Fur Merchant.—­Origin of the Northwest Company.—­Its
     Constitution.—­Its Internal Trade.—­A Candidate for the
     Company.—­Privations in the Wilderness.—­Northwest Clerks. 
     Northwest Partners.—­Northwest Nabobs.—­Feudal Notions in the
     Forests.—­The Lords of the Lakes.—­Fort William.—­Its
     Parliamentary Hall and Banqueting Room.—­Wassailing in the
     Wilderness.

Two leading objects of commercial gain have given birth to wide and daring enterprise in the early history of the Americas; the precious metals of the South, and the rich peltries of the North.  While the fiery and magnificent Spaniard, inflamed with the mania for gold, has extended his discoveries and conquests over those brilliant countries scorched by the ardent sun of the tropics, the adroit and buoyant Frenchman, and the cool and calculating Briton, have pursued the less splendid, but no less lucrative, traffic in furs amidst the hyperborean regions of the Canadas, until they have advanced even within the Arctic Circle.

These two pursuits have thus in a manner been the pioneers and precursors of civilization.  Without pausing on the borders, they have penetrated at once, in defiance of difficulties and dangers, to the heart of savage countries:  laying open the hidden secrets of the wilderness; leading the way to remote regions of beauty and fertility that might have remained unexplored for ages, and beckoning after them the slow and pausing steps of agriculture and civilization.

It was the fur trade, in fact, which gave early sustenance and vitality to the great Canadian provinces.  Being destitute of the precious metals, at that time the leading objects of American enterprise, they were long neglected by the parent country.  The French adventurers, however, who had settled on the banks of the St. Lawrence, soon found that in the rich peltries of the interior, they had sources of wealth that might almost rival the mines of Mexico and Peru.  The Indians, as yet unacquainted with the artificial value given to some descriptions of furs, in civilized life, brought quantities of the most precious kinds and bartered them away for European trinkets and cheap commodities.  Immense profits were thus made by the early traders, and the traffic was pursued with avidity.

As the valuable furs soon became scarce in the neighborhood of the settlements, the Indians of the vicinity were stimulated to take a wider range in their hunting expeditions; they were generally accompanied on these expeditions by some of the traders or their dependents, who shared in the toils and perils of the chase, and at the same time made themselves acquainted with the best hunting and trapping grounds, and with the remote tribes, whom they encouraged to bring their peltries to the settlements.  In this way the trade augmented, and was drawn from remote quarters to Montreal.  Every now and then a large body of Ottawas, Hurons,