inal.

During the progress of this peculiar traffic many people not connected
with the established fur companies, engaged in the Indian trade,
prominently Culver and Farrington, Louis Roberts, and Nathan Myrick. I
remember that Mr. John Farrington made an improvement in the
construction of the Red river cart, by putting an iron box in the hub of
the wheel, which prevented the loud squeaking noise they formerly made,
and so facilitated their movements that they carried a thousand pounds
as easily as they had before carried eight hundred.

The early fur trade in the Northwest, carried on by canoes and these
carts, was very appropriately called by one of our first historians of
Minnesota, "The heroic age of American commerce."

PEMMICAN.

One of the principal sources of subsistence of these frontier people in
their long journeys through uninhabited regions was pemmican. This food
was especially adapted to extreme northern countries, where in the
winter it was sometimes impossible to make fires to cook with, and the
means of transportation was by dog-trains, as it was equally good for
man and beast. It was invented among the Hudson Bay people, many years
ago, and undoubtedly from necessity. It was made in this way: The meat
of the buffalo, without the fat, was thoroughly boiled, and then picked
into shreds or very small pieces. A sack was made of buffalo skin, with
the hair on the outside, which would hold about ninety pounds of meat. A
hole was then dug in the ground of sufficient size to hold the sack. It
was filled with the meat thus prepared, which was packed and pounded
until it was as hard as it could be made. A kettle of boiling hot
buffalo fat, in a fluid state, was then poured into it, until it was
thoroughly permeated, every interstice from center to circumference
being filled, until it became a solid mass, perfectly impervious to the
air, and as well preserved against decomposition as if it had been
enclosed in an hermetically sealed glass jar. Here you had a most
nutritious preparation of animal food, all ready for use for both man
and dog. An analysis of this compound proved it to possess more
nutriment to the pound weight than any other substance ever
manufactured, and with a winter camp appetite, it was a very palatable
dish. Its great superiority over any other kind of food was its not
requiring preparation and its portability.

TRANSPORTATION AND EXPRESS.

With the increase of trade a