company.

How did these rulers of the wilds, these princes of the fur trade, live
in lonely forts and mountain fastnesses? Visit one of the northern forts
as it exists to-day.

The colder the climate, the finer the fur. The farther north the fort,
the more typical it is of the fur-trader's realm.

For six, seven, eight months of the year, the fur-trader's world is a
white wilderness of snow; snow water-waved by winds that sweep from the
pole; snow drifted into ramparts round the fort stockades till the
highest picket sinks beneath the white flood and the corner bastions are
almost submerged and the entrance to the central gate resembles the
cutting of a railway tunnel; snow that billows to the unbroken reaches
of the circling sky-line like a white sea. East, frost-mist hides the
low horizon in clouds of smoke, for the sun which rises from the east in
other climes rises from the south-east here; and until the spring
equinox, bringing summer with a flood-tide of thaw, gray darkness hangs
in the east like a fog. South, the sun moves across the snowy levels in
a wheel of fire, for it has scarcely risen full sphered above the
sky-line before it sinks again etching drift and tip of half-buried
brush in long lonely fading shadows. The west shimmers in warm purplish
grays, for the moist Chinook winds come over the mountains melting the
snow by magic. North, is the cold steel of ice by day; and at night
Northern Lights darting through the polar dark like burnished spears.

Christmas day is welcomed at the northern fur posts by a firing of
cannon from the snow-muffled bastions. Before the stars have faded,
chapel services begin. Frequently on either Christmas or New Year's day,
a grand feast is given the tawny-skinned _habitues_ of the fort, who
come shuffling to the main mess-room with no other announcement than the
lifting of the latch, and billet themselves on the hospitality of a host
that has never turned hungry Indians from its doors.

For reasons well-known to the woodcraftsman, a sudden lull falls on
winter hunting in December, and all the trappers within a week's journey
from the fort, all the half-breed guides who add to the instinct of
native craft the reasoning of the white, all the Indian hunters ranging
river-course and mountain have come by snow-shoes and dog train to spend
festive days at the fort. A great jangling of bells announces the
huskies (dog trains) scampering over the crusted snow-drifts. A babel of