FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Jan. 25, 1908. 
I 
130 _ 
(lie stream, and striking our trail at the lower 
pond came out to find that we had arrived be¬ 
fore them. Notwithstanding the state of the 
weather news of our safety was that night con¬ 
veyed to the several families to which we be¬ 
longed and the anxiety of our friends relieved. 
The storm continued for three days and was re¬ 
membered for many years in that locality as the 
great storm in which the boys were lost. 
The lad who led his little comrades to safety 
on that, to us, eventful day subsequently left his 
home and went to sea, which profession he fol¬ 
lowed successfully for many years. Atttaining 
to the rank of master in the merchant service 
he commanded some of the finest ships ever built 
in the Lower Provinces and sailed them to the 
four quarters of the globe. He eventually lost 
his life while attempting to save the crew of a 
sinking ship off the coast of Nova Scotia in the 
great August gale of 1873. He died as he had 
lived, quietly and fearlessly, endeavoring to do 
his duty, and I am confident that his last glance 
over the howling waste of water as he sank 
into its depths forever was given as clearly and 
coolly as when, a blue-eyed boy, he looked out 
from the sheltering kindly woods into the white 
freezing death through which he led his young 
comrades to home and safety. 
Although the narrative has taken some time to 
tell, the whole scene must have passed before 
my mind’s eye in a few moments, as when I 
again awakened to a sense of my position my 
new friend was sitting on the railing at my el¬ 
bow, puffing a cigar and swinging his legs in 
apparent enjoyment of life. 
“You have been doing a stroke of thinking, 
old man,” he remarked, looking into my face with 
inquiry on his countenance. “Have you ever 
heard the particulars of poor Jim’s death?” he 
asked, apparently divining the drift of my 
thoughts—for Jim was the name by which our 
leader in the storm was familiarly known to his 
comrades. I answered that I had not, as none 
of his boat’s crew or the crew of the ship were 
saved and consequently there were none left to 
tell the tale of Jim’s last gallant fight for life. 
“I must be leaving you now,” he said, “as I 
hear my buggy coming down the road.” 
Arvcient Landmarks 
O F the various posts on the Upper Mis¬ 
souri River, Fort Union was by all odds 
the most celebrated and the best known. 
Situated on the north bank of the Missouri not 
far above the mouth of .Yellowstone it was for 
a long time the great river’s most important post, 
and was commanded by many well known traders 
of importance. In its time it had received with¬ 
in its walls many celebrated persons ; Catlin in 
1832, Maximilian, Prince of Wied in 1833, Mr. 
Audubon, the naturalist, and his party in 1843. 
Audubon’s volume on North American mammals ! 
is full of references to the post, and his journal 
of 1843, published by his granddaughter, Miss M. 
R. Audubon, in the work entitled “Audubon and 
His Journals” gives a full account of what he 
saw and did at the post. A very full account of 
this post, almost from its beginning until its 
final abandonment, will be found scattered through 
the personal narrative of Charles Larpenteur, 
which was edited by Dr. Elliot Coues and pub¬ 
lished in 1898 by Frances P. Harper, of New 
York. 
Col Chittenden in his interesting volume on 
the American Fur Trade of the far West de¬ 
clares that Fort Union was the best built post on 
the Missouri, and with the possible exception of 
Bent’s Fort on the Arkansas the best in the entire 
West. It was 240 by 220 feet, the shorter side 
facing the river, and was surrounded by a pali¬ 
sade of square hewn timber about a foot thick 
and twenty feet high. The bastions were at the 
southwest and northeast corners and consisted 
of square houses twenty-four feet on the side 
and thirty feet high, the lower story pierced for 
cannon, and the upper with a balcony. There 
was a wide entrance with a large gate, later 
changed to'a double gate on account of the dan¬ 
gerous disposition of the Indians. On the oppo¬ 
site 'side oof the square from the entrance was 
. to.vda 3U -II - ' • ■ 
f V'Ol bfJWOih" 
the house of the bourgeois; quarters for the men, 
storehouses, work shops, stables, a powder maga¬ 
zine and a room for the Indians stood about the 
square. It is said that in the inclosure was the 
distillery started by McKenzie in 1833-4. 
