Adventure and adventurers > Away in the wilderness, or, Life among the red Indians and fur-traders of North America

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AWAY IN THE WILDERNESS.
five or six log houses in it, a stockade round it,
and a flag-staff in the middle of it; five, ten, or
fifteen men, and a gentleman in charge. That’s
a Hudson’s Bay Company’s trading-post. All
round it lie the wild woods. Go through the
woods for two or three hundred miles and you’ll
come to another such post, or fort, as we some¬
times call ’em. That’s how it is all the country
over. Although there are many of them, the
country is so uncommon big that they may be
said to be few and far between. Some are bigger
and some are less. There’s scarcely a settlement
in the country worthy o’ the name of a village ex¬
cept Red River”—
“ Ah ! Red River,” exclaimed Heywood, “ I’vo
heard much of that settlement—hold steady,
I’m drawing your nose just now—have you been
there, Jasper?”
“ That have I, lad, and a fine place it is, extend¬
in’ fifty miles or more along the river, with fine
fields, and handsome houses, and churches, and
missionaries and schools, and what not; but the
rest of Rupert’s Land is just what you have seen ;
no roads, no houses, no cultivated fields—nothing
but lakes, and rivers, and woods, and plains with¬
out end, and a few Indians here and there, with
plenty of wild beasts everywhere. These trading-
posts are scattered here and there, from the Atlan¬
tic to the Pacific, and from Canada to the frozen