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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13003 ***
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 13003-h.htm or 13003-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/0/0/13003/13003-h/13003-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/0/0/13003/13003-h.zip)
+
+      In this e-text "a" with a breve and "o", "u", and
+      "a" with a macron are represented by [)a] [¯o] [¯u] [¯a].
+
+
+
+
+
+PIONEERS IN CANADA
+
+By
+
+SIR HARRY JOHNSTON, G.C.M.G., K.C.B.
+
+With Eight Coloured Illustrations by E. Wallcousins
+
+1912
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: TYPE OF SHIP SAILED IN BY THE ENGLISH OR FRENCH
+PIONEERS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY]
+
+
+
+
+The Pioneer Library
+
+A standard series by Sir Harry Johnston. Tastefully bound.
+
+     Pioneers in Australasia.
+     Pioneers in Canada.
+     Pioneers in South Africa.
+     Pioneers in West Africa.
+     Pioneers in Tropical America.
+     Pioneers in India.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+I have been asked to write a series of works which should deal with
+"real adventures", in parts of the world either wild and uncontrolled
+by any civilized government, or at any rate regions full of dangers,
+of wonderful discoveries; in which the daring and heroism of white men
+(and sometimes of white women) stood out clearly against backgrounds
+of unfamiliar landscapes, peopled with strange nations, savage tribes,
+dangerous beasts, or wonderful birds. These books would again and
+again illustrate the first coming of the white race into regions
+inhabited by people of a different type, with brown, black, or yellow
+skins; how the European was received, and how he treated these races
+of the soil which gradually came under his rule owing to his superior
+knowledge, weapons, wealth, or powers of persuasion. The books were to
+tell the plain truth, even if here and there they showed the white man
+to have behaved badly, or if they revealed the fact that the American
+Indian, the Negro, the Malay, the black Australian was sometimes cruel
+and treacherous.
+
+A request thus framed was almost equivalent to asking me to write
+stories of those pioneers who founded the British Empire; in any case,
+the first volumes of this series do relate the adventures of those who
+created the greater part of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, by
+their perilous explorations of unknown lands and waters. In many
+instances the travellers were all unconscious of their destinies, of
+the results which would arise from their actions. In some cases they
+would have bitterly railed at Fate had they known that the result of
+their splendid efforts was to be the enlargement of an empire under
+the British flag. Perhaps if they could know by now that we are
+striving under that flag to be just and generous to all types of men,
+and not to use our empire solely for the benefit of English-speaking
+men and women, the French who founded the Canadian nation, the Germans
+and Dutch who helped to create British Africa, Malaysia, and
+Australia, the Spaniards who preceded us in the West Indies, and the
+Portuguese in West, Central, and East Africa, in Newfoundland and
+Ceylon, might--if they have any consciousness or care for things in
+this world--be not so sorry after all that we are reaping where they
+sowed.
+
+It is (as you will see) impossible to tell the tale of these early
+days in the British Dominions beyond the Seas, without describing here
+and there the adventures of men of enterprise and daring who were not
+of our own nationality. The majority, nevertheless, were of British
+stock; that is to say, they were English, Welsh, Scots, Irish, perhaps
+here and there a Channel Islander and a Manxman; or Nova Scotians,
+Canadians, and New Englanders. The bulk of them were good fellows, a
+few were saints, a few were ruffians with redeeming features.
+Sometimes they were common men who blundered into great discoveries
+which will for ever preserve their names from perishing; occasionally
+they were men of Fate, predestined, one might say, to change the
+history of the world by their revelations of new peoples, new lands,
+new rivers, new lakes, snow mountains, and gold mines. Here and there
+is a martyr like Marquette, or Livingstone, or Gordon, dying for the
+cause of a race not his own. And others again are mere boys, whose
+adventures come to them because they are adventurous, and whose feats
+of arms, escapes, perils, and successes are quite as wonderful as
+those attributed to the juvenile heroes of Marryat, Stevenson, and the
+author of _The Swiss Family Robinson_.
+
+I have tried, in describing these adventures, to give my readers some
+idea of the scenery, animals, and vegetation of the new lands through
+which these pioneers passed on their great and small purposes; as well
+as of the people, native to the soil, with whom they came in contact.
+And in treating of these subjects I have thought it best to give the
+scientific names of the plant or animal which was of importance in my
+story, so that any of my readers who were really interested in natural
+history could at once ascertain for themselves the exact type alluded
+to, and, if they wished, look it up in a museum, a garden, or a
+natural history book.
+
+I hope this attempt at scientific accuracy will not frighten away
+readers young and old; and, if you can have patience with the author,
+you will, by reading this series of books on the great pioneers of
+British West Africa, Canada, Malaysia, West Indies, South Africa, and
+Australasia, get a clear idea of how the British Colonial Empire came
+to be founded.
+
+You will find that I have often tried to tell the story in the words
+of the pioneers, but in these quotations I have adopted the modern
+spelling, not only in my transcript of the English original or
+translation, but also in the place and tribal names, so as not to
+puzzle or delay the reader. Otherwise, if you were to look out some of
+the geographical names of the old writers, you might not be able to
+recognize them on the modern atlas. The pronunciation of this modern
+geographical spelling is very simple and clear: the vowels are
+pronounced _a_ = ah, _e_ = eh, _i_ = ee, _o_ = o, _ô_ = oh,
+_[¯o]_ = aw, _ö_ = u in 'hurt', and _u_ = oo, as in German, Italian, or
+most other European languages; and the consonants as in English.
+
+H. H. JOHNSTON.
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS
+
+     I. THE WHITE MAN'S DISCOVERY OF NORTH AMERICA............... 15
+    II. JACQUES CARTIER.......................................... 29
+   III. ELIZABETHAN PIONEERS IN NORTH AMERICA.................... 45
+    IV. CHAMPLAIN AND THE FOUNDATION OF CANADA................... 53
+     V. AFTER CHAMPLAIN: FROM MONTREAL TO THE MISSISSIPPI........ 88
+    VI. THE GEOGRAPHICAL CONDITIONS OF THE CANADIAN DOMINION.....120
+   VII. THE AMERINDIANS AND ESKIMO: THE ABORIGINES OF BRITISH
+             NORTH AMERICA.......................................153
+  VIII. THE HUDSON BAY EXPLORERS AND THE BRITISH CONQUEST OF
+             ALL CANADA..........................................202
+    IX. THE PIONEERS FROM MONTREAL: ALEXANDER HENRY THE ELDER....211
+     X. SAMUEL HEARNE............................................248
+    XI. ALEXANDER MACKENZIE'S JOURNEYS...........................277
+   XII. MACKENZIE'S SUCCESSORS...................................313
+
+
+
+
+  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  COLOURED PLATES
+
+  Type of Ship sailed in by the English or French Pioneers in the
+    Sixteenth Century _Frontispiece_
+  Icebergs and Polar Bears
+  Indians hunting Bison
+  Indians lying in wait for Moose
+  Caribou swimming a River
+  Great Auks, Gannets, Puffins, and Guillemots
+  Scene on Canadian River: Wild Swans flying up, disturbed by Bear
+  Big-horned Sheep of Rocky Mountains
+
+
+  BLACK-AND-WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  Jacques Cartier
+  Samuel de Champlain and Alexander Henry the Elder
+  An Amerindian Type of British Columbia
+  Lake Louise, the Rocky Mountains
+  Samuel Hearne and Alexander Mackenzie
+  The Upper Waters of the Fraser River
+  The Kootenay or Head Stream of the Columbia River
+  A Hunter's "Shack" in British Columbia: After a successful Shoot of
+    Blue Grouse
+
+  Map of Canada
+  Map of Eastern Canada and Newfoundland
+  Map of Part of the Coast Region of British Columbia
+
+
+
+
+List of the Chief Authorities
+
+
+FROM WHOM THE PRINCIPAL FACTS AND INCIDENTS OF THIS BOOK HAVE BEEN
+DERIVED, IN ADDITION TO THE AUTHOR'S OWN RESEARCHES AND EXPERIENCES,
+AND INFORMATION SUPPLIED BY PROFESSOR R. RAMSAY WRIGHT, OF TORONTO
+UNIVERSITY
+
+_The Saint Lawrence Basin_. By Dr. S.E. DAWSON. London. 1905.
+Lawrence & Bullen.
+
+_Relation Originale du Voyage de Jacques Cartier au Canada en
+1534_; Documents inédits, &c. Publiés par H. MICHELANT et A. RAME.
+Paris. Librairie Tross. 1867.
+
+_Voyage de Jacques Cartier au Canada en 1534_, &c. Par H.
+MICHELANT. Paris. 1865.
+
+_Champlain's Voyages_: The Publications of the Prince Society.
+Boston. 1878. Three volumes.
+
+_Voyage of Verrazano_, &c. By HENRY C. MURPHY. New York. 1875.
+(Also the Essay on the Journeys of Verrazano, by Alessandro Bacchiani,
+in the Bollettino della Societá Geografica Italiana. Rome. November,
+1909.)
+
+_Volume IX of the Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of
+Canada_. (For the History of Cape Breton and of the Beothiks of
+Newfoundland.)
+
+_The Search for the Western Sea_. By Lawrence J. Burpee. London.
+Alston Rivers. 1908.
+
+_Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New
+France_, &c. Edited by REUBEN GOLD THWAITES. Vol. LIX. Cleveland,
+U.S.A. Burrows Bros. 1900.
+
+_Travels and Explorations in Canada and the Indian Territories between
+the years 1760 and 1776_. By ALEXANDER HENRY, Esq. New York. 1809.
+
+_Voyages from Montreal on the River St. Lawrence through the Continent
+of North America to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans, in the years 1789
+and 1793_, &c. &c. By ALEXANDER MACKENZIE, Esq. London. 1801.
+
+_A Journey from Prince of Wales's Fort in Hudson's Bay to the Northern
+Ocean_, &c. By SAMUEL HEARNE. London. 1795.
+
+_Les Bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest_. By L.R. MASSON.
+Quebec. 1890. Two volumes.
+
+_New Light on the Early History of the Greater North-West_: The
+Manuscript Journals of Alexander Henry, Jun., and of David Thompson.
+Edited by ELLIOTT COUES. Three Volumes. New York. Harper. 1897.
+
+_Sport and Travel in the Northland of Canada_. By DAVID T. HANBURY.
+London. Edward Arnold. 1904.
+
+_Henry Hudson the Navigator_, &c. By G.M. ASHER. London. Hakluyt
+Society, 1860.
+
+_The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher_. By Rear-Admiral RICHARD
+COLLINSON. London. Hakluyt Society. 1867.
+
+_The Voyages and Works of John Davis the Navigator_. By Admiral Sir
+ALBERT HASTINGS MARKHAM. London. Hakluyt Society. 1880.
+
+_The Voyages of William Baffin, 1612-1622_. By Sir CLEMENTS R.
+MARKHAM. London. 1881.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+The White Man's Discovery of North America
+
+
+So far as our knowledge goes, it is almost a matter of certainty that
+Man originated in the Old World--in Asia possibly. Long after this
+wonderful event in the Earth's history, when the human species was
+spread over a good deal of Asia, Europe, and Africa, migration to the
+American continents began in attempts to find new feeding grounds and
+unoccupied areas for hunting and fishing. How many thousands or
+hundreds of thousands of years ago it was since the first men entered
+America we do not yet know, any more than we can determine the route
+by which they travelled from Asia. Curiously enough, the oldest traces
+of man as yet discovered in the New World are not only in South
+America, but in the south-eastern parts of South America. Although the
+most obvious recent land connection between the Old and New Worlds is
+the Aleutian chain of islands connecting Kamschatka with Alaska, the
+ethnologist is occasionally led to think by certain evidence that
+there may, both earlier and later, have existed another way of
+reaching western America from south-eastern Asia through Pacific
+archipelagoes and islets now sunk below the sea. In any case it seems
+quite probable that men of Mongolian or Polynesian type reached
+America on its western coasts long before the European came from the
+north-east and east, and that they were helped on this long journey by
+touching at islands since submerged by earthquake shocks or tidal
+waves.
+
+The aboriginal natives of North and South America seem to be of
+entirely Asiatic origin; and such resemblances as there are between
+the North-American Indians and the peoples of northern Europe do not
+arise (we believe) from any ancient colonization of America from
+western or northern Europe, but mainly from the fact that the
+North-American Indians and the Eskimo (two distinct types of people)
+are descended from the same human stocks as the ancient populations of
+the northern part of Europe and Asia.
+
+It was--we think--from the far _north-west_ of Europe that America was
+first visited by the true White man, though there has been an ancient
+immigration of imperfect "White" men (Ainu) from Kamschatka. Three or
+four hundred years after the birth of Christ there were great race
+movements in northern and central Europe, due to an increase of
+population and insufficiency of food. Not only did these white
+barbarians (though they were not as barbarous as we were led to think
+by Greek and Roman literature) invade southern Europe, North Africa,
+and Asia Minor, but from the fourth century of the Christian era
+onwards they began to cross over to England and Scotland. At the same
+time they took more complete possession of Scandinavia, driving north
+before their advance the more primitive peoples like the Lapps and
+Finns, who were allied to the stock from which arose both the Eskimo
+and the Amerindian.[1] All this time the Goths and Scandinavians
+were either learning ideas of navigation from the Romans of the
+Mediterranean or the Greeks of the Black Sea, or they were inventing
+for themselves better ways of constructing ships; and although they
+propelled them mainly by oars, they used masts and sails as well.[2]
+Having got over the fear of the sea sufficiently to reach the coasts
+of England and Scotland, the Hebrides, Orkneys, and Shetlands, they
+became still more venturesome in their voyages from Norway, until they
+discovered the Faroe Archipelago (which tradition says they found
+inhabited by wild sheep), and then the large island of Iceland, which
+had, however, already been reached and settled by the northern Irish.
+
+[Footnote 1: This is a convenient name for the race formerly called
+"American Indian". They are not Indians (i.e. natives of India), and
+they are not the only Americans, since there are now about 110,000,000
+white Americans of European origin and 24,000,000 negroes and
+negroids. The total approximate "Amerindian" or aboriginal population
+of the New World at the present day is 16,000,000, of whom about
+111,000 live in the Canadian Dominion, and 300,000 in the United
+States, the remainder in Central and South America.]
+
+[Footnote 2: It is doubtful whether actual masts and sails were known
+in America till the coming of Europeans, though the ancient Peruvians
+are said to have used mat sails in their canoes. But the northern
+Amerindians had got as far as placing bushes or branches of fir trees
+upright in their canoes to catch the force of the wind.]
+
+Iceland, though it lies so far to the north that it is partly within
+the Arctic Circle, is, like Norway, Scotland, and Ireland, affected by
+the Gulf Stream, so that considerable portions of it are quite
+habitable. It is not almost entirely covered with ice, as Greenland
+is; in fact, Iceland should be called Greenland (from the large extent
+of its grassy pastures), and Greenland should be called Iceland.
+Instead of this, however, the early Norwegian explorers called these
+countries by the names they still bear.
+
+The Norse rovers from Norway and the Hebrides colonized Iceland from
+the year 850; and about a hundred and thirty-six years afterwards, in
+their venturesome journeys in search of new lands, they reached the
+south-east and south-west coasts of Greenland. Owing to the glacial
+conditions and elevated character of this vast continental island
+(more than 500,000 sq. miles in area)--for the whole interior of
+Greenland rises abruptly from the sea-coast to altitudes of from 5000
+to 11,000 ft.--this discovery was of small use to the early Norwegians
+or their Iceland colony. After it was governed by the kingdom of
+Norway in the thirteenth century, the Norse colonization of south-west
+Greenland faded away under the attacks of the Eskimo, until it ceased
+completely in the fifteenth century. When Denmark united herself with
+the kingdom of Norway in 1397, the Danish king became also the ruler
+of Iceland. In the eighteenth century the Norwegian and Danish
+settlements were re-established along the south-east and south-west
+coasts of Greenland, mainly on account of the value of the whale,
+seal, and cod fisheries in the seas around this enormous frozen
+island; and all Greenland is now regarded as a Danish possession.
+
+But the adventurous Norsemen who first reached Greenland from Iceland
+attempted to push their investigations farther to the south-west, in
+the hope of discovering more habitable lands; and in this way it was
+supposed that their voyages extended as far as Massachusetts and Rhode
+Island, but in all probability they reached no farther than
+Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. This portion of North America they
+called "Vinland", more from the abundance of cranberries (_vinbær_) on
+the open spaces than the few vines to be found in the woods of Nova
+Scotia.[3]
+
+[Footnote 3: The grapes and vines so often alluded to by the early
+explorers of North America ripened, according to the species, between
+August and October. They belong to the same genus--_Vitis_--as that of
+the grape vines of the Old World, but they were quite distinct in
+species. Nowadays they are known as the Fox Grapes (_Vitis vulpina_),
+the Frost Grape (_V. cordifolia_), the _V. aestivalis_, the _V.
+labruska_, &c. The fruit of the Fox Grape is dark purple, with a very
+dusky skin and a musky flavour. The Frost Grape has a very small
+berry, which is black or leaden-blue when covered with bloom. It is
+very acid to the taste, but from all these grapes it is easy to make a
+delicious, refreshing drink. Champlain, however, says that the wild
+grapes were often quite large in size, and his men found them
+delicious to eat.]
+
+This brings us down to the year 1008. The Icelandic Norsemen then
+ceased their investigations of the North-American Continent, and were
+too ignorant to realize the value of their discoveries. Their colonies
+on the coasts of Nova Scotia ("Vinland") and Newfoundland
+("Estotiland") were attacked probably by Eskimos, at any rate by a
+short, thick-set, yellow-skinned ugly people whom the Norsemen called
+"Skræling",[4] who overcame the unfortunate settlers, murdered some,
+and carried off others into the interior.
+
+[Footnote 4: Perhaps from the Eastern Eskimo national name _Karalit_.]
+
+But about this period, when Europe was going through that dismal era,
+the Dark Age which followed the downfall of the Roman Empire of the
+west, various impulses were already directing the attention of
+European adventurers to the Western Ocean, the Atlantic. One cause was
+the increased hold of Roman and Greek Christianity over the peoples of
+Europe. These Churches imposed fasts either for single days or for
+continuous periods. When people fasted it meant that they were chiefly
+denied any form of meat, and therefore must eat fish if they were not
+content with oil, bread, or vegetables. So that there was an enormous
+and increasing demand for fish, not only amongst those fortunate
+people who lived by the seashore, and could get it fresh whenever they
+liked, but among those who lived at a distance inland, and were still
+required to fast when the Church so directed. Of course in many parts
+of Europe they could get freshwater fish from the rivers or lakes. But
+the supply was not equal to the demand; and fish sent up from the
+seacoast soon went bad, so that the plan of salting and curing fish
+was adopted. The Norsemen found it a paying business to fish
+industriously in the seas round Iceland, Norway, Scotland, and
+Ireland, salt and cure the fish, and then carry it to more southern
+countries, where they exchanged it against wine, oil, clothing
+materials, and other goods. This led to the Venetians (who had
+absorbed so much of the carrying trade of the Mediterranean) sending
+their ships through the Straits of Gibraltar into the northern seas
+and trading with the Baltic for amber and salt fish. In the course of
+this trade some Venetians, such as Antonio Zeno, found their way to
+Norway and Iceland.[5] It is thought that by this means Venice became
+acquainted with the records of the Icelandic voyages to North
+America, and that her explorers thus grew to entertain the idea of a
+sea journey westward, or north-westward, of Britain, bringing mariners
+to a New World represented by the far-eastern extension of Asia.
+
+[Footnote 5: Antonio Zeno served as pilot to Earl Sinclair of the
+Faeroe Islands and of Roslyn, a Norman-Scottish nobleman who owed
+joint fealty to the kings of Norway and Scotland. Sinclair was so
+impressed with the stories of a "Newland" beyond Greenland that he
+sailed to find it about 1390, but only reached Greenland.]
+
+Christopher Columbus, the Genoese, conceived a similar idea, which
+also may have owed something to the tradition of the Norsemen's
+discovery of Vinland. But Columbus's theories were based on better
+evidence, such as the discovery on the coasts of the Azores
+archipelago, Madeira, and Portugal of strange seeds, tree trunks,
+objects of human workmanship, and even (it is said) the bodies of
+drowned savages--Amerindians--which had somehow drifted across, borne
+by the current of the Gulf Stream, and escaping the notice of the
+sharks.
+
+Whilst Columbus was bestirring himself to find Asia across the
+Atlantic, a sea pilot, JOHN CABOT (Zuan Cabota)--Genoese by birth, but
+a naturalized subject of Venice--came to England and offered himself
+to King Henry VII as a discoverer of new lands across the ocean. At
+first he was employed at Copenhagen to settle fishery quarrels about
+Iceland, and probably Cabota, or Cabot, visited Iceland in King
+Henry's service, and there heard of the Icelandic colonies on the
+other side of the Atlantic, only recently abandoned.
+
+In 1496 King Henry VII provided money to cover some of the expense of
+a voyage of discovery to search for the rumoured island across the
+ocean. The people of Bristol were ordered to assist John Cabot, and by
+them he was furnished with a small sailing ship, the _Matthew_, and a
+crew of fifteen mariners. Cabot, with his two sons, Luis and Sancio,
+sailed for Ireland and the unknown West in May, 1497, and, after a sea
+voyage quite as wonderful as that of Columbus, reached the coast of
+Cape Breton Island (or "the New Isle", as it was first named[6]) on
+June 24, 1497. They found "the land excellent, and the climate
+temperate". The sea was so full of fish along these coasts that the
+mariners opined (truly) that henceforth Bristol need not trouble about
+the Iceland trade. Here along this "new isle" were the predestined
+fisheries of Britain.[7]
+
+[Footnote 6: Cape Breton was not then, or for nearly two hundred years
+afterwards, known to be an island. It was thought to be part of the
+"island" (peninsula) of what we now call Nova Scotia, and the whole of
+this region which advances so prominently into the Atlantic was
+believed to be at first the great unknown "New Island" of Irish and
+English legends--legends based on the Norse discoveries of the
+eleventh century. Cape Breton was thus named by the Breton seaman who
+came thither soon after the Cabot expeditions to fish for cod. This
+large island is separated from Nova Scotia by the Gut of Canso, a
+strait no broader than a river.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Dr. S.E. DAWSON (_The St. Lawrence Basin_) says of this
+voyage: "When the forest wilderness of Cape Breton listened to the
+voices of Cabot's little company (of Bristol mariners) it was the
+first faint whisper of the mighty flood of English speech which was
+destined to overflow the continent to the shores of another
+ocean...."]
+
+They encountered no inhabitants, though they found numerous traces of
+their existence in the form of snares, notched trees, and bone netting
+needles. John Cabot hoisted the English flag of St. George and the
+Venetian standard of St. Mark; then--perhaps after coasting a little
+along Nova Scotia--fearful that a longer stay might cause them to run
+short of provisions, he turned the prow of the _Matthew_ eastward, and
+reached Bristol once more about August 6, and London on August 10,
+1497, with his report to King Henry VII, who rewarded him with a
+donation of £10. He was further granted a pension of £20 a year (which
+he only drew for two years, probably because he died after returning
+from a second voyage to the North-American coast), and he received a
+renewal of his patent of discovery in February, 1498. In this patent
+it is evidently inferred that King Henry VII assumed a sovereignty
+over these distant regions because of John Cabot's hoisting of the
+English flag on "the new Isle" (Cape Breton Island) in the preceding
+year.
+
+The new expedition of 1498 was a relatively important affair. The
+king assisted to finance the ventures of the Bristol captains, and
+five of his ships formed part of the little fleet. It is probable that
+John Cabot was in command, and almost certain that his young son
+Sebastian was a passenger, possibly an assistant pilot. The course
+followed lay much farther to the north, and brought the little sailing
+vessels amongst the icebergs, ice floes, polar bears, and stormy seas
+of Greenland and Labrador. Commercially the voyage was a failure,
+almost a disaster. The ships returned singly, and after a considerable
+interval of time. Nevertheless, some of the king's loans were repaid
+to him; and in 1501 a regular chartered company was formed (perhaps at
+Bristol), with three Bristolians and three Portuguese as directors.
+Henry VII not only gave a royal patent to this association, but lent
+more money to enable it to explore and colonize these new lands across
+the western sea.
+
+There can be little doubt that between 1498 and 1505 these Bristol
+ships, directed by Italian, English, and Portuguese pilots, first
+revealed to the civilized world of western Europe the coasts of
+Newfoundland, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Massachusetts, and
+Delaware. They must have got as far south as the State of Delaware
+(according to Sebastian Cabot, their southern limit was lat. 38°),
+because in 1505 they were able to bring back parrots ("popyngays"), as
+well as hawks and lynxes ("catts of the mountaigne"), for the
+delectation of King Henry; and parrots even at that period could not
+have been obtained from farther north than the latitude of New
+York.[8]
+
+[Footnote 8: Almost certainly this was _Conurus carolinensis_, a green
+and orange parrakeet still found in the south-eastern States of North
+America, but formerly met with as far north as New York and Boston.]
+
+But after 1505 English interest in "the Newe founde launde" and the
+"Newe Isle" languished; the exploration of North America was taken up
+and carried farther by Portuguese, Bretons and Normans of France,
+Italians, and Spaniards.[9] It revived again under Henry VIII, owing
+to the irresistible attraction of the Newfoundland fisheries and the
+knowledge that the ships from France were returning every autumn with
+great supplies of fish cured and salted; for an adequate supply of
+salt fish was becoming a matter of great importance to the markets of
+western Europe. In 1527 Henry VIII sent two ships under the command of
+John Rut to explore the North-American coast, and Captain Rut seems
+to have reached the Straits of Belle Isle between Newfoundland
+and Labrador (then blocked with ice so that he took them for
+a bay), and afterwards to have passed along the east coast of
+Newfoundland--already much frequented by the Bretons, Normans, and
+Portuguese--and to have stopped at the harbour of St. John's, thence
+sailing as far south as Massachusetts.
+
+[Footnote 9: The name _America_ probably appears for the first time in
+English print in the old play or masque the _Four Elements_, which was
+published about 1518. In a review of the geography of the Earth, as
+known at that period, a description is given of this vast New World
+across the Ocean: "But these new landys found lately, been called
+America, because only Americus did find them first". Americus was a
+Florentine bank clerk--Amerigo Vespucci--at Seville who gave up the
+counting-house for adventure, sailed with a Spanish captain to the
+West Indies and the mainland of Venezuela (off which he notes that he
+met an English sailing vessel, and this as early as 1499!), and then
+joined the first exploring voyage of the Portuguese to Brazil. He
+returned to Europe, and in a letter to a fellow countryman at Paris,
+written in the late autumn of 1502, he claimed to have discovered a
+New World across the Ocean. His clear statement about what was really
+the South American Continent aroused so much enthusiasm in civilized
+Europe that five years afterwards the New World was called after him
+by a German printer (Walzmüller) at the little Alsatian University of
+St. Dié. By 1518 the English writers and mariners were probably aware
+that the discoveries of Cabot, Columbus, and the Portuguese indicated
+the extension of "America" from the Arctic to the Antarctic, but not
+till about 1553 did the scholars and adventurers of England show
+themselves fully alive to the gigantic importance of this New World.
+Between 1530 and 1553 their attention was distracted from geography
+and over-sea adventure by the religious troubles of the Reformation.]
