and 'A Romany of
the Snows' seems evidence that the editor of an important magazine in
New York who declined to recommend them for publication to his firm (and
later published several of the same series) was wrong, when he said that
the tales "seemed not to be salient." Things that are not "salient"
do not endure. It is twenty years since 'Pierre and His People'
was produced--and it still endures. For this I cannot but be deeply
grateful. In any case, what 'Pierre' did was to open up a field which
had not been opened before, but which other authors have exploited since
with success and distinction. 'Pierre' was the pioneer of the Far North
in fiction; that much may be said; and for the rest, Time is the test,
and Time will have its way with me as with the rest.

NOTE

It is possible that a Note on the country portrayed in these stories may
be in keeping. Until 1870, the Hudson's Bay Company--first granted
its charter by King Charles II--practically ruled that vast region
stretching from the fiftieth parallel of latitude to the Arctic Ocean--a
handful of adventurous men entrenched in forts and posts, yet trading
with, and mostly peacefully conquering, many savage tribes. Once the
sole master of the North, the H. B. C. (as it is familiarly called) is
reverenced by the Indians and half-breeds as much as, if not more than,
the Government established at Ottawa. It has had its forts within the
Arctic Circle; it has successfully exploited a country larger than
the United States. The Red River Valley, the Saskatchewan Valley, and
British Columbia, are now belted by a great railway, and given to the
plough; but in the far north life is much the same as it was a hundred
years ago. There the trapper, clerk, trader, and factor are cast in the
mould of another century, though possessing the acuter energies of this.
The 'voyageur' and 'courier de bois' still exist, though, generally,
under less picturesque names.

The bare story of the hardy and wonderful career of the adventurers
trading in Hudson's Bay,--of whom Prince Rupert was once chiefest,--and
the life of the prairies, may be found in histories and books of travel;
but their romances, the near narratives of individual lives, have waited
the telling. In this book I have tried to feel my way towards the heart
of that life--worthy of being loved by all British men, for it has
given honest graves to gallant fellows of our breeding. Imperfectly, of
course, I have done it