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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