Jan. 31, 1914. 
FOREST AND STREAM 
141 
caribou, but these deer are now comparatively 
scarce owing to the encroachment of the moose 
which have been driven north by the advance of 
the railways. It is but twelve years since She- 
kauk, now a chief of the tribe, killed the first 
moose at Lac St. Joseph, but to-day these animals 
may be numbered in thousands and form the 
staple food of the Swampy Crees, who pursue 
them relentlessly. Before the advent of the 
moose this tribe subsisted largely on fish in the 
summer and rabbits in the winter, but now the 
art of rabbit-snaring devolves chiefly on the 
squaws and juveniles, while the men hunt bigger 
game. 
“Skillful trackers and possessed of wonderful 
powers of endurance, these wizards of the woods 
find in the moose an easy prey. Even in the 
summer months, when the men are nearly all em¬ 
ployed in freighting supplies from the railway, 
the moose gets no rest. Driven into the water 
by the pitiless attacks of myriads of winged pests, 
he finds himself face to face with a more dan¬ 
gerous enemy in the person of the Swampy, 
whose fleet canoe quickly overtakes him and 
whose unerring rifle lays him low. 
“If these hunters would restrict themselves to 
the number of moose required for food, things 
would not be so bad; but their insatiable appe¬ 
tite for killing never fails to get the better of 
Lord Strathcona, Canada’s Grand Old Man, 
who died in London, January 21st, formed a con¬ 
necting link between the days of the early trapper 
and wilderness explorer, and the present. He 
attained the ripe age of ninety-three years, but 
spent the greater part of his life from early man¬ 
hood to maturity in the service of the Hudson 
Bay Company, rising to the highest position that 
the Great Fur Company could offer. Probably 
no man saw more wilderness service than Donald 
Alexander Smith, and none had a better acquaint¬ 
ance with the Indian and trapping life than he. 
Coming from Scotland he was sent in 1838 to 
Labrador, or the vast country that then bore that 
name—more than four hundred thousand square 
miles of unexplored territory. 
Here in the wilderness, he lived for thirteen 
years, a trader, who travelled in canoes and on 
snowshoes, and whose companions were dogs, 
Eskimos, and Indians. It was a hard, bleak, un¬ 
compromising country, with winters eight months 
long and the temperature at times fifty degrees 
below zero. Aside from fishing and shooting, his 
only recreation was writing home, although there 
was only one mail a year. 
Once, in winter, he was stricken with snow 
blindness, and fearing that he might lose his eye¬ 
sight if he waited until summer for medical aid, 
he took two Indians and started for Montreal. It 
was weeks before the three men reached the offi¬ 
ces of the Hudson’s Bay Company in that city. 
Smith went in to see his chief and the latter 
asked querulously: “Who are you?” 
“Donald Smith of the company’s service in 
Labrador,” was the reply. 
“What are you doing here?” 
Smith explained that he had been stricken with 
snow blindness and had left his post without per- 
them whenever opportunity occurs, quite regard¬ 
less of the shameful waste involved. On a re¬ 
cent trip I saw on one stretch of the river be¬ 
tween Perch Ripple and Big Angling Lake, a dis¬ 
tance of some twelve miles, no fewer than eleven 
carcasses of moose lying bloated in the reeds 
along the water’s edge. Not one of these bad 
been used for food.” 
He further goes on to say that one Indian shot 
forty-one moose in a short season, using only a 
few of them. Martin Hunter, an old Hudson 
Bay factor, has also written of the propensity 
of the young Indian hunter to destroy moose use¬ 
lessly. Evidently the Canadian Government 
must do something, or tourist travel on its new 
lines will not be permanent. 
The one region of Canada which perhaps will 
never see a railway is the great peninsula of 
Labrador, so vast in extent and so barren as to 
agricultural possibilities as to defy civilization, 
but few people of this day have the time or the 
opportunity to go to Labrador—that is, beyond 
the coast line. The country has been traversed 
and explored by government surveyors, but it is 
a terra incognito, and will remain so. Probably 
its extent may be realized when it is stated that 
it is as far across Labrador to Moose Factory as 
from Washington, D. C., to that post on Hudson 
Bay. 
mission because there was no officer of the com¬ 
pany within a thousand miles of him. 
