Lake and Red River; John Johnston, 

 of Sault St. Marie, whose romantic 

 Love stony anid his marriage with an 

 Indian princess, added interest to his 

 contribution; Willard Ferdinand Wen- 

 tzel, a life long- friend of Roderick 

 Mackenzie, but who spent mo'st of 

 that long- life in 'the desolate regions 

 of the north, and Charles Mackenzie, 

 Who gives a vivid account of two im- 

 portant journeys he made to the Man- 

 dans of the Missouri. 



Thus the ground was well covered and 

 as the writers were sometimes moved 

 from place to place they had opportun- 

 ities of extending their spheres of ob- 

 servation. 



The knowledge contained in these 

 letters is almost as extensive as that 

 of Solomon under different circum- 

 stances. They treat of the folk-lore, 

 languages and customs of the Indian 

 tribes, of the variations of climate in 

 different parts of the Northwest, of the 

 trees, herbs, fruits and wild flowers, 

 indigenous to the countries described, 

 as well as the personal experiences and 

 adventures o<f the writers. Mr. Mac- 

 kenzie's literary intention was never 

 carried out, but the correspondence 

 has been edited and published by L. M. 

 Masson, ex-governor of Quebec, who 

 married a grand- daughter of Roderick 

 Mackenzie, and it has been a perfect 

 mine of wealth for subsequent histori- 

 cal and scientific writers on Northwest 

 subjects. 



Music. 



We learn from this corre- 

 spondence that music was cultivated 

 in some degree at the forts of the 

 Northwest. Willard Ferd. Wentzel, 

 one of the most interesting of the let- 

 ter writers, because of his liveliness 

 and humor, was evidently a musician. 

 Sir John Franklin, whom he accom- 

 panied as far as the mouth of the 

 Coppermine river in 1819, says he was 

 a very good musician and he (Went- 

 zel) sometimes expresses a wish in his 

 letters that his friends would send him 

 some new music. Of course the musi- 

 cal instruments in vogue in those re- 

 mote latitudes would have to be of the 

 size that could 



"Travel with the cooking pots and 



pails," 

 or be— 

 "Sandwiched 'twixt the coffee and the 



pork." 



And so we find that Wentzel excelled 



in playing upon the flute and the 

 violin, the most portable and hence the 

 most common instruments in the 

 northern forts, although we sometimes 

 meet with mention of the bag-pipes as 

 being used to "discourse most excellent 

 music." 



Writers of Journals. 



In addition to the correspondence 

 and journals just mentioned we have 

 two writers of this period that are 

 worthy of notice. 



Alexander Henry, Jun., a bourgeois 

 of the Northwest company, has left a 

 voluminous and entertaining journal, 

 commencing its record in 1799 and 

 continuing with but one break of two 

 years, until the author's death by 

 drowning in the Columbia river in 

 1814. Dr. Coues, a late Ameri- 

 can writer, has edited this in- 

 teresting Journal and pays a 

 high compliment to the writer 

 of 'this work, taking notice of the 

 business-like way in which he records 

 his affairs and the suitable choice of 

 language he makes in treating his sub- 

 jects. An authentic copy of Henry's 

 journal is preserved in the parliamen- 

 tary library at Ottawa and a copy of 

 that copy has recently been ordered 

 for the consulting library of the His- 

 torical society of this city. 



The journal of Daniel Williams 

 Harmon, a native of Vermont, who 

 entered the service of the Northwest 

 company in 1800 at the age of 22, is 

 written in a different style. The daily 

 records given have a more natural 

 movement, as the journal was not 

 written for a purpose, as most of the 

 others were. It gives a closer glimpse 

 into the family life of a bourgeois of 

 that time. This journal was edited 

 and given to the public by Daniel Has- 

 kell, a Puritan minister of Andover, 

 Mass., in 1820. Harmon spent a num- 

 ber of years in the Swan River dis- 

 trict and when at the forks of the 

 Saskatchewan in 1805 he married a 

 French half-breed girl 14 years of age. 

 The fortunes of the fur trader took 

 him to many different points in the 

 fur country and we find him, about 

 five years after his marriage, in New 

 Caledonia. 



A most pathetic passage in the jour- 

 nal gives an account of the death of 

 his little boy, George Harmon, whom 

 he had sent, when only three years of 

 age, under the care of a friend, to be 

 brought up and educated among his 



