James Oliver Curwood was a writer and conservationist. He left his job as a reporter in Detroit to travel the Canadian Wilderness in 1909, a source for more than 30 novels in the tradition of Jack London. His realistic adventure stories were top-ten bestsellers in the early 1920's and more than eighteen have been made from his novels. The River's End in 1920 sold over 100,000 copies and was the fourth bestseller of the year. At the time of his death in 1927 he was the highest paid author (per word) in the world. So successful, he built as a writing studio a replica 18th century French Chateau in Michigan, which is now a museum.
The Gold Hunters is the sequel to The Wolf Hunters (1908). I didn't know this, and it didn't seem to matter to the story. In fact, the brief mentions of the first book make it seem like the rather dull set-up to the adventure that The Gold Hunters presents.
South of Hudson's Bay at Lake Nipigon, two Indians race to catch their friend Roderick. Wabigoon is the half-Indian son of the chief and his pathfinder companion is Mukoki. Roderick is the son of the English factor of the area. The three friends met in the previous book, where they explored the wilderness - hunting, fishing, and finding in a burned out cabin the skeletons of two explorers from the 1850's. The Gold Hunters begins with the start of their quest to find the gold deposit noted on a scrap of paper gripped in one skeleton's bony hand. Canoeing towards Hudson's Bay, the trio face wild rapids, savage bear attacks and are tracked by the crazed third member of the explorer party who has gone out of his mind. What is his story? Will they discover where the explorer's hide their cache of gold? Will they find even more gold nuggets - like maybe hidden in the rocky cavern behind that waterfall? Probably.
It's a light and entertaining quest to follow along. It's hard to imagine reading this when it came out in 1908. I wasn't even born then. The Canadian wilderness of Hudson's Bay would seem like another fantastic world to the readers of the day. The characters are well written and throughout the 'adventure' is rooted in realism, it had respect for the explorers of the wilds and never became cheesy. To hear about the Hudson's Bay Mail, the Indian camps and the uncharted terrain was entertaining even now.
The Gold Hunters, along with the first novel, The Wolf Hunters are available as free epub downloads, as are several other James Oliver Curwood titles such as The Valley Of Silent Men, Back To God's Country, and The Alaskan.
I read a nice 1944 hardcover from Triangle Books.
1909 / Hardcover / 328 pages
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