“Go back to your post at once,” was the cold¬ 
blooded command, and the young trader started, 
after seeing a doctor. It was a journey of 2,000 
miles to the coast of Labrador, through a country 
gripped in the icy hand of winter. Two hundred 
miles from the place he called home, Smith left 
his Indians dead on the trail, and then crept on 
alone. In later years, he said he could remember 
little of that cruel journey, save the horror and 
struggle through cold and snow. 
That is the story which has come down mel¬ 
lowed by years. As a matter of fact Smith was 
not subjected to the cold-blooded reception al¬ 
luded to above. He came to Montreal for medi¬ 
cal attention and saw George Simpson, then at 
the head of the Company. He wanted to quit, 
but Simpson persuaded him to go back, a fortu¬ 
nate circumstance as it turned out afterward, for 
all concerned. 
Reaching his post, Donald Smith bent himself 
to the task of doing a little better for the com¬ 
pany each year. Promotion came slowly, but 
finally he became a chief trader, spending ten 
long years on the shores of Hudson’s Bay in one 
of the company’s oldest forts. He was appointed 
a chief factor in 1861, and in 1868, after thirty 
years in the frozen North, he was called to Mon¬ 
treal to be Canadian head of the great company. 
He was then forty-eight, and the color of an 
Indian; the Arctic sun had burned the tan in so 
deep that he never actually lost it, even when he 
passed his ninetieth year. 
He had not been head of the company for a 
year before his worth was tested. It came about 
through the transfer of the company’s lands to 
the government, something that caused appre¬ 
hension among the men who were doing the 
\vork that he had done in the wastes and for¬ 
ests. They, the “wintering partners,” felt that 
the company was betraying them, and scores of 
rugged men journeyed to see Donald Smith. He 
told them that the Northwest must be ruled by 
the government if it were ever to be opened, and 
promised that they should get their full share of 
the purchase money the company was to receive. 
The transfer took place at the end of 1869, but 
when the government commissioner went into 
the Northwest to take possession of a territory 
nearly half as big as the United States, he found 
himself face to face with a rebellious horde of 
Frenchmen, Indians, and Scotchmen, led by 
Louis Riel, a half-breed. Donald Smith, seeing 
the danger, hastened to Fort Garry, the site of 
Winnipeg, where Riel held sway. After two 
months’ of negotiations, in which Smith was 
Lord Strathcona 
watched and trailed so closely that he was vir¬ 
tually a prisoner, the rebellion simmered down 
and Manitoba was saved to Canada. 
Before this trouble had ended, Smith was 
facing another, not less disturbing. It was re¬ 
ported along the trail that the British sharehold¬ 
ers intended to take the whole of the million and 
a half dollars which the company had received 
for the land. The fur traders and factors met 
at Norway House, in the Northwest, and talked 
rebellion once more. Donald Smith visited them 
and again pledged his word that they should get 
a fair share of the company’s money. “Will he 
get us $50,000?” they asked. He straightway 
went to London and told the shareholders that 
they must “play fair” if they did not wish to ruin 
the company and their “wintering partners.” He 
convinced them after long argument and return¬ 
ed with $535,000 for the fur traders. 
Lord Strathcona’s career from that time on 
deals with the material advancement of the 
Dominion, particularly in the building of the 
Canadian Pacific. The Great Fur Company 
never had a better servant or officer. The motto 
of the company, Pro pelle cutem, which seems 
to find a fitting translation in the expression, “A 
skin for a skin,” was enforced by Strathcona in 
the old days of “made beaver,” but he was al¬ 
ways just with the Indians and the trappers, and 
he will be mourned by many an old survivor in 
the Canadian wilderness. 
From Wilderness to Peerage 
Fascinating Career of Hudson Bay Company’s Greatest Officer, Who Ruled Over 
Unmeasured Leagues, Controlled Indians and Suppressed Rebellions. 