+
+The Portuguese monarchy had begun to take possession of the Azores
+archipelago from the year 1432. These islands were probably known to
+the Phoenicians, and even to the Arabs of the Middle Ages; between the
+fourteenth and fifteenth centuries they had been rediscovered by
+Catalans, Genoese, Flemings, and Portuguese; and after 1444 the Azores
+began to prove very useful to the sea adventurers of this wonderful
+fifteenth century, as they became a shelter and a place of call for
+fresh water and provisions almost in the middle of the Atlantic, 800
+to 1000 miles due west of Portugal. Portuguese vessels sailed
+northwards from the Azores in search of fishing grounds, and thus
+reached Iceland, which they called Terra do Bacalhao.[10] They may
+even before Cabot have visited in an unrecorded fashion the wonderful
+banks of Newfoundland--an immense area of shallow sea swarming with
+codfish.
+
+[Footnote 10: _Bacalhao_ in Portuguese (and a similar word in Spanish,
+old French, and Italian) means dried, salted fish. It comes from a
+Latin word meaning "a small stick", because the fish were split open
+and held up flat to dry by means of a cross or framework of small
+sticks, the Norse name "stokfiske" meant the same: stockfish or
+stickfish.]
+
+As soon as the news of the Cabot voyages reached the King of Portugal
+he arranged to send an expedition of discovery to the far north-west,
+perhaps to find a northern sea route to Eastern Asia. He gave the
+command to Gaspar Corte-Real, a Portuguese noble connected through
+family property with the Azores. Starting from the Azores in the
+summer of 1500, Corte-Real discovered Newfoundland, and called it
+"Terra Verde" from its dense woods of fir trees, which are now being
+churned into wood pulp to make paper for British books and newspapers.
+He then sailed along the coast of Labrador,[11] and thence crossed
+over to Greenland, the southern half of which he mapped with fair
+accuracy. His records of this voyage take particular note of the great
+icebergs off the coast of Greenland. His men were surprised to find
+that sea water frozen becomes perfectly fresh--all the salt is left
+out in the process. So that his two ships could supply themselves
+with fresh water of the purest, by hacking ice from the masses
+floating in these Greenland summer seas. The next year he started
+again, but on a more westerly course. His two ships reached the coasts
+of New Jersey and Massachusetts, and sailed north once more to
+Labrador. They captured a number of Amerindian aborigines, but only
+one of the two ships (with seven of these savages on board) reached
+Portugal; Gaspar Corte-Real was never heard of again. His brother
+Miguel went out in search of him, but he likewise disappeared without
+a trace.
+
+[Footnote 11: _Labrador_ (_Lavrador_ in Portuguese) means a labourer,
+a serf. The Portuguese are supposed to have brought some Red Indians
+from this coast to be sold as slaves.]
+
+Nevertheless these Portuguese expeditions to North America have left
+ineffaceable traces in the geography of the Newfoundland coast, of
+which (under the name of Terra Nova[12]) the governorship was made
+hereditary in the Corte-Real family. Cape Race for example--the most
+prominent point of the island--is really the Portuguese _Cabo
+Raso_--the bare or "shaved" cape--and this was by the Spaniards
+regarded as the westernmost limit of Portuguese sovereignty in that
+direction. For the Spaniards were by no means pleased at the intrusion
+of other nations into a New World which they desired to monopolize
+entirely for the Spanish Crown. They did not so much mind sharing it,
+along the line agreed upon in the Treaty of Tordesillas, with the
+Portuguese, but the ingress of the English and French infuriated them.
+The Basque people of the north-east corner of Spain were a hardy
+seafaring folk, especially bold in the pursuit of whales in the Bay of
+Biscay, and eager to take a share in the salt-fish trade. This desire
+took them in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to Ireland and
+Iceland. They began to fish off the Newfoundland coasts perhaps as
+early as 1525. About this time also the Emperor Charles V, King of
+Spain, having through one great Portuguese sea captain--Magalhães
+(Magellan)--discovered the passage from Atlantic to Pacific across
+the extremity of South America, thought by employing another
+Portuguese--Estevão Gomez--to find a similar sea route through North
+America, which would prove a short cut from Europe to China. This was
+the famous "North-west Passage" the search for which drew so many
+great and brave adventurers into the Arctic sea of America between
+1500 and 1853, to be revealed at last by our fellow countrymen, but to
+prove useless to navigation on account of the enormous accumulation of
+ice.
+
+[Footnote 12: Corte-Real's name of Terra Verde ("Greenland") was soon
+dropped in favour of the older English name "New Land" (Newfoundland,
+Terra Nova). This was at once adopted by the French seamen as "Terre
+Neuve".]
+
+Gomez left Corunna in the winter of 1524-5, and reached the
+North-American coast somewhere about Florida. He probably only began
+to investigate closely after he passed into the broad gulf of Maine,
+between Cape Cod and Nova Scotia. Here he sighted from the sea the
+lofty mountains of New Hampshire, and steered for the mouth of the
+Penobscot River (which he named the River of Deer), a title which
+sticks to the locality--in Deer Island--at the present day. But this
+being no opening of a broad strait, he passed on into the Bay of Fundy
+(from Portuguese word, _Fundo_, the bottom of a sack or passage),
+explored its two terminal gulfs, then returned along the coast of Nova
+Scotia,[13] past Cape Sable, and so to the "gut" or Canal of Canso.
+Gomez realized that Cape Breton was an island (we now know that it is
+two islands separated by a narrow watercourse), but thought that Cabot
+Strait was a great bay, and guessed nothing of the Gulf of St.
+Lawrence, and the chance of securing for Spain the possession of this
+mighty waterway into the heart of North America.
+
+[Footnote 13: The name Nova Scotia was not applied to this peninsula
+until 1621, by the British Government. It was at first included with
+New Brunswick under the Spanish name of Norumbega, and after 1603 was
+called by the French "Acadie".]
+
+From Cape North he crossed over to the south coast of Newfoundland,
+and followed this more or less till he came to Cape Race. Newfoundland
+was a "very cold and savage land", and Gomez decided it was no use
+prosecuting any farther his enquiry as to a water passage across North
+America, because, if it existed, it must lie in latitudes of frozen
+sea and be unnavigable.
+
+At different places along the east coast of North America he kidnapped
+natives, and eventually returned to Spain (via Florida and Cuba) with
+a cargo of Amerindian slaves.
+
+He had been preceded, by seven or eight months, in his explorations
+along the same coast by GIOVANNI DA VERRAZANO, a native of Florence,
+who as a navigator and explorer had visited the East, and had
+associated himself a good deal with the shipowners of Dieppe. Ever
+since the issue of Cabot's voyages was known--at any rate from
+1504--ships from Brittany and Normandy had made their way to Cape
+Breton Island and Newfoundland for the cod fisheries. In 1508 a Norman
+named Aubert was sent out by Jean Ango--a great merchant of Dieppe of
+that day--to found a colony in Newfoundland. Aubert failed to do this,
+but he captured and brought away at least seven of the natives, no
+doubt of the Beothik tribe, from Newfoundland to Rouen, with their
+canoe, clothing, and weapons. A good many ships also went out from La
+Rochelle on the west coast of France, and took part in the fishing off
+the coast of Newfoundland: together with the ships of Brittany and
+Dieppe there may have been a French fishing fleet of seventy to eighty
+ships plying every summer season between France, Newfoundland, and
+Cape Breton. So that when "John from Verrazano" offered his services
+to Francis I to make discoveries across the ocean, which should become
+possessions of the French Crown, he was quickly provided with the
+requisite funds and ships.
+
+Verrazano started on the 17th of January, 1524, for the coast of
+North America, but I shall say little about his expedition here,
+because it resulted chiefly in the discovery and mapping of what is
+now the east coast of the United States. He reached as far as the
+south coast of Newfoundland, it is true; he also gave the names of
+Nova Gallia and Francesca to the coast regions of eastern North
+America, and distinctly intended to take possession of these on behalf
+of the French Crown. But his work in this direction did not lead
+directly to the creation of the French colony of Canada, because, when
+he returned from America, Francis I was at war with Spain, and could
+pay no attention to Verrazano's projects. His voyage is worth
+recording in the present volume only for these two reasons: he
+certainly put it into the minds of French people that they might found
+an empire in North America; and he inspired geographers for another
+hundred years with the false idea that the great North American
+Continent had a very narrow waist, like the Isthmus of Panama, and
+that the Pacific Ocean covered the greater part of what is now called
+the United States. This mistake arose from his looking across the
+narrow belts or peninsulas of sand in North Carolina and Virginia, and
+seeing vast stretches of open water to the west. These were found, a
+hundred years afterwards, to be merely large shallow lagoons of sea
+water, but Verrazano thought they were an extension of the Pacific
+Ocean.
+
+Nevertheless, Verrazano's voyage developed into the French
+colonization of Canada, just as Cabot drew the British to
+Newfoundland, Columbus the Spaniards to Central and South America, and
+Amerigo Vespucci showed the Portuguese the way to Brazil. The modern
+nations of western Europe owe the inception of their great colonies in
+America to four Italians.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Jacques Cartier
+
+
+Verrazano and Gomez, and probably the English captain, John Rut, had
+all sought for the opening of a strait of salt water--like Magellan's
+Straits in the far south--which should lead them through the great
+North-American continent to the regions of China and Japan. Yet in
+some incomprehensible way they overlooked the two broad passages to
+the north and south of Newfoundland--the Straits of Belle Isle and of
+Cabot--which would at any rate lead them into the vast Gulf of St.
+Lawrence, and thence to the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes; a
+natural system of waterways connected each with the other and all with
+the Mississippi and Missouri, the Arctic Ocean, and Hudson's Bay; nay,
+more, with the North Pacific also; so that with a few "portages", or
+carryings of canoes from one watershed to another, a traveller of any
+enterprise, accompanied by a sturdy crew, can cross the broad
+continent of North America at its broadest from sea to sea without
+much walking.
+
+Estevão Gomez noticed Cabot Straits between Cape Breton and
+Newfoundland, but thought them only a very deep bay. John Rut and
+others discerned the Straits of Belle Isle as a wide recess in the
+coast rather than the mouth of a channel leading far inland. And yet,
+after thirty years of Breton, English, and Portuguese fishing
+operations in these waters, there must have been glimmerings of the
+existence of the great Gulf of St. Lawrence behind Newfoundland: and
+JACQUES CARTIER (or Quartier), who had probably made already one
+voyage to Newfoundland (besides a visit to Brazil), suspected that
+between Newfoundland and Labrador there lay the opening of the great
+sea passage "leading to China". He proposed himself to Philippe de
+Chabot, the Admiral of France, as the leader of a new French adventure
+to find the North-west Passage, was accepted by King Francis, and at
+the age of forty-three years set out, with two ships, from St. Malo in
+Brittany, on April 20, 1534, ten years after Verrazano's voyage, and
+reached the coast of Newfoundland after a voyage of only twenty days.
+As he sailed northwards, past the deeply indented fiords and bays of
+eastern Newfoundland (the shores of which were still hugged by the
+winter ice), he and his men were much impressed with the incredible
+numbers of the sea fowl settled for nesting purposes on the rocky
+islands, especially on Funk Island.[1] These birds were guillemots,
+puffins, great auks,[2] gannets (called by Cartier _margaulx_), and
+probably gulls and eider duck. To his sailors--always hungry and
+partly fed on salted provisions, as seamen were down to a few years
+ago--this inexhaustible supply of fresh food was a source of great
+enjoyment. They were indifferent, no doubt, to the fishy flavour of
+the auks and the guillemots, and only noticed that they were
+splendidly fat. Moreover, the birds attracted Polar bears "as large as
+cows and as white as swans". The bears would swim off from the shore
+to the islands (unless they could reach them by crossing the ice), and
+the sailors occasionally killed the bears and ate their flesh, which
+they compared in excellence and taste to veal.
+
+[Footnote 1: Funk Island--called by Cartier "the Island of Birds"--is
+only about 3 miles round, and 46 feet above the sea level. It is 3
+miles distant from the coast.]
+
+[Footnote 2: The Great Auk (_Alca impennis_), extinct since about 1844
+in Europe and 1870 in Labrador, once had in ancient times a
+geographical range from Massachusetts and Newfoundland to Iceland,
+Ireland, Scotland, N.E. England, and Denmark. Perhaps nowhere was it
+found so abundantly as on the coasts of Eastern Newfoundland and on
+Funk Island hard by. The Great Auk was in such numbers on the
+north-east coast of Newfoundland that the Amerindians of that country
+and of southern Labrador used it as fuel in the winter time, its body
+being very full of oil and burning with a splendid flame. The French
+seamen called it _pingouin_ ("penguin") from its fatness, and this
+name was much later transferred to the real penguins of the southern
+seas which are quite unrelated to the auks.]
+
+Passing through the Straits of Belle Isle, Cartier's ships entered
+the Gulf of St. Lawrence. They had previously visited the adjoining
+coast of Labrador, and there had encountered their first "natives",
+members of some Algonkin tribe from Canada, who had come north for
+seal fishing (Cartier is clever enough to notice and describe their
+birch-bark canoes). After examining the west coast of Newfoundland,
+Cartier's ships sailed on past the Magdalen Islands (stopping every
+now and then off some islet to collect supplies of sea birds, for the
+rocky ground was covered with them as thickly as a meadow with
+grass).[3] He reached the north coast of Prince Edward Island, and
+this lovely country received from him an enthusiastic description. The
+pine trees, the junipers, yews, elms, poplars, ash, and willows, the
+beeches and the maples, made the forest not only full of delicious and
+stimulating odours, but lovely in its varied tints of green. In the
+natural meadows and forest clearings there were red and white
+currants, gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries, a vetch which
+produced edible peas, and a grass with a grain like rye. The forest
+abounded in pigeons, and the climate was pleasant and warm.
+
+[Footnote 3: On the shores of these islands they noticed "several
+great beasts like oxen, which have two tusks in the mouth similar to
+those of the elephant". These were walruses.]
+
+Later on he coasted New Brunswick, and paused for a time over Chaleur
+Bay, hoping it might be the opening to the strait across the continent
+of which he was in search; but finding it was not, he continued
+northwards till he had almost rounded the Gaspé Peninsula, a course
+which would have led him straight away into the wonderful discovery of
+the St. Lawrence River, but that, being forced by bad weather into
+Gaspé Bay, and perhaps hindered by fog, instead of entering the St.
+Lawrence he sailed right across to Anticosti Island. After that,
+being baffled by bad weather and doubtful as to his resources lasting
+out, he decided to return to France through the Strait of Belle Isle.
+
+So far he had failed to realize two of the most important things in
+the geography of this region: the broad southern entrance into the
+Gulf of St. Lawrence (subsequently called Cabot Strait), which
+separates Newfoundland on the north from Cape Breton Island on the
+south, and the broad entrance into the River St. Lawrence between
+Anticosti Island and the Gaspé Peninsula.
+
+Yet, whilst staying in Gaspé Bay, he had a very important meeting with
+Amerindian natives of the Huron-Iroquois stock, who had come down the
+River St. Lawrence from the neighbourhood of Quebec, fishing for
+mackerel. These bold, friendly people welcomed the French heartily,
+greeting them with songs and dances. But when they saw Cartier erect a
+great cross on the land at the entrance to Gaspé Bay (a cross bearing
+a shield with the arms of France and the letters "Vive le Roi de
+France"), they were ill at ease. It is certain that not one word could
+be understood in language between the two parties, for there were as
+yet no interpreters; but the Amerindians were probably shrewd enough
+to perceive that Cartier was making some claim on the land, and they
+explained by signs that they considered all this country belonged to
+themselves. Nevertheless, Cartier persuaded two youths, the sons of
+one of the chiefs, to go back with him to France on his ship, to learn
+the French language, to see what France looked like, and to return
+afterwards as interpreters. The boys, though they were practically
+kidnapped at first, were soon reconciled to going, especially when
+they were dressed in French clothes!
+
+[Illustration: JACQUES CARTIER]
+
+When Cartier was on his way home he sailed in a north-easterly
+direction in such a way as to overlook the broad channel between the
+Gaspé Peninsula and Anticosti Island, but having rounded the
+easternmost extremity of that large island, he coasted along its
+northern shores until he caught sight of the opening of the Canadian
+channel to the west. He believed then that he had discovered the
+long-looked-for opening of the trans-continental passage, and sailed
+for France with his wonderful news.
+
+On the 19th of May, 1535, Cartier started again from St. Malo with
+three ships, the biggest of which was only 120 tons, while the others
+were respectively 60 and 40 tons capacity. The crew consisted of about
+112 persons, and in addition there were the two Indian youths who had
+been kidnapped on the previous voyage, and were now returning as
+interpreters. Instead, however, of reaching Newfoundland in twenty
+days, he spent five weeks crossing the Atlantic before he reached his
+rendezvous with the other ships at Blanc Sablon, on the south coast of
+Labrador; for the easy access to the Gulf of St. Lawrence through
+Cabot Strait (between Newfoundland and Cape Breton) was not yet
+realized. Once past Anticosti Island, the two Huron interpreters began
+to recognize the scenery.[4] They now explained to Cartier that he had
+entered the estuary of a vast river. This they said he had only to
+pursue in ships and boats and he would reach "Canada" (which was the
+name they gave to the district round about Quebec), and that beyond
+"Canada" no man had ever been known to reach the end of this great
+water; but, they added, it was fresh water, not salt, and this last
+piece of information much disheartened Cartier, who feared that he had
+not, after all, discovered the water route across North America to the
+Pacific Ocean. He therefore turned about and once more searched the
+opposite coast of Labrador most minutely, displaying, as he did so, a
+seamanship which was little else than marvellous, for it is a very
+dangerous coast, the seas are very stormy, and the look-out often
+hampered by a sudden rising of dense fog; there are islands and rocks
+(some of them almost hidden by the water) and sandbanks; but Cartier
+made this survey of southern Labrador without an accident.
+
+[Footnote 4: Anticosti Island received from Cartier the name of "the
+Island of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin", in consequence of his
+having discovered it to be an island on the feast day of that name. It
+did not receive its present title until the late seventeenth century.]
+
+At this period, some three hundred and seventy-five years ago, the
+northern coasts of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and of Anticosti Island
+swarmed with huge walruses, which were described by Cartier as sea
+horses that spent the night on land and the day in the water. They
+have long since been exterminated by the English and French seamen and
+settlers.
+
+At last Cartier set sail for the south-west, intending to explore this
+wonderful river and to reach the kingdom of Canada. According to his
+understanding of the Amerindian interpreters, the waters of the St.
+Lawrence flowed through three great states: _Saguenay_, which was the
+mountainous Gaspé Peninsula and the opposite coast; _Canada_, Quebec
+and its neighbourhood; and _Hochelaga_, the region between Montreal
+and Lake Ontario. At the mouth of the Saguenay River, where Tadoussac
+is now situated, he encountered large numbers of white whales--the
+Beluga. These are really huge porpoises, allied to the narwhals, but
+without the narwhal's exaggerated tusk. When he reached the vicinity
+of the modern Quebec,[5] and his Amerindian interpreters found
+themselves at their actual home (for they were far away from home on a
+fishing expedition when he caught them in Gaspé Bay) there was great
+rejoicing; for they were able to tell their relations of the wonderful
+country to which they had been across the ocean. Cartier was delighted
+with the surroundings of "Canada" (Quebec), near which at that time
+was a large settlement (Stadacona) of Huron Indians under a chief
+named Donnacona. He decided to lay up his ships here for the winter,
+and to pursue the rest of his western explorations in his boats.
+
+[Footnote 5: Then called "Canada". The word Quebec (pronounced
+_Kebek_) means the narrow part of a river.]
+
+But the Amerindians for some reason were not willing that he should go
+any farther, and attempted to scare him from his projects by arranging
+for three of their number to come down river in a canoe, dressed in
+dogs' skins, with their faces blackened, and with bisons' horns
+fastened to their heads. These devils pretended to take no notice of
+the French, but to die suddenly as they reached the shore, while the
+rest of the natives gave vent to howlings of despair and
+consternation. The three devils were pretending to have brought a
+message from a god to these Hurons of "Canada" that the country up
+river (Hochelaga) was so full of ice and snow that it would be death
+for anyone to go there.
+
+However, this made little or no impression on Cartier; but he consented
+to leave a proportion of his party behind with the chief Donnacona as
+hostages, and then started up country in his boats with about seventy
+picked officers and men. On the 2nd of October, 1535, they reached the
+vicinity of the modern Montreal, the chief settlement of Hochelaga.
+The Huron town at the foot of the hills was circular in outline,
+surrounded by a stockade of three rows of upright tree trunks, which
+rose to its highest point in the middle, where the timbers of the
+inner and outward sides sloped to meet one another, the height of the
+central row being about 8 feet above the ground. All round the inside
+there was a platform or rampart on which were stored heavy stones to
+be hurled at any enemy who should attempt to scale the fence. The town
+was entered by only one doorway, and contained about fifty houses
+surrounding an open space whereon the towns-people made their
+bonfires. Each house was about 50 feet long by 12 to 15 feet wide.
+They were roofed with bark, and usually had attics which were
+storerooms for food. In the centre of each of these long houses there
+was a fireplace where the cooking for the whole of the house
+inhabitants was done. Each family had its own room, but each house
+probably contained five families. Almost the only furniture, except
+cooking pots, was mats on which the people sat and slept. The food of
+the people consisted, besides fish and the flesh of beavers and deer,
+of maize and beans. Cartier at once recognized the maize or Indian
+corn as the same grain ("a large millet") as that which he had seen in
+Brazil.
+
+He gives a description of how they made the maize into bread (or
+rather "dampers", "ashcakes"); but as this is not altogether clear, it
+is better to combine it with Champlain's description, written a good
+many years later, but still at a time when the Hurons were unaffected
+by the white man's civilization. According to both Cartier and
+Champlain, the women pounded the corn to meal in a wooden mortar, and
+removed the bran by means of fans made of the bark of trees. From this
+meal they made bread, sometimes mixing with the meal the beans
+(_Phaseolus vulgaris_), which had been boiled and mashed. Or they
+would boil both Indian corn and beans into a thick soup, adding to the
+soup blueberries,[6] dried raspberries, or pieces of deer's fat. The
+meal derived from the corn and beans they would make into bread,
+baking it in the ashes.
+
+[Footnote 6: The Canada Blueberry (_Vaccinium canadense_), called by
+the French _bluës_ or _bluëts_. These bluës were collected and dried
+by the Amerindians, and made a sweet nutriment for eating in the
+winter.]
+
+Or they would take the pounded Indian corn without removing the bran,
+and put two or three handfuls of it into an earthen pot full of water,
+stirring it from time to time, when it boiled, so that it might not
+adhere to the pot. To this was added a small quantity of fish, fresh
+or dry, according to the season, to give a flavour to the _migane_ or
+porridge. When the dried fish was used the porridge smelt very badly
+in the nostrils of Europeans, but worst of all when the porridge was
+mixed with dried venison, which was sometimes nearly putrid! If fish
+was put into this porridge it was boiled whole in the mealy water,
+then taken out without any attempt to remove the fins, scales, or
+entrails, and the whole of the boiled fish was pounded up and put back
+into the porridge. Sometimes a great birch-bark "kettle" would be
+filled with water, fish, and meat, and red-hot stones be dropped in
+till it boiled. Then with a spoon they would collect from the surface
+the fat and oil arising from the fish or meat. This they afterwards
+mixed with the meal of roasted Indian corn, stirring it with this fat
+till they had made a thick soup. Sometimes, however, they were content
+to eat the young corn-cobs freshly roasted, which as a matter of fact
+(with a little salt) is one of the most delicious things in the world.
+Or they would take ears of Indian corn and bury them in wet mud,
+leaving them thus for two or three months; then the cobs would be
+removed and the rotted grain eaten with meat and fish, though it was
+all muddy and smelt horribly. Cartier also noticed that these Huron
+Indians had melons and pumpkins, and described their wampum or shell
+money.[7]
+
+[Footnote 7: Cartier, in Hakluyt's translation, is made to say (I
+modernize the spelling): "They dig their grounds with certain pieces
+of wood as big as half a sword, on which ground groweth their corn,
+which they call 'offici'; it is as big as our small peason.... They
+have also great store of musk melons, pompions, gourds, cucumbers,
+peas, and beans of every colour, yet differing from ours."
+
+Wampum, or shell money (which recalls the shell money of the Pacific
+Islands), consisted either of beads made from the interior parts of
+sea shells or land shells, or of strings of perforated sea shells. The
+most elaborate kind of wampum was that of the Amerindians of Canada
+and the eastern United States, the shell beads of which were generally
+white. The commoner wampum beads were black and violet. Wampum belts
+were made which illustrated events, dates, treaties of peace, &c, by a
+rude symbolism (figures of men and animals, upright lines, &c), and
+these were worked neatly on string by employing different-coloured
+beads.]
+
+From the eminence on which the Huron city stood, Cartier obtained a
+splendid view of rivers and mountains and magnificent forests, and
+called the place then and there, in his Norman French, Mont Real, or
+Royal Eminence, a name which it will probably bear for all time,
+though the actual city of Montreal lies a few miles below.
+
+Montreal was the limit of Cartier's explorations on this journey. He
+returned thence to "Canada" or Stadacona, where his men built a fort
+armed with artillery, and where his ships were anchored. Here he had
+to stay from the middle of November, 1535, to the middle of April,
+1536, his ships being shut in by the ice. The experiences of the
+French during these five months were mostly unhappy. At first Cartier
+gave himself up to the collecting of information. He noticed for the
+first time the smoking of tobacco,[8] and collected information about
+the products and features of "Canada". The Indians told him of great
+lakes in the far west, one of which was so vast that no man had seen
+the end of it. They told him that anyone travelling up the Richelieu
+River (as it was called sixty years later) would eventually reach a
+land in the south where in the winter there was no ice or snow, and
+where fruit and nut trees grew in abundance. Cartier thought that they
+were talking to him of Florida, but their geographical information can
+scarcely have stretched so far; they probably referred to the milder
+regions of New Jersey and Virginia, which would be reached by
+following southwards the valley of the Hudson and keeping to the
+lowlands of the eastern United States.
+
+[Footnote 8: "There groweth also a certain kind of herb whereof in
+summer they make a great provision for all the year, making great
+account of it, and only men use it; and first they cause it to be
+dried in the sun, then wear it about their necks wrapped in a little
+beast's skin made like a bag, together with a hollow piece of stone or
+wood like a pipe. Then when they please they make powder of it and put
+it in one of the ends of the said cornet or pipe, and laying a coal of
+fire upon it at the other end, suck so long that they fill their
+bodies full of smoke, till that it cometh out of their mouth and
+nostrils, even as out of the tunnel of a chimney. They say that this
+doth keep them warm and in health: they never go without some of it
+about them. We ourselves have tried the same smoke, and having put it
+in our mouths, it seemed almost as hot as pepper." The foregoing is
+one of the earliest descriptions of tobacco smoking in any European
+language, the original words being in Cartier's Norman French.]
+
+As the winter set in with its customary Canadian severity the real
+trouble of the French began. They did not suffer from the cold, but
+they were dying of scurvy. This disease, from which the natives also
+suffered to some extent, was due to their eating nothing but salt or
+smoked provisions--forms of meat or fish. They lived, of course, shut
+up in the fort, and Cartier's fixed idea was to keep the Hurons from
+the knowledge of his misfortune, fearing lest, if they realized how
+the garrison was reduced, they might treacherously attack and massacre
+the rest; for in spite of the extravagant joy with which their arrival
+had been greeted, the Amerindians--notably the two interpreters who
+had been to France and returned--showed at intervals signs of disquiet
+and a longing to be rid of these mysterious white men, whose coming
+might involve the country in unknown misfortunes. In January and
+February, also, Donnacona and these two interpreters and many of the
+Huron men had been absent hunting in the forests, so that there was no
+one among the Amerindians to whom the French could turn for
+information regarding this strange disease. At last 25 out of the 112
+who had left France were dead, and of the remainder only 10 men,
+including Cartier, were not grievously ill. Those who were living
+found it sometimes beyond their strength to bury the dead in the
+frozen ground, and simply placed their bodies in deep snow. Once or
+twice, when Cartier left the fort to go out to the ships, he met
+Domagaya, one of the two interpreters, and found that he also was
+suffering from this mysterious disease, though not nearly so badly as
+the French people. On the body of one young man who died of scurvy
+Cartier and his officers, shuddering, made investigations, opening the
+corpse and examining the organs to try and find the cause of death.
