On a certain breezy morning in October-not many years ago-a wilderness of foam rioted wildly over those dangerous sands which lie off the port of Yarmouth, where the Evening Star, fishing-smack, was getting ready for sea. In one of the narrow lanes or "Rows" peculiar to that town, the skipper of the smack stood at his own door, grumbling. He was a broad burly man, a little past the prime of life, but prematurely aged by hard work and hard living.

Nobody ever caught John Buzzby asleep by any chance whatever. No weasel was ever half so sensitive on that point as he was. Wherever he happened to be (and in the course of his adventurous life he had been to nearly all parts of the known world) he was the first awake in the morning and the last asleep at night; he always answered promptly to the first call; and was never known by any man living to have been seen with his eyes shut, except when he winked, and that operation he performed less frequently than other men.

There is a river in America which flows to the north-westward of Great Bear Lake, and helps to drain that part of the great wilderness into the Arctic Sea. It is an insignificant stream compared with such well-known waterways as the Mackenzie and the Coppermine; nevertheless it is large enough to entice the white-whale and the seal into its waters every spring, and it becomes a resting-place for myriads of wild-fowl while on their passage to and from the breeding-grounds of the Far North.

It is man's nature to soar intellectually, and it seems to have been his ambition from earliest ages to soar physically. Every one in health knows, or at some period of life must have known, that upward bounding of the spirit which induces a longing for the possession of wings, that the material body might be wafted upwards into those blue realms of light, which are so attractive to the eye and imagination of poor creeping man that he has appropriately styled them the heavens.

The following story is intended to illustrate one of the many phases of the fur-trader's life in those wild regions of North America which surround Hudson's Bay. Most of its major incidents are facts-fiction being employed chiefly for the purpose of weaving these facts into a readable form. If this volume should chance to fall into the hands of any of those who acted a part in the first settlement of Ungava, we trust that they will forgive the liberty that has been taken with their persons and adventures, remembering that transpositions, modifications, and transformations are necessary in...

"'Honesty is the best policy, ' Tom, you may depend on it," said a youth to his companion, one afternoon, as they walked along the margin of one of those brawling rivulets which, born amid the snows of the Rocky Mountain peaks, run a wild and plunging course of many miles before finding comparative rest in the celebrated goldfields of Oregon.

"So, sir, it seems that you've set your heart on learning something of everything?" The man who said this was a tall and rugged professional diver. He to whom it was said was Edgar Berrington, our hero, a strapping youth of twenty-one. "Well-yes, I have set my heart upon something of that sort, Baldwin," answered the youth. "You see, I hold that an engineer ought to be practically acquainted, more or less, with everything that bears, even remotely, on his profession; therefore I have come to you for some instruction in the noble art of diving."

In the 1800s shipowners often did not keep their vessels in good condition, knowing that if they were wrecked the owners would get recompense from the insurance for the ship and cargo. They were unconcerned at the deaths of the crew and passengers. One such shipowner is Mr Denham, who ignores the advice given by one of his captains, John Bax, to improve the condition of his ships, and the pleas of his nephew Guy for a donation to help build a lifeboat to be stationed on the Kent Coast. In the book we follow the adventures of Bax and Guy as they go to sea and also the brave crews of the...