PARTIII—Continued

THE CONQUEST OFTHE GREAT NORTHWESTCHAPTER XXI

1760-1810

“THE COMING OF THE PEDLARS” CONTINUED—VOYAGE UP TO FORT WILLIAM, LIFE OF WILDWOOD WASSAIL AND GRANDEUR THERE—HOW THE WINTERING PARTNERS EXPLOITED THE NORTHWEST—TALES OF THE WINTERERS IN THE PAYS D’EN HAUT

It wasno easier for the Nor’Westers to obtain recruits than for the Hudson’s Bay Company. French habitants were no more anxious to have their heads broken in other men’s quarrels than the Orkneymen of the Old Country; but the Nor’Westers managed better than the Hudson’s Bay. Brigades were made up as the ice cleared from the rivers in May. For weeks before, the Nor’Westers had been craftily at work. No agents were sent to the country parishes with clumsy offersof £8 bounty, which would be, of itself, acknowledgment of danger. Companies don’t pay £8 bounty for nothing. Not agents were sent to the parishes, but “sly old wolves of the North”—as one parish priest calls these demoralizers of his flock—went from village to village, gay, reckless, dare-devil veterans, old in service, young in years, clothed in all the picturesque glory of beaded buckskin, plumed hats, silk sashes, to tickle the vanity of the poor country bucks, who had never been beyond their own hamlet. Cocks of the walk, bullies of the town, slinging money around like dust, spinning yarns marvelous of fortune made at one coup, of adventures in which they had been the heroes, of freedom—freedom like kings to rule over the Indian tribes—these returned voyageurs lounged in the taverns, played the gallants at all the hillside dances, flirted with the daughters, made presents to the mothers, and gave to the youth of the parish what the priest describes as “dizziness of the head.” It needed only a little maneuvering for our “sly wolves of the North” to get themselves lionized, the heroes of the parish. Dances were given in their honor. The contagion invaded even the sacred fold of the church. The “sons of Satan” maneuvered so well that the holy festivals even seemed to revolve round their person as round a sun of glory. The curé mightpreach himself black in the face proving that a camp on the sand and a bedà la belle étoile, under the stars, are much more poetic in the telling than in life; that voyageurs don’t pass all their lives clothed in picturesque costumes chanting ditties to the rhythmic dip of paddle blades; that, in fact, when your voyageur sets out in spring he passes half his time in ice water to mid-waist tracking canoes up rapids, and that where the portage is rocky glassed with ice, you can follow the sorry fellow’s path by blood from the cuts in his feet.

What did the curé know about it? There was proof to the contrary in the gay blade before their eyes, and the green country bucks expressed timid wish that they, too, might lead such a life. Presto! No sooner said than done! My hero from the North jerks a written contract all ready for the signature of names and slaps down half the wages in advance before the dazzled greenhorns have time to retract. From now till the brigades depart our green recruit busies himself playing the hero before he has won his spurs. He dons the gay vesture and he dons the grand air and he passes the interval in a glorious oblivion of all regrets drowned in potions at the parish inn; but it is our drummer’s business to round up the recruits at Montreal, which he does as swiftly as they sober up. And they usually soberup to find that all the advance wages have melted in the public house. No drawing back now, though the rosy hopes have faded drab! A hint at such a thought brings down on the poltroon’s head threats of instant imprisonment—a fine ending, indeed, to all the brag and the boast and the brass-band flourish with which our runaway has left his native parish.

Crews and canoes assemble above Lachine, nine miles from Montreal, ninety or one hundred canoes with eight men to each, including steersman, and a pilot to each ten canoes. Thirty or forty guides there will, perhaps, be to the yearly brigade—men who lead the way and prevent waste of time by following wrong water courses. And it is a picturesque enough scene to stir the dullest blood, spite of all the curé’s warning. Voyageurs and hunters are dressed in buckskin with gayest of silk bands round hair and neck. Partners are pompous in ruffles and lace and gold braid, with brass-handled pistols and daggers in belt. In each canoe go the cargoes—two-thirds merchandise, one-third provisions—oilcloth to cover it, tarpaulin for a tent, tow lines, bark and gum for repairs, kettles, dippers and big sponges to bail out water. As the canoes are loaded, they are launched and circle about on the river waiting for the signal of the head steersman. The chief steersman’s steel-shod pole is held overhead. It drops—fivehundred paddles dip as with one arm, and there shoots out from the ninety-foot canoes the small, narrow, swift craft of the partners, racing ahead to be at the rendezvous before the cargoes arrive. Freight packers ashore utter a shout that makes the echoes ring. The voyageurs strike up a song. The paddles dip to the time of the song. The deep-throated chorus dies away in echo. The life of thePays d’en Hauthas begun.

