The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Young Fur Traders, by R.M. Ballantyne

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Title: The Young Fur Traders

Author: R.M. Ballantyne

Release Date: June 6, 2007 [EBook #21712]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUNG FUR TRADERS ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

THE YOUNG FUR TRADERS, BY R.M. BALLANTYNE.

Preface.

In writing this book my desire has been to draw an exact copy of the
picture which is indelibly stamped on my own memory. I have carefully
avoided exaggeration in everything of importance. All the chief and
most of the minor incidents are facts. In regard to unimportant
matters, I have taken the liberty of a novelist--not to colour too
highly, or to invent improbabilities, but--to transpose time, place, and
circumstance at pleasure; while, at the same time, I have endeavoured to
convey to the reader's mind a truthful impression of the _general
effect_--to use a painter's language--of the life and country of the
Fur-Trader.

R.M. BALLANTYNE.

EDINBURGH, 1856.

CHAPTER ONE.

PLUNGES THE READER INTO THE MIDDLE OF AN ARCTIC WINTER; CONVEYS HIM INTO
THE HEART OF THE WILDERNESSES OF NORTH AMERICA; AND INTRODUCES HIM TO
SOME OF THE PRINCIPAL PERSONAGES OF OUR TALE.

Snowflakes and sunbeams, heat and cold, winter and summer, alternated
with their wonted regularity for fifteen years in the wild regions of
the Far North. During this space of time the hero of our tale sprouted
from babyhood to boyhood, passed through the usual amount of accidents,
ailments, and vicissitudes incidental to those periods of life, and
finally entered upon that ambiguous condition that precedes early
manhood.

It was a clear, cold winter's day. The sunbeams of summer were long
past, and snowflakes had fallen thickly on the banks of Red River.
Charley sat on a lump of blue ice, his head drooping and his eyes bent
on the snow at his feet with an expression of deep disconsolation.

Kate reclined at Charley's side, looking wistfully up in his expressive
face, as if to read the thoughts that were chasing each other through
his mind, like the ever-varying clouds that floated in the wi