There
Was A Vast Deal Of Solemn Deliberation, And Hard Scottish
Reasoning, With An Occasional Swell Of Pompous Declamation.
These grave and weighty councils were alternated by huge feasts
and revels, like some of the old feasts described in Highland
castles. The tables in the great banqueting room groaned under
the weight of game of all kinds; of venison from the woods, and
fish from the lakes, with hunters' delicacies, such as buffalos'
tongues, and beavers' tails, and various luxuries from Montreal,
all served up by experienced cooks brought for the purpose. There
was no stint of generous wine, for it was a hard-drinking period,
a time of loyal toasts, and bacchanalian songs, and brimming
bumpers.
While the chiefs thus revelled in hall, and made the rafters
resound with bursts of loyalty and old Scottish songs, chanted in
voices cracked and sharpened by the northern blast, their
merriment was echoed and prolonged by a mongrel legion of
retainers, Canadian voyageurs, half-breeds, Indian hunters, and
vagabond hangers-on who feasted sumptuously without on the crumbs
that fell from their table, and made the welkin ring with old
French ditties, mingled with Indian yelps and yellings.
Such was the Northwest Company in its powerful and prosperous
days, when it held a kind of feudal sway over a vast domain of
lake and forest. We are dwelling too long, perhaps, upon these
individual pictures, endeared to us by the associations of early
life, when, as yet a stripling youth, we have sat at the
hospitable boards of the "mighty Northwesters," the lords of the
ascendant at Montreal, and gazed with wondering and inexperienced
eye at the baronial wassailing, and listened with astonished ear
to their tales of hardship and adventures. It is one object of
our task, however, to present scenes of the rough life of the
wilderness, and we are tempted to fix these few memorials of a
transient state of things fast passing into oblivion; for the
feudal state of Fort William is at an end, its council chamber is
silent and deserted; its banquet hall no longer echoes to the
burst of loyalty, or the "auld world" ditty; the lords of the
lakes and forests have passed away; and the hospitable magnates
of Montreal where are they?
CHAPTER II.
Rise of the Mackinaw Company. Attempt of the American Government
to Counteract Foreign Influence Over the Indian Tribes. John
Jacob Astor. His Birth-Place. His Arrival in the United
States. What First Turned His Attention to the Fur Trade. His
Character, Enterprises, and Success. His Communications With the
American Government. Origin of the American Fur Company
THE success of the Northwest Company stimulated further
enterprise in this opening and apparently boundless field of
profit. The traffic of that company lay principally in the high
northern latitudes, while there were immense regions to the south
and west, known to abound with valuable peltries; but which, as
yet, had been but little explored by the fur trader. A new
association of British merchants was therefore formed, to
prosecute the trade in this direction.
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