Ste.Anne’s—the patron saint of canoemen—is the last chapel spire they will see for many a year. The canoemen cross themselves in prayer. Then the Lake of the Two Mountains comes, and the Long Sault Rapids and the Chaudiere Falls, of what is now Ottawa City, and the Chat Rapids and thirty-six other portages in the four hundred miles up the Ottawa from Montreal, each portage being reckoned as many “pipes” long as the voyageur smokes, when carrying the cargo overland in ninety-pound packs on his back. Leaving the Mattawa at the headwaters of the Ottawa, the brigades strike westward for the Great Lakes, down stream through Nipissing Lake and French River to Lake Huron; easier going now with the current and sheer delight once the canoes are out on the clear waters of the lake, where if the wind is favorable, blankets are hoisted for a sail and the canoes scud across to the Sault. But it isnot always easy going. Where French River comes out of Nipissing Lake, ten crosses mark where voyageurs have found a watery grave, and sometimes on the lake the heavily laden canoes are working straight against a head wind that sends choppy waves ice-cold slapping into their laps till oilcloth must be bound round the prow to keep from shipping water where a wave-crest dips over and the canoe has failed to climb. Even mounting the waves and keeping the gun’els clear of the wash, at every paddle dip the spray splashes the voyageur to his waist. The “old wolves” smoke and say nothing. The bowman bounces back athwart so that the prow will lighten and rise to the climbing wave, but the green hands—the gay dons who left home in such a flush of glory—mutter “c’est la misère, c’est la misère, mon bourgeois,”bourgeoisbeing the habitant’s name for the partners of the Company; and misery it is, indeed, if ice glasses the canoe and the craft becomes frost-logged. They must land then and repair the canoe where the bark has been jagged, new bark being gummed on where the cuts are deep, resin and tar run along all fissures. And these Nor’Westers are very wolves for time. Repairs must be done by torchlight at night. In fair weather, the men sleep on the sand. In bad weather, tarpaulin is put up as a wind-break. Reveille is soundedat first dawn streak—a bugle call if a partner is in camp, a shout from the chief steersman if the brigades have become scattered—“Levé! Levé!” By four in the morning, canoes are again on the water. At eight, the brigades land for breakfast. If weather be favorable for speed, they will not pause for mid-day meal but eat a snack of biscuit or pemmican as they run across the portages. Night meal comes when they can see to go no farther, and often relays of paddles are put on and the brigades paddle all night. The men have slim fare—grease and barley meal and pemmican, and the greenhorns frequently set up such a wail for the pork diet of the home table that they become known as the “mangeurs de lard,” “the pork eaters,” between Montreal and Lake Superior, or “the comers and goers,” because the men on this part of the voyage to the Up Country are freighters constantly coming and going. At each fresh portage the new hand must stand for treats to his comrades, or risk a ducking, or prove himself a better wrestler than they. At the hardest places and the hardest pace, the bourgeois unbends and gives his men arégale, which means rum.

The Sault at the west side of Lake Huron leading up to Lake Superior is the last military post—the outermost reach of the law’s arm. Beyond the Sault—as the priests had warned—is law of neitherGod nor man. Beyond the Sault, letters from home friends to the voyageurs bear the significant address, “Wherever He May Be Found.”

At the Sault on the north side, the Nor’Westers constructed a canal with locks, for they had two sailing vessels patrolling the lakes—The OtterandThe Beaver—one bound for the Detroit trade, the other from the Sault across Lake Superior. As the superstitious half-breeds passed from the Sault to Lake Superior, it was an Indian custom to drop an arrow on the shore as an offering to keep the devil from doing them harm on the boisterous waters of Lake Superior. Many a canoe was swamped by head winds crossing Lake Superior. To avoid risk, the brigades skirted close to the north shore, till they came to the Company’s headquarters at Fort William, formerly known as Grand Portage.

