1906-7. ' TRANSACTIONS. 99 



force them to move inland and face the unpleasantly novel com- 

 petition of the Montreal traders. 



The first of the latter who left any record of his life in the 

 west was Alexander Henry. There were three of that name 

 connected with the fur-trade: Alexander Henry, the elder; his 

 son, and his nephew. The elder Henry published an account of 

 his experiences in the west in 1807. The voluminous manuscript 

 journals of Alexander Henry, nephew of the one first mentioned, 

 are in the Library of Parliament. They have been edited, in 

 connection with the even more voluminous journals of David 

 Thompson, by the late Dr. Elliott Coues. The son of the first 

 Henry — also named Alexander — did not fill so important a place 

 in the western fur-trade as his father and cousin. 



A brief account of his tragic end in the far North-West is given 

 in Masson's "Bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest," in a 

 letter from George Keith who writes: "Sorry I am to add that 

 the late Mr. Alexander Henry with four men and some women 

 and children suffered an untimely and barbarous fate, all having 

 been most cruelly murdered by a strong party of natives of that 

 post (Fort Nelson, Liard River)." 



The elder Henry left Montreal for the west in August, 1761, 

 and reached Michilimakinac the following month. We find in 

 his narrative what is probably the best available account of the 

 fur-trade; at least as it was in his day. Dr. Bain justly praises 

 Henry's "clear, simple, Defoe-like style." The story of his 

 adventurous life in the great v>^est is, indeed, as fascinating as any 

 romance. 



Henry travelled, as all the Montreal traders did, French and 

 English, in a birch-bark canoe. These canoes were five and a 

 half fathoms, or thirty-three feet in length, and four and a half 

 feet wide at the broadest part. To each canoe there were eight 

 men, and to every three or four canoes, constituting a brigade, 

 a guide was assigned. The most skilful voyageurs took the bow 

 and stern of the canoes, and earned double the wages of the 

 middle-men. Such a canoe carried, in addition to its crew 

 sixty packages of merchandise; weighing ninety to a hundred 

 pounds each, and provisions to the extent of a thousand pounds; 

 as well as the men's personal baggage; making a total load of 

 about four tons — in a birch-bark canoe! 



At Ste. Anne's, where Tom Moore many years afterwards 

 wrote his famous "Canadian Boat Song," Henry's boatmen 