+This was on the afternoon of a day on which they had held a solemn
+service before a statue erected to the Virgin Mary on the shore
+opposite to the ships. All who were fit to walk went in procession
+from the fort to the statue, singing penitential psalms and the Litany
+and celebrating Mass.
+
+Some days after this religious service Cartier met the interpreter,
+Domagaya, and to his surprise found him perfectly well and strong. He
+asked him for an explanation, and was told that the medicine which
+cured this disease was made from the leaves and bark of a tree called
+ameda.[9] Cartier then ventured to say that one of his servants was
+sick of this unknown disease, and Domagaya sent for two women, who
+taught the French people how to make an extract from the balsam fir
+for drinking, and how to apply the same liquid to the inflamed skin.
+The effect on the crews was miraculous. In six days all the sick were
+well and strong.
+
+[Footnote 9: This tree was the balsam fir, _Abies balsamea_.]
+
+Then came the sudden spring. Between April 15th and May 1st the ice on
+the river was all melted, and on the 6th May, 1536, Cartier started
+from the vicinity of Quebec to return to France. But before leaving he
+had managed to kidnap Donnacona, the chief of the Huron settlement,
+and six or seven other Amerindians, amongst them Tainyoanyi, one of
+the two interpreters who had already been to France. He seized these
+men, it appears, partly because he wanted hostages and had good reason
+to fear that the Indians meditated a treacherous attack on his ships
+before they could get away. He also wished for native witnesses at
+Court, when he reached France, to testify to the truth of his
+discoveries, and even more to convince the King of France that there
+was great profit to be obtained from giving effect to Cartier's
+explorations. The chief, Donnacona, was full of wonderful stories of
+the Saguenay region, and of the great lakes to the northwards of
+Quebec. Probably he was only alluding to the wealth of copper now
+known to exist in northern Canada, but to Cartier and the other
+Frenchmen it seemed as though he spoke of gold and silver, rubies, and
+other precious stones.
+
+Donnacona's people howled and wept when their chief was seized; but
+Cartier obliged the chief to reassure them, and to say that the French
+had promised to bring him back after he had paid a visit to their
+great king, who would return him to his country with great presents.
+As a matter of fact, not one of these Indians rapt away by Cartier
+ever saw Canada again. But this was not the fault of Cartier, but of
+the distractions of the times which turned away the thoughts of King
+Francis I from American adventures. The Indians were well and kindly
+treated in France, but all of them died there before Cartier left St.
+Malo to return to Canada in 1541.
+
+One advantage he derived from sailing away with these hostages was (no
+doubt) that they could give him geographical information of importance
+which materially shortened the return journey. For the first time he
+made use of the broad strait between Anticosti Island and Gaspé
+Peninsula, and, better still, entered the Atlantic, not by the
+dangerous northern route through the straits of Belle Isle, but by
+means of Cabot Strait, between Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island. Of
+these discoveries he availed himself on his third and last voyage in
+1541.
+
+When in that year he once more anchored his ships near Quebec he found
+the attitude of the Hurons changed. They enquired about their friends
+and relations who had been carried off five years before, and although
+they pretended to be reconciled to their fate when they heard (not
+altogether truly) that one or two were dead, and the others had become
+great lords in France and had married French women, they really felt a
+disappointment so bitter and a hostility so great that Cartier guessed
+their expressions of welcome to be false. However, he sent back to
+France two of the ships under his command and beached the other three,
+landed his stores, built two forts at Cap Rouge, above and below, and
+then started off with a few of his men and two boats to revisit the
+country of Hochelaga. Here he intended to examine the three rapids or
+"saults"--interruptions to the navigation of the St. Lawrence--which
+he had observed on his previous journey, and which were later named
+the La Chine Rapids (in the belief that they were obstacles on the
+river route to China). But these falls proved insuperable obstacles to
+his boats, and he gave up any further idea of westward exploration,
+returned to his forts and ships near Quebec, and there laid the
+foundations of a fortified town, which he called Charlesbourg Royal.
+Here he spent a very difficult winter, the Hurons in the neighbourhood
+becoming increasingly hostile, and at last, when the spring came, as
+he had received no relief from France, he took to his three ships,
+abandoned Charlesbourg Royal (having probably to do some fighting
+before he could get safely away) and thence sailed for France. Off the
+Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland he met the other ships of the
+expedition which was to have occupied Canada for France. These were
+under the command of the Sieur de Roberval, a French nobleman, who had
+really been made head of the whole enterprise, with Cartier as a
+subordinate officer, but who, the year before, had allowed Cartier to
+go off to Canada and prepare the way, promising to follow immediately.
+The interview between Cartier and Roberval, near where the capital of
+Newfoundland (St. John's) now stands, was a stormy one. Roberval
+ordered Cartier to return at once to Charlesbourg and await his
+arrival. However, in the middle of the night which followed this
+interview, Cartier took advantage of a favourable wind and set sail
+for France, arriving soon afterwards at St. Malo.
+
+But Roberval arrived at Charlesbourg (going the roundabout way through
+the straits of Belle Isle, for Cartier had told him nothing of the
+convenient passage through Cabot Strait), and there spent the winter
+of 1542-3, sending his ships back to France. This winter was one of
+horrors. Roberval was a headstrong, passionate man, perfectly reckless
+of human life. He maintained discipline by ferocious sentences,
+putting many of his men in irons, whipping others cruelly, women as
+well as men, and shooting those who seemed the most rebellious. Even
+the Indians were moved to pity, and wept at the sight of the woes of
+these unhappy French men and women under the control of a bloodthirsty
+tyrant, and many of them dying of scurvy, or miserably weak from that
+disease.[10]
+
+[Footnote 10: A story was subsequently told of Roberval's stern
+treatment which had a germ of truth in it, though it has since been
+the foundation of many a romance. On the journey out from France it is
+said that Roberval took with him his niece Marguerite, a high-born
+lady, who was accompanied by an old companion or nurse. Marguerite was
+travelling with her uncle because, unknown to him, she had a lover who
+had sailed with him on this expedition and whom she hoped to marry. As
+they crossed the Atlantic these facts leaked out, and Roberval
+resolved to bide his time and punish his niece for her deception. As
+they passed the coast of Southern Labrador Marguerite and her old
+nurse were seized and put into a boat, Roberval ordering his sailors
+to row them ashore to an island, and leave them to their fate. They
+were given four guns with ammunition and a small supply of provisions.
+But, as the boat was leaving the ship, Marguerite's lover threw
+himself into the sea and swam to the island. Here, according to the
+story which Marguerite is supposed to have told afterwards, they
+endeavoured to live by killing the wild animals and eating their
+flesh; but her lover-husband died, so also did her child soon after it
+was born, and then the old nurse, and the unhappy Marguerite was left
+alone with the wild beasts, especially the white Polar bears, who
+thronged round her hut. Nevertheless she kept them at bay with her
+arquebus, and managed somehow to support an existence, until after
+nineteen months' isolation the ascending smoke of her fire was seen by
+people on one of the many fishing vessels which, by this time,
+frequented the coasts of Newfoundland. She was taken off the island
+and restored to her home in France. The island to which this tradition
+more especially relates is now called Grand Meccatina.]
+
+However, when the weather was warm again, in June, 1543, Roberval
+started up the St. Lawrence River in boats to reach the wonderful
+country of Saguenay. Apparently he met with little success, and, being
+relieved by French ships in the late summer of 1543, he returned to
+France.
+
+Thus the splendid work achieved by Cartier seemed to have come to
+nothing, for neither he nor Roberval revisited America. The French
+settlement near Quebec was abandoned, so far as the officers of the
+French king were concerned, and between 1545 and about 1583, if any
+other Frenchman or European visited Canada it was some private
+adventurer who traded with the natives in furs, or Basques from France
+and Spain who frequented the waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence on
+account of the abundance of whales, walruses, and seals. In fact, at
+the close of the sixteenth century, the Spanish Basques had
+established themselves on shore at Tadoussac and other places, and
+seemed likely to colonize the country.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Elizabethan Pioneers in North America
+
+
+Except that the ships of Bristol still no doubt continued to resort to
+the banks of Newfoundland for fishing, and that even the captains of
+these ships were occasionally elected admirals of the French, Basque,
+Portuguese, and English fishing fleets during the summer, the English,
+as a nation, took no part in claiming political dominion over North
+America after the voyage of Captain John Rut in 1527. This was the
+fault of Sebastian Cabot, the son of the man who founded British
+America, and who had returned to England long afterwards as the Grand
+Pilot appointed by Edward VI to further the discovery of a northern
+sea passage to China. Through him the attention of adventurers for a
+time was diverted from America to the "discovery" of Russia (as it has
+been called). The efforts of Sebastion Cabot were directed towards the
+revelation of a north-east passage by way of Arctic Russia to the
+Pacific, rather than past Newfoundland and Labrador and across Arctic
+America.
+
+But as soon as Elizabeth came to the throne the sea adventurers of
+Britain, freed from any subservience to Spanish wishes, developed
+maritime intercourse between England, Morocco, and West Africa on the
+one hand, and Tropical and North America on the other. Once more the
+discovery of the North-west Passage across America to China came into
+favour. MARTIN FROBISHER[1] offered himself as a discoverer, and the
+Earl of Warwick found the means which provided him with two small
+sailing vessels of 25 and 20 tons each, besides a pinnace of 10
+tons.[2] Queen Elizabeth confined herself, in the way of
+encouragement, to waving her lily hand from her palace of Greenwich as
+these three little boats dropped down the Thames on the 8th of June,
+1576. She also sent them "an honourable message", which no doubt
+reached them at Tilbury.
+
+[Footnote 1: The name was also spelt Furbusher, and in other ways. He
+became Sir Martin Frobisher over the wars of the Armada, and died Lord
+High Admiral of England in 1592.]
+
+[Footnote 2: It may be of interest to set forth the kind of rations
+shipped in those Elizabethan times for the food of the sailors.
+According to Frobisher's accounts these consisted of salted beef, salt
+pork, salt fish, biscuit, meal for making bread, dried peas, oatmeal,
+rice, cheese, butter, beer, and wine, with brandy for emergencies. As
+regards beer, the men were to have a ration of 1 gallon a day each.
+Altogether it may be said that these rations were superior in
+variety--and no doubt in quality--to the food given to seamen in the
+British merchant marine in the nineteenth century.]
+
+But the pinnace was soon swallowed up in the high seas; the seamen in
+the vessel of 20 tons lost heart and turned their ship homewards.
+Frobisher alone, in his 25-ton bark, sailed on and on across the
+stormy Atlantic, past the south end of Greenland, and over the great
+gulf that separates Greenland from Labrador. He missed the entrance to
+Hudson's Bay, but reached a great "island" which he named Meta
+Incognita[3]. Here he gathered up stones and, as he believed,
+minerals, besides capturing at least one Eskimo, and then returned.
+
+[Footnote 3: We now know Meta Incognita to be the southernmost
+peninsula of the vast Baffin Island.]
+
+One of his stones was declared by the refiners of London to contain
+gold. There was at once--as we should say in modern slang--a boom for
+these Arctic regions. Queen Elizabeth took part in it, and on the 27th
+of May, 1577, a considerable fleet, under the command of Frobisher,
+sailed past the Orkneys for the south end of Greenland. It did not
+reach as far as Meta Incognita, but it brought back large heaps of
+earth and pieces of rock, probably from northern Labrador, which
+almost certainly contained mica schist, and were therefore believed
+to be full of gold. The following year 1578, Frobisher started on his
+third American voyage with a fleet of fifteen vessels, mainly financed
+by Queen Elizabeth, and manned to a great extent by the sons of the
+aristocracy, besides a hundred persons who were going out as
+colonists. For this region of ice and snow which was believed to be a
+mass of gold-bearing rocks! But the result was one of bitter
+disappointment. The captains were bewildered by the immense icebergs,
+"so vast that, as they melted, torrents poured from them in sparkling
+waterfalls". One iceberg toppled over on to a ship and crushed it,
+though most of the sailors were picked up in the sea and saved. In the
+thick mists the greater part of the fleet blundered into Hudson's
+Straits, yet did not realize that they had found a passage into the
+heart of Canada. At last, disgusted with this land of bare rocks, ice,
+and snow, they filled up the ships with cargoes of stones supposed to
+contain gold, and straggled back to England. No gold was extracted,
+however, from these cargoes, and much discouragement ensued.
+
+SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT, one of the brilliant figures of Elizabeth's
+reign--scholar, poet, courageous adventurer, and man of
+chivalry--stimulated by the discoveries of Frobisher, obtained a
+patent or charter in 1578, and, after several unsuccessful attempts,
+led an expedition of small sailing ships to Newfoundland, where he
+entered St. John's Bay, and in the presence of the Basque, Portuguese,
+and Breton fishermen took formal possession of the country for Queen
+Elizabeth, raising a pillar on which the arms of England were engraved
+as a token. He then proceeded to grant lands to the fishermen to
+reassure them, and loaded his ships with rocks brought from the
+interior mountains and supposed to contain minerals. But in his
+further explorations of the southern coast of Newfoundland one of the
+ships was lost and nearly a hundred men intended as colonists were
+drowned.
+
+Gilbert then determined to return to England in his small frigate of
+10 tons named the _Squirrel_. He was accompanied by a larger vessel,
+the _Golden Hinde_, but refused to leave the men on the _Squirrel_ to
+their fate. Consequently, between the Azores and the north coast of
+Spain, when the _Squirrel_ was overwhelmed by the heavy seas, Sir
+Humphrey Gilbert perished together with all on board.
+
+In spite, however, of the disappointing results of Gilbert's attempt
+to found a colony in Newfoundland, the importance of the cod fishery
+and the ivory tusks and oil of the walruses drew ever more and more
+ships from Bristol and Devonshire to the coasts of that great island
+and to the Gulf of St. Lawrence beyond. In 1592 the English
+adventurers got as far west as Anticosti Island (in a ship from
+Bristol), and in 1597 there is the first record of English ships (from
+London--the _Hopewell_ and the _Chancewell_) sailing up the St.
+Lawrence River, perhaps as far west as Quebec.
+
+In 1602, stimulated by Sir Walter Raleigh,[4] Bartholomew Gosnold
+sailed direct to the coast of North America south of the Newfoundland
+latitudes, and anchored his bark off the coast of Massachusetts on the
+26th of March, 1602. Failing to find a good harbour here, he stood out
+for the south and definitely discovered and named Cape Cod, not far
+from the modern city of Boston. From Cape Cod he made his way to the
+Elizabeth Islands in Buzzard's Bay, and here he built a storehouse and
+fort, and may be said to have laid the foundations of the future
+colony of New England. He brought back with him a cargo of sassafras
+root, which was then much esteemed as a valuable medicine and a remedy
+for almost all diseases.
+
+[Footnote 4: In 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh, the half-brother of Sir
+Humphrey Gilbert, financed an expedition to sail to the coast of North
+America in a more southerly direction. In this way was founded the
+(afterwards abandoned) colony of Roanoke, in North Carolina. It was to
+this region that Queen Elizabeth applied the title of Virginia, which
+some years afterwards was transferred to the first English colony on
+the James River.]
+
+Subsequent expeditions of English ships explored and mapped the coast
+of Maine, and took on board Amerindians for exhibition in England.
+Their adventures, together with those of the colonists farther south,
+led to the creation of chartered companies, and to the great British
+colonies of New England, New York, Virginia, the Carolinas, and
+Georgia, which were to become in time the United States of America--a
+vast field of adventure which we cannot follow farther in this book.
+
+As regards Newfoundland, James I, in 1610, granted a patent to a
+Bristol merchant for the foundation there of a colony, and although
+this attempt, and another under Sir George Calvert (Lord Baltimore) in
+1616, came almost to nothing through the attacks of the French and the
+dislike of the crews of the fishing vessels to permanent settlers who
+might interfere with the fishing industry, the English colonization of
+Newfoundland to some extent caught hold, so that in 1650 there were
+about two thousand colonists of English descent along the east and
+south-east coasts of the island. But settlement was prohibited within
+six miles of the shore, to please the fishermen, and this regulation
+checked for more than two hundred years the colonization of
+Newfoundland.
+
+Nova Scotia as a British colony also came into being as another result
+of these adventurous British expeditions to North America in the reign
+of James I. Under the name of Acadie this region had been declared to
+be a portion of New France by De Monts and Champlain in 1604-14. But
+the English colonists in 1614 drove the French out of the peninsula of
+Nova Scotia on the plea that it was a part of the discoveries made by
+the Cabots on behalf of the British Crown. In 1621 James I gave a
+grant of all this territory to Sir William Alexander under the name of
+Nova Scotia, and both Charles I and Cromwell encouraged settlement in
+this beautiful region. When Charles II ceded it to France in 1667 the
+English and Scottish colonists who were residing there, and the
+English settlers of New England, refused to recognize the effects of
+the Treaty of Bréda, and so harassed the French in the years which
+followed that in 1713 Nova Scotia was, together with Newfoundland,
+recognized as belonging to Great Britain. The French colonists were
+allowed to remain, but during the course of the eighteenth century
+they combined with the Amerindians (who liked the French and disliked
+the British) and made the position of the British colonists so
+precarious that they were finally expelled and obliged to transfer
+themselves to Louisiana and Canada. This was the departure of the
+Acadians so touchingly described by Longfellow.
+
+The British had become tenacious of their rights over the east coast
+of Newfoundland, because from the middle of the seventeenth century
+onwards they were becoming increasingly interested in the whale
+fisheries and the fur trade of the lands bordering on Hudson's Bay,
+and would not tolerate any blocking of the sea route thither by the
+French.
+
+In the explorations of Arctic America, Frobisher's expeditions had
+been succeeded by those of JOHN DAVIS, who in the course of three
+voyages, beginning in June, 1585, passed the entrance of Hudson's
+Straits and reached a point as far north as 72° 41', a lofty granite
+island, which he named Sanderson's Hope. He saw beyond him a great
+sea, free, large, very salt, and blue, unobstructed by ice and of an
+unsearchable depth, and believed that he had completely discovered the
+eastern entrance of the North-West Passage.
+
+[Illustration: ICEBERGS AND POLAR BEARS]
+
+HENRY HUDSON, the great English navigator, who had made two voyages
+(1607-8) for the English-Moscovy Company to discover a north-east
+passage to India, past Siberia, commanded a third experiment in 1609
+at the expense of the Dutch East India Company. He was to discover the
+North-West Passage. For this purpose he entered the river now named
+the Hudson, but soon found it was only a river; though he returned to
+Holland with such an encouraging account of the surrounding country
+that the Dutch a little later on, founded on the banks of the Hudson
+River their colony of New Amsterdam (afterwards the State of New
+York). In 1610 Hudson accepted a British commission to sail beyond
+where Davis and Frobisher had passed, and once more seek for the
+north-west passage to China. Instead he found the way into Hudson's
+Bay. Here his men, alarmed at the idea of being lost in these regions
+of ice and snow, mutinied against him, placed him and those who were
+faithful to him in a boat, and cast them off, themselves returning to
+England with the news of his discovery. Hudson was never heard of
+again, and, strange to say, the mutineers apparently received no
+punishment.
+
+Between 1602 and 1668, English adventurers from London and Bristol,
+notable amongst whom were WILLIAM BAFFIN, LUKE FOX, and CAPTAIN JAMES,
+mapped the coasts of Hudson's Bay and Baffin's Bay and brought to the
+notice of merchants in England the abundance of whales in these Arctic
+waters, and of fur-bearing beasts and fur-trading Indians in the
+region of Hudson's Bay.
+
+This last point was most forcibly presented to Charles II and his
+Government by a disappointed French Canadian, Pierre Esprit Radisson,
+whose adventures will later on be described. Radisson, conceiving
+himself to be badly treated by the French Governor of Canada, crossed
+over to England with his brother-in-law, Chouart, and the two were
+warmly taken up by Prince Rupert of Bavaria, the cousin of Charles II.
+They were sent out by Prince Rupert in command of an expedition
+financed by him and a number of London merchants, and in 1669 the New
+England captain, Gillam, returned to England with Chouart and the
+first cargo of furs from Hudson's Bay. This cargo so completely met
+the expectations of those who had promoted the venture that it led in
+1670 to the foundation of the Governor and Company of Adventurers of
+England trading into Hudson's Bay, a company chartered by Charles II
+and presided over by Prince Rupert, and an association which proved to
+be the germ of British North America, of the vast three-quarters of
+the present Dominion of Canada.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Champlain and the Foundation of Canada
+
+
+From the first voyage of Cartier onwards, Canada was called
+intermittently New France, and its possibilities were not lost sight
+of by a few intelligent Frenchmen on account of the fur trade. Amongst
+these was Amyard de Chastes, at one time Governor of Dieppe, who got
+into correspondence with the adventurers who had settled as fur
+traders at Tadoussac, prominent amongst whom was Du Pont-Gravé. De
+Chastes dispatched with Pont-Gravé a young man whose acquaintance he
+had just made, SAMUEL CHAMPLAIN.[1] This was the man who, more than
+any other, created French Canada.
+
+[Footnote 1: Afterwards the Sieur de Champlain. The title of _Sieur_
+(from the Latin _Senior_) is the origin of the English "sir", and is
+about equivalent to an English baronetcy.]
+
+Champlain had had already a most adventurous life. He was born about
+1567, at Brouage, in the Saintonge, opposite to the Island of Héron,
+on the coast of western France. From his earliest years he had a
+passion for the sea, but he also served as a soldier for six years.
+His father had been a sea captain, and his uncle as an experienced
+navigator was commissioned by the King of Spain to transport by sea to
+that country the remainder of the Spanish soldiers who had been
+serving in Brittany. The uncle took his nephew with him. Young
+Champlain when in Spain managed to ingratiate himself so much with the
+Spanish authorities that he was actually commissioned as a captain to
+take a king's ship out to the West Indies. No sooner did he reach
+Spanish America than he availed himself of the first chance to
+explore it. For two years he travelled over Cuba, and above all
+Mexico. He visited the narrowest part of Central America and conceived
+the possibility of making a trans-oceanic canal across the Panama
+isthmus.
+
+When he got back to France he placed before Henry IV a report on
+Spanish Central America, together with a project for making a canal at
+Panama. Henry IV was so pleased with his work and enterprise that he
+gave him a pension and the title of Geographer to the King. Shortly
+afterwards he met Governor de Chastes at Dieppe, and was by him sent
+out to Canada. The ship which carried Champlain, PONT-GRAVÉ,[2] the
+SIEUR DE MONTS,[3] and other French adventurers (together with two
+Amerindian interpreters whom Pont-Gravé had brought from Canada to
+learn French) arrived at Tadoussac on May 24, 1603.
+
+[Footnote 2: Correctly written this was François Gravé, Sieur du
+Pont.]
+
+[Footnote 3: The full name was Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts.
+Including de Champlain and de Poutrincourt, who will be described
+later, we have here the four great heroes who founded French Canada.]
+
+Champlain lost no time in commencing his explorations. Tadoussac was
+at the mouth of an important river, called by the French the Saguenay,
+a name which they also applied to the mysterious and wonderful country
+through which it flowed in the far north; a country rich in copper and
+possibly other precious metals. Champlain ascended the Saguenay River
+for sixty miles as far as the rapids of Chicoutima. The Amerindians
+whom he met here told him of Lake St. John, lying at a short distance
+to the west, and that beyond this lake and the many streams which
+entered it there lay a region of uplands strewn with other lakes and
+pools; and farther away still began the sloping of the land to the
+north till the traveller sighted a great arm of the salt sea, and
+found himself amongst tribes (probably the Eskimo) who ate raw flesh,
+and to the Indians appeared absolute savages.[4] This was probably
+the first allusion, recorded by a European, to the existence of
+Hudson's Bay, that huge inlet of the sea, which is one of the leading
+features in the geography of British North America.
+
+[Footnote 4: The real name for this remarkable people, the Eskimo, is,
+in Alaska and Arctic North America, _Innuit_, and in Labrador and
+Greenland, _Karalit_. Eskimo (in French, _Esquimaux_) is said to be a
+corruption of the Montagnais-Indian word, Eskimantsik, meaning "eaters
+of raw flesh".]
+
+The Montagnais Indians round about Tadoussac received Champlain with
+great protestations of friendship, and at the headquarters of their
+principal chief or "Sagamore" celebrated this new friendship and
+alliance with a feast in a very large hut. The banquet, as usual, was
+preceded by a long address from the Sagamore in answer to the
+description of France, given by one of the Indian interpreters. The
+address was accompanied by the solemn smoking of tobacco, and at every
+pause in this grave oration the natives present shouted with one
+voice: "Ho! ho! ho!" The repast consisted of elk's meat (which struck
+the Frenchmen as being like beef), also the flesh of bear, seal,
+beaver, and wild fowl. There were eight or ten stone boilers or
+cauldrons full of meats in the middle of the great hut, separated each
+six feet from each other, and each one having its own fire. Every
+native used a porringer or vessel made of birch bark. When the meat
+was cooked a man in authority distributed it to each person. But
+Champlain thought the Indians ate in a very filthy manner. When their
+hands were covered with fat or grease they would rub them on their own
+heads or on the hair of their dogs. Before the meat was cooked each
+guest arose, took a dog, and hopped round the boilers from one end of
+the great hut to the other. Arriving in front of the chief, the
+Montagnais Indian feaster would throw his dog violently to the ground,
+exclaiming: "Ho! ho! ho!" after which he returned to his place.
+
+At the close of the banquet every one danced, with the skulls of
+their Iroquois enemies slung over their backs. As they danced they
+slapped their knees with their hands, and shouted: "Ho! ho! ho!" till
+they were out of breath.
+
+The huts of these Indians were low and made like tents, being covered
+with the bark of the birch tree. An opening about a foot of the top
+was left uncovered to admit light and to allow the smoke to escape.
+Though low, the huts were sometimes quite large, and would accommodate
+ten families. These slept higgledy-piggledy on skins, with their dogs
+amongst them. The dogs in appearance were something like what we know
+as Eskimo dogs, and also rather resembled the Chinese chow, with broad
+heads and rather short muzzles, prick ears, and a tail inclined to
+curl over the back. "All these people have a very cheerful
+disposition, laughing often, yet at the same time they are somewhat
+phlegmatic. They talk very deliberately, as if desiring to make
+themselves well understood, and, stopping suddenly, they reflect for a
+long time, when they resume their discourse."
+
+They were agile, well-proportioned people, who in the summertime went
+about nearly naked, but in the winter were covered with good furs of
+elk, otter, beaver, bear, seal, and deer. The colour of their skin was
+usually a pale olive, but the women for some reason made themselves
+much darker-skinned than the men by rubbing their bodies with pigments
+which turned them to a dark brown. At times they suffered very much
+from lack of food, being obliged then to frequent the shore of the
+river or gulf to obtain shellfish. When pressed very hard by famine
+they would eat their dogs (their only domestic animal) and even the
+leather of the skins with which they clothed themselves. In the autumn
+they were much given to fishing for eels, and they dried a good deal
+of eel flesh, to last them through the winter. During the height of
+the winter they hunted the beaver, and later on the elk. Though they
+ate wild roots and fruits whenever they could obtain them, they do
+not seem to have cultivated any grain or vegetables. In the early
+spring they were sometimes dying of hunger, and looked so thin and
+haggard that they were mere walking skeletons. They were then ready to
+eat carrion that was putrid, so that it is little wonder that they
+suffered much from scurvy.
