CANOES 37 



like 'Mackinaw' was completely outside this 

 venturesome class. It was a useful but hum- 

 drum cargo boat, laboriously poled along 

 shallow, quiet waters, or rowed with lumber- 

 ing sweeps; or sometimes even sailed, when 

 it shovelled its way through the water with a 

 very safe wind dead aft. 



This completes the tale of Canadian inland 

 small craft that depended on pole and paddle, 

 oar and towline, and only used a simple 

 sail as an exceptional thing. But the human 

 interest would not be complete without some 

 reference to the tours of inspection made by 

 the magnates of the Hudson's Bay Company. 

 The greatest tours of all were those of Sir 

 George Simpson, the governor who took 

 charge after the Company absorbed its war- 

 ring rival in 1821. In modern business 

 language he would be called the executive 

 head of the great Canadian fur-trade ' merger.' 

 He was a young promoted clerk, a Scotsman 

 born, with little experience of the Canadian 

 wilds, but with the natural faculty of rule and 

 a good deal of diplomacy — the gauntlet in the 

 velvet glove. 



Simpson soon grasped the salient features of 

 the people he had to deal with and very sensibly 

 made his tours of inspection as much like a 



