These metifs, or, as the Canadians term them, bois brules, are upon the whole a good-looking people and, where the experiment has been made, have shown much aptness in learning and willingness to be taught; they have however been sadly neglected.  The example of their fathers has released them from the restraint imposed by the Indian opinions of good and bad behaviour; and generally speaking no pains have been taken to fill the void with better principles.  Hence it is not surprising that the males, trained up in a high opinion of the authority and rights of the Company to which their fathers belonged and, unacquainted with the laws of the civilised world, should be ready to engage in any measure whatever that they are prompted to believe will forward the interests of the cause they espouse.  Nor that the girls, taught a certain degree of refinement by the acquisition of an European language, should be inflamed by the unrestrained discourse of their Indian relations, and very early give up all pretensions to chastity.  It is however but justice to remark that there is a very decided difference in the conduct of the children of the Orkney men employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company and those of the Canadian voyagers.  Some trouble is occasionally bestowed in teaching the former and it is not thrown away, but all the good that can be said of the latter is that they are not quite so licentious as their fathers are.

Many of the half-breeds both male and female are brought up amongst and intermarry with the Indians; and there are few tents wherein the paler children of such marriages are not to be seen.  It has been remarked, I do not know with what truth, that half-breeds show more personal courage than the pure Crees.*

(Footnote.  A singular change takes place in the physical constitution of the Indian females who become inmates of a fort, namely they bear children more frequently and longer but at the same time are rendered liable to indurations of the mammae and prolapsus of the uterus, evils from which they are in a great measure exempt whilst they lead a wandering and laborious life.)

The girls at the forts, particularly the daughters of Canadians, are given in marriage very young; they are very frequently wives at twelve years of age and mothers at fourteen.  Nay, more than once instance came under our observation of the master of a post having permitted a voyager to take to wife a poor child that had scarcely attained the age of ten years.  The masters of posts and wintering partners of the Companies deemed this criminal indulgence to the vices of their servants necessary to stimulate them to exertion for the interest of their respective concerns.  Another practice may also be noticed as showing the state of moral feeling on these subjects amongst the white residents of the fur countries.  It was not very uncommon amongst the Canadian voyagers for one woman to be common to and maintained at the joint expense of two men; nor for a voyager to sell his wife, either for a season or altogether, for a sum of money proportioned to her beauty and good qualities but always inferior to the price of a team of dogs.