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CHAPTER ONE.APPOINTMENT TO THE SERVICE OF THE HUDSON BAY COMPANY--THE PRINCERUPERT--THE ANNUAL DINNER OF THE H.B.C.--FELLOW-VOYAGERS--THREATENINGWEATHER--A SQUALL--ISLAND OF LEWIS.Reader,--I take for granted that you are tolerably well acquainted withthe different modes of life and travelling peculiar to European nations.I also presume that you know something of the inhabitants of the East;and, it may be, a good deal of the Americans in general. But Isuspect--at least I would fain hope--that you have only a vague andindefinite knowledge of life in those wild, uncivilised regions of thenorthern continent of America that surround the shores of Hudson Bay. Iwould fain hope this, I say, that I may have the satisfaction of givingyou information on the subject, and of showing you that there is a bodyof civilised men who move, and breathe (pretty cool air, by the way!),and spend their lives in a quarter of the globe as totally different, inmost respects, from the part you inhabit, as a beaver, roaming among theponds and marshes of his native home, is from that sagacious animal whenconverted into a fashionable hat.About the middle of May eighteen hundred and forty-one, I was throwninto a state of ecstatic joy by the arrival of a letter appointing me tothe enviable situation of apprentice clerk in the service of theHonourable Hudson Bay Company. To describe the immense extent to whichI expanded, both mentally and bodily, upon the receipt of this letter,is impossible; it is sufficient to know that from that moment I fanciedmyself a complete man of business, and treated my old companions withthe condescending suavity of one who knows that he is talking to hisinferiors.
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