The Complete Works of

  R. M. BALLANTYNE

  (1825-1894)

  Contents

  The Novels and Novellas

  SNOWFLAKES AND SUNBEAMS

  THE CORAL ISLAND

  MARTIN RATTLER

  UNGAVA

  THE DOG CRUSOE AND HIS MASTER

  THE GOLDEN DREAM

  THE WORLD OF ICE

  THE GORILLA HUNTERS

  THE RED ERIC

  AWAY IN THE WILDERNESS

  FIGHTING THE WHALES

  MAN ON THE OCEAN

  FAST IN THE ICE

  THE WILD MAN OF THE WEST

  CHASING THE SUN

  GASCOYNE: THE SANDAL-WOOD TRADER

  THE LIFEBOAT

  FREAKS ON THE FELLS

  THE LIGHTHOUSE

  SHIFTING WINDS

  A RESCUE IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

  SILVER LAKE

  FIGHTING THE FLAMES

  DEEP DOWN

  ERLING THE BOLD

  LOST IN THE FOREST

  SAVED BY THE LIFEBOAT

  SUNK AT SEA

  OVER THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

  UP IN THE CLOUDS

  THE CANNIBAL ISLANDS

  HUNTING THE LIONS

  THE BATTLE AND THE BREEZE

  THE FLOATING LIGHT OF THE GOODWIN SANDS

  THE IRON HORSE

  THE NORSEMEN IN THE WEST

  THE PIONEERS

  LIFE IN THE RED BRIGADE

  BLACK IVORY

  FORT DESOLATION

  THE OCEAN AND ITS WONDERS

  THE PIRATE CITY

  RIVERS OF ICE

  THE STORY OF THE ROCK

  WRECKED BUT NOT RUINED

  UNDER THE WAVES

  THE SETTLER AND THE SAVAGE

  IN THE TRACK OF THE TROOPS

  JARWIN AND CUFFY

  DIGGING FOR GOLD

  SIX MONTHS AT THE CAPE

  THE LONELY ISLAND

  PHILOSOPHER JACK

  POST HASTE

  THE RED MAN’S REVENGE

  THE GIANT OF THE NORTH

  MY DOGGIE AND I

  THE BATTERY AND THE BOILER

  BATTLES WITH THE SEA

  THE MADMAN AND THE PIRATE

  THE THOROUGHGOOD FAMILY

  DUSTY DIAMONDS, CUT AND POLISHED

  THE YOUNG TRAWLER

  THE ISLAND QUEEN

  THE ROVER OF THE ANDES

  TWICE BOUGHT

  THE PRAIRIE CHIEF

  RED ROONEY

  THE LIVELY POLL

  THE FUGITIVES

  THE BIG OTTER

  BLUE LIGHTS

  THE MIDDY AND THE MOORS

  BLOWN TO BITS

  THE CREW OF THE WATER WAGTAIL

  THE EAGLE CLIFF

  CHARLIE TO THE RESCUE

  THE GARRET AND THE GARDEN

  JEFF BENSON

  THE BUFFALO RUNNERS

  THE COXSWAIN’S BRIDE

  THE HOT SWAMP

  HUNTED AND HARRIED

  THE WALRUS HUNTERS

  The Nursery Tales

  THREE LITTLE KITTENS

  THE BUTTERFLY’S BALL AND THE GRASSHOPPER’S FEAST

  MISTER FOX

  THE LIFE OF A SHIP, FROM THE LAUNCH TO THE WRECK

  MY MOTHER

  THE ROBBER KITTEN

  The Non-Fiction

  HUDSON’S BAY

  HANDBOOK TO THE NEW GOLDFIELDS

  THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ENSIGN SOPHT, LATE OF THE VOLUNTEERS

  The Autobiography

  PERSONAL REMINISCENES IN BOOKEEPING

  The Delphi Classics Catalogue

  © Delphi Classics 2014

  Version 1

  The Complete Works of

  R. M. BALLANTYNE

  By Delphi Classics, 2014

  COPYRIGHT

  Complete Works of R. M. Ballantyne

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2014 by Delphi Classics.