+
+Yet the rivers and the gulf abounded in fish, and as soon as the
+waters were unlocked by the melting of the ice in April, the surviving
+Indians rapidly grew fat and well, and of course the late summer and
+the autumn brought them nuts (hickory and other kinds of walnut, and
+hazel nuts), wild cherries, wild plums, raspberries, strawberries,
+gooseberries, blackberries, currants,[5] cranberries, and grapes.
+
+[Footnote 5: The wild currants so often mentioned by the early
+explorers of Canada are often referred to as red, green, and blue. The
+blue currants are really the black currant, now so familiar to our
+kitchen gardens (_Ribes nigrum_). This, together with the red currant
+(_Ribes rubrum_), grows throughout North America, Siberia, and eastern
+Europe. The unripe fruit may have been the green currants alluded to
+by Champlain, or these may have been the white variety of our gardens.
+The two species of wild strawberry which figure so frequently in the
+stories of these early explorers are _Fragaria vesca_ and _F.
+virginiana_. From the last-named is derived the cultivated strawberry
+of Europe. The wild strawberries of North America were larger than
+those of Europe. Champlain does not himself allude to gooseberries
+(unless they are his _groseilles vertes_), but later travellers do.
+Three or more kinds of gooseberry grow wild in Canada, but they are
+different from the European species. The blueberry so often Mentioned
+by Champlain (bluëts or bluës) was _Vaccinium canadense_.]
+
+Champlain observed amongst them for the first time the far-famed
+Amerindian snowshoes, which he compares very aptly for shape to a
+racquet used in tennis.
+
+Champlain next visited the site of Stadacona, but there was no longer
+any settlement of Europeans at that place, nor were the native
+Amerindians the descendants of the Hurons that had received Jacques
+Cartier. For the first time the name Quebec (pronounced Kebek) is
+applied to this point where the great River St. Lawrence narrows
+before dividing to encircle the Isle of Orleans. In fact, Quebec meant
+in the Algonkin speech a place where a river narrows; for a tribe of
+the great Algonkin family, _the_ Algonkins, allied to the tribes of
+Maine and New Brunswick, had replaced the Hurons as the native
+inhabitants of this region.
+
+On the shore of Quebec he noticed "diamonds" in some slate rocks--no
+doubt quartz crystals. Proceeding on up the River St. Lawrence he
+observed the extensive woods of fir and cypress (some kind of _Thuja_
+or _Juniper_), the undergrowth of vines, "wild pears", hazel nuts,
+cherries, red currants and green currants, and "certain little
+radishes of the size of a small nut, resembling truffles in taste,
+which are very good when roasted or boiled". As they advanced towards
+the interior the country became increasingly mountainous on the south
+(the green mountains of New Hampshire), and was more and more
+beautiful--"the pleasantest land yet seen". Landing on the south bank
+of the St. Lawrence, west of the entrance of the river of the Iroquois
+(the Richelieu), he found magnificent forests, which, besides the
+trees already mentioned, included oaks, chestnuts, maples, pines,
+walnut-like nut trees,[6] aspens, poplars, and beeches; with climbing
+hops and vines, strawberries trailing over the ground, and raspberry
+canes and currant bushes "growing in the thick grass". These splendid
+woods on the islands and banks of the broad river were full of game:
+elks,[7] wapiti deer, Virginian deer, bears, porcupines, hares, foxes,
+beavers, otters, and musk rats, besides many animals he could not
+recognize.
+
+[Footnote 6: Of the genera _Juglans_ and _Carya_.]
+
+[Footnote 7: The huge deer of the genus _Alces_. Elk is the old
+Scandinavian name. _Moose_, derived from the Kri language, is the
+Canadian term, "Elk" being misapplied to the wapiti (red) deer.
+Champlain calls the elk _orignac_, its name in Algonkin.]
+
+At last his little expedition in "a skiff and canoe" had to draw into
+the bank, warned by the noise that they were approaching a great fall
+of water--the La Chine or St. Louis Rapids. Champlain wrote: "I saw,
+to my astonishment, a torrent of water descending with an impetuosity
+such as I have never before witnessed.... It descends as if in steps,
+and at each descent there is a remarkable boiling, owing to the force
+and swiftness with which the water traverses the fall, which is about
+a league in length.... The territory on the side of the fall where we
+went overland consists, so far as we saw it, of very open wood, where
+one can go with his armour without much difficulty."
+
+From the Algonkin Indians in the neighbourhood of these St. Louis
+Rapids, and also from those living near Quebec, Champlain obtained a
+good deal of geographical information to add to his own observations.
+He was given an idea, more or less correct, of Lake Ontario, the Falls
+of Niagara, Lake Erie and Lake Huron, and perhaps also of Lake
+Superior, a sea so vast, said the Amerindians, that the sun set on its
+horizon. This sheet of water, Champlain calculated, must be 1200 miles
+distant to the west, and therefore identical with the "Mer du sud"
+(Pacific Ocean), which all North-American explorers for three
+centuries wished to reach.
+
+After collecting much information about possible copper mines in the
+regions north and south of the Lower St. Lawrence, and of silver[8] in
+New Brunswick or Nova Scotia, and a terrible story which he more than
+half believed about a monster of prodigious size, the _Gougou_,[9]
+Champlain set sail for France at the end of August, 1603.
+
+[Footnote 8: Or lead mixed with silver. The local natives used this
+ore, which was white when beaten, for their arrowheads.]
+
+[Footnote 9: The Gougou dwelt on the small island of Miscon, to the
+east of the Bay of Chaleurs. It had the form of a woman but was about
+a hundred feet high. Its habit was to catch and devour men and women,
+whom it first placed in a pocket capacious enough to hold a small
+ship. Its roarings and hissings could be heard at times coming from
+the island of Miscon, where the Gougou lay concealed. Even a
+Frenchman, the Sieur Prévert, had heard these noises. Probably this
+islet had a whirlpool communicating with a cavern into which fishermen
+were sucked by the current.]
+
+In April, 1604, Champlain accompanied the Sieur de Monts (who had
+succeeded the dead Amyard de Chastes as head of a chartered
+fur-trading association) in a fresh expedition to North America,
+together with a hundred and twenty artisans and several noblemen.
+They were to occupy the lands of "Cadie" (Acadia, Nova Scotia),
+Canada, and other places in New France. De Monts thought Tadoussac and
+Quebec too cold in wintertime, and preferred the sunnier east coast
+regions. He aimed indeed at colonizing what is now New England.
+
+On the way to Nova Scotia, the expedition was nearly wrecked on Sable
+Island, about one hundred and twenty miles south of Cape Breton
+Island, and noticed there the large red cattle run wild from the bulls
+and cows landed on Sable Island by the Portuguese some sixty years
+earlier. (The Portuguese of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
+deserved well of humanity for the generous way in which they left
+cattle, goats, pigs, and rabbits to run wild on desert islands and
+serve as provender for shipwrecked mariners like Robinson Crusoe.)
+Champlain also speaks of the "fine large black foxes" which he and
+other voyagers noticed on Sable Island. How they came there is a
+mystery, unless the island had once been part of the mainland.
+
+This same Sable Island had been the scene of an extraordinary
+experiment at the end of the previous century. In 1598 the Marquis de
+la Roche, given a commission to colonize New France, sailed in a small
+ship for North America with sixty convicts from French prisons as
+colonists. He landed them on Sable Island, and went away to look for
+some good site for his colony. But then a storm arose, and his little
+ship was literally blown back to France. The convicts, abandoned thus,
+built themselves shelters out of the driftwood of wrecks; killed and
+ate the cattle and caught fish. They made themselves warm clothes out
+of the skins of the seals which frequented the island coast in
+thousands. But these convicts quarrelled and fought among themselves
+so fiercely that when at last a ship from Normandy came to take them
+away, there were only twelve left--twelve shaggy men with long tangled
+hair and beards; and, a legend says, in addition a Franciscan monk
+who had been landed on the island with them as a kind of missionary or
+chaplain, and who had been so heartbroken at their bloody quarrels and
+horrible deeds that when the Norman ship arrived to take the castaways
+back to France, the Franciscan refused to go with them, believing
+himself to be dying and wishing to end his life undisturbed. So he was
+left behind. But after the ship had sailed away he slowly mended, grew
+well and strong, and cultivated eagerly his little garden. For food he
+ate the whelks, mussels, and oysters that were so abundant on the
+shore. Occasionally ships (then as now) were wrecked on Sable Island
+in stormy weather, and the good monk ministered to the mariners who
+reached the shore. Also he was visited, ever and again, by the Breton
+fishing boats, which brought him supplies of necessaries and the bread
+and wine for celebrating Mass. Long after his death his spirit was
+thought to haunt the desolate island.
+
+Champlain and his companions passed on from Sable Island to the
+south-east coast of Nova Scotia, noticing as they landed here and
+there the abundance of rabbits[10] and sea birds, especially the Great
+Auk, of which they killed numbers with sticks, cormorants (whose fishy
+eggs they ate with enjoyment), puffins, guillemots, gulls, terns,
+scissorbills, divers, ospreys, buzzards, and falcons; and no doubt the
+typical American white-tailed sea eagles, ravens, ducks, geese,
+curlews, herons, and cranes. Here and there they found the shore
+"completely covered with sea wolves"--seals, of course, probably the
+common seal and the grey seal. Of these they captured as many as they
+wanted, for the seals, like most of the birds, were quite unafraid of
+man.
+
+[Footnote 10: There are no real rabbits in America. This was probably
+the Polar Hare (_Lepus timidus glacialis_), or the common small
+varying hare (_L. americanus_).]
+
+They then explored the Bay of Fundy, and, after zig-zagging about,
+decided to fix on the harbour of St. John's (New Brunswick) as the
+site for their colony. The future capital of New France, therefore,
+was begun on La Sainte Croix (Dochet) Island, near the mouth of the
+wonderful tidal estuary of the Uigudi (Ouygoudy) River.
+
+Here they passed the winter, but suffered so badly from scurvy[11]
+that, when in the spring of 1605 Du Pont Gravé arrived from Brittany
+with supplies, the remnant of the colony was removed to the opposite
+coast of Nova Scotia to Port Royal (afterwards named by the English
+Annapolis[12]). The French seem to have fallen in love with this place
+from the very first. Nevertheless here they suffered from scurvy
+during the winter as elsewhere. Before moving over here, however,
+Champlain, together with De Monts, had explored the west of New
+England south of New Brunswick as far as Plymouth, just south of
+Boston.
+
+[Footnote 11: How awful was this "mal de terre" or scurvy amongst the
+French settlers may be seen from this description of Champlain: "There
+were produced in the mouths of those who had it great pieces of
+superfluous and drivelling flesh, which got the upper hand to such an
+extent that scarcely anything but liquid could be taken. Their teeth
+became very loose and could be pulled out with the fingers without its
+causing them pain.... Afterwards a violent pain seized their arms and
+legs, which remained swollen and very hard, all spotted as if with
+fleabites; and they could not walk on account of the contraction of
+the muscles.... They suffered intolerable pains in the loins, stomach,
+and bowels, and had a very bad cough and short breath.... Out of
+seventy-nine who composed our party, thirty-five died and twenty were
+on the point of death (when spring began in May)."
+
+Scurvy is said to be a disease of the blood caused by a damp, cold,
+and impure atmosphere combined with absence of vegetable food and a
+diet of salted or semi-putrid meat or fish, such as was so often the
+winter food of Amerindians and of the early French pioneers in Canada.
+We have already noted Cartier's discovery of the balsam remedy.]
+
+[Footnote 12: From Queen Anne.]
+
+Off the coast of Maine (Richmond's Island) they encountered
+agricultural Amerindians of a new tribe, the Penobskot probably, who
+cultivated a form of rank narcotic tobacco (_Nicotiana rustica_),
+which they called _Petun_. (A variety of this has produced the
+handsome garden flower _Petunia_, whose Latin name is derived from
+this native word Petun.) They also grew maize or Indian corn, planting
+very carefully three or four seeds in little mounds three feet apart
+one from the other, the soil in between being kept clear of weeds. The
+American farmers of to-day cannot adopt any better method.
+
+The islands round about Portland (Maine) were matted all over with
+wild red currants, so that the eye could scarcely discern anything
+else. Attracted by this fruit, clouds of wild pigeons had
+assembled[13]. They manifested hardly any fear of the French, who
+captured large numbers of them in snares, or killed them with guns.
+The natives of southern Maine fled with dismay on sighting the French
+ships, for they had never before seen sailing vessels, but later on
+they timidly approached the French ships in a canoe, then landed and
+went through a wild dance on the shore to typify friendliness.
+Champlain took with him some drawing paper and a pencil or crayon,
+together with a quantity of knives and ship's biscuit. Landing alone,
+he attracted the natives towards him by offering them biscuits, and
+having gathered them round him (being of course as much unable to
+understand their speech as they were French), he proceeded to ask
+questions by means of certain drawings, chiefly the outlines of the
+coast. The savages at once seized his idea, and taking up his pencil
+drew on the paper an accurate outline of Massachusetts Bay, adding
+also rivers and islands unknown to the French. They went on by further
+intelligent signs to supply information. For instance, they placed six
+pebbles at equal distances to intimate that Massachusetts Bay was
+occupied by six tribes and governed by as many chiefs. By drawings of
+growing maize and other plants they intimated that all these people
+lived by agriculture.
+
+[Footnote 13: The pigeons referred to by Champlain were probably the
+Passenger pigeon (_Ectopistes_) which at one time was extraordinarily
+abundant in parts of North America, though it has now been nearly
+killed out by man. It would arrive in flocks of millions on its
+migratory journeys in search of food.]
+
+Champlain thought Massachusetts (in his first voyage) a most
+attractive region in the summer, what with the blue water of the
+enclosed arms of the sea, the lofty forest trees, and the fields of
+Indian corn and other crops.
+
+When these French explorers reached the harbour of Boston, the islands
+and mainland were swarming with the native population. The Amerindians
+were intensely interested in the arrival of the first sailing vessel
+they had ever seen. Although it was only a small barque, its size was
+greater than any canoe known to them. As it seemed to spread huge
+white wings and to glide silently through the water without the use of
+paddles or oars, it filled them with surprise and admiration. They
+manned all their canoes[14] and came out in a flotilla to express
+their honour and reverence for the wonderful white men. But when the
+French took their leave, it was equally obvious that the natives
+experienced a sense of relief, for they were disquieted as well as
+filled with admiration at the arrival of these wonderful beings from
+an unknown world.
+
+[Footnote 14: It is interesting to learn from his accurate notes that
+in Massachusetts (and from thence southwards) there were no more bark
+canoes, but that the canoes were "dug-outs"--trunks of tall trees
+burnt and chipped till they were hollowed into a narrow vessel of
+considerable length.]
+
+Champlain describes the wigwams or native huts as being cone-shaped,
+heavily thatched with reeds, with an opening at the top of the roof
+for the smoke to escape. Inside the huts was a low bed raised a foot
+from the ground and made of short posts driven into the ground, with a
+surface made of boards split from trees. On these boards were laid
+either the dressed skins of deer or bear, or thick mattresses made of
+reeds or rushes. The beds were large enough for several people to lie
+on. Champlain describes the huts as being full of fleas, and likewise
+the persons of the nearly naked Indians, who carried these fleas out
+with them into the fields when they were working, so that the
+Frenchmen by stopping to talk to the natives became covered with
+fleas to such an extent that they were obliged to change their
+clothes.
+
+In the fields were cultivated not only maize, but beans similar to the
+beans grown by the natives of Brazil, vegetable marrows or pumpkins,
+Jerusalem artichokes[15], radishes, and tobacco. The woods were filled
+with oaks, walnut trees[16], and the red "cedar" of North America,
+really a very large juniper, the foliage of which in the summertime
+often assumes a reddish colour, together with the trunk. This
+Virginian juniper or "red cedar" is now quite a common tree in
+England. In warm weather it exhales a delicious aromatic scent.
+
+[Footnote 15: This tuber, which is a well-known and very useful
+vegetable in England, comes from the root of a species of sunflower
+(_Helianthus tuberosus_). It has nothing to do with the real
+artichoke, which is a huge and gorgeous thistle, and it has equally
+nothing to do with Jerusalem. The English people have always taken a
+special delight in mispronouncing and corrupting words in order to
+produce as much confusion as possible in their names for things.
+Jerusalem is a corruption of _Girasole_, which is the Italian name
+given to this sunflower with the edible roots, because its flower is
+supposed always to turn towards the sun. The Jerusalem artichoke was
+originally a native of North America.]
+
+[Footnote 16: These walnut trees were afterwards known in modern
+American speech as hickories, butter-nuts, and pig-nuts, all of which
+are allied to, but distinct from, the European walnut.]
+
+All these natives of the Massachusetts coast were described by
+Champlain as being almost naked in the summertime, wearing at most a
+small piece of leather round the waist, and a short robe of spun hemp
+which hung down over the shoulders. Their faces were painted red,
+black and yellow. The men pulled out any hairs which might come on the
+chin, and thus were beardless. They were armed with pikes, clubs,
+bows, and arrows. The pikes were probably made of wood with the ends
+hardened by being burnt to a point in the fire, and the arrow tips
+were made of the sharp termination of the tail of the great
+king-crab[17].
+
+[Footnote 17: _Limulus polyphemus_. This extraordinary crustacean is
+one of the oldest of living animals in its history, as it is closely
+related to the Xiphosura and even the Trilobites of the Primary Epoch,
+which existed millions of years ago. In a rough way it is a kind of
+connecting link between the Crustacea, or crabs and lobsters, and the
+Scorpions and spiders.]
+
+These Massachusetts "Indians" described to Champlain a wonderful bird
+which at some seasons of the year they caught in snares and ate. This
+Champlain at once guessed was the wild turkey, now, of course, quite
+extinct in that region. This wild turkey of the eastern half of North
+America (including southern Canada) was quite a distinct form from the
+Mexican bird, which last is the origin of our domestic turkey.
+
+In July, 1606, as De Monts had not returned from France, and the
+little colony at Port Royal was without supplies, they decided to
+leave two Frenchmen in charge of the local chief of the Mikmak
+Indians, and find their way along the coast to Cape Breton, where they
+might get a fishing vessel to take them back to France. But after
+travelling in an open boat--a chaloupe--round the coast of Nova Scotia
+they met another small boat off Cape Sable, under the charge of the
+secretary of De Monts, and learnt that Lieutenant-General DE
+POUTRINCOURT[18] (one of the great names amongst the pioneers of
+Canada, and the man who had really chosen Port Royal for the French
+headquarters at Nova Scotia) had already returned from France with
+fresh supplies. Consequently, Champlain and his companions returned to
+Port Royal, and all set to work with eagerness to develop the
+settlement. Champlain relates in his book how he created vegetable
+gardens, trout streams and ponds, and a reservoir of salt water for
+sea fish; but he was soon off again on a fresh journey of exploration,
+because De Monts was not satisfied with Nova Scotia on account of the
+cold in winter. Accordingly Champlain examined the whole coast round
+the Bay of Fundy, and down to Cape Cod, and the islands of Martha's
+Vineyard and Nantucket. But in this region, already visited in past
+times by French, Spanish, and English ships, they found the natives
+treacherous and hostile. An unprovoked attack was made on the French
+after they landed, and several of the seamen were killed with arrows.
+
+[Footnote 18: Jean de Biencourt, the Sieur de Poutrincourt and Baron
+de Saint-Just, were his full titles.]
+
+On the 24th of May, 1607, a small barque of six or seven tons burden
+(fancy crossing the wide Atlantic from Brittany to Nova Scotia in a
+ship of that size at the present day!) arrived outside Port Royal from
+France, with an abrupt notification that De Monts' ten years' monopoly
+and charter were _cancelled_ by Henry IV, and that all the colony was
+to be withdrawn and brought back to France. Henry IV took this action
+simply because De Monts attempted to make his monopoly a real one,[19]
+and stop the ships of fur traders who were trading with the
+Amerindians of Cape Breton without his licence. These fur traders of
+Normandy then complained bitterly that because De Monts was a
+Protestant he was allowed not only to have this monopoly, but to
+endanger the spiritual welfare of the savages by spreading his false
+doctrines! So King Henry IV, volatile and capricious, like most of the
+French kings, cancelled a charter which had led to such heroic and
+remarkable results.
+
+[Footnote 19: You will observe that neither the French nor the English
+sovereigns of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries went to much
+personal expense over the creation of colonies. They simply gave a
+charter or a monopoly, which cost them nothing, but which made other
+people pay.]
+
+The greater part of the little colony had to leave Port Royal and make
+its way in small boats along the Nova Scotia coasts till they reached
+Cape Breton Island. Here fishing vessels conveyed them back to
+Brittany. It was in this boat journeying along the coast of Nova
+Scotia that Champlain discovered Halifax Harbour, then called by the
+Indian name of Shebuktu. As they passed along this coast with its many
+islands, they feasted on ripe raspberries, which grew everywhere "in
+the greatest possible quantity".
+
+Poutrincourt, however, had succeeded in taking back with him samples
+of the corn, wheat, rye, barley, and oats which had been so
+successfully grown on the island of Sainte Croix and at Port Royal,
+and also presented to that monarch five brent-geese[20] which he had
+reared up from eggs hatched under a hen. The king was so delighted at
+these presents that he once more veered about and gave to De Monts the
+monopoly of the fur trade for one more year, in order to enable him to
+renew his colonies in New France.
+
+[Footnote 20: _Branta canadensis_, a handsome black-and-brown goose
+with white markings, which the French pioneers in Canada styled
+"outarde" or "bustard", and whose eggs were considered very good
+eating.]
+
+
+The Sieur de Monts was again appointed by Henry IV Lieutenant-General
+in New France. The latter engaged Champlain as his lieutenant, and
+also sent out Du Pont Gravé in command of the second vessel, as head
+of the trading operations. This time, on the advice of Champlain, the
+expedition made its way directly to the St. Lawrence River, stopping
+first at Tadoussac, where Du Pont Gravé proceeded to take very strong
+measures with the Basque seamen, who were infringing his monopoly by
+trading with the natives in furs. Apparently they were still allowed
+to continue their whale fishery.
+
+Once more Champlain heard from the Montagnais Indians of the great
+Salt Sea to the north of Saguenay, in other words, the southern
+extension of Hudson's Bay; and in his book he notes that the English
+in these latter years "had gone thither to find their way to China".
+However, he kept his intent fixed on the establishment of a French
+colony along the St. Lawrence, and may be said to have founded the
+city of Quebec (the site of which was then covered with nut trees) on
+the 4th of July, 1608. Then his enterprise was near being wrecked by a
+base conspiracy got up between a surgeon and a number of French
+artisans, who believed that by seizing and killing Champlain, and then
+handing over the infant settlement to the Spanish Basques, they might
+enable these traders and fishermen with their good strong ships to
+overcome Du Pont Gravé, and seize the whole country. Naturally (they
+believed) the Basques would reward the conspirators, who would thus at
+a stroke become rich men. They none of them wished to go to France,
+but would live here independent of outside interference. A
+conspirator, however, revealed the plot to Champlain as he was
+planting one of the little gardens which he started as soon as he had
+been in a place a few days. He went about his business very
+discreetly, arrested all the leading conspirators, gave them a fair
+trial, had the ringleader executed by Pont Gravé, and sent three
+others back to France. After this he settled down at Quebec for the
+winter, taking care, however, in the month of October, to plant seeds
+and vines for coming up in the spring.
+
+In the summer of 1609 Champlain, apparently with the idea of thus
+exploring the country south of the St. Lawrence, decided to accompany
+a party of Algonkins and Hurons from Georgian Bay and the
+neighbourhood of Montreal, who were bent on attacking the Iroquois
+confederacy in the Mohawk country at the headwaters of the Hudson
+River. He was accompanied by two French soldiers--Des Marais and La
+Routte--and by a few Montagnais Indians from Tadoussac.
+
+The Hurons[21] were really of the same group (as regards language and
+descent) as the Iroquois (Irokwá), but in those days held aloof from
+the five other tribes who had formed a confederacy[22] and alliance
+under the name of _Ongwehonwe_--"Superior Men". The Iroquois
+(Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Kayugas, and Senekas) dominated much of
+what is now New York State, and from the mountain country of the
+Adirondaks and Catskills descended on the St. Lawrence valley and the
+shores of Lakes Ontario and Huron to rob and massacre.
+
+[Footnote 21: Huron was a French name given to the westernmost group
+of the Iroquois family (see p. 159). The Huron group included the
+Waiandots, the Eries or Erigas, the Arendáronons, and the Atiwándoronk
+or "neutral" nation. The French sometimes called all these Huron
+tribes "the good Iroquois". Iroquois was probably pronounced "Irokwá",
+and seems to have been derived from a word like Irokosia, the name of
+the Adirondack mountain country.]
+
+[Footnote 22: The confederacy was founded about 1450 by the great
+Hiawatha (of Longfellow's Poem), himself an Onondaga from south of
+Lake Ontario, but backed by the Mohawks only, in the beginning of his
+work.]
+
+
+The route into the enemy's country lay along the Richelieu River and
+across Lake Champlain to its southern end, in sight of the majestic
+snow-crowned Adirondak Mountains. On the way the allies stopped at an
+island, held a kind of review, and explained their tactics to
+Champlain. They set no sentries and kept no strict watch at night,
+being too tired; but during the daytime the army advanced as follows:
+The main body marched in the centre along the warpath; a portion of
+the troops diverged on either side to hunt up food for the expedition;
+and a third section was told off for "intelligence" work, namely, they
+ran on ahead and roundabout to locate the enemy, looking out
+especially along the rivers for marks or signals showing whether
+friends or enemies had passed that way. These marks were devised by
+the chiefs of the different tribes, and were duly communicated to the
+war leaders of tribes in friendship or alliance, like our cipher
+codes; and equally they were changed from time to time to baffle the
+enemy. Neither hunters nor main body ever got in front of the advance
+guard, lest they should give an alarm. Thus they travelled until they
+got within two days or so of the enemies' headquarters; thenceforward
+they only marched by night, and hid in the woods by day, making no
+fires or noise, and subsisting only on cooked maize meal.
+
+At intervals the soothsayers accompanying the army were consulted for
+signs and omens; and when the war-chiefs decided on their plan of
+campaign they summoned all the fighting men to a smooth place in a
+wood, cut sticks a foot long (as many as there were warriors), and
+each leader of a division "put the sticks in such order as seemed to
+him best, indicating to his followers the rank and order they were to
+observe in battle. The warriors watched carefully this proceeding,
+observing attentively the outline which their chief had made with the
+sticks. Then they would go away and set to placing themselves in such
+order as the sticks were in. This manoeuvre they repeated several
+times, and at all their encampments, without needing a sergeant to
+maintain them in the proper order they were able to keep accurately
+the positions assigned to them" (Champlain).
+
+The Hurons who were accompanying Champlain frequently questioned him
+as to his dreams, they themselves having a great belief in the value
+of dreams as omens and indications of future events. One day, when
+they were approaching the country of the Iroquois, Champlain actually
+did have a dream. In this he imagined that he saw the Iroquois enemies
+drowning in a lake near a mountain. Moved to pity in his dream he
+wished to help them, but his savage allies insisted that they must be
+allowed to die. When he awoke he told the Amerindians of his dream,
+and they were greatly impressed, as they regarded it as a good omen.