Grand Portage was eighteen hundred miles from Montreal and lay at the foot of a hill, the buildings engirt by eighteen-foot palisades. It was here rival traders were usually stopped. When the Montreal merchants first went to the Northwest, their headquarters had been Michilimacinac, but this was too close to rival traders. The Frobishers and McGillivrays and McTavishes decided to seek some good location on the north shore of the lake leading directly to the Up Country. Grand Portage onPigeon River leading up to the height of land drained by Rainy River, was chosen for the fort, but when the American boundary was specified by treaty, it was found that Grand Portage was in foreign territory. The partners looked for an eastern site that would still be on waterways leading toward Rainy River. The very year, 1785, that the Nor’Westers had petitioned the government for monopoly, they sent voyageurs seeking such a site. The man who led the voyageurs was that Edward Umfreville, who had been captured by the French on Hudson Bay, in 1782, and had now come to join the Nor’Westers. Umfreville found a chain of waterways leading up from Lake Superior to Lake Nipigon and from Nipigon west to Winnipeg River, but later, in 1797, Roderick MacKenzie found the trail of the fur traders in the old French régime—by way of Kaministiquia; and to the mouth of the Kaministiquia headquarters were moved by 1800, and the post named Fort William in honor of that William McGillivray who had bought out Peter Pond.

The usual slab-cut palisades surrounded the fort. In the center of the square stood the main building surmounted by a high balcony. Inside was the great saloon or hall—sixty feet by thirty—decorated with paintings of the leading partners in the full flush of ruffles and court costume. Here the partnersand clerks and leading guides took their meals. Round this hall were the partners’ bedrooms; in the basement, the kitchen. Flanking the walls of the courtyard were other buildings equally large—the servants’ quarters, storehouses, warerooms, clerks’ lodgings. The powder magazine was of stone roofed with tin with a look-out near the roof commanding a view of the lake. There was also a jail which the voyageurs jocularly called theirpot au beurre, or butter tub. The physician, Doctor McLoughlin, a young student of Laval, Quebec, who had been forced to flee west for pitching a drunken British officer of Quebec Citadel on his head in the muddy streets, had a house to himself near the gate. Over the gate was a guardhouse, where sentry sat night and day. Inside the palisades was a population of from twelve hundred to two thousand people. Outside the fort a village of little log houses had scattered along the river front. Here dwelt the Indian families of the French voyageurs.

Here, then, came the brigades from Montreal—seven hundred, and one thousand strong, preceded by the swift-traveling partners whose annual meeting was held in July. A great whoop welcomed the men ashore and they were at once rallied to the Canteen, where bread, butter, meal and four quarts of rum were given to each man. About the same timeas the canoes from the East arrived, the fur brigades from the West came in smaller canoes, loaded to the waterline with skins valued at £40 a pack. To these also was given arégale. Then twenty or a dozen kegs of rum were distributed to the Indian families; “and after that,” says one missionary, “truly the furies of Hell were let loose.” The gates were closed for reasons that need not be given, and the Nor’ Westers often took the precaution of gathering up all the weapons of the Indians before theboissonor mad drinking bout began, but the rum-frenzied Indians still had fists and teeth left, and never a drinking bout passed but from one to a dozen Indians were murdered—frequently wives and daughters because they were least able to defend themselves—though the Indian murderer when sobered was often plunged in such grief for his deed that he would come to the white men and beg them to kill him as punishment. The stripping of all restraint—moral, physical, legal—has different effects on different natures. Some rise higher in the freedom. Others go far below the level of the most vicious beast. Men like Alexander MacKenzie and Doctor McLoughlin braced themselves to the shock of the sudden transition from civilization to barbarism and rose to renown—one as explorer, the other as patriot; but in the very same region whereAlexander MacKenzie won his laurels was another MacKenzie—James—a blood relative, who openly sold native women to voyageurs and entered them as an asset on the Company’s books; and in that very Oregon where McLoughlin won his reputation as a saint, was his son McLoughlin, notorious as a sot. Perhaps the crimes of the fur country were no greater than those committed under hiding in civilization, but they were more terrific, for they were undisguised and in open day where if you would not see them you must close your eyes or bolt the gates.

Inside the bolted gates where the partners lived, the code was on the whole one of decency and high living and pomp. In the daytime, the session of the annual meeting was held in secret behind barred doors. The entire Up Country was mapped out for the year’s campaign. Reports were received on the past season, men and plans arranged for the coming year, weak leaders shifted to easy places, strong men, “old winterers, the crafty wolves of the North,” dispatched to the fields where there was to be the hardest fighting against either Indians or English, and English always meant Hudson’s Bay.