  © Delphi Classics, 2014.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

  Delphi Classics

  is an imprint of

  Delphi Publishing Ltd

  Hastings, East Sussex

  United Kingdom

  Contact: sales@delphiclassics.com

  www.delphiclassics.com

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  The Novels and Novellas

  Edinburgh, Princes Street, 1825 — Robert Michael Ballantyne was born in Edinburgh on 24 April 1825, the ninth of ten children and the youngest son, to newspaper editor Alexander Thomson Ballantyne (1776–1847) and his wife Anne (1786–1855).

  Robert’s uncle, James Ballantyne (1772–1833), was the printer for the world famous author Sir Walter Scott. The serious banking crisis in 1825 resulted in the collapse of the Ballantyne printing business the following year with debts of £130,000, leading to a decline in the family’s fortunes.

  SNOWFLAKES AND SUNBEAMS

  OR, THE YOUNG FUR TRADERS

  Due to the straightened circumstances facing the Ballantyne family after the collapse of Sir Walter Scott’s publishing house, R. M. Ballantyne was sent to work in Canada, aged 16, where he spent five years employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company. In this employment he traded with the local Native Americans for furs, often travelling by canoe and sleigh to the areas occupied by the modern-day provinces of Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec. These experiences were to form the basis of Ballantyne’s first novel, which was first published in 1856, after his return to Britain. Snowflakes and Sunbeams follows the youthful adventures of Charley in Canada, whose experiences and encounters with fur traders mirror the author’s own early adventures.

  The first edition

  CONTENTS

  Preface.

  Chapter One.

  Chapter Two.

  Chapter Three.

  Chapter Four.

  Chapter Five.

  Chapter Six.

  Chapter Seven.

  Chapter Eight.

  Chapter Nine.

  Chapter Ten.

  Chapter Eleven.

  Chapter Twelve.

  Chapter Thirteen.

  Chapter Fourteen.

  Chapter Fifteen.

  Chapter Sixteen.

  Chapter Seventeen.

  Chapter Eighteen.

  Chapter Nineteen.

  Chapter Twenty.

  Chapter Twenty One.

  Chapter Twenty Two.

  Chapter Twenty Three.

  Chapter Twenty Four.

  Chapter Twenty Five.

  Chapter Twenty Six.

  Chapter Twenty Seven.

  Chapter Twenty Eight.

  Chapter Twenty Nine.

  Chapter Thirty.

  Chapter Thirty One.

  The original title page

  Preface.

  In writing this book my desire has been to draw an exact copy of the picture which is indelibly stamped on my own memory. I have carefully avoided exaggeration in everything of importance. All the chief and most of the minor incidents are facts. In regard to unimportant matters, I have taken the liberty of a novelist — not to colour too highly, or to invent improbabilities, but — to transpose time, place, and circumstance at pleasure; while, at the same time, I have endeavoured to convey to the reader’s mind a truthful impression of the general effect — to use a painter’s language — of the life and country of the Fur-Trader.

  R.M. Ballantyne.

  Edinburgh, 1856.

  Chapter One.

  Plunges the reader into the middle of an Arctic winter; conveys him into the heart of the wildernesses of North America; and introduces him to some of the principal personages of our tale.

  Snowflakes and sunbeams, heat and cold, winter and summer, alternated with their wonted regularity for fifteen years in the wild regions of the Far North. During this space of time the hero of our tale sprouted from babyhood to boyhood, passed through the usual amount of accidents, ailments, and vicissitudes incidental to those periods of life, and finally entered upon that ambiguous condition that precedes early manhood.

  It was a clear, cold winter’s day. The sunbeams of summer were long past, and snowflakes had fallen thickly on the banks of Red River. Charley sat on a lump of blue ice, his head drooping and his eyes bent on the snow at his feet with an expression of deep disconsolation.

