 
the year and in different latitudes. In Oregon their journeys 
are chiefly made in Mackinaw boats and Indian canoes. 
With these they ascend and descend the various streams, bear¬ 
ing their cargoes, and often their boats, from the head-waters 
of one to those of another. In this manner they pass up the 
Cowelitz and descend the Chihilis with their furs and other 
goods ; thus do they reach the head-waters of the northern 
fork of the Columbia, pass over the Rocky Mountains, and 
run down the rivers and lakes to Canada. Farther north on 
the east side of the Rocky Mountain range, they travel much 
on foot in summer, and in winter (which is there the greatest 
part of the year) on sledges drawn by dogs. Ten or twelve 
of these animals are attached to a light sledge, in which the 
man sits wrapped in furs and surrounded by meat for his car¬ 
nivorous steeds and provisions for himself. Thus rigged, the 
train starts on the hard snow crust, and make eighty or one 
hundred miles before the dogs tire. When the time for rest 
comes, they are unharnessed, fed, tied to the bushes or shrubs, 
and the traveller enveloped in furs, addresses himself to sleep 
under the lea of a snow-bank or precipitous rock. When na¬ 
ture is recruited the train is again harnessed and put on route. 
The Aurora Borealis, which flames over the skies of those 
latitudes, illuminates the county so well, that the absence 
of the sun during the winter months offers no obstacles to 
these journeyings. Drawn by dogs over mountain and plain, 
under heavens filled with electric crackling light, the travel¬ 
ler feels that his situation harmonizes well with the sublime 
desolation of that wintry zone. In this manner these ad- 