But at night the cares of the campaign were laid aside. The partners dressed for dinner—ruffles and gold lace and knee breeches with gold-clasped garters and silver-buckled shoes. Over the richly ladendinner table was told many a yarn of hardship and danger and heroism in the Up Country. The rafters rang with laughter and applause and song. Outside the gates among the voyageurs the songs were French; inside among the partners, Scotch. When plates were cleared away, bagpipes of the beloved Highlands, and flutes, and violins struck up and “we danced till daylight,” records Rod. MacKenzie; or “we drank the ten gallon kegs empty,” confesses Henry; it was according to the man. Or when more wine than wisdom had flowed from the festive board, and plates were cleared, the jolly partners sometimes straddled wine kegs, chairs, benches, and “sauted,” as one relates it—shot the rapids from the dining table to the floor ending up a wild night with wild races astride anything from a broom to a paddle round and round the hall till daylight peeped through the barred windows, or pipers and fiddlers fell asleep, and the servants came to pilot the gay gentlemen to bed. Altogether, it wasn’t such a dull time—those two weeks’ holidays at Fort William—and such revel was only the foam (“bees’ wings” one journal calls it) of a life that was all strong wine. Outside the gates were the lees and the dregs of the life—riot and lust.

It was part of the Nor’Westers’ policy to encourage a spirit of bluster and brag and bullying among theservants. Bluff was all very well, but the partners saw to it that the men could back up their bluff with brawn. Wrestling matches and boxing bouts were encouraged between the Scotch clerks and the French voyageurs. These took place inside the walls. Half the partners were Catholics and all the voyageurs. The Catholic Church did not purpose losing these souls to Satan. Not for nothing had the good bishop of Quebec listened to confessions from returned voyageurs. When he picked out a chaplain for Fort William, he saw to it that the man chosen should be a man of herculean frame and herculean strength. The good father was welcomed to the Fort, given ample quarters and high precedence at table, but the Catholic partners weren’t quite sure how he would regard those prize fights.

“Don’t go out of your apartments to-morrow! There’s to be arégale! There may be fighting,” they warned him.

“I thank you,” says the priest politely, no doubt recalling the secrets of many a confessional.

From his window, he watched the rough crowds gather next day in the courtyard. As he saw the two champions strip to their waists, he doubtless guessed this was to be no chance fight. Hair tied back, at a signal, fists and feet, they were at it. The priest grew cold and then hot. He began to strip off garmentsthat might hinder his own shoulder swing, and clad in fighting gear burst from his room and marched straight to the center of the crowd. No one had time to ask his intentions. He was a big man and the crowd stood aside. Shooting out both his long arms, the priest grabbed each fighter by the neck, knocked their heads together like two billiard balls, and demanded: “Heh? That’s the way you bullies fight, is it? Eh? Bien! You don’t know anything about it! You’re a lot of old hens! Here’s the way to do it! I’ll show you how,” and with a final bang of cracking skulls, he spun them sprawling across the courtyard half stunned. “If you have any better than these two, send them along! I’ll continue the lessons,” he proffered; and for lack of learners withdrew to his own apartments.

It is now necessary to examine how the Nor’Westers blocked out their Northern Empire over which they kept more jealous guard than Bluebeard over his wives.

Take a map of North America. Up on Hudson Bay is the English Company with forts around it like a wheel. Of this circle, the bay is the hub. Eastward are the forts in Labrador; southward, Abbittibbi toward Quebec; westward, three lines of fur posts extending inland like spokes of the wheel—1st,up Albany River toward the modern Manitoba—(Mine, water;toba, prairie, that is, country of the prairie water), along the valley of Red River to modern Minnesota (Mine, water;sotar, sky-colored, that is, country of the sky-colored water), and up the winding Assiniboine (country of the stone boilers where the Assiniboines cooked food on hot stones) to the central prairie; 2nd, up Hayes River from York (Nelson) to the Saskatchewan as far as the Rockies; 3rd, up Churchill River from Churchill Fort to Portage de Traite and Isle a la Crosse and far-famed Athabasca and MacKenzie River.

The wheel that has for its hub Hudson Bay, has practically only five spokes—two, eastward; three, westward. Between these unoccupied spokes are areas the size of a Germany or a Russia or a France. Into these the Nor’Westers thrust themselves like a wedge.

