the bay and the
Frenchmen with their _coureurs-des-bois_ pushed westward along the
chain of water-ays leading from Lake Superior and Lake Winnipeg to the
Saskatchewan and Athabasca. Then came the Conquest, with the downfall of
French trade in the north country. But there remained the
_coureurs-des-bois_, or wood-rangers, the _Metis_, or French
half-breeds, the _Bois-Brules_, or plain runners--so called, it is
supposed, from the trapper's custom of blazing his path through the
forest. And on the ruins of French barter grew up a thriving English
trade, organized for the most part by enterprising citizens of Quebec
and Montreal, and absorbing within itself all the cast-off servants of
the old French companies. Such was the origin of the X. Y. and
North-West Companies towards the beginning of the nineteenth century. Of
these the most energetic and powerful--and therefore the most to be
feared by the Ancient and Honorable Hudson's Bay Company--was the
North-West Company, "_Les Bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest_," as
the partners designated themselves.

From the time that the North-Westers gratuitously poured their secrets
into the ears of Lord Selkirk, and Lord Selkirk shrewdly got control of
the Hudson's Bay Company and began to infuse Nor'-Westers' zeal into the
stagnant workings of the older company, there arose such a feud among
these lords of the north as may be likened only to the pillaging of
robber barons in the middle ages. And this feud was at its height when I
cast in my lot with the North-West Fur Company, Nor'-Westers had reaped
a harvest of profits by leaving the beaten track of trade and pushing
boldly northward into the remote MacKenzie River region. This year the
Hudson's Bay had determined to enter the same area and employed a former
Nor'-Wester, Mr. Colin Robertson, to conduct a flotilla of canoes from
Lachine, Montreal, by way of the Nor'-Westers' route up the Ottawa to
the Saskatchewan and Athabasca. But while the Hudson's Bay Company could
ship their peltries directly to England from the bay, the Nor'-Westers
labored under the disadvantage of many delays and trans-shipments before
their goods reached seaboard at Montreal. Indeed, I have heard my uncle
tell of orders which he sent from the north to England in October. The
things ordered in October would be sent from London in March to reach
Montreal in mid-summer. There they would be re-packed in small
quantities for portaging and despatched from