chigan. This famous old French trading post continued to be a rallying
point for a multifarious and motley population. The inhabitants were
amphibious in their habits, most of them being, or having been voyageurs
or canoe men. It was the great place of arrival and departure of the
southwest fur trade. Here the Mackinaw Company had established its
principal post, from whence it communicated with the interior and with
Montreal. Hence its various traders and trappers set out for their
respective destinations about Lake Superior and its tributary waters, or
for the Mississippi, the Arkansas, the Missouri, and the other regions
of the west. Here, after the absence of a year, or more, they returned
with their peltries, and settled their accounts; the furs rendered in by
them being transmitted in canoes from hence to Montreal. Mackinaw was,
therefore, for a great part of the year, very scantily peopled; but at
certain seasons the traders arrived from all points, with their crews of
voyageurs, and the place swarmed like a hive.

Mackinaw, at that time, was a mere village, stretching along a small
bay, with a fine broad beach in front of its principal row of houses,
and dominated by the old fort, which crowned an impending height.
The beach was a kind of public promenade where were displayed all the
vagaries of a seaport on the arrival of a fleet from a long cruise. Here
voyageurs frolicked away their wages, fiddling and dancing in the booths
and cabins, buying all kinds of knick-knacks, dressing themselves out
finely, and parading up and down, like arrant braggarts and coxcombs.
Sometimes they met with rival coxcombs in the young Indians from the
opposite shore, who would appear on the beach painted and decorated
in fantastic style, and would saunter up and down, to be gazed at
and admired, perfectly satisfied that they eclipsed their pale-faced
competitors.

Now and then a chance party of "Northwesters" appeared at Mackinaw from
the rendezvous at Fort William. These held themselves up as the chivalry
of the fur trade. They were men of iron; proof against cold weather,
hard fare, and perils of all kinds. Some would wear the Northwest
button, and a formidable dirk, and assume something of a military air.
They generally wore feathers in their hats, and affected the "brave."
"Je suis un homme du nord!"-"I am a man of the north,"-one of these
swelling fellows would exclaim, sticking his arms akimbo and ruffling by
the Southwesters