Since this book was written, very considerable changes have taken place
in the affairs and management of the Hudson Bay Company. The original
charter of the Company is now extinct. Red River Settlement has become
a much more important colony than it was, and bids fair to become still
more important--for railway communication will doubtless, ere long,
connect it with Canada on the one hand and the Pacific seaboard on the
other, while the presence of gold in the Saskatchewan and elsewhere has
already made the country much more generally known than it was when the
Author sojourned there. Nevertheless, all these changes--actual and
prospective--have only scratched the skirt of the vast wilderness
occupied by the fur-traders; and as these still continue their work at
the numerous and distant outposts in much the same style as in days of
yore, it has been deemed advisable to reprint the book almost without
alteration, but with a few corrections.
R.M. Ballantyne.