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280 THROUGH T H E MACKENZIE BASIN
any companionship worthy the name, and from all or almost all
that we are accustomed to regard as the advantages of civilization.
When sickness comes they are dependent upon themselves or on
their Indian neighbours. When their children grow up they must
send them away to school, often at an expense which their incomes
cannot well afford. Their promotion comes slowly at the best, for
it is a service in which men live long, and promotion may mean
the charge of a post or district farther away from civilization,
while the prospect of becoming a chief factor or of being able to
retire with a competency is distant and shadowy. Many missionaries
will undergo all this and even more than this, but they are
supposed to be animated by a clear and lofty purpose that nerves
them for exile and hardship If they can but fulfil their aim. Gold
hunters will undergo much, but they, too, have a definite object;
but the spell of the Hudson's Bay Company's service seems as
vague and quite as powerful as that which binds the sailor to his
seafaring life, which he may often abuse, but which he cannot
abandon. Its agents may be attracted by the freedom from the
conventionalities and artificial restraints of society, by the authority
which they enjoy over Indians and half- breeds, as well as by the
scope for adventure and the opportunity for sport which most of
them delight in. Ask them what fascination they find in It and
they can hardly tell you. Listen to them when several of them
are together " talking musquash" ( to use their own term for discussing
the business of the Company) and they have not many
good words for the service; only when an outsider finds fault with
it will they speak up strongly in its defense, and yet let them
leave it for a time and many of them long to come back to it.
One of them, a young Irish gentleman who had spent years in
the service on the Upper Ottawa River and went home to Ireland,
informed some of his Canadian friends that he found Dublin
awfully dull after Temiscamingue! But, withal, among the officers
of the Hudson's Bay Company you find men of education and
refinement, competent to fill places of importance in society had
they chosen the more settled walks of life.
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| Title | Page 304 |
| OCR | 280 THROUGH T H E MACKENZIE BASIN any companionship worthy the name, and from all or almost all that we are accustomed to regard as the advantages of civilization. When sickness comes they are dependent upon themselves or on their Indian neighbours. When their children grow up they must send them away to school, often at an expense which their incomes cannot well afford. Their promotion comes slowly at the best, for it is a service in which men live long, and promotion may mean the charge of a post or district farther away from civilization, while the prospect of becoming a chief factor or of being able to retire with a competency is distant and shadowy. Many missionaries will undergo all this and even more than this, but they are supposed to be animated by a clear and lofty purpose that nerves them for exile and hardship If they can but fulfil their aim. Gold hunters will undergo much, but they, too, have a definite object; but the spell of the Hudson's Bay Company's service seems as vague and quite as powerful as that which binds the sailor to his seafaring life, which he may often abuse, but which he cannot abandon. Its agents may be attracted by the freedom from the conventionalities and artificial restraints of society, by the authority which they enjoy over Indians and half- breeds, as well as by the scope for adventure and the opportunity for sport which most of them delight in. Ask them what fascination they find in It and they can hardly tell you. Listen to them when several of them are together " talking musquash" ( to use their own term for discussing the business of the Company) and they have not many good words for the service; only when an outsider finds fault with it will they speak up strongly in its defense, and yet let them leave it for a time and many of them long to come back to it. One of them, a young Irish gentleman who had spent years in the service on the Upper Ottawa River and went home to Ireland, informed some of his Canadian friends that he found Dublin awfully dull after Temiscamingue! But, withal, among the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company you find men of education and refinement, competent to fill places of importance in society had they chosen the more settled walks of life. |
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