36 TIIEOUGH THE IIACKEjS^ZIE BASIjST 



Another attraction was my companion, Mr. d'E. himself 

 — a man stout in person, quiet by disposition, and of few 

 'words; a man, too, with a lineage which connected him 

 with many of the oldest pioneer families of French Canada. 

 Tlis ancestor, Jacques Alexis d'Eschambault, originally of 

 -St. Jean de Montaign, in Poictou, came to 'New France in 

 ■the 17th century, where, in 1667, he married Marguerite 

 Eene Denys, a relative of the devoted Madame de la Peltrie, 

 and thus became brother-in-law to M. de Eamezay, the owner 

 of the famous old mansion in Montreal, now a museum. 

 •Jacques d'Eschambault's son married a daughter of Louis 

 Joliet, the discoverer of the Mississippi, and became a prom- 

 inent merchant in Quebec, distinguishing himself, it is said, 

 by having the largest family ever known in Canada, viz., 

 thirty-two children. Under the new regime my companion's 

 ■grandfather, like many another French Canadian gentle- 

 man, entered the British army, but died in Canada, leaving 

 as heir to his seigneurie a young man whose friendship for 

 Lord Selkirk led him to Red River as a companion, where 

 he subsequently entered the Hudson's Bay Company's ser- 

 vice, and died, a chief-factor, at St. Boniface, Man. His 

 son, my companion, also entered the service, in 1857, at his 

 father's post of Isle a la Crosse, served seven years at Cum- 

 berland, nine at other distant points, and, finally, fifteen 

 years as trader at Reindeer Lake, a far northern post bor- 

 dering on the Barren Lands, and famous for its breed of 

 ■dogs. My friend had some strange virtues, or defects, as 

 the ungodly might call them; he had never used tobacco or 

 intoxicants in his life, a marvellous thing considering his 

 ■environment. He possessed, besides, a fine simplicity which 

 pleased one. Doubled up in the Edmonton hotel with a 

 waggish companion, he was seen, so the latter affirmed, to 

 attempt to blow out the electric light, a thing which, greatly- 

 to his discomfiture, was done by his bed-fellow with appar- 

 ent ease. Being a man of scant speech, I enjoyed with him 

 'betimes the luxury of it. But we had much discourse for 



