430 THRILLING ADVENTURES. 



" The French merchant at his trading-post, in these primi- 

 tive days of Canada, was a kind of commercial patriarch. 

 With the lax habits and easy familiarity of his race, he had 

 , a little world of self-indulgence and misrule around him. He 

 had his clerks, canoe-men, and retainers of all kinds, who 

 lived with him on terms of perfect sociability, always calling 

 him by his Christian name ; he had his harem of Indian wo- 

 men, and his troop of half-breed children ; nor was there ever 

 wanting a troop of louting Indians, hanging about the esta- 

 blishment, eating and drinking at his expense in the intervals 

 of their hunting expeditions. 



"The Canadian traders," continues Mr. Irving, "for a 

 long time had troublesome competitors in the British mer- 

 chants of New York, who inveigled the Indian hunters and 

 coureurs des bois to their posts, and traded with them on more 

 favorable terms." The Hudson Bay Company, chartered by 

 Charles II. in 1670, was another formidable rival. In 1762, 

 the French lost possession of Canada, and the trade fell prin- 

 cipally into the hands of the British, with whom it does not 

 seem to have thriven. In 1766, however, it was carried on 

 with more than its former energy, by the force of private 

 opposition ; the consequences of which, displayed in " scenes 

 of drunkenness, brutality, and brawl in the Indian villages 

 and around the trading-houses," led to the formation of the 

 famous "North-west Company," which Mr. Irving compares, 

 in the extent of its power and the magnificence of its esta- 

 blishments, to that congress in Leadenhall street, which has 

 so long dispensed the treasures of the East Indies. The 

 partners who formed a kind of commercial aristocracy at 

 Montreal and Quebec, held annual gatherings at Fort Wil- 

 liam, on Lake Superior, for the discharge of business, and 

 these meetings were celebrated with the utmost state, luxury, 

 and display. 



It was hardly to be expected that a company, at once so 

 prosperous and ostentatious, should be permitted to gather 



