Chapter Two.

Headquarters—The men—Disputation and uncertainty—New uses for the skins of dead boys!—Mutinous resolves.

Moose Fort, the headquarters and depôt of the fur-traders, who prosecute their traffic in almost all parts of the wild and uninhabited regions of North America, stands on an island near the mouth of Moose River. Like all the establishments of the fur-traders, it is a solitary group of wooden buildings, far removed beyond the influences—almost beyond the ken—of the civilised world, and surrounded by the primeval wilderness, the only tenants of which were, at the time we write of, a few scattered tribes of Muskigon Indians, and the wild animals whose flesh furnished them with food and whose skins constituted their sole wealth. There was little of luxury at Moose Fort. The walls of the houses within the stockade, that served more as an ornament than a defence, were of painted, in some cases unpainted, planks. The floors, ceilings, chairs, tables, and, in short, all the articles of furniture in the place, were made of the same rough material. A lofty scaffolding of wood rose above the surrounding buildings, and served as an outlook, whence, at the proper season, longing eyes were wont to be turned towards the sea in expectation of “the ship” which paid the establishment an annual visit from England. Several large iron field-pieces stood before the front gate; but they were more for the sake of appearance than use, and were never fired except for the purpose of saluting the said ship on the occasions of her arrival and departure. The first boom of the cannon unlocks the long-closed portals of connection between Moose Fort and England; the second salvo shuts them up again in their frozen domains for another year! A century and a half ago, the band of “adventurers trading into Hudson’s Bay” felled the first trees and pitched their tents on the shores of James’s Bay, and successive generations of fur-traders have kept the post until the present day; yet there is scarcely a symptom of the presence of man beyond a few miles round the establishment. Years ago the fort was built, and there it stands now, with new tenants, it is true, but in its general aspect unchanged; and there it is likely to remain, wrapped in its barrier of all but impregnable solitude, for centuries to come.

Nevertheless, Moose is a comfortable place in its way, and when contrasted with other trading establishments is a very palace and temple of luxury. There are men within its walls who can tell of log-huts and starvation, solitude and desolation, compared with which Moose is a terrestrial paradise. Frank Morton, whom we have introduced in the first chapter, said, on his arrival at Moose, that it appeared to him to be the very fag-end of creation. He had travelled night and day for six weeks from what he considered the very outskirts of civilisation, through uninhabited forests and almost unknown rivers, in order to get to it; and while the feeling of desolation that overwhelmed him on his first arrival was strong upon him, he sighed deeply, and called it a “horrid dull hole.” But Frank was of a gay, hearty, joyous disposition, and had not been there long ere he loved the old fort dearly. Poor fellow! far removed though he was from his fellow-men at Moose, he afterwards learned that he had but obtained an indistinct notion of the signification of the word “solitude.”

There were probably about thirty human beings at Moose, when Mr George Stanley, one of the principal fur-traders of the place, received orders from the governor to make preparations, and select men, for the purpose of proceeding many hundred miles deeper into the northern wilderness, and establishing a station on the distant, almost unknown, shores of Ungava Bay. No one at Moose had ever been there before; no one knew anything about the route, except from the vague report of a few Indians; and the only thing that was definitely known about the locality at all was, that its inhabitants were a few wandering tribes of Esquimaux, who were at deadly feud with the Indians, and generally massacred all who came within their reach. What the capabilities of the country were, in regard to timber and provisions, nobody knew, and, fortunately for the success of the expedition, nobody cared! At least those who were to lead the way did not; and this admirable quality of total indifference to prospective dangers is that which, to a great extent, insures success in a forlorn hope.

Of the leaders of this expedition the reader already knows something. George Stanley was nearly six feet high, forty years of age, and endued with a decision of character that, but for his quiet good humour, would have been deemed obstinacy. He was deliberate in all his movements, and exercised a control over his feelings that quite concealed his naturally enthusiastic disposition. Moreover, he was married, and had a daughter of ten years of age. This might be thought a disadvantage in his present circumstances; but the governor of the fur-traders, a most energetic and active ruler, thought otherwise. He recommended that the family should be left at Moose until an establishment had been built, and a winter passed at Ungava. Afterwards they could join him there. As for Frank Morton, he was an inch taller than his friend Stanley, and equally powerful; fair-haired, blue-eyed, hilarious, romantic, twenty-two years of age, and so impulsive that, on hearing of the