The Fur Country quotes

“A traveller! And what does he want?”

“He is come to see the moon.”

At this reply, Captain Craventy said to himself the man must be a fool.

But there was no time to announce this opinion, for the courier had taken an inert mass from the sledge, a kind of bag covered with snow, and was about to carry it into the house, when the Captain inquired—

“It is my traveller,” replied the courier.

“Well, he must be thawed.”

“It is my traveller,” replied the courier.

“Well, he must be thawed.”

Thomas Black, carried by the Sergeant, the Corporal, and the courier, now made his entrance into the house of the fort, and was taken to a room on the first floor, the temperature of which was bearable, thanks to a glowing stove.

he existed only for astronomy; he lived in the heavens, not upon the earth; and was a true descendant of the witty La Fontaine’s savant who fell into a well. He could talk of nothing but stars and constellations.

He ought to have lived in a telescope.

As an observer be had not his rival; his patience was inexhaustible; he could watch for months for a cosmical phenomenon. He had a specialty of his own, too;

Would that all our men understood as you do the importance of our mission, and would devote themselves body and soul to the interests of the Company! Ah, Sergeant Long, I know if I gave you an impossible order—”

“Lieutenant, there is no such thing as an impossible order.”

“What? Suppose now I ordered you to go to the North Pole?”

… surprise at not meeting more of these terrible carnivorous beasts, of whose daily attacks on whalers and persons shipwrecked in Baffin’s Bay and on the coasts of Greenland and Spitzbergen she had read in the accounts of those who had wintered in the Arctic regions.

“Wait for the winter, madam,” replied the Lieutenant; “wait till the cold makes them hungry, and then you will perhaps see as many as you care about!”

On the 23rd May, after a long and fatiguing journey, the expedition at last reached the Arctic Circle.

“That is my conviction,” replied Hobson. “

Such is human nature, and greed of gain will always carry a man further than zeal for science.

”

But they could see and hear nothing. No cry for help broke upon their ears. No dead body floated in the white foam.

The old sailor had met his death in the element he loved so well.

Mrs. Barnett and Hobson sank back upon their seats. They were now alone, and must see to their own safety; but neither of them knew anything of the management of a boat, and even an experienced hand could scarcely have controlled it now.

“We are lost!” said the Lieutenant.

“No, Lieutenant,” replied Mrs. Barnett; “let us make another effort. Heaven helps those who help themselves!”

Lieutenant Hobson now for the first time realised with how intrepid a woman fate had thrown him.

“About ninety years ago,” he said, “the territory through which the Coppermine flows was unknown, and we are indebted for its discovery to the agents of the Hudson’s Bay Company. But as always happens in scientific matters, in seeking one thing, another was found.

Columbus was trying to find Asia, and discovered America.

”

“Nor an Indian,” cried Corporal Joliffe.

“No, it was a Frenchman,” said Sergeant Long quietly.

And all agreed that none but a Frenchman could have been capable of dancing on such a spot.

“No, it was a Frenchman,” said Sergeant Long quietly.

And all agreed that none but a Frenchman could have been capable of dancing on such a spot.

And that very evening these hardy pioneers, encamped so far from the inhabited world, watched the mighty luminary of day touch the edges of the western horizon without dipping beneath it.

For the first time they saw the shining of the midnight sun.

The snow would, however, settle upon them; and when once they were covered with it, the house would be, so to speak, hermetically closed, and the inside temperature would be kept at the same mean height.

Snow is, in fact, a very bad conductor of heat: it prevents it from entering, it is true; but, what is more important in an Arctic winter, it also keeps it from getting out.

The carpenter was to build two chimneys—one above the kitchen, the other in connection with the stove of the large dining-room, which was to heat it and the compartment containing the cabins. The architectural effect of the whole would certainly be poor;

but it answered its purpose, and strong conical chimneys soon adorned the roof, to the great satisfaction of Mrs. Paulina Barnett, who congratulated the originator of the scheme warmly on its success, only adding laughingly, that she hoped the chimneys would not smoke.

“Of course they will smoke, madam,” replied Hobson coolly; “all chimneys do!”

All this was finished within a month, and on the 6th of August they were to take possession of the new house.

The colonists now considered themselves fairly installed stalled in their new abode, and after due deliberation unanimously agreed to bestow upon the settlement the name of Fort Good Hope.

Alas! the auspicious title was never to be inscribed upon a map.

The undertaking, begun so bravely and with such prospects of success, was destined never to be carried out, and another disaster would have to be added to the long list of failures in Arctic enterprise.