  Kate reclined at Charley’s side, looking wistfully up in his expressive face, as if to read the thoughts that were chasing each other through his mind, like the ever-varying clouds that floated in the winter sky above. It was quite evident to the most careless observer that, whatever might be the usual temperaments of the boy and girl, their present state of mind was not joyous, but, on the contrary, very sad.


  “It won’t do, sister Kate,” said Charley. “I’ve tried him over and over again — I’ve implored, begged, and entreated him to let me go; but he won’t, and I’m determined to run away, so there’s an end of it!”

  As Charley gave utterance to this unalterable resolution, he rose from the bit of blue ice, and taking Kate by the hand, led her over the frozen river, climbed up the bank on the opposite side — an operation of some difficulty, owing to the snow, which had been drifted so deeply during a late storm that the usual track was almost obliterated — and turning into a path that lost itself among the willows, they speedily disappeared.

  As it is possible our reader may desire to know who Charley and Kate are, and the part of the world in which they dwell, we will interrupt the thread of our narrative to explain.

  In the very centre of the great continent of North America, far removed from the abodes of civilised men, and about twenty miles to the south of Lake Winnipeg, exists a colony composed of Indians, Scotsmen, and French-Canadians, which is known by the name of Red River Settlement. Red River differs from most colonies in more respects than one — the chief differences being, that whereas other colonies cluster on the sea-coast, this one lies many hundreds of miles in the interior of the country, and is surrounded by a wilderness; and while other colonies, acting on the Golden Rule, export their produce in return for goods imported, this of Red River imports a large quantity and exports nothing, or next to nothing. Not but that it might export, if it only had an outlet or a market; but being eight hundred miles removed from the sea, and five hundred miles from the nearest market, with a series of rivers, lakes, rapids, and cataracts separating from the one, and a wide sweep of treeless prairie dividing from the other, the settlers have long since come to the conclusion that they were born to consume their own produce, and so regulate the extent of their farming operations by the strength of their appetites. Of course, there are many of the necessaries, or at least the luxuries, of life which the colonists cannot grow — such as tea, coffee, sugar, coats, trousers, and shirts — and which, consequently, they procure from England, by means of the Hudson’s Bay Fur Company’s ships, which sail once a year from Gravesend, laden with supplies for the trade carried on with the Indians. And the bales containing these articles are conveyed in boats up the rivers, carried past the waterfalls and rapids overland on the shoulders of stalwart voyageurs, and finally landed at Red River, after a rough trip of many weeks’ duration. The colony was founded in 1811, by the Earl of Selkirk, previously to which it had been a trading-post of the Fur Company. At the time of which we write, it contained about five thousand souls, and extended upwards of fifty miles along the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, which streams supplied the settlers with a variety of excellent fish. The banks were clothed with fine trees; and immediately behind the settlement lay the great prairies, which extend in undulating waves — almost entirely devoid of shrub or tree — to the base of the Rocky Mountains.

  Although far removed from the civilised world, and containing within its precincts much that is savage and very little that is refined, Red River is quite a populous paradise as compared with the desolate, solitary establishments of the Hudson’s Bay Fur Company. These lonely dwellings of the trader are scattered far and wide over the whole continent — north, south, east, and west. Their population generally amounts to eight or ten men — seldom to thirty. They are planted in the thick of an uninhabited desert — their next neighbours being from two to five hundred miles off; their occasional visitors, bands of wandering Indians; and the sole object of their existence being to trade the furry hides of foxes, martens, beavers, badgers, bears, buffaloes, and wolves. It will not, then, be deemed a matter of wonder that the gentlemen who have charge of these establishments, and who, perchance, may have spent ten or twenty years in them, should look upon the colony of Red River as a species of Elysium — a sort of haven of rest, in which they may lay their weary heads, and spend the remainder of their days in peaceful felicity, free from the cares of a residence among wild beasts and wild men. Many of the retiring traders prefer casting their lot in Canada; but not a few of them smoke out the remainder of their existence in this colony — especially those who, having left home as boys fifty or sixty years before, cannot reasonably expect to find the friends of their childhood where they left them, and cannot hope to remodel tastes and habits long nurtured in the backwoods so as to relish the manners and customs of civilised society.

