Part 1 (1/2)

Popular Adventure Tales

by Mayne Reid

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Captain Mayne Reid was born at Ballyroney, County Down, on the 4th April, 1818, and was the son of the Rev Thomas Mayne Reid Mayne Reid was educated with a view to the Church, but finding his inclinations opposed to this calling, he erated to America and arrived in New Orleans on January, 1840 After a varied career as plantation over-seer, school-master, and actor, with a nu and Indian warfare, he settled down in 1843 as a journalist in Philadelphia, where hePhiladelphia in 1846, he spent the summer at Newport, Rhode Island, as the correspondent of the _New York Herald_, and in Dece obtained a commission as second lieutenant in the 1st New York Volunteers, he sailed for Vera Cruz to take part in the Mexican war He behaved with conspicuous gallantry in e of Chapultepec on the 13th Septe of 1848, he resumed literary work But in June, 1849, he sailed for Europe in order to take part in the revolutionaryhowever too late, he turned his attention again to literature, and in London in 1850, published his first novel ”The Rifle Rangers,” in two volue number of volu, for in them are avowedly embodied the observations and experiences of his own extraordinary career

Unfortunate building and journalistic speculation and enterprises involved him in financial failure, so he returned to New York in October, 1867 There he founded and conducted _The Onward Magazine_, but owing to recurring bad effects of his old Mexican wound, he had to abandon work for so which he returned to England in 1870 During the later years of his life he resided at Ross in Herefordshi+re where he died on the 22nd October, 1883, and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery

Mayne Reid wrote in all thirty-five works, chiefly books of adventure and travel As in the case of all authors, the books vary h order in their own department of literature Many of them have been extraordinary popular and have become standard works Reid has not been surpassed by any other writer in co adventure and great instruction in the fields of natural history Many of the works have been translated into Continental languages and are as highly estee the French and Germans as at home

CHAPTER I

THE FUR COUNTRIES

Boy reader, you have heard of the Hudson's Bay Company? Ten to one you have worn a piece of fur which it has provided for you; if not, your pretty little sister has--in herfor her winter dress Would you like to know so of the country whence come these furs?--of the animals whose backs have been stripped to obtain them? As I feel certain that you and I are old friends, I make bold to answer for you--yes Coether to the ”Fur Countries;” let us cross them from south to north

A vast journey it will be It will cost us many thousand miles of travel We shall find neither railway-train, nor steaecoach, to carry us on our way We shall not even have the help of a horse For us no hotel shall spread its luxurious board; no road-side inn shall hang out its inviting sign and ”clean beds;” no roof of any kind shall offer us its hospitable shelter Our table shall be a rock, a log, or the earth itself; our lodging a tent; and our bed the skin of a wild beast Such are the best accommodations we can expect upon our journey Are you still ready to undertake it? Does the prospect not deter you?

No--I hear you exclaiany? With the lodging--I can tent like an Arab With the bed--fling feathers to the wind!

Enough, brave boy! you shall go with ions of the ”North-west,” to the far ”fur countries” of Ah which we are going to travel

Take down your atlas Bend your eye upon the ht side, Newfoundland; another upon the left, Vancouver Draw a line from one to the other; it will nearly bisect the continent North of that line you behold a vast territory

How vast? You lands out of it!

There are lakes there in which you land, or make an island of it! Now, you ion known as the ”fur countries”

Will you believe me, when I tell you that all this i wilderness, if you like a poetical name? It is even so Frohout all that vast do that can be dignified with the nans of civilisation to be seen are the ”forts,” or trading posts of the Hudson's Bay Cons” are few and far--hundreds of miles--between

For inhabitants, the country has less than ten thousand white men, the _employes_ of the Company; and its native people are Indians ofby the chase, and half starving for at least a third part of every year! In truth, the territory can hardly be called ”inhabited” There is not a man to every ten miles; and in many parts of it youa face, red, white, or black!

The physical aspect is, therefore, entirely wild It is very different in different parts of the territory One tract is peculiar It has been long known as the ”Barren Grounds” It is a tract of vast extent It lies north-west fro nearly to the Mackenzie River Its rocks are _primitive_ It is a land of hills and valleys--of deep dark lakes and sharp-running streaion No tilandular dwarf birches, s, and black spruce, srow in isolated valleys More generally the surface is covered with coarse sand--the _debris_ of granite or quartz-rock--upon which no vegetable, save the lichen or the moss, can find life and nourishment

In one respect these ”Barren Grounds” are unlike the deserts of Africa: they are atered In alh many of these are land-locked, yet do they contain fish of several species Sometimes these lakes communicate with each other by h narrow gorges; and lines of those connected lakes fore portion of the Hudson's Bay territory Most of the extensive peninsula of Labrador partakes of a similar character; and there are other like tracts west of the Rocky Mountain range in the ”Russian possessions”

Yet these ”Barren Grounds” have their denizens Nature has forht to dwell there, and that are never found increatures find sustenance upon the mosses and lichens that cover their cold rocks: they are the caribou (reindeer) and the musk-ox These, in their turn, beco creatures The wolf, in all its varieties of grey, black, white, pied, and dusky, follows upon their trail The ”brown bear”--a large species, nearly reserizzly”--is found only in the Barren Grounds; and the great ”Polar bear” comes within their borders, but the latter is a dweller upon their shores alone, and finds his food a the finny tribes of the seas that surround the here and there, the er cousin, the beaver Upon the water sedge he finds subsistence; but his natural enehbourhood

The ”Polar hare” lives upon the leaves and twigs of the dwarf birch-tree; and this, transformed into its ohite flesh, becoh it be, does not grow in vain The seeds fall to the earth, but they are not suffered to decay They are gathered by the little les and meadow-mice, who, in their turn, become the prey of two species of _mustelidae_, the ermine and vison weasels Have the fish of the lakes no enemy? Yes--a terrible one in the Canada otter The mink-weasel, too, pursues thereat pelican, the corle

These are the _fauna_ of the Barren Grounds Man rarely ventures within their boundaries The wretched creatures who find a living there are the Esquimaux on their coasts, and a few Chippewa Indians in the interior, who hunt the caribou, and are known as ”caribou-eaters” Other Indians enter the fros, that numbers frequently perish by the way There are no white men in the Barren Grounds The ”Company” has no commerce there No fort is established in the animals of these parts, their skins would not repay the expense of a ”trading post”