arving, with a tale of blundering and
mismanagement that must have been gall to MacKenzie, the old Nor' Wester
accompanying them. The main body under Hunt reached Astoria in February,
and two other detachments later.

The management of the overlanders had been intrusted to Wilson Price
Hunt of New Jersey, who at once proceeded to Montreal with Donald
MacKenzie, the Nor' Wester. Here the fine hand of the North-West Company
was first felt. Rum, threats, promises, and sudden orders whisking them
away prevented capable _voyageurs_ from enlisting under the Pacific
Company. Only worthless fellows could be engaged, which explains in part
why these empty braggarts so often failed Mr. Hunt. Pushing up the
Ottawa in a birch canoe, Hunt and MacKenzie crossed the lake to
Michilimackinac.

Here the hand of the North-West Company was again felt. Tattlers went
from man to man telling yarns of terror to frighten _engages_ back. Did
a man enlist? Sudden debts were remembered or manufactured, and the bill
presented to Hunt. Was a _voyageur_ on the point of embarking? A swarm
of naked brats with a frouzy Indian wife set up a howl of woe. Hunt
finally got off with thirty men, accompanied by Mr. Ramsay Crooks, a
distinguished Nor' Wester, who afterward became famous as the president
of the American Fur Company. Going south by way of Green Bay and the
Mississippi, Hunt reached St. Louis, where the machinations of another
rival were put to work.

Having rejected Mr. Astor's suggestion to take part in the Pacific
Company, Mr. Manuel Lisa of the Missouri traders did not propose to see
his field invaded. The same difficulties were encountered at St. Louis
in engaging men as at Montreal, and when Hunt was finally ready in
March, 1811, to set out with his sixty men up the Missouri, Lisa
resurrected a liquor debt against Pierre Dorion, Hunt's interpreter,
with the fluid that cheers a French-Canadian charged at ten dollars a
quart. Pierre slipped Lisa's coil by going overland through the woods
and meeting Hunt's party farther up-stream, beyond the law.

Whatever his motive, Lisa at once organized a search party of twenty
picked _voyageurs_ to go up the Missouri to the rescue of that Andrew
Henry who had fled from the Blackfeet over the mountains to Snake River.
Traders too often secured safe passage through hostile territory in
those lawless days by giving the savages muskets enough to blow out the
brains of the next comers. Lisa himself was cha