"Imagine an immense extent of country, many hundred miles broad and many hundred miles long, covered with dense forests, expanded lakes, broad rivers, and mighty mountains, and all in a state of primeval simplicity, undefaced by the axe of civilised man, and untenanted save by a few roving hordes of red Indians, and myriads of wild animals. Imagine, amid this wilderness, a number of small squares, each enclosing half-a-dozen wooden houses, and about a dozen men, and between each of these establishments a space of forest varying from fifty to three hundred miles in length, and you will have a pretty correct idea of the Hudson's Bay territories, and of the number of, and distance between, their forts. The idea, however, may be still more correctly obtained, by imagining populous Great Britain converted into a wilderness, and planted in the middle of Rupert's Land; the company, in that case, would build _three_ forts in it--one, at the Land's End, one in Wales, and one in the Highlands; so that in Britain there would be but three hamlets with a population of some thirty men, half a dozen women, and a few children! The company's posts extend, with these intervals between, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, and from within the Arctic Circle to the northern boundaries of the United States. "Throughout this immense country, there are probably not more ladies than would suffice to form half-a-dozen quadrilles; and these, poor banished creatures! are chiefly the wives of the principal gentlemen connected with the fur trade. The rest of the female population consist chiefly of half-breeds and Indians--the latter entirely devoid of education, and the former as much enlightened as can be expected from those whose life is spent in such a country. Even these are not very numerous; and yet without them the men would be in a sad condition; for they are the only tailors and washerwomen in the country, and make all the mittens, moccassins, fur caps, deer-skin coats, &c., &c., worn in the land."