out among the Indians and for the season destroy its trade. Another year, there would be great floods in the west, and trade would be impeded if not wholly lost. Then there came the era of strife with the Red River colony and collision with the "Hudson Bays." In these engagements forts were fired and fur-depots destroyed. For a time hostilities were keen and continuous, and on both sides ruinous. Finally, the Hudson Bays and the Nor'-Westers coalesced; and from 1821 the amalgamated corporations traded under the old English title and charter of the Hudson Bay Company. This coalition of the Nor'-Westers with its English rival gave great strength to the united Company. It brought it an accession of capable traders and intelligent voyageurs and discoverers. In the service of the North-West Company were men—Alexander Mackenzie and David Thompson among the number—whose names will be forever identified with discovery in the NorthWest. The writer from whom we have more than once quoted, an old employé of the Hudson Bay Company, thus writes of the character and social status of the men it took over with the North-West Company:

"The sleepy old Hudson Bay Company were astounded at the magnificence of the newcomers, and old traders yet talk of the lordly Nor'-Wester. It was in those days that young Washington Irving was their guest, when he made his memorable journey to Montreal. The agents who presided over the affairs of the Company at headquarters were very important personages indeed, as might be expected. They were veterans that had grown grey in the wilds, and were full of all the traditions of the fur trade; and around them circled the laurels gained in the North. They were, in fact, a sort of commercial aristocracy in Quebec and Montreal, in days when nearly everybody was more or less directly interested in the fur trade."

In Washington Irving's "Astoria," the record of John Jacob Astor's Fur-trading Expedition on the waters of the Columbia River, occurs a graphic description of the North-West Com

pany in the days of its prime. As the passage admirably describes a gathering at the annual conference of the Company at Fort William, we make no excuse for its insertion here, and with it shall conclude the present chapter.

"To behold the North-West Company in all its state and grandeur it was necessary to witness the annual gathering at Fort William, near what is now called the Grand Portage, on Lake Superior. Here two or three of the leading partners from Montreal proceeded once a year to meet the partners from the various trading-places in the wilderness, to discuss the affairs of the Company during the preceding year, and to arrange plans for the future. On these occasions might be seen the change since the unceremonious times of the old French traders, with their roystering coureurs de bois. Now the aristocratic character of the Briton, or rather the feudal spirit of the Highlander, shone out magnificently; every partner who had charge of an interior post, and had a score of retainers at his command, felt like the chieftain of a Highland clan, and was almost as important in the eyes of his dependants as of himself. To him a visit to the grand conference at Fort William was a most important event, and he repaired thither as to a meeting of Parliament. The partners from Montreal, however, were the lords of the ascendant. Coming from the midst of a luxurious and ostentatious life, they quite eclipsed their compeers from the woods, whose forms and faces had been battered by hard living and rough service, and whose garments and equipments were all the worse for wear. Indeed the partners from below considered the whole dignity of the Company as represented in their own persons, and conducted themselves in suitable style. They ascended the rivers in great state, like sovereigns making a progress, or rather like Highland chieftains navigating their subject lakes. They were wrapped in rich furs, their huge canoes freighted with every convenience and luxury, and manned by Canadian voyageurs as obedient as clansmen. They carried with them cooks and bakers, together with delicacies of every kind, and abundance of choice wines for the banquets which attended this great convocation. Happy were they, too, if they could meet with any distinguished stranger-above all, with some titled member of the British nobility-to accompany them on this stately occa

Fort William, the

sion, and grace their high solemnities. scene of this important meeting, was a considerable village on the banks of Lake Superior. Here, in an immense wooden building, was the great council-chamber, and also the banqueting-hall, decorated with Indian arms and accoutrements, and the trophies of the fur trade. The house swarmed at this time with traders and voyageurs from Montreal bound to the interior posts, and some from the interior posts bound to Montreal. The councils were held in great state, for every member felt as if sitting in Parliament, and every retainer and dependant looked up to the assemblage with awe, as to the House of Lords. There was a vast deal of solemn deliberation and hard Scottish reasoning, with an occasional swell of pompous declamation. These grave and weighty councils were alternated with huge feasts and revels. The tables in the great banqueting-room groaned under the weight of game of all kinds, of venison from the woods, and fish from the lakes; with hunters' delicacies, such as buffaloes' tongues and beavers' tails; and various luxuries from Montreal. There was no stint of generous wine, for it was a hard-drinking period, a time of loyal toasts and Bacchanalian songs and brimming bumpers. While the chiefs thus revelled in the hall, and made the rafters resound with bursts of loyalty and old Scottish song, chanted in voices cracked and sharpened by the Northern blast, their merriment was echoed and prolonged by a mongrel legion of retainers, Canadian voyageurs, half-breeds, Indian hunters, and vagabond hangers-on, who feasted sumptuously without, on the crumbs from their table, and made the welkin ring with old French ditties, mingled with Indian yelps and yellings."

The English Trader, Alexander Henry.

NE of the conditions on which the Hudson Bay Company received its original charter was that it should interest itself in geographical research, To a trading corporation this was a foolish proviso. We have seen that the Company took no thought to colonise its possessions: on the contrary, it did all it could to prevent settlement. The aid it gave to discovery, if we except some little assistance to the expeditions to the Arctic Seas in search of Franklin, was very slight. It sought solely its own interests. If it opened up regions in the North-West, it was to establish a trading-post, not to set up a meteorological station or erect an observatory. We doubt if its administrative officers could give, even approximately, the latitude and longitude of any one of its stations. Many of its traders and voyageurs doubtless, in time, became very familiar with the North-West, but only a few of them caught the adventurous spirit of the old navigators and travellers, and forgot their trading operations in their eagerness to explore the country.

From the earliest period of colonial settlement at Quebec, the French led the van in all exploratory effort. The great water

ways of the country gave facilities in probing the continent. Quebec was but the gateway to the Far West. From its portal the Jesuit was the first to lead off in the adventurous mission of carrying the Cross into the Canadian wilderness. Closely following the Black Robes, Champlain pursued his toilsome journey, by the Ottawa and Lake Nipissing, to the inland sea of the Hurons.* From the home of the Wyandot, detachments of the French missionaries threaded their way through the maze of islands in the Georgian Bay to the St. Mary's river and Lake Superior. Later on, Marquette tracked the mighty waters of Superior, and penetrated to the Mississippi. Down this great artery La Salle carried the fleur de lis to the Gulf of Mexico, and finally found an unknown grave in Texas. From the beginning of the seventeenth century the adventurous spirits of old France were to be found on all the great waters of the continent; and the footsteps of French traders, guided, it may be, by an Algonquin Indian, might be traced on the crisp snow of even the western prairie. Over the latter, in 1738, the Verandryes, father and son, braved their course to the far Rockies, through untold dangers and over almost insurmountable obstacles.

War was not long in following on the trail of the explorer. Over the route taken by Joliet and Marquette to the west might be seen the armed column of Rogers' Rangers, on its way to the fort at Detroit. English garrisons were also to be found at Sault Ste. Marie, and at Green Bay, on Lake Michigan Ere long the woods at Mackinaw resounded with the shrieks. of Pontiac's victims in the treacherously captured garrison of Michillimackinac; while a storm of blood and fire was passing over the region between Lake Erie and the Alleghanies. English and French blood also flowed freely on the shores of Lakes St. George and Champlain, and the woods of the neigh

*For an account of this ill-starred expe lition, and the subsequent Iroquois massacre of the Hurons and Jesuit Missionaries, see the Author's article on "The Georgian Bay and Muskoka Lakes,” in Picturesque Canada.