People are supposed to have an object in every journey they undertake in this world. A man goes to Africa to look for the Nile, to Rome to see the Coliseum or St. Peter’s; and once, I believe, a certain traveller tramped all the way to Jerusalem for the sole purpose of playing ball against the walls of that city.

Many tracks lay before me in that immense region I call “The Wild North Land.” Former wandering had made me familiar with the methods of travel pursued in these countries by the Indian tribes, or far-scattered fur-hunters. Fortunate in recovering possession of an old and long-tried Esquimaux dog—the companion of earlier travel—I started in the autumn of 1872 from the Red River of the North, and, reaching Lake Athabasca, completed half my journey by the first week of March in the following year.

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