Let me commence, then, by at once taking a header into the middle of that period when God--all unknown to, and unrecognised by, myself--was furnishing me with some of the material and weapons for the future battle of life. One day my dear father was reading in the newspapers some account of the discoveries of Dease and Simpson in the neighbourhood of the famous North-west Passage. Looking at me over his spectacles with the perplexed air of a man who has an idle son of sixteen to start in the race of life, he said-- "How would you like to go into the service of the Hudson's Bay Company and discover the North-west Passage?"--or words to that effect. "All right, father," said I--or something of that sort. I was at that age, and in that frame of mind, which regards difficulties with consummate presumption and profound inexperience. If the discovery of the North-pole had been suggested, or the South-pole, or any other terrestrial pole that happened to exist at the time, I was quite ready to "rush in" where even a Franklin might "fear to tread!" This incident was but a slight one, yet it was the little hinge on which turned my future career. We had a relation--I won't say what, because distant relationships, especially if complicated, are utterly beyond my mental grasp--who was high up in the service of the Hudson's Bay Fur Company. Through Iain I became a clerk in the service with a salary of 20 pounds for the first year. Having been born without a silver spoon in my mouth, I regarded this as an adequate, though not a princely, provision. In due time I found myself in the heart of that vast North American wilderness which is variously known as Rupert's Land, the Territories of the Hudson's Bay Company, and the Great Nor'west, many hundreds of miles north of the outmost verge of Canadian civilisation. I am not learned in the matter of statistics, but if a rough guess may be allowed, I should say that the population of some of the regions in which I and my few fellow-clerks vegetated might have been about fifty to the hundred square miles--with uninhabited regions around. Of course we had no libraries, magazines, or newspapers out there. Indeed we had almost no books at all, only a stray file or two of American newspapers, one of which made me acquainted with some of the works of Dickens and of Lever. While in those northern wilds I also met--as with dear old friends--some stray copies of _Chambers's Edinburgh Journal_, and the _Penny Magazine_.