Look at the map again. This time the point of radiation is Fort William on Lake Superior. Between Lake Superior and Hudson Bay northward for seven hundred miles is not a post. Into these dark, impenetrable, river-swamped forests the Nor’Westers send their men. Dangerous work, this! For some unaccountable reason the Indians of these shadowy forests are more treacherous and gloomy than the tribes of the plains. Umfreville passesthrough their territory when he tries to find a trail westward not on American soil. Shaw, the partner, and Long, the clerk, are sent in to drum up trade. The field is entered one hundred miles east of Fort William at Pays Plat, where canoes push north to Lake Nipigon. First, a fort is built on Lake Nipigon named Duncan, after Duncan Cameron. Long stays here in charge. Shaw, as partner, pushes on to a house half way down to Albany on Hudson Bay. The Indians call Mr. Shaw “the Cat” from his feeble voice. A third hand, Jacque Santeron, is sent eastward to the Temiscamingue Lakes south of Abbittibbi. The three Nor’Westers have, as it were, thrust themselves like a wedge between the spokes of the Hudson’s Bay Company from Moose River to Albany; but a thousand perils assail them, a thousand treacheries. First, the Frenchman Santeron loses courage, sends a farewell written on a birch-bark letter down to Long at Nipigon, and deserts bag and baggage, provisions and peltries, to the Hudson’s Bay at Abbittibbi. Determined to prevent such loss, Long tears across country to Temiscamingue only to find Santeron’s cabins abandoned and these words in charcoal on bark: “Farewell my dear comrade; I go with daring and expect a good price for my furs with the English. With the best heart, I wish you luck. My regards to mypartners. Good-by.” But desertion and theft of Company goods are not the worst of it. Down at Nipigon, Long hears that the Indians of the North are going to murder “the Cat”—Mr. Shaw—probably to carry the plundered furs down to the Hudson’s Bay. Long rushes to the rescue to find Shaw cooped up in the cabin surrounded by a tribe of frenzied Indians whom he tried in vain to pacify with liquor.

“My God! But I’m glad to see you,” shouts Shaw, drawing Long inside the door. For a week the Indians had tried to set fire to his house by shooting arrows of lighted punk wood at it, but every window and crevice of the cabin bristles with loaded muskets—twenty-eight of them—that keep the assailants back. The Indians demand more liquor. Shaw gives it to them on condition they go away, but at daybreak back they come for more, naked and daubed with war paint from head to foot.

“More,” shouts Long. “Come on then,” throwing the doors wide open and rolling across the entrance a keg of gunpowder from which he knocks the lid. “One step across the door and we all perish together,” cocking his pistol straight for the powder. Pell-mell off dashed the terrified Indians paddling canoes as fast as drunken arms could work the blades. Another time, Long discovers that hisIndian guide is only awaiting a favorable chance to assassinate him. A bottle of drugged liquor puts the assassin to sleep and another Indian with a tomahawk prevents him ever awakening. When Long retires, Duncan Cameron, son of a royalist in the American Revolution, comes to command Nipigon. Cameron pushes on up stream past Nipigon two hundred miles to the English post Osnaburg, where the Hudson’s Bay man, Goodwin, welcomes the Nor’Wester—a rival is safer indoors than out, especially when he has no visible goods; but Cameron manages to speak with the Indians during his visit and when he departs they follow him back to the place where he hascachedhis goods and the trade takes place. Henceforth traders of the Nipigon do not stay in the fort on the lake but range the woods drumming up trade from Abbittibbi east, to Albany west.

Meanwhile, what are the brigades of Fort William doing? Fifteen days at the most it takes for the “goers and comers” of Montreal to exchange their cargo of provisions for the Northerners’ cargo of furs. When the big canoes head back for the East at the end of July, the Montreal partners go with them. Smaller canoes, easier to portage and in more numerous brigades, set out for the West with the wintering partners. These are “the wolves ofthe North”—the MacKenzies and Henry and Harmon and Fraser and a dozen others—each to command a wilderness empire the size of a France or a Germany.

By the new route of Kaministiquia, it is only a day’s paddling beyond the first long portage to the height of land. Beyond this, the canoes launch down stream, gliding with the current and “somerseting” or shooting the smaller rapids, portaging when the fall of water is too turbulent. Wherever there is a long portage there stands a half-way house—wayside inn of logs and thatch roof where some stray Frenchman sells fresh food to the voyageurs—a great nuisance to the impatient partners, for the men pause to parley. First of the labyrinthine waterways that weave a chain between Lake Superior and Lake Winnipeg is Rainy River, flowing northwest to Lake of the Woods, or Lake of the Isles as the French called it. On Rainy River are the ruins of an old fort of the French traders. Here the Northbound brigades often meet the Athabasca canoes which can seldom come down all the way as far as Fort William and go back to Athabasca before winter. Again an exchange of goods takes place, and the Athabasca men head back with the Northbound brigades.