+
+Near the modern town of Ticonderoga the Hurons and Algonkins of
+Georgian Bay and Ottawa met a party of Iroquois, probably of the
+Mohawk tribe. The Iroquois had built rapidly a stockade in which to
+retreat if things should go badly with them, but the battle at first
+began in the old heroic style with as much ceremony as a French duel.
+First the allies from the St. Lawrence asked the Iroquois what time it
+would suit them to begin fighting the next day; then the latter
+replied: "When the sun is well up, if you don't mind? We can see
+better then to kill you all." Accordingly in the bright morning the
+Hurons and Algonkins advanced against the circular stockade of the
+Iroquois, and the Iroquois marched out to fight in great pomp, their
+leaders wearing plumed headdresses. With this exception both parties
+fought quite naked, and armed only with bows and arrows.
+
+"I marched twenty paces in advance of the rest" (wrote Champlain)
+"till I was within about thirty paces of the Iroquois.... I rested my
+musket against my cheek, and aimed directly at one of the three
+chiefs. With the same shot two fell to the ground, and one of their
+men was so wounded that he died some time afterwards. I had loaded my
+musket with four balls. When they saw I had shot so favourably for
+them, they (the Algonkins and Hurons) raised such loud cries that one
+could not have heard it thunder.
+
+"Meantime the arrows flew on both sides. The Iroquois were greatly
+astonished that two men had been so quickly killed, though they were
+equipped with armour woven from copper thread and with wood, which was
+proof against their arrows."
+
+Whilst Champlain was loading to fire again one of his two companions
+fired a shot from the woods, whereupon the Iroquois took to flight,
+abandoning their camp and fort. As they fled they threw off their
+armour of wooden boards and cotton cloth.
+
+As to the way in which the Hurons tortured their Iroquois prisoners,
+Champlain writes of one instance.
+
+"They commanded him (the prisoner) to sing, if he had courage, which
+he did, but it was a very sad song." The Hurons kindled a fire, and
+when it was well alight they each took a brand from the blaze, the end
+of which was red-hot, and with this burnt the bodies of their
+prisoners tied to stakes. Every now and then they stopped and threw
+water over them to restore them from fainting. Then they tore out
+their finger nails and applied fire to the extremities of the fingers.
+After that they tore the scalps off their heads, and poured over the
+raw and bleeding flesh a kind of hot gum. Then they pierced the arms
+of the prisoners near the wrists, and drew up their sinews with sticks
+inserted underneath, trying to tear them out by force, and, if
+failing, cutting them. One poor wretch "uttered such terrible cries
+that it excited my pity to see him treated in this manner, yet at
+other times he showed such firmness that one would have said he
+suffered scarcely any pain at all".
+
+In this case Champlain, seeing that the man could not recover from his
+injuries, drew apart and shot him dead, "thus putting an end to all
+the tortures he would have suffered".
+
+But the savage Hurons were not yet satisfied. They opened the corpse
+and threw its entrails into the lake. Then they cut off head, arms,
+and legs, and cut out the heart; this they minced up, and endeavoured
+to force the other prisoners to eat it.
+
+With those of his allies who were Montagnais Indians from Tadoussac,
+Champlain returned to that place. As they neared the shore the
+Montagnais women undressed themselves, jumped into the river, and swam
+to the prows of the canoes, from which they took the heads of the
+slain Iroquois. These they hung about their necks as if they had been
+some costly chain, singing and dancing meanwhile.
+
+However, in spite of these and other horrors, Champlain had "separated
+from his Upper Canadian allies with loud protestations of mutual
+friendship", promising to go again into their country and assist them
+with continued "fraternal" relations.
+
+From this expedition Champlain learned much regarding the geography of
+eastern North America, and he brought back with him to France, to
+present to King Henry IV, two scarlet tanagers--one of the commonest
+and most beautiful birds of the eastern United States--a girdle of
+porcupine quills made from the Canadian porcupine, and the head of a
+gar-pike caught in Lake Champlain.[23]
+
+[Footnote 23: Unconsciously, no doubt, he brought away with him to the
+King of France one of the most remarkable freshwater fish living on
+the North-American continent, for the gar-pike belongs, together with
+the sturgeon and its allies, to an ancient type of fish the
+representatives of which are found in rock formations as ancient as
+those of the Secondary and Early Tertiary periods. Champlain may be
+said to have discovered this remarkable gar-pike (_Lepidosteus
+osseus_), which is covered with bony scales "so strong that a poniard
+could not pierce them". The colour he describes as silver-grey. The
+head has a snout two feet and a half long, and the jaws possess double
+rows of sharp and dangerous teeth. These teeth were used by the
+natives as lancets with which to bleed themselves when they suffered
+from inflammation or headache. Champlain declares that the gar-pike
+often captures and eats water birds. It would swim in and among rushes
+or reeds and then raise its snout out of the water and keep perfectly
+still. Birds would mistake this snout for the stump of a tree and
+would attempt to alight on it; whereupon the fish would seize them by
+the legs and pull them down under the water.]
+
+On Champlain's return from France in 1610 (he and other Frenchmen and
+Englishmen of the time made surprisingly little fuss about crossing
+the North Atlantic in small sailing vessels, in spite of the storms of
+spring and autumn) he found the Iroquois question still agitating the
+minds of the Algonkins, Montagnais, and Hurons. Representatives of
+these tribes were ready to meet this great captain of the _Mistigosh_
+or _Matigosh_[24] (as they called the French), and implored him to
+keep his promise to take part in another attack on the dreaded enemy
+of the Adirondak heights. Apparently the Iroquois (Mohawks) this time
+had advanced to meet the attack, and were ensconced in a round
+fortress of logs built near the Richelieu River.[25] The Algonkins and
+their allies on this expedition were armed with clubs, swords, and
+shields, as well as bows and arrows. The swords of copper(?) were
+really knife blades attached to long sticks like billhooks. Before the
+barricade, as usual, both parties commenced the fight by hurling
+insults at each other till they were out of breath, and shouting "till
+one could not have heard it thunder". The circular log barricade,
+however, would never have been taken by the Algonkins and their
+allies but for the assistance of Champlain and three or four
+Frenchmen, who with their musketry fire at short range paralysed the
+Iroquois. Champlain and one other Frenchman were wounded with arrows
+in the neck and arm, but not seriously. The victory of the allies was
+followed by the usual torture of prisoners, which Champlain made a
+slight--only slight--attempt to prevent.
+
+[Footnote 24: Spelt by Champlain with a "ch" instead of _sh_.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Then called the Rivière des Iroquois.]
+
+But results far more serious arose from these two skirmishes with the
+Iroquois in 1609 and 1610. The Confederacy of the Five Nations
+(afterwards six) realized that they had been attacked unprovoked by
+the dominant white men of the St. Lawrence, called by the Montagnais
+_Mistigosh_, and by the Iroquois _Adoreset[¯u]i_ ("men of iron", from
+their armour). They became the bitter enemies of the French, and
+tendered help first to the Dutch to establish themselves in the valley
+of the Hudson, and secondly to the English. In the great Colonial wars
+of the early eighteenth century the Iroquois were invaluable allies to
+the British forces, Colonial and Imperial, and counted for much in the
+struggle which eventually cost France Nova Scotia, New Brunswick,
+Maine, the two Canadas, and Louisiana. On the other hand, the French
+alliance with the Hurons, Algonkins, and Montagnais, begun by this
+brotherhood-in-arms with Champlain, secured for France and the French
+such widespread liking among the tribes of Algonkin speech, and their
+allies and friends, that the two Canadas and much of the Middle West,
+together with Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois, became French in
+sympathy without any war of conquest. When the French dominion over
+North America fell, in 1759, with the capture of Quebec by Wolfe's
+army, tribes of Amerindians went on fighting for five years afterwards
+to uphold the banner and the rule of the beloved French king.
+
+On Champlain's next visit to Canada, in 1610, he handed over to the
+Algonkin Indians a French youth named Étienne Brulé (see p. 88), to
+be taught the Algonkin language (the use of which was spread far and
+wide over north-east America), and, further, sent a Huron youth to
+France to be taught French. Between 1611 and 1616 he had explored much
+of the country between Montreal (the foundations of which city he may
+be said to have laid on May 29, 1611, for his stockaded camp is now in
+the centre of it) and Lakes Huron and Ontario, especially along the
+Ottawa River, that convenient short cut (as a water route) between the
+St. Lawrence at Sault St. Louis (Montreal) and Lakes Huron and
+Superior. With short portages you can get in canoes from Montreal to
+the waters of Hudson Bay, or to Lake Winnipeg and the base of the
+Rocky Mountains.
+
+In exploring this "River of the Algonkins" (as he called it),
+Champlain was nearly drowned between two rocks, and much hurt, from
+over bravery and want of knowledge of how to deal with a canoe on
+troubled water; but on June 4, 1613, he stood on the site of the
+modern city of Ottawa--the capital of the vast Canadian Dominion--and
+gazed at the marvellous Rideau or Curtain Fall, where the Rideau River
+enters the Ottawa. But the air was resonant with the sound of falling
+water. Three miles above the falls of the Gatineau and the Rideau, the
+main Ottawa River descended with a roar and a whirl of white foam and
+rainbow-tinted mist into the chasm called the Chaudière or Kettle. On
+a later occasion he describes the way in which the Algonkins
+propitiated the Spirit of the Chasm:
+
+"Continuing our way, we came to the Chaudière Falls, where the savages
+carried out their customary ceremony. After transporting their canoes
+to the foot of the fall they assemble in one spot, where one of them
+takes up a collection on a wooden platter, into which each person puts
+a bit of tobacco. The collection having been made, the plate is placed
+in the midst of the troop, and all dance about it, singing after
+their style. Then one of the captains makes an harangue, setting forth
+that for a long time they have been accustomed to make this offering,
+by which means they are ensured protection against their enemies, that
+otherwise misfortune would befall them from the evil spirit. This
+done, the maker of the harangue takes the plate and throws the tobacco
+into the midst of the cauldron (the chasm of foaming water), whereupon
+they all together raise a loud cry. These poor people are so
+superstitious, that they would not believe it possible for them to
+make a prosperous journey without observing this ceremony at this
+place; for sometimes their enemies (Iroquois) await them at this
+portage, not venturing to go any farther on account of the difficulty
+of the journey. Consequently they are occasionally surprised and
+killed by the Iroquois at this place (the south bank of the Ottawa)."
+
+Above the Chaudière Champlain met the Algonkin chief, Tessouat, and
+thus described the burial places of his tribe:
+
+"On visiting the island I observed their cemeteries, and was struck
+with wonder as I saw sepulchres of a shape like shrines, made of
+pieces of wood fixed in the ground at a distance of about three feet
+from each other, and intersecting at the upper end. On the
+intersections above they place a large piece of wood, and in front
+another upright piece on which is carved roughly, as would be
+expected, the figure of the male or female interred. If it is a man,
+they add a shield, a sword attached to a handle after their manner, a
+mace, and bow and arrows. If it is a chief, there is a plume on his
+head, and some other _matachia_ or embellishment. If it is a child,
+they give it a bow and arrow, if a woman or girl, a boiler, an earthen
+vessel, a wooden spoon, and an oar. The entire sepulchre is six or
+seven feet long at most, and four wide; others are smaller. They are
+painted yellow and red, with various ornaments as neatly done as the
+carving. The deceased is buried with his dress of beaver or other
+skins which he wore when living, and they lay by his side all his
+possessions, as hatchets, knives, boilers, and awls, so that these
+things may serve him in the land whither he goes; for they believe in
+the immortality of the soul, as I have elsewhere observed. These
+carved sepulchres are only made for the warriors, for in respect to
+others they add no more than in the case of women, who are considered
+a useless class, accordingly but little is added in their case."
+
+In the summer of 1615 Champlain, returning from France, made his way
+up the Ottawa River, and, by a short portage, to Lake Nipissing,
+thence down French River to the waters of Lake Huron. On the banks of
+the French River he met a detachment of the Ottawa tribe (of the
+Algonkin family). These people he styled the _Cheveux Relevés_,
+because the men's hair was gathered up and dressed more carefully and
+becomingly on the top of the head than (he says) could at that time be
+done by a hairdresser in France. This arrangement of the hair gave the
+men a very handsome appearance, but here their toilet ended, for they
+wore no clothes whatever (in the summertime), making up for this
+simplicity by painting their faces in different colours, piercing
+their ears and nostrils and decorating them with shell beads, and
+tattooing their bodies and limbs with elaborate patterns.
+
+These Ottawas carried a club, a long bow and arrows, and a round
+shield of dressed leather, made (wrote Champlain) "from the skin of an
+animal like the buffalo".[26] The chief of the party explained many
+things to the white man by drawing with a piece of charcoal on the
+white bark of the birch tree. He gave him to understand that the
+present occupation of his band of warriors was the gathering of
+blueberries, which would be dried in the sun, and could then be
+preserved for eating during the winter.
+
+[Footnote 26: This was the first intimation probably that any European
+sent home for publication regarding the existence of the bison in
+North America, though the Spanish explorers nearly a hundred years
+before Champlain must have met with it in travelling through
+Louisiana, Texas, and northern Mexico. The bison is not known ever to
+have existed near Hudson Bay, or in Canada proper (basin of the St.
+Lawrence). South of Canada it penetrated to Pennsylvania and the
+Susquehanna River, but not farther eastward.]
+
+From French River, Champlain passed southwards to the homeland of the
+Hurons, which lay to the east of what Champlain called "the Fresh
+Water Sea" (Lake Huron). This country he describes in enthusiastic
+terms. The Hurons, like the other Iroquois tribes (and unlike the
+hunting races to the north of them), were agriculturists, and
+cultivated pumpkins, sunflowers,[27] beans and Indian corn.
+
+[Footnote 27: The Amerindians of the Lake regions made much use of the
+sunflowers of the region (_Helianthus multiflorus_). Besides this
+species of sunflower already mentioned, which furnishes tubers from
+its roots (the "Jerusalem" artichoke) others were valued for their
+seeds, and some or all of these are probably the originals of the
+cultivated sunflower in European gardens. The largest of these was
+called _Soleille_ by the French Canadians. It grew in the cultivated
+fields of the Amerindians to seven or eight feet in height, with an
+enormous flower. The seeds were carefully collected and boiled. Their
+oil was collected then from the water and was used to grease the hair.
+This same Huron country (the Simcoe country of modern times) was
+remarkable for its wild fruits. There was the Canada plum (_Prunus
+americana_), the wild black cherry (_Prunus serotina_), the red
+cherries (_P. pennsylvanica_), the choke cherry (_P. virginiana_),
+wild apples (_Pyrus coronaria_), wild pears (a small berry-like pear
+called "poire" by the French: _Pyrus canadensis_), and the may-apple
+(_Podophyllum peltatum_). Champlain describes this may-apple as of the
+form and colour of a small lemon with a similar taste, but having an
+interior which is very good and almost like that of figs. The
+may-apples grow on a plant which is two and a half feet high, with not
+more than three or four leaves like those of the fig tree, and only
+two fruits on each plant.]
+
+The Hurons persuaded Champlain to go with them to attack the Iroquois
+tribe of the Senekas (Entuhónorons) on the south shores of Lake
+Ontario. On the way thither he noticed the abundance of stags and
+bears, and, near the lake, of cranes, white and purple-brown.[28]
+
+[Footnote 28: The cranes of Canada--so often alluded to by the French
+explorers as "Grues"--are of two species, _Grus canadensis_, with its
+plumage of a purple-grey, and _Grus americanus_, which is pure white
+(see p. 139).]
+
+On the southern shores of the lake[29] were large numbers of chestnut
+trees, "whose fruit was still in the burr. The chestnuts are small but
+of a good flavour." The southern country was covered with forests,
+with very few clearings. After crossing the Oneida River the Hurons
+captured eleven of the Senekas, four women, one girl, three boys, and
+three men. The people had left the stockade in which their relations
+were living to go and fish by the lake shore. One of the Huron
+chiefs--the celebrated Iroquet, who had been so much associated with
+Champlain from the time of his arrival--proceeded at once to cut off
+the finger of one of these women prisoners. Whereupon Champlain,
+firmer than in years gone by, interposed and reprimanded him, pointing
+out that it was not the act of a warrior such as he declared himself
+to be, to conduct himself with cruelty towards women "who had no
+defence but their tears, so that one should treat them with humanity
+on account of their helplessness and weakness". Champlain went on to
+say that this act was base and brutal, and that if he committed any
+more of such cruelties he, Champlain, "would have no heart to assist
+or favour them in the war". To this Iroquet replied that their enemies
+treated them in the same manner, but that since this was displeasing
+to the Frenchmen he would not do anything more to women, but he would
+not promise to refrain from torturing the men.
+
+[Footnote 29: Lakes Ontario and Huron were probably first actually
+reached by Father Le Caron, a Recollett missionary who came out with
+Champlain in 1615 (see p. 90), and by Étienne Brulé, Champlain's
+interpreter.]
+
+However, in the subsequent fighting which occurred when they reached
+the six-sided stockade of the Senekas (a strong fortification which
+faced a large pond on one side, and was surrounded by a moat
+everywhere else except at the entrance), the Hurons and Algonkins
+showed a great lack of discipline. Champlain and the few Frenchmen
+with him, by using their arquebuses, drove the enemy back into the
+fort, but not without having some of their Indian allies wounded or
+killed. Champlain proposed to the Hurons that they should erect what
+was styled in French a _cavalier_--a kind of box, with high, loopholed
+sides, which was erected on a tall scaffolding of stout timbers. This
+was to be carried by the Hurons to within a pike's length of the
+stockade. Four French arquebusiers then scrambled up into the
+_cavalier_ and fired through the loopholes into the huts of the Seneka
+town. Meantime the Hurons were to set fire, if possible, to the wooden
+stockade. They managed the whole business so stupidly that the fire
+produced no effect, the flames being blown in the opposite direction
+to that which was desired. The brave Senekas threw water on to the
+blazing sticks and put out the fire. Champlain was wounded by an arrow
+in the leg and knee. The reinforcement of the five hundred Hurons
+expected by the allies did not turn up. The Hurons with Champlain lost
+heart, and insisted on retreating. Only the dread of the French
+firearms prevented the retreat being converted into a complete
+disaster. Whenever the Senekas came near enough to get speech with the
+French they asked them "why they interfered with native quarrels".
+
+Champlain being unable to walk, the Hurons made a kind of basket,
+similar to that in which they carried their wounded. In this he was so
+crowded into a heap, and bound and pinioned, that it was as impossible
+for him to move "as it would be for an infant in his swaddling
+clothes". This treatment caused him considerable pain after he had
+been carried for some days; in fact he suffered agonies while fastened
+in this way on to the back of a savage.
+
+He was afterwards obliged to pass the winter of 1615-6 in the Huron
+country. At that time it swarmed with game. Amongst birds, there were
+swans, white cranes, brent-geese, ducks, teal, the redbreasted thrush
+(which the Americans call "robin"), brown larks (_Anthus_), snipe, and
+other birds too numerous to mention, which Champlain seems to have
+brought down with his fowling-piece in sufficient quantities to feed
+the whole party whilst waiting for the capture of deer on a large
+scale.
+
+Meanwhile, many of the Indians were catching fish, "trout and pike of
+prodigious size". When they desired to secure a large number of deer,
+they would make an enclosure in a fir forest in the form of the two
+converging sides of a triangle, with an open base. The two sides of
+these traps were made of great stakes of wood closely pressed
+together, from 8 to 9 feet high; and each of the sides was 1000 yards
+long. At the point of the triangle there was a little enclosure. The
+Hurons were so expeditious in this work that in less than ten days
+these long fences and the "pound" or enclosure at their convergence
+were finished. They then started before daybreak and scattered
+themselves in the woods at a considerable distance behind the
+commencement of these fences, each man separated from his fellow by
+about 80 yards. Every Huron carried two pieces of wood, one like a
+drumstick and the other like a flat, resonant board. They struck the
+flat piece of wood with the drumstick and it made a loud clanging
+sound. The deer who swarmed in the forest, hearing this noise, fled
+before the savages, who drove them steadily towards the converging
+fences. As they closed up, the Hurons imitated very cleverly the
+yapping of wolves. This frightened the deer still more, so that they
+huddled at last into the final enclosure, where they were so tightly
+packed that they were completely at the men's mercy. "I assure you,"
+writes Champlain, "there is a singular pleasure in this chase, which
+takes place every two days, and has been so successful that in
+thirty-eight days one hundred and twenty deer were captured. These
+were made good use of, the fat being kept for the winter to be used as
+we do butter, and some of the flesh to be taken to their homes for
+their festivities."
+
+Champlain himself, in the winter of 1615, pursuing one day a
+remarkable bird "which was the size of a hen, had a beak like a parrot
+and was entirely yellow, except for a red head and blue wings, and
+which had the flight of the partridge"--a bird I cannot
+identify--lost his way in the woods. For two days he wandered in the
+wilderness, sustaining himself by shooting birds and roasting them.
+But at last he found his way back to a river which he recognized, and
+reached the camp of the Hurons, who were extremely delighted at his
+return. Had they not found him, or had he not come back of himself,
+they told him that they could never again have visited the French for
+fear of being held responsible for his death.
+
+By the month of December of this year (1615) the rivers, lakes, and
+ponds were all frozen. Hitherto, Champlain had had to walk when he
+could not travel in a canoe, and carry a load of twenty pounds, while
+the Indians carried a hundred pounds each. But now the water was
+frozen the Hurons set to work and made their sledges. These were
+constructed of two pieces of board, manufactured from the trunks of
+trees by the patient use of a stone axe and by the application of
+fire. These boards were about 6 inches wide, and 6 or 7 feet long,
+curved upwards at the forward end and bound together by cross pieces.
+The sides were bordered with strips of wood, which served as brackets
+to which was fastened the strap that bound the baggage upon the
+sledge. The load was dragged by a rope or strap of leather passing
+round the breast of the Indian, and attached to the end of the sledge.
+The sledge was so narrow that it could be drawn easily without
+impediment wherever an Indian could thread his way over the snow
+through the pathless forests.
+
+The rest of the winter and early spring Champlain spent alone, or in
+company with Father Joseph Le Caron (one of the Recollet
+missionaries), visiting the Algonkin and Huron tribes in the region
+east of Lake Huron. He has left this description of the modern country
+of Simcoe, the home, three hundred years ago, of the long-vanished
+Hurons[30]; and gives us the following particulars of their home
+life. The Huron country was a pleasant land, most of it cleared of
+forest. It contained eighteen villages, six of which were enclosed and
+fortified by palisades of wood in triple rows, bound together, on the
+top of which were galleries provided with stores of stones, and
+birch-bark buckets of water; the stones to throw at an enemy, and the
+water to extinguish any fire which might be put to the palisades.
+These eighteen villages contained about two thousand warriors, and
+about thirty thousand people in all. The houses were in the shape of
+tunnels, and were thatched with the bark of trees. Each lodge or house
+would be about 120 feet long, more or less, and 36 feet wide, with a
+10-foot passage-way through the middle from one end to the other. On
+either side of the tunnel were placed benches 4 feet high, on which
+the people slept in summer in order to avoid the annoyance of the
+fleas which swarmed in these habitations. In winter time they slept on
+the ground on mats near the fire. In the summer the cabins were filled
+with stocks of wood to dry and be ready for burning in winter. At the
+end of each of these long houses was a space in which the Indian corn
+was preserved in great casks made of the bark of trees. Inside the
+long houses pieces of wood were suspended from the roof, on to which
+were fastened the clothes, provisions, and other things of the
+inmates, to keep them from the attacks of the mice which swarmed in
+these villages. Each hut might be inhabited by twenty-four families,
+who would maintain twelve fires. The smoke, having no proper means of
+egress except at either end of the long dwelling, and through the
+chinks of the roof, so injured their eyes during the winter season
+that many people lost their sight as they grew old.
+
+[Footnote 30: They were almost completely exterminated by the Iroquois
+confederacy between thirty and forty years after Champlain's visit.]
+
+"Their life", writes Champlain, "is a miserable one in comparison
+with our own, but they are happy amongst themselves, not having
+experienced anything better, nor imagining that anything more
+excellent could be found."
+
+These Amerindians ordinarily ate two meals a day, and although
+Champlain and his men fasted all through Lent, "in order to influence
+them by our example", that was one of the practices they did _not_
+copy from the French.
+
+The Hurons of this period painted their faces black and red, mixing
+the colours with oil made from sunflower seed, or with bears' fat. The
+hair was carefully combed and oiled, and sometimes dyed a reddish
+colour; it might be worn long or short, or only on one side of the
+head. The women usually dressed theirs in one long plait. Sometimes it
+was done up into a knot at the back of the head, bound with eelskin.
+The men were usually dressed in deerskin breeches, with gaiters of
+soft leather. The shoes ("Moccasins") were made of the skin of deer,
+bears, or beavers. In addition to this the men in cold weather wore a
+great cloak. The edges of these cloaks would often be decorated with
+bands of brown and red colour alternating with strips of a
+whitish-blue, and ornamented with bands of porcupine quills. These,
+which were originally white or grey in colour, had been previously
+dyed a fine scarlet with colouring matter from the root of the
+bed-straw (_Galium tinctorum_). The women were loaded with necklaces
+of violet or white shell beads, bracelets, ear-rings, and great
+strings of beads falling below the waist. Sometimes they would have
+plates of leather studded with shell beads and hanging over the back.
+
+[Illustration: SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN; ALEXANDER HENRY THE ELDER]
+
+In 1616 Champlain returned to France, but visited Quebec in 1617 and
+1618. During the years spent at Quebec, which followed his
+explorations of 1616, he was greatly impeded in his work of
+consolidating Canada as a French colony by the religious strife
+between the Catholics and Huguenots, and the narrow-minded greed of
+the Chartered company of fur-trading merchants for whom he worked. But
+in 1620 he came back to Canada as Lieutenant-Governor (bringing his
+wife with him), and after attending to the settlement of a violent
+commercial dispute between fur-trading companies he tried to compose
+the quarrel between the Iroquois and the Algonkins, and brought about
+a truce which lasted till 1627.
+
+In 1628 came the first English attack on Canada. A French fleet was
+defeated and captured in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and in the
+following year Champlain, having been obliged to surrender Quebec (he
+had only sixteen soldiers as a garrison, owing to lack of food),
+voyaged to England more or less as a prisoner of state in the summer
+of 1629. He found, on arriving there, that the cession of Quebec was
+null and void, peace having been concluded between Britain and France
+two months before the cession. Charles I remained true to his compact
+with Louis XIII, and Quebec and Nova Scotia were restored to French
+keeping. In 1633 Champlain returned to Canada as Governor, bringing
+with him a considerable number of French colonists. _It is from 1633
+that the real French colonization of Canada begins_: hitherto there
+had been only one family of settlers in the fixed sense of the word;
+the other Frenchmen were fur traders, soldiers, and missionaries. But
+Champlain only lived two years after his triumphant return, and died
+at Quebec on Christmas Day, 1635.
+
+His character has been so well summed up by Dr. S.E. Dawson, in his
+admirable book on the _Story of the St. Lawrence Basin_, that I cannot
+do better than quote his words:
+
+"Champlain was as much at home in the brilliant court of France as in
+a wigwam on a Canadian lake, as patient and politic with a wild band
+of savages on Lake Huron as with a crowd of grasping traders in St.