  Such an one was old Frank Kennedy, who, sixty years before the date of our story, ran away from school in Scotland; got a severe thrashing from his father for so doing; and having no mother in whose sympathising bosom he could weep out his sorrow, ran away from home, went to sea, ran away from his ship while she lay at anchor in the harbour of New York, and after leading a wandering, unsettled life for several years, during which he had been alternately a clerk, a day-labourer, a store-keeper, and a village schoolmaster, he wound up by entering the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company, in which he obtained an insight into savage life, a comfortable fortune, besides a half-breed wife and a large family.

  Being a man of great energy and courage, and moreover possessed of a large, powerful frame, he was sent to one of the most distant posts on the Mackenzie River, as being admirably suited for the display of his powers both mental and physical. Here the smallpox broke out among the natives, and besides carrying off hundreds of these poor creatures, robbed Mr Kennedy of all his children save two, Charles and Kate, whom we have already introduced to the reader.

  About the same time the council which is annually held at Red River in spring for the purpose of arranging the affairs of the country for the ensuing year thought proper to appoint Mr Kennedy to a still more outlandish part of the country — as near, in fact, to the North Pole as it was possible for mortal man to live — and sent him an order to proceed to his destination without loss of time. On receiving this communication Mr Kennedy upset his chair, stamped his foot, ground his teeth, and vowed, in the hearing of his wife and children, that sooner than obey the mandate he would see the governors and council of Rupert’s Land hanged, quartered, and boiled down into tallow! Ebullitions of this kind were peculiar to Frank Kennedy, and meant nothing. They were simply the safety-valves to his superabundant ire, and, like safety-valves in general, made much noise but did no damage. It was well, however, on such occasions to keep out of the old fur-trader’s way; for he had an irresistible propensity to hit out at whatever stood before him, especially if the object stood on a level with his own eyes and wore whiskers. On second thoughts, however, he sat down before his writing-table, took a sheet of blue ruled foolscap paper, seized a quill which he had mended six months previously, at a time when he happened to be in high good-humour, and wrote as follows: —

  To the Governor and Council of Rupert’s Land, Red River Settlement.

  Fort Paskisegun, June 15, 18 hundred and something.

  Gentlemen, — I have the honour to acknowledge receipt of your favour of 26th April last, appointing me to the charge of Peel’s River, and directing me to strike out new channels of trade in that quarter. In reply, I have to state that I shall have the honour to fulfil your instructions by taking my departure in a light canoe as soon as possible. At the same time I beg humbly to submit that the state of my health is such as to render it expedient for me to retire from the service, and I herewith beg to hand in my resignation. I shall hope to be relieved early next spring. — I have the honour to be, gentlemen, your most obedient humble servant, F. Kennedy.

  “There!” exclaimed the old gentleman, in a tone that would lead one to suppose he had signed the death-warrant, and so had irrevocably fixed the certain destruction, of the entire council— “there!” said he, rising from his chair, and sticking the quill into the ink-bottle with a dab that split it up to the feather, and so rendered it hors de combat for all time coming.

  To this letter the council gave a short reply, accepting his resignation, and appointing a successor. On the following spring old Mr Kennedy embarked his wife and children in a bark canoe, and in process of time landed them safely in Red River Settlement. Here he purchased a house with six acres of land, in which he planted a variety of useful vegetables, and built a summer-house after the fashion of a conservatory, where he was wont to solace himself for hours together with a pipe, or rather with dozens of pipes, of Canada twist tobacco.