It was to Fort - Union that Berger brought 
down the Blackfeet chiefs when they made a 
friendly arrangement with the traders at Union 
by which a post should be started further up the 
river and more accessible to them. This was 
Fort McKenzie, which was one of a succession 
of posts in that vicinity, the last of which was 
Fort Benton, whose crumbling ruins exist to¬ 
day. Here, too, came the Assiniboines and other 
bands of Sioux, as well as from time to time 
Mandans and Gros Ventres of the village from 
down the river. Usually these parties were 
friendly and came to trade, but not uncommonly 
the trade was wound up by a lot of young men 
gathering up such of the traders’ horses as 
seemed handy for them, and driving them off. 
Pallisser, who, it will be remembered, started 
on his journey toward the Upper Missouri with 
Mr. James Kipp, whose name occurs so fre¬ 
quently in the accounts of the L T pper Missouri 
explorations and fur trade given by Catlin, Maxi¬ 
milian and the early travelers up the great river, 
stopped more than once at Fort Union. 
Fort Union was begun by Kenneth McKenzie 
in the autumn of 1829 and was finished in 1833. 
During the course of its construction a fire broke 
out early in the year 1832 which caused great 
damage. 
At Fort Union, Audubon spent more than two 
months in the summer of 1843, constantly meet¬ 
ing with birds and mammals, some of which he 
had, of course, known before, but most of which 
he had never seen in life. 
It was during the year of its completion that 
Maximilian stayed there and visited Fort Union 
where Mr. Bodmer made some of the most 
superb and faithful pictures of early Indian life 
which have come down to us. 
At the time when the Prince visited it, the 
fort was substantially finished, though a few 
houses hastily built were to be torn down and 
replaced by more permanent structures. It was 
then surrounded by a strong palisade sixteen or 
seventeen feet in height of stout cottonwood 
trees deeply set in the ground very close to¬ 
gether on top of which were sharp pickets to 
prevent anyone from climbing the fence. At 
that time there were fifty or sixty horses at the 
post, together with a few mules and a few cattle, 
hogs, goats and chickens. The horses were sent 
out daily on herd to feed on the prairie, and at 
night were brought within the stockade. 
This was the receiving point for the furs 
gathered at the two trading posts which were 
then closest to the Rocky Mountains. One of 
these advance posts, Fort Cass, was situated two 
hundred miles further up the Yellowstone and 
intended for trade with the Crow nation; the 
other, Fort Piegan, or then Fort McKenzie, was 
“six hundred and fifty miles” further up the Mis¬ 
souri, that is to say, one day’s travel above the 
falls of that river. Its purpose was to receive 
the furs of the three tribes of the Blackfoot In¬ 
dians. At that time this last fort had been es¬ 
tablished hardly two years, and since at that time 
steamboats could not go up the river above Fort 
Union, the goods necessary for trade with the 
Indians were sent up in keelboats. The keelboats 
wintered at the post, and in the spring brought 
back the furs to Fort Union, whence in the course 
of the summer they were sent by steamboats to 
St. Louis. 
At these various trading posts the fur com¬ 
pany maintained a crowd of employees, most 
of them for the time of their sojourn in the 
country married to Indian women. The lower 
classes of these people who were called engages 
or voyageurs, worked as builders, rowers, hunters 
or traders, according to their capabilities. Often 
they were sent off to great distances to carry on 
more or less dangerous business with Indians 
They were often obliged to fight with the enemy, 
and not a year passes in which a certain numbei 
of them did not fall before the arms which the 
whites themselves furnish to the Indians. A 
part of the employees of the company wintered 
every year in the Rocky Mountains. 
Although it has no special relation to the ole 
forts, the list and quantity of the annual catcl 
of skins as given by Maximilian is interesting: 
These he rates as follows: 
1. Beaver, about twenty-five thousand skins] 
These are sorted and bound in packs, each on 
weighing about a hundred pounds. Usually sixt; 
large skins are required to make a pack. Whei 
the animals are small a greater number of skin 
is required. A large beaver skin weighs tw- 
pounds and often more, and the ordinary pric 
is four dollars a pound. A note appended t 
this speaks of the enormous quantity of beaver 
killed every year, referring to the fact that th 
Hudson’s Bay Company alone imported annual! 
to London fifty thousand skins. 
2. Otter; two to three hundred skins. 
3. Bison; forty to fifty thousand skins. Te 
bison skins are required to make a pack. ! 
must be remembered that these were dresse; 
hides. 
4. Fisher; five to six hundred skins. 