+Malo or Dieppe. Always calm, always unselfish, always depending on
+God, in whom he believed and trusted, and thinking of France, which he
+loved, this single-hearted man resolutely followed the path of his
+duty under all circumstances; never looking for ease or asking for
+profit, loved by the wild people of the forest, respected by the
+courtiers of the king, and trusted by the close-fisted merchants of
+the maritime cities of France."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+After Champlain: from Montreal to the Mississippi
+
+
+A very remarkable series of further explorations were carried out as
+the indirect result of Champlain's work. In 1610 he had allowed a
+French boy of about eighteen years of age, named ÉTIENNE BRULÉ, to
+volunteer to go away with the Algonkins, in order to learn their
+language. Brulé was taken in hand by Iroquet,[1] a chief of the
+"Little Algonkins", whose people were then occupying the lands on
+either side of the Ottawa River, including the site of the now great
+city of Ottawa. After four years of roaming with the Indians, Brulé
+was dispatched by Champlain with an escort of twelve Algonkins to the
+headwaters of the Suskuehanna, far to the south of Lake Ontario, in
+order to warn the Andastes[2] tribe of military operations to be
+undertaken by the allied French, Hurons, and Algonkins against the
+Iroquois. This enabled Brulé to explore Lake Ontario and to descend
+the River Suskuehanna as far south as Chesapeake Bay, a truly
+extraordinary journey at the period. This region of northern Virginia
+had just been surveyed by the English, and was soon to be the site of
+the first English colony in North America.[3]
+
+[Footnote 1: Mentioned on p. 80.]
+
+[Footnote 2: The Andastes were akin to the Iroquois, but did not
+belong to their confederacy; they lived in Pennsylvania.]
+
+[Footnote 3: The inaccurate statement has frequently been written
+about Newfoundland being "the first British American colony".
+Newfoundland was reached by the ship in which John Cabot sailed on his
+1497 voyage of discovery, and a few years afterwards its shores were
+sought by the English in common with the French and the Portuguese,
+and later on the Spaniards and Basques, for the cod fishery. But no
+definite British settlement, such as subsequently grew into an actual
+colony, was founded in Newfoundland until the year 1624; the island
+was not recognized as definitely British till 1713, and no governor
+was appointed till 1728. The first permanent English colonial
+settlement in America was founded at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607; and
+in the Bermudas and Barbados (West Indies) soon afterwards.]
+
+In attempting to return to the valley of the St. Lawrence in 1616,
+with his Andaste guides, Brulé lost his way, and to avoid starvation
+surrendered himself to the Seneka Indians (the westernmost clan of the
+Iroquois) against whom the recent warlike operations of the French
+were being directed. Discovering his nationality, the Senekas decided
+to torture him before burning him to death at the stake. As they tore
+off his clothes they found that he was wearing an _Agnus Dei_ medal
+next his skin. Brulé told them to be careful, as it was a medicine of
+great power which would certainly kill them. By a coincidence, at that
+very moment a terrific thunderstorm burst from a sky which until
+recently had been all sunshine. The Senekas were so scared by the
+thunder and lightning that they believed Brulé to be a person of
+supernatural powers. They therefore released him, strove to heal such
+slight wounds as he had incurred, and carried him off to their
+principal town, where he became a great favourite. After a while they
+gave him guides to take him north into the country of the Hurons.
+
+His further adventures led him to discover Lake Superior and the way
+thither through the Sault Ste. Marie, and to reach a place probably
+not far from the south coast of Hudson Bay, in which there was a
+copper mine. Then he explored the Montagnais country north of Quebec,
+and even at one time (in 1629) entered the service of the English, who
+had captured Quebec and Tadoussac from the French. When the English
+left this region Brulé travelled again to the west and joined the
+Hurons once more.
+
+His licentious conduct amongst his Indian friends seems to have
+roused them to such a pitch of anger that in 1632 they murdered him,
+then boiled and ate his body. But immediately afterwards misfortune
+seemed to fall on the place. The Hurons were terrified at what they
+had done, and thought they heard or saw in the sky the spirits of the
+white relations of Brulé--some said the sister, some the
+uncle--threatening their town (Toanche), which they soon afterwards
+burnt and deserted.
+
+In 1615 Champlain, returning from France, had brought out with him
+friars of the Récollet order.[4] These were the pioneer missionaries
+of Canada, prominent amongst whom was FATHER LE CARON, and these
+Récollets traversed the countries in the basin of the St. Lawrence
+between Lake Huron and Cape Breton Island, preaching Christianity to
+the Amerindians as well as ministering to the French colonists and fur
+traders. One of these Récollet missionaries died of cold and hunger in
+attempting to cross New Brunswick from the St. Lawrence to the Bay of
+Fundy, and another--Nicholas Viel--was the first martyr in Canada in
+the spread of Christianity, for when travelling down the Ottawa River
+to Montreal he was thrown by the pagan Hurons (together with one of
+his converts) into the waters of a rapid since christened Sault le
+Récollet. Another Récollet, Father d'Aillon, prompted by Brulé,
+explored the richly fertile, beautiful country known then as the
+territory of the Neutral nation, that group of Huron-Iroquois
+Amerindians who strove to keep aloof from the fierce struggles between
+the Algonkins and Hurons on the one hand and the eastern Iroquois
+clans on the other. This region, which lies between the Lakes
+Ontario, Erie, and Huron, is the most attractive portion of western
+Canada. Lying in the southernmost parts of the Dominion, and nearly
+surrounded by sheets of open water, it has a far milder climate than
+the rest of eastern Canada.
+
+[Footnote 4: The Récollet (properly Recollect) friars were a strict
+branch of the Franciscan order that were sometimes called the
+Observantines. They were also known as "Recollects" (pronounced in
+French _récollet_) because they were required to be constantly keeping
+guard over their thoughts. This development of the Franciscan order of
+preaching missionary friars was originally a Spanish one, founded
+early in the sixteenth century, and becoming well established in the
+Spanish Netherlands. Many of them were Flemings or Walloons.]
+
+In 1626 the Jesuit order supplanted the Récollets, and commenced a
+campaign both of Christian propaganda and of geographical exploration
+which has scarcely finished in the Canada of to-day.
+
+In 1627 the war between the Iroquois Confederacy and the Huron and
+Algonkin tribes recommenced, and this, together with the British
+capture of Quebec and other portions of Canada, put a stop for several
+years to the work of exploration. This was not resumed on an advanced
+scale till 1634, when Champlain, unable himself, from failing health,
+to carry out his original commission of seeking a direct passage to
+China and India across the North-American continent, dispatched a
+Norman Frenchman named JEAN NICOLLET to find a way to the Western Sea.
+Nicollet, as a very young man, had lived for years amongst the
+Amerindian tribes, especially amongst the Nipissings near the lake of
+that name. Being charged, amongst other things, with the task of
+making peace between the Hurons and the tribes dwelling to the west of
+the great lakes, Nicollet discovered Lake Michigan. He was so
+convinced of the possibility of arriving at the Pacific Ocean, and
+thence making his way to China, that in the luggage which he carried
+in his birch-bark canoe was a dress of ceremony made of Chinese damask
+silk embroidered richly with birds and flowers. He was on his way to
+discover the Winnebago Indians, or "Men of the Sea", of whom Champlain
+had heard from the Hurons, with whom they were at war. But the great
+water from which they derived their name was not in this instance a
+sea, but the Mississippi River. The Winnebago Indians were totally
+distinct from the Algonkins or the Iroquois, and belonged to the
+Dakota stock, from which the great Siou confederation[5] was also
+derived.
+
+[Footnote 5: See p. 160.]
+
+Nicollet advanced to meet the Winnebagos clad in his Chinese robe and
+with a pistol in each hand. As he drew near he discharged his pistols,
+and the women and children fled in terror, for all believed him to be
+a supernatural being, a spirit wielding thunder and lightning.
+However, when they recovered from their terror the Winnebagos gave him
+a hearty welcome, and got up such lavish feasts in his honour, that
+one chief alone cooked 120 beavers at a single banquet.
+
+Nicollet certainly reached the water-parting between the systems
+of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, and under that
+name--Misi-sipi--"great water"--he heard through the Algonkin Indians
+of a mighty river lying three days' journey westward from his last
+camp. Winnebago (from which root is also derived the names of the
+Lakes Winnipeg and Winnipegosis much farther to the north-west) meant
+"salt" or "foul" water. Both terms might therefore be applied to the
+sea, and also to the lakes and rivers which, in the minds of the
+Amerindians, were equally vast in length or breadth.
+
+From 1648 to 1653 the whole of the Canada known to the French settlers
+and explorers was convulsed by the devastating warfare carried on by
+the Iroquois, who during that period destroyed the greater part of the
+Algonkin and Huron clans. The neutral nation of Lake Erie (the Erigas)
+was scattered, and between the shores of Lakes Michigan and Huron and
+Montreal the country was practically depopulated, except for the
+handfuls of French settlers and traders who trembled behind their
+fortifications. Then, to the relief and astonishment of the French,
+one of the Iroquois clans--the Onondaga--proposed terms of peace,
+probably because they had no more enemies to fight of their own
+colour, and wished to trade with the French.
+
+The fur trade of the Quebec province had attracted an increasing
+number of French people (men bringing their wives) to such settlements
+as Tadoussac and Three Rivers. Amongst these were the parents of
+PIERRE ESPRIT RADISSON. This young man went hunting near Three Rivers
+station and was captured in the woods by Mohawks (Iroquois) who
+carried him off to one of their towns and intended to burn him alive.
+Having bound him at a stake, they proceeded to tear out some of his
+finger nails and shoot arrows at the less vital parts of his body. But
+a Mohawk woman was looking on and was filled with pity at the
+sufferings of this handsome boy. She announced her intention of
+adopting him as a member of her family, and by sheer force of will she
+compelled the men to release him. After staying for some time amongst
+the Mohawks he escaped, but was again captured just as he was nearing
+Three Rivers. Once more he was spared from torture at the intercession
+of his adopted relations. He then made an even bolder bid for freedom,
+and fled to the south, up the valley of the Richelieu and the Hudson,
+and thus reached the most advanced inland post of Dutch America--then
+called Orange, now Albany--on the Hudson River. From this point he was
+conveyed to Holland, and from Holland he returned to Canada.
+
+Soon after his return he joined two Jesuit fathers who were to visit a
+mission station of the Jesuits amongst the Onondagas (Iroquois) on a
+lakelet about thirty miles south-east of the present city of
+Rochester. The Iroquois (whose language Radisson had learnt to speak)
+received them with apparent friendliness, and there they passed the
+winter. But in the spring Radisson found out that the Onondaga
+Iroquois were intending to massacre the whole of the mission.
+Instructed by him, the Jesuits pretended to have no suspicions of the
+coming attack, but all the while they were secretly building canoes at
+their fort. As soon as they were ready for flight, and the sun of
+April had completely melted the ice in the River Oswego, the French
+missionaries invited the Onondagas to a great feast, no doubt making
+out that it was part of the Easter festivities sanctioned by the
+Church. They pointed out to their guests that from religious motives
+as well as those of politeness it was essential that the _whole_ of
+the food provided should be eaten, "nothing was to be left on the
+plate". They set before their savage guests an enormous banquet of
+maize puddings, roast pigs, roast ducks, game birds, and fish of many
+kinds, even terrapins, or freshwater turtles. The Iroquois ate and ate
+until even _their_ appetites were satisfied. Then they began to cry
+off; but the missionaries politely insisted, and even told them that
+in failing to eat they were neglecting their religious duties. To help
+them in this respect they played hymn and psalm tunes on musical
+instruments. At last the Onondagas were gorged to repletion, and sank
+into a stertorous slumber at sunset. Whilst they slept, the Jesuits,
+their converts, and Radisson got into the already prepared canoes and
+paddled quickly down the Oswego River far beyond pursuit.
+
+Radisson next joined his brother-in-law, Medard Chouart, and after
+narrowly escaping massacre by the Iroquois (once more on the warpath
+along the Ottawa River) reached the northern part of Lake Huron, and
+Green Bay on the north-west of Lake Michigan. From Green Bay they
+travelled up the Fox River and across a portage to the Wisconsin,
+which flows into the Mississippi. Down this river they sped, meeting
+people of the great Siou confederation and Kri (Cree) Indians, these
+last an Algonkin nation roaming in the summertime as far north as
+Hudson's Bay, until at length they reached the actual waters of the
+Mississippi, first of all white men. Returning then to Lake Michigan,
+the shores of which seemed to them an earthly paradise with a climate
+finer than Italy, they journeyed northwards into Lake Huron, and
+thence north-westwards through the narrow passages of St. Mary's River
+into Lake Superior. The southern coast of Lake Superior was followed
+to its westernmost point, where they made a camp, and from which they
+explored during the winter (in snowshoes) the Wisconsin country and
+collected information regarding the Mississippi and its great western
+affluent the Missouri. The Mississippi, they declared, led to Mexico,
+while the other great forked river in the far west was a pathway,
+perhaps, to the Southern Sea (Pacific).
+
+The Jesuits, on the other hand, were convinced that Hudson's Bay (or
+the "Bay of the North") was at no great distance from Lake Superior
+(which was true) and that it must communicate to the north-west with
+the Pacific Ocean or the sea that led to China.
+
+In 1661, without the leave of the French Governor of Canada, who
+wanted them to take two servants of his own with them and to give him
+half the profits of the venture, Chouart and Radisson hurried away to
+the west, picked up large bodies of natives who were returning to the
+regions north of Lake Huron, with them fought their way through the
+ambushed Iroquois, and once more navigated the waters of Lake
+Superior. Once again they started for the Mississippi basin and
+explored the country of Minnesota, coming thus into contact with
+native tribes which lived on the flesh of the bison. In Minnesota they
+met a second time the Kri or Kinistino Indians of north-central
+Canada, and joined one of their camps in the spring of 1662, somewhere
+to the west of Lake Superior. With Kri guides they started away to the
+north and north-east, no doubt by way of the Lake of the Woods, the
+English River, Lake St. Joseph, and the Albany River, thus reaching
+the salt sea at James Bay, the southernmost extension of Hudson Bay.
+Or they may have proceeded by an even shorter route, though with
+longer portages for canoes, through Lake Nipigon to the Albany.
+
+The summer of 1662 they passed on the islands and shores of James Bay
+hunting "buffalo"[6] with the Indians. Then, in 1663, travelling back
+along the same route they had followed in the previous year, they
+regained Lake Superior, and so passed by the north of Lake Huron to
+the Ottawa River and the St. Lawrence. But on their return to Three
+Rivers they were arrested by the French Governor, D'Avaugour, who
+condemned them to imprisonment and severe fines. The courts of France
+gave them no redress, and in their furious anger Chouart and Radisson
+went over to the English, offered their services to England, and so
+brought about the creation of the Hudson Bay Company.
+
+[Footnote 6: More probably musk oxen.]
+
+Radisson's journey from England to Hudson Bay has been treated of in
+an earlier chapter: it is preferable to follow out to its finish the
+great, western impulse of the French, which led them to neglect for a
+time the doings of the British on the east coast of North America and
+in the sub-Arctic regions of Hudson Bay.
+
+From 1660 onwards the Jesuit missionaries again took up vigorously
+that work of Christianizing the Amerindians which had been so
+completely checked by the frightful ravages of the Iroquois between
+1648 and 1654.
+
+By 1669 the Jesuits had three permanent stations in western Canada.
+The first was the mission station at Sault Ste. Marie, the second was
+the station of Ste. Esprit, on Lake Superior (not far from the modern
+town of Ashland), and the third was the station of St. François Xavier
+at the mouth of the Fox River, on Green Bay, Lake Michigan.
+
+As regards some of the sufferings which these missionaries had to go
+through when travelling across Canada in the winter, I quote the
+following from _The Relations of the Jesuits_ (p. 35):--
+
+"I [Father de Crépieul] set out on the 16th of January, 1674, from the
+vicinity of Lake St. John, near the Saguenay River, with an Algonkin
+captain and two Frenchmen. We started after Mass, and walked five long
+leagues on snowshoes with much trouble, because the snow was soft and
+made our snowshoes very heavy. At the end of five leagues, we found
+ourselves on a lake four or five leagues long all frozen over, on
+which the wind caused great quantities of snow to drift, obscuring the
+air and preventing us from seeing where we are going. After walking
+another league and a half with great difficulty our strength began to
+fail. The wind, cold, and snow were so intolerable that they compelled
+us to retrace our steps a little, to cut some branches of fir which
+might in default of bark serve to build a cabin. After this we tried
+to light a fire, but were unable to do so. We were thus reduced to a
+most pitiful condition. The cold was beginning to seize us to an
+extraordinary degree, the darkness was great, and the wind blew
+fearfully. In order to keep ourselves from dying with cold, we resumed
+our march on the lake in spite of our fatigue, without knowing whither
+we were going, and all were greatly impeded with the wind and snow.
+After walking a league and a half we had to succumb in spite of
+ourselves and stop where we were. The danger we ran of dying from cold
+caused me to remember the charitable Father de Noue, who in a similar
+occasion was found dead in the snow, kneeling and with clasped
+hands.... We therefore remained awake during the rest of the night....
+On the following morning two Frenchmen arrived from Father Albanel's
+cabin very opportunely, and kindled a great fire on the snow.... After
+this we resumed our journey on the same lake, and at last reached the
+spot where Father Albanel was.... A serious injury, caused by the fall
+of a heavy load upon his loins, prevented him from moving, and still
+more, from performing a missionary's duties."
+
+One of the Jesuit fathers, Allouez, in founding the station of St.
+François Xavier on Green Bay, Lake Michigan, had gained further
+information about the wonderful Mississippi, which he called "Messi
+Sipi". He also thoroughly explored Lake Nipigon, to the north of Lake
+Superior. In 1669 two missionaries, named Dollier de Casson and
+Galinée, started from the seminary of St. Sulpice (Montreal) to reach
+the great tribes of the far west, supposed to be eager to learn of
+Christianity and known to be much more tractable than the Iroquois.
+These two missionaries, in their expedition of seven canoes and
+twenty-one Amerindians, were accompanied by a remarkable young man
+commonly known as La Salle, but whose real name was Robert
+Cavalier.[7]
+
+[Footnote 7: La Salle was the name of his property in France.]
+
+Before leaving Lake Ontario, they actually passed the mouth of the
+Niagara River and heard the falls, but had not sufficient curiosity to
+leave their canoes and walk a short distance to see them. The
+wonderful cascades of Niagara, where the St. Lawrence leaving Lake
+Erie plunges 328 feet down into Lake Ontario (which is not much above
+sea level), remained nearly undiscovered and undescribed until the
+year 1678, when they were visited by Father Hennepin. Near the western
+end of Lake Ontario the two Sulpician missionaries met another
+Frenchman, Jolliet, who had come down to Lake Superior by way of the
+Detroit passage, which is really the portion of the St. Lawrence
+connecting Lake Huron with Lake Erie. Jolliet told the missionary de
+Casson of a great tribe in the far west, the Pottawatomies, who had
+asked for missionaries, and who were of Algonkin stock. La Salle, on
+the other hand, was determined to make for the rumoured Ohio River,
+which lay somewhere to the south-west of Lake Erie.
+
+The two Sulpicians wintered in "the earthly paradise" to the north of
+Lake Erie, passing a delightful six months there in the amazing
+abundance of game and fish. They then met with various disasters to
+their canoes, and consequently gave up their western journey, passing
+northwards through Detroit and Lake St. Clair into Lake Huron, and
+thence to the Jesuit mission station of the Sault Ste. Marie. Here
+they were received rather coldly, as being rivals in the mission field
+and in exploration. They in their turn accused the Jesuits of thinking
+mainly, if not entirely, of the foundation of French colonies, and
+very little of evangelizing the natives.
+
+JOLLIET, a Canadian by birth,[8] was dispatched by the Viceroy of
+Canada in 1672 to explore the far west. Two years--1670--previously
+the French Government had for the first time adopted a really definite
+policy about Canada, and had taken formal possession of the Lake
+region and of all the territories lying between the lakes and the
+Mississippi. A great assembly of Indians was held at Sault Ste. Marie,
+near the east end of Lake Superior; and here a representative of the
+French Government, accompanied by numerous missionaries and by
+Jolliet, read a proclamation of the sovereignty of King Louis XIV of
+France and Navarre. Below a tall cross was erected a great shield
+bearing the arms of France. Father Allouez addressed the Indians in
+the Algonkin language, and told them of the all-powerful Louis XIV,
+who "had ten thousand commanders and captains, each as great as the
+Governor of Quebec". He reminded them how the troops of this king had
+beaten the unconquerable Iroquois, of how he possessed innumerable
+soldiers and uncountable ships; that at times the ground of France
+shook with the discharge of cannon, while the blaze of musketry was
+like the lightning. He pictured the king covered with the blood of his
+enemies and riding in the middle of his cavalry, and ordering so many
+of his enemies to be slain that no account could be kept of the number
+of their scalps, whilst their blood flowed in rivers. The Amerindians
+being what they were, addicted to warfare, and only recognizing the
+right of the strongest, it may be that this gospel of force was not
+quite so shocking and unchristian as it reads to us nearly 250 years
+afterwards, though it jars very much as coming from the lips of a
+missionary of Christianity. However, it must be remembered that but
+for the valour of the French soldiers in the awful period between 1648
+and 1666 (when the Mohawks received a thorough and well-deserved
+thrashing) many of the tribes addressed on this occasion by the Jesuit
+missionaries would have been completely exterminated; the Iroquois
+would have depopulated much of north-eastern America. It is obvious,
+indeed, from our study of the conditions of life amongst the
+Amerindians, that one reason why the New World was so poorly populated
+at the time of its discovery by Europeans was the wars of
+extermination between tribe and tribe; for America between the Arctic
+regions and Tierra del Fuego is marvellously well supplied with
+natural food products--game, fish, fruits, nuts, roots, and
+grain--much more so than any area of similar extent in the Old World.
+
+[Footnote 8: Born at Quebec in 1645.]
+
+Jolliet was to be accompanied on his westward expedition by Father
+JACQUES MARQUETTE,[9] a Jesuit missionary who had become well
+acquainted with the tribes visiting Lake Superior, and had learnt the
+Siou dialect of the Illinois people. On May 17, 1673, Jolliet and
+Marquette started from the Straits of Michili-Makinak with only two
+bark canoes and five Amerindians. They coasted along the north coast
+of Lake Michigan, passed into Green Bay, and thence up the River Fox.
+They were assisted by the Maskutins, or Fire Indians, and were given
+Miami guides. Thence the natives assisted them to transport their
+canoes and baggage over the very short distance that separates the
+upper waters of the Fox River from the Wisconsin River, and down the
+Wisconsin they glided till they reached the great Mississippi. The
+Governor of Quebec, who had sent Jolliet on this mission, believed
+that the Great River of the west would lead them to the Gulf of
+California, which was then called the Vermilion Sea by the Spaniards,
+because it resembled in shape and colour the Red Sea.
+
+[Footnote 9: Father Jacques Marquette was born in the province of
+Champagne, eastern France. He came to Canada when he was twenty-nine
+years old, having already been prepared by the Jesuits for priesthood
+and missionary work since his seventeenth year. He spent nine years in
+Canada, and died at the age of thirty-eight. He has left an enduring
+memory for goodness, courage, and purity of life.]
+
+"On the 17th of June (1673)", writes Father Marquette, "we safely
+entered the Mississippi with a joy that I cannot express. Its current
+is slow and gentle, the width very unequal. On its banks there are
+hardly any woods or mountains. The islands are most beautiful, and
+they are covered with fine trees. We saw deer and cattle (bison),
+geese, and swans. From time to time we came upon monstrous fish, one
+of which struck our canoe with such violence that I thought it was a
+great tree. On another occasion we saw on the water a monster with the
+head of a tiger, a sharp nose like that of a wild cat, with whiskers
+and straight erect ears. The head was grey, and the neck quite black
+(possibly a lynx).... We found that turkeys had taken the place of
+game, and the _pisikiou_, or wild cattle, that of the other animals."
+
+Father Marquette, of course, by his wild cattle means the bison, of
+which he proceeds to give an excellent description. He adds: "They are
+very fierce, and not a year passes without their killing some savages.
+When attacked, they catch a man on their horns if they can, toss him
+in the air, throw him on the ground, then trample him under foot and
+kill him. If a person fires at them from a distance with either a bow
+or a gun, he must immediately after the shot throw himself down and
+hide in the grass, for if they perceive him who has fired they run at
+him and attack him."
+
+Soon after entering the Mississippi, Marquette noticed some rocks
+which by their height and length inspired awe. "We saw upon one of
+them two painted monsters which at first made us afraid, and upon
+which the boldest savages dare not long rest their eyes. They are as
+large as a calf; they have horns on their heads like those of deer, a
+horrible look, red eyes, a beard like a tiger's, a face somewhat like
+a man's, a body covered with scales, and so long a tail that it winds
+all round the body and ends like that of a fish. Green, red, and black
+are the three colours composing the picture. Moreover, these two
+monsters are so well painted that we cannot believe that any savage is
+their author, for good painters in France would find it difficult to
+paint so well, and, besides, they are so high up on the rock that it
+is difficult to reach that place conveniently to paint them."[10]
+
+[Footnote 10: These remarkable rock pictures were situated immediately
+above the present city of Alton, Illinois. In 1812 they still remained
+in a good state of preservation, but the thoughtless Americans had
+gradually destroyed them by 1867 in quarrying the rock for building
+stone.]
+
+As the Jolliet expedition paddled down the Mississippi--ever so easily
+and swiftly--a marvellous panorama unfolded itself before the
+Frenchmen's fascinated gaze. Immense herds of bison occasionally
+appeared on the river banks, flocks of turkeys flew up from the glades
+and roosted in the trees and on the river bank. Everywhere the natives
+seemed friendly, and Father Marquette was usually able to communicate
+with them through his knowledge of the Illinois Algonkin dialect,
+which the Siou understood.
+
+[Illustration: INDIANS HUNTING BISON]
+
+On their first meeting with the Mississippi Indians, the French
+explorers were not only offered the natives' pipes to smoke in token
+of peace, but an old man amongst the latter uttered these words to
+Jolliet: "How beautiful the sun is, O Frenchman, when thou comest to
+visit us. Our village awaits thee, and thou shalt enter all our cabins
+in peace."... "There was a crowd of people," writes Marquette; "they
+devoured us with their eyes, but nevertheless preserved profound
+silence. We could, however, hear these words addressed to us from time
+to time in a low voice: 'How good it is, my brothers, that you should
+visit us'.
+
+"... The council was followed by a great feast, consisting of four
+dishes, which had to be partaken of in accordance with all their
+fashions. The first course was a great wooden platter full of
+sagamité, that is to say, meal of Indian corn boiled in water, and
+seasoned with fat. The Master of the Ceremonies filled a spoon with
+sagamité three or four times, and put it to my mouth as if I were a
+little child. He did the same to Monsieur Jollyet. As a second course
+he caused a second platter to be brought, on which were three fish. He
+took some pieces of them, removed the bones therefrom, and, after
+blowing upon them to cool them, he put them in our mouths as one would
+give food to a bird. For the third course, they brought a large dog
+that had just been killed, but, when they learned that we did not eat
+this meat, they removed it from before us. Finally, the fourth course
+was a piece of wild ox, the fattest morsels of which were placed in
+our mouths.... We thus pushed forward and no longer saw so many
+prairies, because both shores of the river are bordered with lofty
+trees. The cotton wood, elm and bass wood are admirable for their
+height and thickness. There are great numbers of wild cattle whom we
+hear bellowing. We killed a little parroquet, with a red and yellow
+head and green body.... We have got down to near the 33° of
+latitude.... We heard from afar savages who were inciting one another
+to attack us by their continual yelling. They were armed with bows and
+arrows, hatchets, clubs, and shields.... Part of them embarked in
+great wooden canoes, some to ascend, others to descend the river in
+order to surround us on all sides.... Some young men threw themselves
+into the water and seized my canoe, but the current compelled them to
+return to land. One of them hurled his club, which passed over without
+striking us. In vain I showed the calumet (pipe of peace), and made
+them signs that we were not coming to war against them. The alarm
+continued; they were already preparing to pierce us with arrows from
+all sides when God suddenly touched the hearts of the old men who were
+standing at the water's edge, who checked the ardour of their young
+men.... Whereon we landed, not without fear on our part. First we had
+to speak by signs, because none of them understood the six languages
+which I spoke. At last we found an old man who could speak a little
+Illinois. We informed them that we were going to the sea.
