In pondering the early records of the Company, one truth will hardly escape observation. It did not go forth amongst the savages with the Bible in its hand. Elsewhere, an old axiom, and true--first the missionary, then the soldier, then the trader. In the case of the Company, this order has been reversed. The French associations in Canada for the collection and sale of furs were preceded by the Jesuits--brave, fearless, self-denying--whose deeds form the theme of some of Parkman's most thrilling pages. A few years since, in the solitudes of the West, two European tourists were struck by the frequency with which they encountered a certain mystic legend. Eager to solve its meaning, they addressed a half-breed lounger at a small station on the Canadian Pacific Railway. "Tell us, my friend," they said, "what those three letters yonder signify. Wherever we travel in this country we encounter 'H. B. C.' We have seen the legend sewn on the garments of Indians; we have seen it flying from rude forts; it has been painted on canoes; it is inscribed on bales and boxes. What does 'H. B. C.' mean?" "That's _the Company_," returned the native grimly, "Here Before Christ." Might not the first missionary who, in 1818, reached York Factory contemplate his vast cure, and say: Here, bartering, civilizing, judging, corrupting, revelling, slaying, marching through the trackless forest, making laws and having dominion over a million souls--_here before Christ!_ It is probable a day is at hand when all this area will be dotted with farms, villages and cities, a time when its forests will be uprooted and the plains of Rupert's Land and the North-West Territory tilled by the husbandman, its hills and valleys exploited by the miner; yet, certain spots in this vast region must ever bear testimony to the hunter of furs. Remote, solitary, often hungry and not seldom frozen--the indomitable servant of the Great Fur Company lived here his life and gave his name to mountain, lake and river. Whatsoever destiny has in store for this country, it can never completely obliterate either the reverence and admiration we have for brave souls, or those deeper feelings which repose in the bosoms of so many Canadian men and women whose forefathers lent their arms and their brains to the fur-trade. The beaver and the marten, the fox and the mink, may soon be as extinct as the bison, or no more numerous than the fox and the beaver are to-day in the British Isles; but this volume, imperfect as it is, may serve as a reminder that their forbears long occupied the minds and energies of a hardy race of men, the like of whose patience, bravery and simple honest careers may not soon again be seen. He who would seek in these pages the native romance, the vivid colour, the absorbing drama of the Great North-West, will seek, I fear, in vain. My concern has been chiefly with the larger annals of the Hudson's Bay Company, its history proper, which until now has not been compiled.