I8S2.] IMMORALITY, AND ITS CAUSES. 263 



them, to go among the wild Indian tribes and buy up their 

 produce. They, however, have to give credit to the Indians, who 

 will not work till they have been paid six months beforehand ; 

 and so they are paid for sarsaparilla or oil, which is still in the 

 forest or the lake. And at every step of this credit there is 

 not the slightest security ; and robbery, waste, and a profuse 

 squandering away of the property of others, is of constant 

 occurrence. To cover all these chances of loss, the profits are 

 proportionably great at every step, and the consumer often 

 has to pay two shillings a yard for calico worth twopence, and 

 everything else in like proportion. It is these apparently 

 enormous profits that lead mechanics and others into trade, as 

 they do not consider the very small business that can be done 

 in a given time, owing to the poverty of the country and the 

 enormous number of traders in proportion to the purchasers. 

 It seems a very nice and easy way of getting a living, to sell 

 goods at double the price you pay for them, and then again to 

 sell the produce you receive at double what you pay for it ; 

 but as the greater part of the small traders do not get rid of 

 more than a hundred pounds' worth of goods in a year, and 

 the expenses of Indians and canoes, their families and bad 

 debts, wines and liquors, and the waste which always takes 

 place where everything is obtained upon credit, are often 

 double that sum, it is not to be wondered at that they are 

 almost all of them constantly in debt to their correspondents, 

 who, when they have once thus got a hold on them, do not 

 allow them easily to get free. 



It is this universal love of trade which leads, I think, to 

 three great vices very prevalent here drinking, gambling, and 

 lying, besides a whole host of trickeries, cheatings, and 

 debaucheries of every description. The life of a river trader 

 admits of little enjoyment to a man who has no intellectual 

 resources ; it is not therefore to be wondered at that the 

 greater part of these men are more or less addicted to intoxi- 

 cation ; and when they can supply themselves on credit with 

 as much wine and spirits as they like, there is little inducement 

 to break through the habit. A man who, if he had to pay 

 ready money, would never think of drinking wine, when he 

 can have it on credit takes twenty or thirty gallons with him in 

 his canoe, which, as it has cost him nothing, is little valued, 

 and he perhaps arrives at the end of his voyage without a drop. 



18 



