I
Therefore Felt Disposed To Undertake The Task, Provided Documents
Of Sufficient Extent And Minuteness Could Be Furnished To Me.
All
the papers relative to the enterprise were accordingly submitted
to my inspection.
Among them were journals and letters narrating
expeditions by sea, and journeys to and fro across the Rocky
Mountains by routes before untravelled, together with documents
illustrative of savage and colonial life on the borders of the
Pacific. With such material in hand, I undertook the work. The
trouble of rummaging among business papers, and of collecting and
collating facts from amidst tedious and commonplace details, was
spared me by my nephew, Pierre M. Irving, who acted as my
pioneer, and to whom I am greatly indebted for smoothing my path
and lightening my labors.
As the journals, on which I chiefly depended, had been kept by
men of business, intent upon the main object of the enterprise,
and but little versed in science, or curious about matters not
immediately bearing upon their interest, and as they were written
often in moments of fatigue or hurry, amid the inconveniences of
wild encampments, they were often meagre in their details,
furnishing hints to provoke rather than narratives to satisfy
inquiry. I have, therefore, availed myself occasionally of
collateral lights supplied by the published journals of other
travellers who have visited the scenes described: such as Messrs.
Lewis and Clarke, Bradbury, Breckenridge, Long, Franchere, and
Ross Cox, and make a general acknowledgment of aid received from
these quarters.
The work I here present to the public is necessarily of a
rambling and somewhat disjointed nature, comprising various
expeditions and adventures by land and sea. The facts, however,
will prove to be linked and banded together by one grand scheme,
devised and conducted by a master spirit; one set of characters,
also, continues throughout, appearing occasionally, though
sometimes at long intervals, and the whole enterprise winds up by
a regular catastrophe; so that the work, without any labored
attempt at artificial construction, actually possesses much of
that unity so much sought after in works of fiction, and
considered so important to the interest of every history.
WASHINGTON IRVING
CHAPTER I.
Objects of American Enterprise. Gold Hunting and Fur Trading.
Their Effect on Colonization. Early French Canadian Settlers.
Ottawa and Huron Hunters. An Indian Trading Camp. Coureurs Des
Bois, or Rangers of the Woods. Their Roaming Life. Their Revels
and Excesses. Licensed Traders. Missionaries. Trading
Posts. Primitive French Canadian Merchant. His Establishment and
Dependents. British Canadian Fur Merchant. Origin of the
Northwest Company. Its Constitution. Its Internal Trade. A
Candidate for the Company. Privations in the
Wilderness. Northwest Clerks. Northwest Partners. Northwest
Nabobs. Feudal Notions in the Forests. The Lords of the
Lakes. Fort William. Its Parliamentary Hall and Banqueting
Room. Wassailing in the Wilderness.
TWO leading objects of commercial gain have given birth to wide
and daring enterprise in the early history of the Americas; the
precious metals of the South, and the rich peltries of the North.
While the fiery and magnificent Spaniard, inflamed with the mania
for gold, has extended his discoveries and conquests over those
brilliant countries scorched by the ardent sun of the tropics,
the adroit and buoyant Frenchman, and the cool and calculating
Briton, have pursued the less splendid, but no less lucrative,
traffic in furs amidst the hyperborean regions of the Canadas,
until they have advanced even within the Arctic Circle.
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