knew of
but one relation in the whole world, with whom their father had kept up
any correspondence. This relation was an uncle, and, strange as it may
seem, a Scotchman--a Highlander, who had strayed to Corsica in early
life, and had there married the Colonel's sister. That uncle had
afterwards emigrated to Canada, and had become extensively engaged in
the fur trade. He was now a superintendent or "factor" of the Hudson's
Bay Company, stationed at one of their most remote posts near the shores
of the Arctic Sea! There is a romance in the history of some men wilder
than any fiction that could be imagined.

I have not yet answered the question as to where our Boy Hunters were
journeying in their birch-bark canoe. By this time you will have divined
the answer. Certainly, you will say, they were on their way to join
their uncle in his remote home. For no other object could they be
travelling through the wild regions of the Red River. That supposition
is correct. To visit this Scotch uncle (they had not seen him for years)
was the object of their long, toilsome, and perilous journey. After
their father's death he had sent for them. He had heard of their
exploits upon the prairies; and, being himself of an adventurous
disposition, he was filled with admiration for his young kinsmen, and
desired very much to have them come and live with him.

Being now their guardian, he might command as much, but it needed not
any exercise of authority on his part to induce all three of them to
obey his summons. They had travelled through the mighty forests of the
Mississippi, and upon the summer prairies of the South. These great
features of the earth's surface were to them familiar things, and they
were no longer curious about them. But there remained a vast country
which they longed eagerly to explore. They longed to look upon its
shining lakes and crystal rivers; upon its snow-clad hills and ice-bound
streams; upon its huge mammalia--its moose and its musk-oxen, its wapiti
and its monster bears. This was the very country to which they were now
invited by their kinsman, and cheerfully did they accept his invitation.

Already had they made one-half the journey, though by far the easier
half. They had travelled up the Mississippi by steamboat as far as the
mouth of the St. Peter's. There they had commenced their canoe
voyage--in other words became "voyageurs"--for such is the name given to
those who travel by canoes through these wild terr