Wherever the rivers widen to lakes as at LakeFrancis and Lake of the Woods, the canoes swing abreast, lash gun’els together by thwarting paddles, hoist sails and drift lazily forward on the forest-shadowed, placid waters, crews smoking, or singing with weird cadences amid the loneliness of these silent places. In this part of the voyage, while all the brigades were still together, there were often as many as five hundred canoes spread out on the lakes like birds on wing. Faces now bronzed almost to the shade of woodland creatures, splashes of color here and there where the voyageurs’ silk scarf has not faded, blue sky above with a fleece of clouds, blue sky below with a fleece of clouds and all that marked where sky began and reflection ended the margin of the painted shores etched amber in the brown waters—the picture was one that will never again be witnessed in wilderness life. Sometimes as the canoes cut a silver trail across the lakes, leather tepee tops would emerge from the morning mists telling of some Cree hunters waiting with their furs, and one of the partners would go ashore to trade, the crew camping for a day. Every such halt was the chance for repairing canoes. Camp fires sprang up as if by magic. Canoes lay keel up and tar was applied to all sprung seams, while the other boatmen got lines out and laid up supplies of fresh fish. That night the lake would twinkle witha hundred fires and an army of voyageurs lie listening to the wind in the pines. The next day, a pace would be set to make up for lost time.

Lake of the Woods empties into Winnipeg River through a granite gap of cataract. The brigades skirted the falls across the Portage of the Rat (modern Rat Portage) and launched down the swift current of Winnipeg River that descends northward to Lake Winnipeg in such a series of leaps and waterfalls it was long known among the voyageurs as White or Foaming River. Where the river entered the southeast end of Lake Winnipeg, were three trading posts—the ruins of the old French fort, Maurepas, the Nor’ Westers’ fort known as Bas de la Riviere, and the Hudson’s Bay Post, now called Fort Alexander—some three miles from the lake.

This was the lake which Kelsey, and perhaps Radisson and Hendry and Cocking, had visited from Hudson Bay. It was forty days straight west from Albany, three weeks from York on the Hayes.

At this point the different brigades separated, one going north to the Athabasca, one west up the Saskatchewan to the Rockies, one southwest across the lake to Dauphin and Swan Lake and what is now northwestern Manitoba, two or three south up Red River destined for Pembina at the Boundary, Grand Forks, the Mandanes on the Missouri, and the postsalong the Assiniboine River of the middle West. Look again to the map. What kind of an empire do these Nor’Westers encompass? All of the great West, all except the unknown regions of the Pacific Coast. In size how large? The area of the Russian Empire. No wonder Simon McTavish, founder of the Company, wore the airs of an emperor, and it is to be remembered that Nor’Westers ruled with the despotism of emperors, too.

Let us follow the different brigades to their destinations.

Notes to Chapter XXI.—The contents of Chapter XXI are drawn from the Journals of the Northwest partners as published by Senator Masson, from Long’s Voyages, from private journals in my own collection of manuscripts, chiefly Colin Robertson’s, and from the Abbé Dugas’ inimitable store of Northwest legends in several volumes. The story of the recruiting officers and of the holy father comes chiefly from Dugas. Umfreville’s book does not give details of his voyage for the N. W. C. to Nipigon, but he left a journal from which Masson gives facts, and there are references to his voyage in N. W. C. petitions to Parliament. Cameron tells his own story of Nipigon in the Masson Collection. The best descriptions of Fort William are in Colin Robertson’s letters (M. S.) and “Franchere’s Voyage.” In following N. W. C. expansion, it was quite impossible to do so chronologically. It could be done only by grouping the actors round episodes. For instance, in Nipigon, Long was there off and on in 1768, ’72, ’82. Cameron did not come on the scene till ’96 and did not take up residence till 1802 to 1804. To scatter this account of Nipigon chronologically would be to confuse it. Again, Umfreville found the Nipigon trail to the Up Country, in 1784. Rod. MacKenzie did not find the old Kaministiquia road till the nineties. Or again, Grand Portage was a rendezvous till 1797 and was not entirely moved to Fort William till 1801 and 1802. Why separate these events by the hundred other episodes of the Company’s history purely for the sake of sequence on dates? I have tried to keep the story grouped round the main thread of one forward movement—the domination of the Up Country by the N. W. C.

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