LORDS

OF THE

NORTH

BY

A. C. LAUT

TORONTO
WILLIAM BRIGGS

Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year onethousand nine hundred, by William Briggs, at the Department ofAgriculture.

TO THE

Pioneers and their Descendants

WHOSE

HEROISM WON THE LAND,

THIS WORK

IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT.

The author desires to express thanks to pioneers and fur traders of theWest for information, details and anecdotes bearing on the old life,which are herein embodied; and would also acknowledge the assistance ofthe history of the North-West Company and manuscripts of theBourgeois, compiled by Senator L. R. Masson; and the value of suchearly works as those of Dr. George Bryce, Gunn, Hargraves, Ross andothers.

THE TRAPPER'S DEFIANCE.

"The adventurous spirits, who haunted the forest and plain, grew fond oftheir wild life and affected a great contempt for civilization."

You boxed-up, mewed-up artificials,
Pent in your piles of mortar and stone,
Hugging your finely spun judicials,
Adorning externals, externals alone,
Vaunting in prideful ostentation
Of the Juggernaut car, called Civilization—
What know ye of freedom and life and God?

Monkeys, that follow a showman's string,
Know more of freedom and less of care,
Cage birds, that flutter from perch to ring,
Have less of worry and surer fare.
Cursing the burdens, yourselves have bound,
In a maze of wants, running round and round—
Are ye free men, or manniken slaves?

Costly patches, adorning your walls,
Are all of earth's beauty ye care to know;
But ye strut about in soul-stifled halls
To play moth-life by a candle-glow—
What soul has space for upward fling,
What manhood room for shoulder-swing,
Coffined and cramped from the vasts of God?

The Spirit of Life, O atrophied soul,
In trappings of ease is not confined;
That touch from Infinite Will 'neath the Whole
In Nature's temple, not man's, is shrined!
From hovel-shed come out and be strong!
Be ye free! Be redeemed from the wrong,
Of soul-guilt, I charge you as sons of God!
[Pg 3]

INTRODUCTION.

I, Rufus Gillespie, trader and clerk for the North-West Company, whichruled over an empire broader than Europe in the beginning of thiscentury, and with Indian allies and its own riotous Bois-Brulés,carried war into the very heart of the vast territory claimed by itsrivals, the Honorable Hudso

...