r days when The Honourable the Hudson's
Bay Company ruled the West, formed the great highways of barter. By
these teeming lakes and sleughs and marshes hunted and trapped Indians
and half-breeds. Down these streams and rivers floated the great fur
brigades in canoe and Hudson's Bay pointer with priceless bales of
pelts to the Bay in the north or the Lakes in the south, on their
way to that centre of the world's trade, old London. And up these
streams and rivers went the great loads of supplies and merchandise
for the far-away posts that were at once the seats of government
and the emporiums of trade in this wide land.

Following the canoe and Hudson's Bay boat, came the river
barge and side-wheeler, and with these, competing for trade,
the overland freighter with ox train and pack pony, with Red
River cart and shagginappi.

Still later, up these same waterways and along these trails came
settlers singly or in groups, the daring vanguard of an advancing
civilization, and planted themselves as pleased their fancy in
choice spots, in sunny nooks sheltered by bluffs, by gem-like
lakes or flowing streams, but mostly on the banks of the great
rivers, the highways for their trade, the shining links that held
them to their kind. Some there were among those hardy souls who,
severing all bonds behind them, sought only escape from their
fellow men and from their past. These left the great riverways
and freighting trails, and pressing up the streams to distant
head waters, there pitched their camp and there, in lonely, lordly
independence, took rich toll of prairie, lake and stream as they
needed for their living.

Such a man was Jack French, and such a spot was Night Hawk Lake,
whose shining waters found a tortuous escape four miles away by
Night Hawk Creek into the South Saskatchewan, king of rivers.

The two brothers, Jack and Herbert French, of good old English
stock, finding life in the trim downs of Devon too confined and
wearisome for their adventurous spirits, fell to walking seaward
over the high head lands, and to listening and gazing, the soft
spray dashing wet upon their faces, till they found eyes and ears
filled with the sights and sounds of far, wide plains across the
sea that called and beckoned, till in the middle seventies, with
their mother's kiss trembling on their brows and on their lips,
and their father's almost stern benediction stiffening their backs,
they fared forth to the far West, and found themse