, I suppose, the breast of
every explorer. To visit unknown lands has always been with me almost a
passion, and this desire has extended even to trivial localities,
insomuch that I was in the habit, while at fort Dunregan, of traversing
all the surrounding country--on snow-shoes in winter and in my hunting
canoe in summer--until I became familiar with all the out-of-the-way and
the seldom-visited nooks and corners of that neighbourhood.

To be appointed, therefore, as second in command of an expedition to
establish a new trading-post in a little-known region, was of itself a
matter of much self-gratulation; but to have my friend and chum Jack
Lumley as my chief, was a piece of good fortune so great that on hearing
of it I executed an extravagant pirouette, knocked Spooner off his chair
by accident--though he thought it was done on purpose--and spent five or
ten minutes thereafter in running round the stove to escape his wrath.

As to my fitness for this appointment, I must turn aside for a few
moments to pay a tribute of respect to my dear father, as well as to
tell the youthful reader one or two things that have made a considerable
impression on me.

"Punch," said my father to me one day--he called me Punch because in
early life I had a squeaky voice and a jerky manner--"Punch, my boy, get
into a habit of looking up, if you can, as you trot along through this
world. If you keep your head down and your eyes on the ground, you'll
see nothing of what's going on around you--consequently you'll know
nothing; moreover, you'll get a bad habit of turning your eyes inward
and always thinking only about yourself and your own affairs, which
means being selfish. Besides, you'll run a chance of growing
absent-minded, and won't see danger approaching; so that you'll tumble
over things and damage your shins, and tumble into things and damage
your clothes, and tumble off things and damage your carcase, and get run
over by wheels, and poked in the back by carriage-poles, and killed by
trains, and spiflicated in various ways--all of which evils are to be
avoided by looking up and looking round, and taking note of what you
see, as you go along the track of life--d'ye see?"

"Yes, father."

"And this," continued my father, "is the only mode that I know of
getting near to that most blessed state of human felicity,
self-oblivion. You won't be able to manage that altogether, Punch, but
you'll come nearest to it by looking up. Of co