+
+"The next day was spent in feasting on Indian corn and dogs' flesh.
+The people here had an abundance of Indian corn, which they sowed at
+all seasons. They cook it in great earthen jars which are very well
+made, and also have plates of baked earth. The men go naked and wear
+their hair short; they pierce their noses, from which, as well as from
+their ears, hang beads.... Their cabins are made of bark, and are long
+and wide. They sleep at the two ends, which are raised two feet above
+the ground. They know nothing of the beaver, and their wealth consists
+in the skins of wild cattle. They never see snow in their country, and
+recognize the winter only through the rains."
+
+The expedition had passed the confluence of the Missouri and that of
+the Ohio, and had finally reached the place where the Arkansas River
+enters the Mississippi. Here the Frenchmen gathered from the natives
+that the sea was only ten days distant, and this sea they knew (for
+Jolliet was able to take astronomical observations and to make a rough
+survey) could only be the Gulf of Mexico. Jolliet feared if he
+prosecuted his journey any farther, he and his people would fall into
+the hands of the Spaniards and be imprisoned, if not killed.
+Therefore, at this point on the Lower Mississippi, the expedition
+turned back. Its return journey was a weary business, for the current
+was against the canoes as they were propelled northwards up the Great
+River. But Jolliet learnt from the natives of a better homeward route,
+that of following the Illinois River upstream until the expedition
+came within a very short distance of Lake Michigan, near where Chicago
+now stands. The canoes were carried over a low ridge of ground,
+launched again in the Chicago River, and so passed into Lake Michigan.
+(There is, in fact, at this point the remains of an ancient water
+connection between Lake Michigan and the Illinois River, and a canal
+now connects the two systems.) Jolliet, in describing this region,
+realized that by cutting a canal through two miles of prairie it would
+be possible to go "in a small ship" from Lake Erie or Lake Superior
+"to Florida".
+
+Father Marquette remained at his new mission on the Fox River (he died
+two years afterwards on the shores of the Straits of Michili-makinak).
+Jolliet, on returning by way of the Ottawa River to Quebec, was nearly
+drowned in the La Chine Rapids (Montreal), and all his papers and maps
+were lost. The natives with him also perished, but he struggled to
+shore with difficulty, and went on his way to Quebec to report his
+wonderful discoveries to the Governor, Frontenac. Fortunately Father
+Marquette had also kept a journal and had made maps, and these
+reaching the superior of his mission arrived in time to confirm
+Jolliet's statements.
+
+Jolliet married at Quebec, and proceeded to explore and develop the
+regions along the north coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, travelling
+in this work as far as Hudson's Bay. He was given by the French
+Government the Island of Anticosti as a reward for his achievements,
+but the work and capital which he put into the development of this
+long-neglected island came to nothing; for it was captured by the
+English, and Jolliet died a poor man whilst attempting to explore the
+coast of Labrador.
+
+As to ROBERT CAVALIER DE LA SALLE, he had, after all, discovered the
+Ohio, and had descended that river as far as the site of the present
+town of Louisville. Then he interested the Governor (Frontenac) of
+Canada in his enterprises. A fort, called Fort Frontenac, was built at
+what is now Kingston, at the point where the St. Lawrence leaves Lake
+Ontario. La Salle returned to France, and obtained the grant of the
+lordship of this fort and the surrounding country on conditions of
+maintaining the whole cost of the establishment, and making a
+settlement of colonists. Another visit to France in 1677-8 secured him
+further support and capital, and he returned from France with a
+companion, Henry de Tonty.
+
+La Salle, with de Tonty, started from Fort Frontenac in September,
+1678, so intensely anxious to commence his discoveries that he
+disregarded the difficulties of the winter season. On his way to
+Niagara he paid a visit to the Iroquois to conciliate them, and
+cleverly got from them permission to build a vessel on Lake Erie and
+also to erect a blacksmith's forge, near where Niagara now stands. The
+blacksmith's forge grew rapidly into a fort before the Indians were
+aware of what was being done. By August, 1679, he had built and
+launched (in spite of extraordinary calamities and misfortunes) on the
+Upper Niagara River the first sailing boat which ever appeared on the
+four great upper lakes of the St. Lawrence basin.
+
+In this ship he sailed through Lake Erie and past Detroit into Lake
+Huron, and thence to Green Bay (Lake Michigan), stopping at intervals
+amongst the canoes of the amazed natives, who for the first time heard
+the sound of cannon, for he had armed his vessel with guns. At Green
+Bay he collected a large quantity of furs, which had been obtained in
+trade by the men he had sent on in advance. He loaded up his sailing
+boat, the _Griffon_, and sent her on a voyage back to the east to
+transport this splendid load of furs to the merchants with whom he had
+become deeply indebted. Unhappily the _Griffon_ foundered in a storm
+on Lake Michigan, and was never heard of again. Meantime La Salle,
+with de Tonty and Father HENNEPIN, the discoverer of Niagara, had
+travelled in canoes to the south-east end of Lake Michigan, had passed
+up the Joseph River, and thence by portage into the Kankaki, which
+flows into the Illinois. This river he descended till he stopped near
+the site of the modern Peoria. Below this place he built a fort--for
+it was winter time--and although the natives were not very friendly he
+collected enough information from them to satisfy himself that he
+could easily pass down the Illinois to the Mississippi.
+
+He sent one of the Frenchmen, Michel Accault, together with Father
+Hennepin, to explore the Illinois down to the Mississippi; de Tonty he
+placed in charge of the fort with a small garrison; and then himself,
+on the last day of February, 1680, started to walk overland from Lake
+Michigan to Detroit. Eventually, by means of a canoe, which he
+constructed himself, he regained Fort Frontenac and Montreal. When he
+returned to Fort Crèvecoeur, on the Illinois River,[11] it was to meet
+with the signs of a horrible disaster. The Iroquois in his absence had
+descended on the place with a great war party. They had massacred the
+Illinois people dwelling in a big settlement near the fort, and the
+remains of their mutilated bodies were scattered all over the place.
+Their town had been burnt; the fort was empty and abandoned. There
+were no traces of the Frenchmen, however, amongst the skulls and
+skeletons lying around him; for the skulls retained sufficient hair to
+show that they belonged to Amerindians. Nevertheless, he deposited his
+new stock of goods and most of his men in the ruins of the Fort
+Crèvecoeur, and descended the River Illinois to the Mississippi. But
+he was obliged to turn back. On the west bank of the river were the
+scared Illinois Indians, on the east the raging Iroquois. Whenever La
+Salle could safely visit a deserted camp he would examine the remains
+of the tortured men tied to stakes to see if amongst them there was a
+Frenchman.
+
+[Footnote 11: He had named this place "Heartbreak" because when
+building it he had learnt of the loss of his sailing ship _Griffon_,
+with the splendid supply of furs which was to have paid off his debts,
+with all his reserve supplies and his men. This was not the limit of
+his troubles; for, after the overland journey of appalling hardships
+through a country of melting ice, flood, swamp, and hostile
+Iroquois--the Iroquois being furious with La Salle for having
+outwitted them in the building of this fort, and seeking him
+everywhere to destroy him--when he got to Montreal it was only to
+learn that a ship, coming from France with further supplies for his
+great journey had been wrecked at the mouth of the St. Lawrence!]
+
+But de Tonty was not dead. After incredible adventures he had escaped
+the raids of the Iroquois and had reached the Straits of
+Michili-makinak, between Lakes Michigan and Huron, and there met La
+Salle, who was once more on his way to Montreal.
+
+Again de La Salle and de Tonty, in the winter of 1681, returned to the
+south end of Lake Michigan, and made their way over the snow to the
+Illinois River. On the 6th February, 1682, they left the junction of
+the Illinois and the Mississippi to trace that great river to its
+outlet in the sea. La Salle reached the delta on the 6th April, 1682,
+having on the way taken possession of the country in the name of the
+King of France. Accault and Father Hennepin had meantime paddled up
+the Northern Mississippi as far as its junction with the Wisconsin. At
+this place their party was surrounded and captured by a large band of
+Siou warriors.
+
+The Frenchmen were at first in danger of being killed, as the Sious
+refused to smoke with them the pipe of peace. But being much less
+bloodthirsty than the Iroquois, they soon calmed down and treated
+their captives with a certain rough friendliness. All their goods were
+taken from them, even the vestments worn by Father Hennepin. But they
+were well supplied with food such as the country produced--bison,
+beef, fish, wild turkeys, and the grain of the wild rice, which made
+such excellent flour. They were gradually conveyed by the Siou[12] to
+a large settlement of that tribe on the shore of Mille Lacs, a sheet
+of water not far distant from the westernmost extremity of Lake
+Superior. Whilst staying at this Siou town Hennepin conversed with
+Indians from the far north and north-west, and from what they told him
+came to the conclusion that there was no continuous waterway or
+"Strait of Anian" across the North-American continent, but that
+the land extended to the north-west till it finally joined the
+north-eastern part of Asia--a guess that was not very far wrong. But
+he also surmised that there were rivers in the far west which led to
+an ocean--the Pacific--across which ships might go to Japan and China
+without passing to the southward of the Equator.
+
+[Footnote 12: The real name of the Siou, as far as we can arrive at it
+through the records of the French pioneers, was Issati or Naduessiu.]
+
+Whilst moving up and down the northern Mississippi, bison-hunting with
+the Indians, the Frenchmen were met near the site of St. Paul by one
+of the great French pioneers of the seventeenth century, the Sieur
+DANIEL DE GREYSOLON DU L'HUT. This remarkable man, who was an officer
+of the French army, had already planted the French arms at the
+Amerindian settlement of Mille Lacs in 1679, and had established
+himself as a powerful authority at the west end of Lake Superior. He
+had also summoned a great council of Amerindian tribes--the Siou from
+the Upper Mississippi, the Assiniboins from the Lake of the Woods
+(between Lake Superior and Lake Winnipeg), and the Kri Indians from
+Lake Nipigon. He had further discovered, in 1679, the water route of
+the St. Croix River from near Lake Superior to the Mississippi.
+
+Du L'Hut soon persuaded the Siou to let his fellow countrymen return
+with him to Lake Superior. Accault remained behind with the Siou,
+delighted with their wild, roving life, and no doubt married an Indian
+wife and became the father of some of those bold half-breeds who
+played such a great part in the subsequent history of innermost
+Canada. But Father Hennepin returned to Montreal, and made his way
+eventually to France, where he fell into great disgrace and was
+unfrocked. He had richly merited this treatment, for after he heard of
+the death of La Salle he impudently claimed the discovery of the whole
+course of the Mississippi River for himself, and for a long time was
+believed. He will certainly go down in history as the man who
+discovered and described Niagara Falls (in 1678), and he also assisted
+greatly to clear up the geography of the time by the information he
+collected from the Amerindians as to the vast extent of the
+North-American continent; but he was a boastful, unscrupulous man.
+
+Du L'Hut, who came to the rescue of Accault and Hennepin, was of noble
+family, and a member of the king's bodyguard. He decided, however, to
+seek his fortune in Canada, and obtained a commission as captain. It
+was his cousin, Henri de Tonty, who had accompanied La Salle. After
+returning to France to fight in the wars then going on, he came back
+to Canada with a younger brother, Claude. He had in him the spirit of
+great adventurers, and longed to visit the unknown countries of the
+upper Mississippi. In the early part of these journeys he rescued his
+fellow countrymen from the keeping of the Sious in the manner
+described. After that he spent _thirty_ years travelling and trading
+about North America, from the northern Mississippi into what we
+should now call Manitoba, and from the vicinity of Lake Winnipeg to
+Hudson Bay. He brought the great Amerindian nation of the Dakotas into
+direct relations with the French. He was absolutely fearless, and in
+no period of Canadian history has France been more splendidly
+represented in the personality of any of her officers than she was by
+Daniel de Greysolon du L'Hut. His was a tiresome name for English
+scribes and speakers. It was therefore written by them "Duluth" and
+pronounced D[)a]l[)a]th (instead of "Dülüt"). It is the name given to
+the township near the southernmost extremity of Lake Superior.
+
+When the journeys of du L'Hut came to an end--he died at Montreal in
+1710--and after the era of great French explorations in North America
+drew to a close, the French power was beginning to be eclipsed by that
+of the British, who were building up the foundations of a colony on
+the shores of Hudson's Bay, and were taking steps to acquire
+Newfoundland and to colonize New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
+
+Nevertheless, in 1720, the King of France, or rather the regent acting
+for the king, decided that a serious attempt must be made to discover
+the Western Sea, or Pacific Ocean, from the French posts which had
+been established in what is now known as Manitoba. The French had
+already discovered the Missouri, and had heard from several Indian
+tribes that it was possible to cross the Rocky Mountains and descend
+by other rivers to the waters of a great ocean, the coasts of which
+were visited by Spaniards. Several expeditions were sent out, more or
+less under the control of Jesuits, but did not accomplish much.
+
+The really great discoveries which link the "Great North-West" for all
+time in history with France and French names were initiated by PIERRE
+GAULTIER DE LA VÉRENDRYE, who was born in 1685 at the town of Three
+Rivers, in Lower Canada, where his father was Governor. He entered
+the army at the age of twelve, and took part in the French campaigns
+in Flanders, winning the rank of lieutenant at the battle of
+Malplaquet, where he received nine wounds and was left for dead on the
+field. He then returned to Canada, not having the necessary means with
+which to support the position of a lieutenant; and then, as France
+seemed to have entered upon a period of protracted peace, he
+determined to become an explorer. In 1728, when he was commandant of
+the trading post of Nipigon, to the north of Lake Superior, he heard
+from an Indian that there was a great lake beyond Lake Superior, out
+of which flowed a river towards the west, which ultimately led to a
+great salt lake where the water ebbed and flowed. As a matter of fact,
+these stories simply referred to Lake Winnipeg, but the importance of
+them lay in the fact that they acted as a powerful incentive to La
+Vérendrye to push his explorations westwards, and perhaps discover a
+route to the Pacific Ocean.[13]
+
+[Footnote 13: The water of Lake Winnipeg--whatever it may be now--was
+frequently stated by Amerindians in earlier days to be "stinking
+water", or salt, brackish water, disagreeable to drink, and this lake
+exhibits a curious phenomenon of a regular rise and fall, reminding
+the observer of a tide, a phenomenon by no means confined to Lake
+Winnipeg, but occurring on sheets of water of much smaller extent.]
+
+La Vérendrye afterwards went to Quebec, where he discussed his plans
+for Western exploration with the Governor of New France, the Marquis
+de Beauharnais, who was a distant connection of the Beauharnais family
+from which sprang the first husband of the Empress Joséphine, the
+grandfather of Napoleon III.
+
+This Governor entered into his scheme with enthusiasm, though he could
+obtain little or no money from the ministers of Louis XVI. But a way
+out of the difficulty was found by the Governor giving La Vérendrye
+the monopoly of the fur trade in the far North-West.[14] This
+monopoly enabled La Vérendrye to obtain the funds for his expenditure
+from the merchants of Montreal, and in the summer of 1731 he started
+out on his explorations, accompanied by three of his sons, his nephew,
+fifty soldiers and French Canadian canoe men, and a Jesuit missionary.
+For a guide they had the Indian, Oshagash, who had first told La
+Vérendrye of the western river and the salt water. After many delays,
+necessitated by the need for trading in furs to satisfy the merchants
+of Montreal, La Vérendrye and his expedition skated on snowshoes down
+the ice of the Winnipeg River and reached the shores of Lake Winnipeg.
+They were probably the first white men to arrive there. La Vérendrye
+established forts and posts along his route from Lake Nipigon, but his
+expedition had not been a commercial success. There was a deficit of
+£1700 between the amount realized in furs and the cost of the
+equipment and wages of the French and French Canadians. De Beauharnais
+made a fresh appeal to the French Court; he urged that the expenditure
+to convey La Vérendrye's expedition to the Pacific Ocean would not be
+a large one--perhaps only £1500.
+
+[Footnote 14: What we should call to-day a "concession".]
+
+But the French Court was obdurate; it would not furnish a penny. Thus
+La Vérendrye, in all probability, was prevented from forestalling the
+British explorers of sixty and seventy years later, besides the
+expeditions of Captain Cook and Captain Vancouver, which secured for
+Great Britain a foothold on the Pacific seaboard of British Columbia.
+
+La Vérendrye in his fort on Lake Winnipeg was in a desperate position.
+He made a hasty journey back to Montreal and even Quebec, to beat up
+funds and to pacify the capitalists of his fur-trading monopoly. He
+painted in glowing colours the prospects of cutting off the trade of
+the Hudson's Bay Company and the building up of an immense commerce in
+valuable furs, and these men agreed once again to furnish the funds
+for the extension of the expedition. On his return he took back with
+him his youngest son, Louis, a boy of eighteen. Whilst he had been
+absent from Fort St. Charles (a post which he had built on the Lake of
+the Woods, in communication by water with the Winnipeg River), on Lake
+Winnipeg, that place was visited by a party of Siou Indians. They
+found the fort occupied in the absence of the French by a number of
+Kri or "Knistino" Indians in French service. These Kris were
+frightened at the arrival of the Sious and fired guns at them. "Who
+fired on us?" demanded these haughty Indians from Dakota, and the Kris
+replied, "The French". Then the Sious withdrew, but vowed to be
+completely revenged on the treacherous white man.
+
+When La Vérendrye reached Fort St. Charles its little garrison was
+almost at the point of starvation. He had travelled himself ahead of
+his party, and the immense stock of supplies and provisions he was
+bringing up country were a long way behind him when he reached the
+fort. He therefore sent back his son Jean, together with the most
+active of his Canadian voyageurs and the Jesuit missionary, in order
+that they might meet the heavily laden canoes and hurry them up
+country as fast as possible. But this party was met by the Sious on
+Rainy River, who massacred them to a man. They were afterwards found
+lying in a circle on the beach, decapitated and mutilated. The heads
+of most of them were wrapped ironically in beaver skins, and La
+Vérendrye's son, Jean, was horribly cut and slashed, and his
+mutilated, naked body decorated with garters and bracelets of
+porcupine quills.
+
+Meantime, during his absence in Lower Canada, two of his sons in
+charge of Fort Maurepas, on Lake Winnipeg, had been very active. They
+had discovered the great size of this lake, and also the entrance of
+the Red River on the south. They then proceeded to explore both the
+Red River and its western tributary the Assiniboin. On the Assiniboin
+was afterwards built the post of Fort La Reine, and from this place in
+1738 La Vérendrye started with two of his sons, several other
+Frenchmen, a few Canadian voyageurs, and twenty-five Assiniboin
+Indians. Leaving the Assiniboin River, they crossed the North Dakota
+prairies on foot. Owing to the timidity of his Indian guides, La
+Vérendrye was not led direct to the Missouri River, the "Great River
+of the West", but along a zigzag route which permitted his guides to
+reinforce their numbers at Assiniboin villages, and every now and then
+join in a bison hunt. All the party were on foot, horses not then
+having reached the Assiniboin tribe. But on the 28th of November,
+1738, they drew near to the Missouri and were met by a chief of the
+great Mandan tribe, who was accompanied by thirty of his warriors, and
+who presented La Vérendrye with young maize cobs and leaves of native
+tobacco, these being regarded as emblems of peace and friendship.
+
+The Mandan tribe differed materially in its habits and customs from
+the Indians to the north, who supported themselves mainly, if not
+entirely, by hunting, who cared very little for agriculture, and moved
+continually like nomads over great stretches of country, living
+chiefly in tents or temporary villages. The Mandans, on the other
+hand, were a people who practised agriculture, and had permanent and
+well-constructed towns. In fact, their civilization and demeanour made
+such an impression on the Assiniboin and other northern tribes that
+they had been considered a sort of "white people", somewhat akin to
+Europeans, and La Vérendrye was a little disappointed to find them
+only Amerindians in race and colour.
+
+The six hundred Assiniboins who had gathered about La Vérendrye's
+expedition proved to be a great trouble to him, as they were
+constantly picking quarrels with the Mandans, who were very dishonest.
+Accordingly, La Vérendrye arranged with the Mandans to frighten them
+away by pretending that the Siou Indians were on the warpath. The six
+hundred Assiniboins bolted, but took with them La Vérendrye's
+interpreter, so that he was henceforth obliged to communicate with the
+Mandans by means of signs and gestures. This and other reasons decided
+him to return--even though it was the depth of winter, to Fort La
+Reine, but not before he had given the head chief of the Mandans a
+flag and a leaden plate which (unknown to the Mandans) meant taking
+possession of their country in the name of the French king.
+
+The journey back to Fort La Reine, over the plains of the Assiniboin,
+was a terrible experience. The party had to travel in the teeth of an
+almost unceasing north-east wind which was freezingly cold. Night
+after night they were obliged to dig deep holes in the snow for their
+sleeping places. La Vérendrye nearly died of agonizing pain and
+fatigue during this journey, and was a long time recovering from its
+effects.
+
+As they continued to receive friendly messages from the Mandans,
+inviting them to make further discoveries, LA VÉRENDRYE'S sons, PIERRE
+and FRANCOIS, set out in the spring of 1742, and, after some checks
+and disappointments, managed with a single Mandan guide to reach Broad
+Lands on the Little Missouri River, where they noticed the earths of
+different colours, blue, green, red, black, white, and yellow, which
+are so characteristic of this region. They reached the village of the
+Crow Indians, passed through a portion of the friendly tribe, the
+Cheyennes (the name was probably pronounced Shian) and got into the
+country which was constantly being ravaged by the Snake Indians, or
+Shoshones. Here, on the 1st of January, 1743, when the mists of
+morning cleared away, they saw upon the horizon the outline of huge
+mountains. As they travelled westwards or south-westwards, day after
+day, the jagged blue wall resolved itself into towering snow-capped
+peaks, glittering in the sun and provoking the appellation of "the
+Mountains of Bright Stones", a name probably given to the Rocky
+Mountains by the Amerindians, but used in all the earlier French and
+English maps until the end of the eighteenth century.[15]
+
+[Footnote 15: The term Rocky Mountains was probably first officially
+applied by the American expedition, under Lewis and Clarke, sent out
+by the United States Government in 1804 to take possession of the
+coast of Oregon, but it was used twenty or thirty years earlier by
+British explorers of Western Canada.]
+
+On the 12th of January they reached the very foot of the mountains,
+the slopes of which they saw were thickly covered with magnificent
+forests of pine and fir--forests, that have since suffered to an
+appalling extent from annual bush fires, which so far the United
+States Government seems unable to check. Here they were to meet with a
+bitter disappointment. They were travelling with a very large war
+party of the Bow Indians for the purpose, if need be, of attacking and
+routing the Shoshones; but a Shoshone camp at the base of the
+mountains was found to be deserted, and the Bow Indians jumped to the
+conclusion that the Shoshones had turned back through the forest
+unseen, and were now making with all speed for the principal war camp
+of the Bow Indians, where they would massacre the women and children.
+They would listen to no remonstrances from the two Frenchmen, who
+perforce had also to travel back, either alone or with the Bow
+Indians, in the direction of their war camp, where the idea of a
+Shoshone attack was found to be baseless. Eventually, the two La
+Vérendrye brothers were obliged to make their way to the Missouri
+River, and abandon any idea of finding a way to the Western Ocean
+across the Rocky Mountains.
+
+The French pioneers had already heard of the Spaniards in California,
+and the possibility of getting into touch with them. They had now
+discovered, first of all Europeans, the Rocky Mountains--that great
+snowy range of North America which extends from Robson Peak on the
+eastern borders of British Columbia to Baldy Peak in New Mexico.
+
+Afterwards the La Vérendryes directed their attention more to the
+opportunities of reaching the Far West through the streams that flowed
+into the system of Lake Winnipeg, and in this way discovered, in or
+about 1743, the great River Saskatchewan. This river La Vérendrye's
+sons followed up till they reached the junction between the North and
+the South Rivers, and then they probably learnt a good deal more of
+the Southern Saskatchewan, on which they may have built one or two
+posts. La Vérendrye himself thought that this would prove to be the
+best route by which the French could reach the Western Sea.
+
+By this time the French Government was becoming alive to the
+importance of these discoveries, and it conferred a decoration on La
+Vérendrye, and allowed him to hope that he might be furnished with
+means for further exploration. But he died soon afterwards, at the
+close of 1749, and after his death his sons were treated with gross
+ingratitude and neglect. The self-seeking Governor of New France
+endeavoured to secure the fur trade for his own friends, and sent an
+officer with a terribly long name--Captain Jacques Répentigny Le
+Gardeur de Saint Pierre--to continue the exploration towards the
+Pacific. From 1750 to 1763 the French occupation of this region of the
+two Saskatchewan Rivers was extended till in all probability the
+French got within sight of the northern Rocky Mountains in the
+vicinity of Calgary. Then came the English conquest of Canada to stop
+all further enterprise in this direction, and the story was next to be
+taken up by English, Scottish, and Canadian explorers.
+
+It will be men with English and Scottish names, mainly, who will
+henceforth complete the work begun and established so magnificently by
+Cartier, Brulé, Nicollet, Jolliet, La Salle, du L'Hut, and La
+Vérendrye, though the French Canadians will also play a notable part,
+together with "Americans", from New England.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+The Geographical Conditions of the Canadian Dominion
+
+
+Before we continue to follow the adventures of the pioneers of British
+North America, I think--even if it seems wearisome and discursive--my
+readers would better understand this story if I placed before them a
+general description of what is now the Dominion of Canada, more
+particularly as it was seen and discovered by the earliest European
+explorers.
+
+The most prominent feature on the east, and that which was nearest to
+Europe, was the large island of NEWFOUNDLAND, 42,000 square miles in
+extent, that is to say, nearly as large as England without Wales. It
+seems to bar the way of the direct sea access by the Gulf of St.
+Lawrence to the very heart of North America; and, until the Straits of
+Belle Isle and of Cabot were discovered, did certainly arrest the
+voyages of the earliest pioneers. Newfoundland, as you can see on the
+map, has been cut into and carved by the forces of nature until it has
+a most fantastic outline. Long peninsulas of hills alternate with
+deep, narrow gulfs, and about the south-east and east coasts there are
+innumerable islets, most of which in the days of the early discoverers
+were the haunt of millions of sea birds who resorted there for
+breeding purposes. The heart of Newfoundland, so to speak, is an
+elevated country with hills and mountains rising to a little over 2000
+feet. A great deal of the country is, or was, dense forests, chiefly
+consisting of fir trees. As numerous almost as the sea birds were the
+seals and walruses which frequented the Newfoundland coasts. Inland
+there were very large numbers of reindeer, generally styled nowadays
+by the French-Canadian name of _Caribou_[1]. Besides reindeer there
+were wolves, apparently of a smaller size than those of the mainland.
+There were also lynxes and foxes, besides polar bears, martens,
+squirrels, &c. The human inhabitants of Newfoundland, whom I shall
+describe in the next chapter, were known subsequently by the name of
+Beothuk, or Beothik, a nickname of no particular meaning. They had
+evidently been separated for many centuries from contact with the
+Amerindians of the mainland, though they may have been visited
+occasionally on the north by the Eskimo. They had in fact been so long
+separated from the other Amerindians of North America that they were
+strikingly different from them in their habits, customs, and language.