“But there is no smoke issuing from any of them,” added the Sergeant.

“That proves nothing; your pipe is not always in your mouth, and it is just the same with volcanoes, they are not always smoking.”

“I see,” said the Sergeant; “but it is a great puzzle to me how volcanoes can exist at all on Polar continents.”

Mrs. Barnett’s delight and enthusiasm knew no bounds; everything was new to her, and she would have thought no fatigue or suffering too great to be endured for the sake of witnessing such a spectacle.

She could imagine nothing more sublime than this invasion of winter with all its mighty forces, this conquest of the northern regions by the cold.

All trace of the distinctive features of the country had disappeared; the land was metamorphosed, a new country was springing into being before her admiring eyes, a country gifted with a grand and touching beauty.

“I suppose they will soon get tired of prowling about,” said the lady, “and return as they came.”

Hobson shook his head as if he had his doubts.

“You don’t know these animals, madam. They are famished with hunger, and will not go until we make them!”

Mrs. Barnett had endeavoured to reason with the unfortunate astronomer, but he would listen to nothing.

He felt that Nature had deceived him, and that he could never forgive her.

After many a hearty farewell, the Lieutenant and his two companions left the fort by the postern gate, and, turning to the west, followed the lengthened curve of the coast between Capes Bathurst and Eskimo.

Truly Hobson was a favourite of Heaven, and ought to return thanks to Providence every day for the discovery of this unique spot.

Ah, Mac-Nab, you little knew how you wrung the heart of your master when you talked in that strain!

The manufacture of winter garments was not neglected in the factory. Mrs. Barnett, Madge, Mrs. Mac-Nab, Mrs. Rae, and Mrs. Joliffe—when she could leave her fires—were alike indefatigable. Mrs.

“But,” added the lady, “suppose you don’t get back tomorrow, suppose you are away more than two days?”

“Then we shall not return at all,” replied Hobson simply.

The door was opened, Mrs. Barnett closed it behind the Lieutenant and his companion and went back to her own room, where Madge awaited her, feeling anxious and thoughtful.

On the beach, about fifty paces from Cape Eskimo, a large white mass was moving about and growling angrily.

It was an immense Polar bear, and the two women watched it with beating hearts.

It was pacing round and round a bundle of fur on the ground, which it smelt at every now and then, lifting it up and letting it fall again. The bundle of fur looked like the dead body of a walrus.

Hobson at once understood the nature of this atmospheric phenomenon, which whalers and explorers have often noticed in the spring in the Polar regions.

“It is not a mist or fog,” he said to his companions, “it is a ‘frost-rime,’ a dense vapour which remains in a state of complete congelation.”

But whether a fog or a frozen mist this phenomenon was none the less to be regretted, for it rose a hundred feet at least above the level of the sea, and it was so opaque that the colonists could not see each other when …

The foxes, martens, ermines, lynxes, beavers, muskrats, gluttons, and even the wolves, rendered less savage by their instinctive knowledge of a common danger, approached nearer and nearer to their old enemy man, as if man could save them.

It was a tacit, a touching acknowledgment of human superiority, under circumstances in which that superiority could be of absolutely no avail.

No! Mrs. Barnett cared no longer for the beauties of nature, and gazed without ceasing upon the boundless, pitiless, infinite ocean with its unbroken horizon.

“Poor Madge!” she said at last to her faithful companion; “it was I who brought you to this terrible pass—you who have followed me everywhere, and whose fidelity deserved a far different recompense! Can you forgive me?”

“There is but one thing I could never have forgiven you,” replied Madge⁠—“a death I did not share!”

“Ah, Madge!” cried Mrs. Barnett, “if my death could save the lives of all these poor people, how gladly would I die!”

The whole structure was strong, although clumsy; and if the wind were favourable, and the sea not too rough, this rude assortment of planks and timbers might save the lives of the whole party.

“Nothing,” observed Mrs. Barnett⁠—“nothing is impossible to Him who rules the winds and waves.”

Hobson carefully looked over the stores of provisions. The reserves had been much damaged by the avalanche, but there were plenty of animals still on the island, and the abundant shrubs and mosses supplied them with food.

Lieutenant Hobson hastened to reassure his comrades about drinkable water.

“There will be plenty of ice, my friends,” he said. “We can always melt a piece of our island, and,” he added, with a ghastly attempt at a smile, “I don’t suppose we shall drink it all.”

It is, in fact, well known that salt separates from seawater in freezing and evaporation. A few blocks of ice were therefore “disinterred,” if we may so express it, and melted for daily use, and to fill the casks on board the raft.