In nineteenth-century North America the beaver was "brown gold." It and other fur-bearing animals were the targets of an extractive industry like gold mining. Hoping to make their fortunes with the Hudson's Bay Company, young Scots and Englishmen left their homes in the British Isles for the Canadian frontier. In the Far Northwest -- northern British Columbia, the Yukon, the western Northwest Territories, and eastern Alaska -- they collaborated with Indians and French Canadians to send back as many pelts as possible in return for an allotment of trade goods. For profit more than fame the traders risked dangerous rapids in summer, starvation in winter, and hostile Indian tribes year round to discover new river routes "westward of the mountains." In pursuit of a Northwest Passage or a Great River of the West, successive expeditions were dispatched to the Far North by Sir George Simpson, the viceroylike governor of the Hudson's Bay Company. Exploration was profitable and necessary because more furs could be traded for fewer goods in the virgin lands where the white man had never been. The extraordinary achievements of the trader-adventurers -- such men as Samuel Black, John Bell, and Robert Campbell -- have been overlooked by previous historians because their way was so difficult and their successes were so meager.

Isolated at the end of 3,000 miles of canoe trails, in fierce competition with Russian and Indian traders, they always worked against the odds while at every turn the Bay Company withheld its support in order to conserve profits. This lively account of the unsung heroes of the Hudson's Bay Company provides new information about the traders who tested the mapmakers' misconceptions of the Far Northwest. Besides quoting liberally from Governor Simpson's infamous "Character Book" (in which he recorded his private opinions of colleagues and subordinates), the author has culled the explorers' own journals for the best examples of the Scottish wit that never failed them. He has himself canoed and backpacked along their trade routes. The result is a book that will appeal at once to historians and lovers of the wilderness.