+
+[Footnote 1: The first Frenchmen visiting North America, and seeing
+the caribou without their horns, thought they were a kind of wild ass.
+The reindeer of Newfoundland is a sub-species peculiar to this
+island.]
+
+The climate of Newfoundland is not nearly so cold as that of the
+mainland, nor so hot in summer, but it is spoilt at times by fogs and
+sea mists which conceal the landscape for days together. In the
+wintertime, and quite late in the spring, quantities of ice hang about
+the shores of the islands, and when the warm weather comes, these
+accumulations of ice slip away into the Atlantic in the form of
+icebergs and are most dangerous to shipping.
+
+To the south-east of Newfoundland the sea is very shallow for hundreds
+of miles, the remains no doubt of a great extension of North America
+in the direction of Europe which had sunk below the surface ages ago.
+In this shallow water--the "Banks" of Newfoundland--fish, especially
+codfish, swarmed in millions, and still continue to swarm with little,
+if any, diminution from the constant toll of the fishing fleets.
+Another creature found in great abundance on these coasts is the true
+lobster,[2] which filled as important a part in the diet of the
+Beothuk natives, before the European occupation, as the salmon did in
+the dietary of the British Columbian tribes.
+
+[Footnote 2: _Homarus americanus_. The lobster of Newfoundland and the
+coasts of North-east America is closely related to the common lobster
+of British waters. These true lobsters resemble the freshwater
+crayfish in having their foremost pair of legs modified into large,
+unequal-sized claws. The European rock-lobster of the Mediterranean
+and French coasts (the _langouste_ of the French) has no large claws.]
+
+The next most striking feature in the geography of Eastern North
+America is NOVA SCOTIA. AS you look at it on the map this province
+seems to be a long peninsula connected with the mainland by the narrow
+isthmus of Chignecto; but its northernmost portion--Cape
+Breton--really consists of two big and two little islands, only
+separated from Nova Scotia by a very narrow strait--the Gut of Canso.
+On the north of Nova Scotia lies the large Prince Edward Island, and
+north of this again the small group of the Magdalen Islands,
+discovered by Cartier, the resort of herds of immense walruses at one
+time. Due west of Nova Scotia the country, first flat (like Nova
+Scotia itself) and at one time covered with magnificent forests, rises
+into a very hilly region which culminates on the north in the Shikshok
+Mountains of the Gaspé Peninsula (nearly 4000 feet in height) and the
+White Mountains (over 6000 feet) and the Adirondak Mountains (over
+5000 feet). The White, the Green, and the Adirondak Mountains lie just
+within the limits of the United States.
+
+North of the Gaspé Peninsula, in the great Gulf of St. Lawrence, is
+Anticosti Island, which rises on the south in a series of terraces
+until it reaches an altitude of about 2000 feet. This island, which is
+well wooded, was said to have swarmed with reindeer at one time, and
+perhaps other forms of deer also, and to have possessed grizzly bears
+which fed on the deer, besides Polar bears visiting it in the winter.
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF CANADA]
+
+Newfoundland is separated from the mainland of LABRADOR on the north
+by the Strait of Belle Isle, and from Cape Breton Island on the south
+by Cabot Strait. Labrador is an immense region on the continent, where
+the coast (except for the deep inlet of Melville Lake) soon rises into
+an elevated plateau 2000 feet in height, which is strewn with almost
+uncountable lakes, out of which rivers flow north, south, east, and
+west. On the north-east corner of Labrador there are mountains from
+3000 to 4000 feet, overlooking the sea. The whole of this vast
+Labrador or Ungava Peninsula, which is bounded on the south by the
+River and Gulf of St. Lawrence, and on the north by Hudson's Bay and
+Hudson's Straits, is an inhospitable land, at no time with much
+population.
+
+"The winter of Labrador is long and severe; one would need to have
+blood like brandy, a skin of brass, and an eye of glass not to suffer
+from the rigours of a Labrador winter. In the summer the frequent fogs
+render the air damp, and the constant breezes from the immense fields
+of ice floating in the gulf keep the land very cool, and make any
+alteration in the winter dress almost unnecessary" (James M'Kenzie).
+Labrador and the lands farther north on the continent of North America
+are separated from Greenland on the east by the broad straits--a great
+branch of the Atlantic--named after Davis and Baffin, who first
+explored them. Passing up Davis Strait, along the coast of Labrador to
+beyond 60° N. lat., the voyager comes to Hudson's Straits, which, if
+followed up first to the northwards and then to the south-west, would
+lead him into the great expanse of Hudson's Bay, one of the most
+important features in the geography of North America.
+
+HUDSON'S BAY, which is a great inland sea with an area of about
+315,000 square miles, has a southern loop or extension called James
+Bay, the shores of which are not at a very great distance either from
+Lake Superior to the south-west, or from the source of the River
+Saguenay on the south. The Saguenay flows into the Lower St. Lawrence
+River. It is therefore not surprising that as soon as the French began
+to settle in Lower Canada they heard of a vast northern inland sea of
+salt water--Hudson's Bay. But the people who discovered and surveyed
+Hudson's Bay during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth
+centuries were always on the search for a passage out of its waters
+into the Arctic Sea, which would enable them to get right round
+America into the Pacific Ocean.
+
+In Arctic North America Nature really seems to have been preparing
+during millions of years a grim joke with which to baffle exploring
+humanity! It is easy enough to pass from Davis Straits into Hudson's
+Bay, but to get out of Hudson's Bay in the direction of the Arctic
+Ocean is like getting out of a very cleverly arranged maze. There are
+innumerable false exits, which have disappointed one Arctic explorer
+after another. When they had discovered that Hudson's Bay to the south
+was only like a great bottle, and had no outlet, they explored its
+northern waters; and when they found Chesterfield Inlet on the
+north-west, which leads into Baker Lake, they thought perhaps here was
+the passage through into the Arctic Sea. But no; that was no good. To
+the north of Chesterfield Inlet was a broad channel called Roe's
+Welcome, which led into Wager Bay and through frozen straits into
+Fox's Channel, and this again into Ross Bay. Here only a very narrow
+isthmus separates Hudson's Bay from the Arctic Sea; but still it is an
+isthmus of solid land. Turning to the north-east and north there are
+the broad waters of Fox's Channel leading into Fox's Basin; but the
+north-west corner of this inland sea was so blocked with ice and
+islands that it was not until the year 1822 that the _real_ northern
+outlet of Hudson's Bay was discovered by Captain EDWARD PARRY to be
+the narrow Fury and Hecla Straits (the discovery was not completed
+until 1839 by the Hudson's Bay Company's explorers T. SIMPSON and W.
+DEASE).
+
+Here you have found the way out into the Gulf of Boothia, which
+communicates in the north with Barrow Strait and Baffin's Bay. But
+across the supposed peninsula of Boothia there were discovered, in
+1847, by Dr. JOHN RAE (also an officer of the Hudson's Bay Company)
+the narrow Bellot Straits, which lead into Franklin Straits and so
+into M'Clintock Channel and the Arctic Ocean. After this you might
+theoretically (if the ice permitted it) sail or steam your ship
+through Victoria Straits and Coronation Gulf till you got into
+Beaufort Sea (part of the open Arctic Ocean), or, by turning round
+Prince Albert Land, pass through the Prince of Wales' Straits or
+M'Clure Straits into the same Beaufort Sea.
+
+The North-West Passage across the Arctic extremity of North America,
+therefore, _did_ exist after all, and the directest route would be up
+Davis Straits, through Hudson's Straits into Fox's Basin, then through
+the Fury and Hecla Straits into the Gulf of Boothia, then through the
+Bellot Straits and Franklin Straits (past Victorialand and Kemp
+Peninsula) and out through the Dolphin and Union Straits into the
+Arctic Ocean, and so on round the north coast of Alaska, past Bering's
+Straits into Bering Sea and the Pacific. But of course the
+accumulations of ice completely block continuous navigation.
+
+The huge jagged island of BAFFIN'S LAND differs from much of Arctic
+America in that it has high land rising into mountains. This is so
+completely covered with ice that it is of little interest under
+present circumstances to the world of civilization, though the large
+herds of musk oxen which it once supported were of much use to Arctic
+explorers as a food supply in winter. The coasts are inhabited by a
+few thousand Eskimo, and Davis Straits and Baffin's Bay possess a
+certain amount of commercial importance owing to the whale fisheries
+which are carried on there by the British, the Danes, the Americans,
+and the Eskimo. In fact the importance of these whale fisheries have
+of late made the Americans of the United States a little inclined to
+challenge the British possession of these great Arctic islands. North
+Devon, North Somerset, Prince of Wales' Land, Melville Island, Banks
+Land, Prince Albert Land, &c. &c, are names of other great Arctic
+islands completely within the grip of the ice. The nature of their
+interior is almost unknown. They are at present of use to no form of
+man unless it be to a few wandering Eskimo, who come to their coasts
+in the summer to kill seals.
+
+The great NORTH-WEST TERRITORIES of the Canadian Dominion extend from
+the American frontier of Alaska (which is the 141° of W. long.) to the
+Ungava Peninsula, which abuts on Labrador. Where this vast region
+slopes to the Arctic Ocean and Hudson's Bay it is rather low and flat,
+except between Alaska and the Mackenzie River, and between the
+Mackenzie and the watershed of Hudson's Bay. The principal river
+system in the far North-West is that of the great Mackenzie River,
+which flows into the Arctic Ocean (Beaufort Sea) through an immense
+delta, and is one of the longest rivers in the world. The southernmost
+sources of the Mackenzie (such as the Peace River and the Athabaska
+River) rise in the Rocky Mountains to the east of British Columbia.
+These waters are stored for a time in Lake Athabaska, and then under
+the name of Slave River flow northwards into the Great Slave Lake, and
+out of this, under the name of Mackenzie River, into Beaufort Sea,
+through an immense delta. The Great Bear Lake is also a feeder of the
+Mackenzie.
+
+Two other Arctic rivers at one time thought to be of great importance
+as means of communication with the Arctic Ocean, are the Great Fish
+River, which flows into Elliot Bay, and the Coppermine River, which
+enters Coronation Gulf. The other northward-flowing rivers (passing
+through innumerable lakes and lakelets) enter Hudson's Bay.
+
+West of the great Mackenzie River rises the northernmost extension of
+the Rocky Mountains. All this easternmost part of Alaska, which is
+under British control, is a region of great elevation, something like
+parts of Central Asia. The streams which rise here unite in the great
+Yukon River, and this has its outlet in Bering's Sea. Some points of
+the great mountains within the limits of British territory in this
+direction reach to nearly 20,000 feet (Mount Logan).
+
+But the climate of the northern parts of the Canadian Dominion differs
+very greatly in the west as compared to the east. For instance, the
+northern parts of Labrador are cruelly Arctic, hopelessly frozen,
+though they are in the same latitude as St. Petersburg (the capital of
+European Russia) and as the splendidly forested northern parts of
+British Columbia. Eastern Labrador is a region in which explorers have
+frequently perished from cold and starvation. Although in the lofty
+parts of the Yukon country (three hundred and fifty miles north of
+treeless Labrador) the winter is intensely cold, and the ground is
+frozen for a considerable depth downwards, all the year round, there
+are still great forests; and a white and Amerindian population find it
+possible to live there all the year round, while animal life is
+extremely abundant. On the other hand, a good deal of the territory
+between Mackenzie River and Hudson's Bay is almost uninhabitable,
+except during the summertime, owing to the depth of the snow and the
+bare rocky nature of the ground.
+
+The treeless area north of Lake Athabaska (the "barren lands" of the
+Canadian Dominion) seems to consist of nothing but slabs of rock and
+loose stones. Yet this region is far from being without vegetation.
+The rock is often covered with a thin or thick sod of lichen
+("reindeer moss", in some districts three feet deep) intermixed with
+the roots of the wishakapakka herb (_Ledum palustre_, from which
+Labrador tea is made), of cranberries, gooseberries, heather (with
+white bell flowers), and a dwarf birch. This last, in sheltered places
+where a little vegetable soil has been formed, grows into a low
+scrubby bush. As to the gooseberries--here and farther south--Hearne
+describes them as "thriving best on the stony or rocky ground, open
+and much exposed to the sun". They spread along the ground like vines.
+The small red fruit is always most plentiful and fine on the under
+side of the branches, probably owing to the reflected heat of the
+stones. In the bleaker places a hard, black, crumply lichen--the
+"Tripe de roche" of the French Canadians (_Gyrophoreus_) grows on the
+rocks and stones, and is of great service to the Amerindians, as it
+furnishes them with a temporary subsistence when no animal food can be
+procured. This lichen, when boiled, turns to a gummy consistence
+something like sago. Hearne describes it as being remarkably good when
+used to thicken broth; but some other pioneers complained that it made
+them and their Indians seriously ill. Another lichen, "reindeer moss"
+(_Cladina_), is also eaten by men as well as deer. The _muskegs_, or
+bogs and marshes, produce in the summertime a very rapid growth of
+grass (as well as breeding swarms of mosquitoes!), and thus furnish
+food for the geese and swans which throng them between June and
+October.
+
+In the summertime all these northern territories of Canada--from the
+basin of Lake Winnipeg, with its white pelicans, to the Arctic
+circle--swarm with birds, wild swans, geese, ducks, plovers, grouse,
+cranes, eagles, owls of several kinds--especially the great snowy
+eagle-owl--red-breasted thrushes, black and white snow-buntings,
+scarlet grosbeaks (the female green and grey), crested jays, and
+ravens "of a beautiful glossy black, richly tinged with purple", but
+smaller in size than those of Europe.
+
+This is also the country for bears. Some grizzlies still linger here.
+Their range at one time extended to near the Arctic circle. In
+Alaska (British as well as United States) there is an enormous
+chocolate-coloured bear, the biggest in the world. The Polar bear,
+usually creamy white along the seacoast, is stated to range inland
+during the summer over the "barren grounds", and to develop either a
+permanent local variety or a seasonal change of coat, which is
+greyish-brown or blue-grey.
+
+The black bear in northern Canada is said to give birth at times to
+cubs which are cinnamon-brown in colour.
+
+"In the early summer the black bears swim up and down the northern
+rivers with their mouths open, swallowing the immense number of water
+insects which have come into being at that season." Hearne goes on to
+state that bears which have subsisted on this food for some days, when
+cut open emit a stench that is intolerable, and which taints their
+flesh to a sickening degree. The insects on which they feed are mostly
+of two kinds: one a sort of grasshopper with a hard black skin, and
+the other a soft, brown, sluggish fly. "This last is the most
+numerous. In some of the lakes such quantities are forced into the
+bays when the wind blows hard, that they are pressed together in dead
+multitudes and remain a great nuisance. I have several times, in my
+inland voyages from York Fort (Hudson's Bay), found it scarcely
+possible to land in some of those bays for the intolerable stench of
+those insects, which in some places were lying in putrid masses to the
+depth of two or three feet." It is more than probable that the bears
+occasionally feed on these dead insects. After the middle of July,
+when they take to a diet of berries, they are excellent eating, and
+continue to be so to the end of the winter.
+
+The Arctic foxes of this region when young are sooty black all over,
+and gradually change to a light ash-grey in colour, with a dark,
+almost blue, tint on the head, legs, and back. In winter they usually
+become white all over, with or without a black tip to the tail; but it
+is recorded by some travellers that not all the foxes of the _Canis
+lagopus_ species turn white; some keep their dark-grey colour all the
+year round. The common fox (_C. vulpes fulvus_) in Northern Canada is
+sometimes black, with white-tipped hairs. Wolves in these far northern
+regions do not seem to have been so abundant as farther south.
+
+The deer tribe are represented (north of the Athabaska region) by the
+reindeer and the elk (called by the Canadians "Moose"). The wapiti or
+red deer (for which the common Amerindian name in the north was
+_Waskesiu_) seldom ranged farther north than the vicinity of Lake
+Winnipeg. The reindeer of the "barren ground" sub-species extended to
+the Arctic seacoast, and were at one time especially abundant in
+Labrador. Here they were so tame, down to a hundred years ago, that
+fishermen were often known to shoot many of them from the windows of
+their huts near the seashore. This type (_Rangifer tarandus arcticus_)
+might possibly be domesticated; not so the larger and much wilder
+Caribou woodland reindeer of the more southern and western parts of
+the Dominion, which dislikes the neighbourhood of man. The elk or
+moose, east of the Rocky Mountains, was not found northward of about
+50° to 55°; but west of that range extended over all British Columbia
+and Alaska, in which latter country it grows to a giant size and
+develops enormous antlers.
+
+Hearne says of the elk in northern Canada: "In summer, when they
+frequent the margins of rivers and lakes, they are often killed by the
+Indians in the water while they are crossing rivers or swimming from
+the mainland to islands, &c. When pursued in this manner, they are
+the most inoffensive of all animals, never making any resistance; and
+the young ones are so simple that I remember to have seen an Indian
+paddle his canoe up to one of them and take it by the poll without the
+least opposition; the poor, harmless animal seeming at the same time
+as contented alongside the canoe as if swimming by the side of its
+dam, and looking up in our faces with the same fearless innocence that
+a house lamb would; making use of its fore foot almost every instant
+to clear its eyes of mosquitoes, which at that time were remarkably
+numerous.... The moose are also the easiest to tame and domesticate of
+any of the deer kind. I have repeatedly seen them at Churchill as tame
+as sheep, and even more so; for they would follow their keeper any
+distance from home, and at his call return with him without the least
+trouble, or ever offering to deviate from the path."
+
+The most northern range of the elk would seem to be the region round
+Lake Athabaska.
+
+The musk ox (_Ovibos_) is perhaps the most remarkable beast of Arctic
+Canada.[3] Samuel Hearne is my principal source for the following
+notes as to its habits and appearance: The number of bulls is very few
+in proportion to the cows, for it is rare to see more than two or
+three full-grown bulls with the largest herd; and from the number of
+the males that are found dead, the Indians are of opinion that they
+kill each other in contending for the females. In the rutting season
+they are so jealous of the cows that they run at either man or beast
+who offers to approach them, and have been observed to run and bellow
+even at ravens and other large birds which chanced to alight near
+them. They delight in the most stony and mountainous parts of the
+"barren ground", but are seldom found at any great distance from the
+woods. Though they are a beast of great magnitude, and apparently of a
+very unwieldy inactive structure, yet they climb the rocks with ease
+and agility, and are nearly as surefooted as a goat. Like it, too,
+they will feed on anything; and though they seem fondest of grass, yet
+in winter, when grass cannot be had in sufficient quantity, they will
+eat moss or any other herbage they can find, as also the tops of
+willows and the tender branches of the pine tree.
+
+[Footnote 3: The musk ox, which is not an ox, but a creature about
+midway in structure and affinities between cattle on the one hand and
+sheep and goats on the other, is a large beast comparatively, being
+the size of a small ox, but appearing very much larger than it is on
+account of the extremely thick coat of hair and wool. Both sexes have
+horns, and the horns, after meeting in the middle and making more or
+less of a boss over the forehead, droop down at the sides of the
+cheeks and then turn up with sharp points. The musk ox once ranged
+right across the northern world, from England and Scandinavia, through
+Germany, Russia, and Siberia, to Alaska and North America. Many
+thousands of years ago, during one of the Glacial periods, it
+inhabited southern England. At the present day it is extinct
+everywhere, excepting in the eastern parts of Arctic America, not
+going west of the Mackenzie River nor south of Labrador. It is also
+found in Greenland.]
+
+"The musk ox, when full grown, is as large as the generality of
+English black cattle; but their legs, though thick, are not so long,
+nor is their tail longer than that of a bear; and, like the tail of
+that animal, it always bends downward and inward, so that it is
+entirely hid by the long hair of the rump and hind quarters. The hunch
+on their shoulders is not large, being little more in proportion than
+that of a deer. Their hair is in some parts very long, particularly on
+the belly, sides, and hind quarters; but the longest hair about them,
+particularly the bulls, is under the throat, extending from the chin
+to the lower part of the chest between the fore legs. It there hangs
+down like a horse's mane inverted, and is fully as long, which gives
+the animal a most formidable appearance. It is of the hair from this
+part that the Eskimo make their mosquito wigs (face screens or masks).
+In winter the musk oxen are provided with a thick fine wool or fur
+that grows at the root of the long hair, and shields them from the
+intense cold to which they are exposed during that season; but as the
+summer advances this fur loosens from the skin, and by frequently
+rolling themselves on the ground it works out to the end of the hair,
+and in time drops off, leaving little for their summer clothing except
+the long hair. This season is so short in these high latitudes, that
+the new fleece begins to appear almost as soon as the old one drops
+off, so that by the time the cold becomes severe they are again
+provided with a winter dress."
+
+According to Hearne, the flesh of the musk ox does not resemble that
+of the bison, but is more like the meat of the moose or wapiti. The
+fat is of a clear white, "slightly tinged with a light azure". The
+calves and young heifers are good eating, but the flesh of the bulls
+both smells and tastes so strongly of musk as to be very disagreeable;
+"even the knife that cuts the flesh of an old bull will smell so
+strongly of musk that nothing but scouring the blade quite bright can
+remove it, and the handle will retain the scent for a long time".
+
+Bisons of the "wood" variety are (or were) found far up the heights of
+the Rocky Mountains and in the regions south-west of the Great Slave
+Lake. These "wood buffaloes" delight in mountain valleys, and never
+resort to the plains. And higher than anything, of course, range the
+great white mountain goat-antelopes (_Oreamnus montanus_) from
+northern Alaska to the Columbia River.
+
+The north and the north-west were, of course, pre-eminently the great
+fur-trading regions, though all parts of the vast Dominion have at one
+time or another yielded furs for commerce with the white man. The
+principal fur-bearing smaller mammals of the north and north-west were
+wolves, foxes, lynxes, gluttons (wolverene), otters, martens (sables)
+and black fishing martens, mink (a kind of polecat), ermine-stoats,
+weasels, polar hares (_Lepus timidus_), beavers, musquash, lemming,
+gopher or pouched ground-squirrels, and the common red squirrel of
+North America. The grey squirrel and striped chipmunk are only found
+in southern Canada.
+
+The musquash (_Fiber zibethicus_) is such a characteristic animal of
+northern Canada that it is worth while to give Hearne's description of
+it (I would mention it is really a huge _vole_, and no relation of the
+beaver):--
+
+"The musk rat or musquash builds a dwelling near the banks of ponds or
+swamps to shelter it from the bitter cold of the winter, but never on
+land, always on the ice, as soon as it is firm enough, taking care to
+keep a hole open to admit it to dive for its food, which chiefly
+consists of the roots of grass or arums. It sometimes happens in very
+cold winters that the holes communicating with their dwellings under
+the water are so blocked by ice that they cannot break through them.
+When this is the case, and they have no provisions left in the house,
+they begin to eat one another. At last there may be only one rat left
+out of a whole lodge. They occasionally eat fish, but in general feed
+very cleanly, and when fat are good eating. They are easily tamed and
+soon grow fond of their owner. They are very cleanly and playful, and
+'smell exceedingly pleasant of musk', but their resemblance to the rat
+is so great that few are partial to them, though of course they are
+much larger in size, and have webbed hind feet and a flat scaly tail.
+In Canadian regions farther south the musquash no longer builds on the
+ice, but in swamps, where it raises heaps of mud like islands in the
+surrounding water. On the top of these mounds they build their nests,
+and on the top of the musquash nest, or 'lodge', wild geese frequently
+lay their eggs and bring forth their young brood without any fear of
+being molested by foxes."
+
+The YUKON territories of the Dominion, and above all the State of
+BRITISH COLUMBIA, constitute a very distinct region from the rest of
+British North America, not only in their tribes of Amerindians but in
+their fauna, flora, and climate. British Columbia is one of the most
+beautiful and richly endowed countries in the world. Here, in spite
+of northern latitudes, the warm airs coming up from the Pacific Ocean
+act somewhat in the same way as the Gulf Stream on north-west Europe,
+and favour the growth of magnificent forests.
+
+All this north-western part of British Columbia is very mountainous,
+and the rocks are rich in minerals, especially gold in the Fraser and
+Columbia Rivers, far north in the upper valley of the Yukon, and
+copper and coal in Vancouver Island.
+
+The rainfall in British Columbia is considerable, and the
+flora--trees, plants, ferns--richer than anywhere else in North
+America, with many resemblances to the trees and plants of Japan and
+northern China. In British Columbia more than in any other part of the
+world are found the noblest developments of the pines, firs, and
+junipers (_Coniferæ_).
+
+The coast rivers swarm with salmon, and perhaps because of the
+abundance of sea fish close in shore there have been developed in the
+course of ages those remarkable aquatic mammals, the sea lions or fur
+seals (_Otaria_), whose relationship to the true seals is a very
+distant one. On the Alaskan coasts and islands is _Otaria ursina_, the
+creature which provides the sealskin fur of commerce. There is also
+the much larger sea lion (_Otaria stelleri_), on the coasts of British
+Columbia and Vancouver Island. Alexander Henry, jun., gives some
+interesting facts about this remarkable beast.
+
+"The natives at Oak Point, during the time Mr. Keith was there, killed
+five very large sea lions by spearing them at night. Two canoes being
+lashed together, they approach very softly, and throw their spears,
+which are fastened by a long, strong cord, with a barb so fixed in a
+socket that, when it strikes the animal and pierces the flesh, it is
+detached from the shaft of the spear, but remains fastened to the
+cord. This is instantly made fast between the canoes; the animal
+dives and swims down river, dragging the canoes with such velocity
+that they may be in danger of filling, and require great skill in
+steering. In this manner they are carried down some miles before the
+animal becomes exhausted with loss of blood, makes for the shore, and
+lies on the beach, where they dispatch it and cut it up. The price of
+a sea lion among the natives is one slave and an assortment of other
+articles. Mr. Keith bought the flesh of one of these animals, and we
+had some roasted; it resembles bear's meat. The hair is like that of a
+horse, in summer of a chestnut colour. The natives, and also the
+Russians, are particularly fond of marine animals, such as whales,
+&c.; they drink the oil like milk."
+
+Another notable water beast of the British Columbia coast was the sea
+otter (_Enhydris_), described on p. 305. Such an immense value was set
+on its fur that it is now nearly extinct within British limits.
+
+The huge chocolate-coloured bear of the Yukon valley has already been
+mentioned; also the very large, blackish-brown wild dog (_Canis
+pambasileus_), which from one or two passages in the writings of
+Canadian pioneers may also be found as far south as the British
+Columbian Rocky Mountains. In the Yukon country the elk (which was
+formerly very common in British Columbia) grows to gigantic
+proportions with longer and larger antlers than elsewhere. In the
+forested mountains of British Columbia (as well as farther north) are
+the wood bison, the white mountain goat, grizzly bears, black bears,
+two kinds of lynx, the wapiti red deer, and the large bighorn sheep.
+
+These (_Ovis montana_) sheep are of a grey or leaden colour; the rump
+and the inner side of the legs are white; the hoofs black, about one
+inch long. "The hair is rather soft, and at the roots is mixed with
+exceedingly fine white wool, which seems to grow only in certain
+patches. The neck is relatively much thicker than that of other
+animals of the same size; the legs and hoofs are also strongly built,
+like the neck." The horns of the female are comparatively small,
+flat, and have only a small bend backward; they are of a
+dirty-yellowish white, marked with closely connected annulations to
+the very tip. The legs are brown, as are also the ends of the hairs
+about the neck; the hoofs are black. "A ewe will weigh about 100 lb.
+when in full flesh, with only the entrails taken out. The head bears
+every resemblance to that of our European sheep." The colour of the
+males is nearly the same as that of the females, only rather browner;
+they are much larger and more strongly built, with a pair of enormous
+horns, which incline backward. As they grow they bend downward, and in
+the course of time form a complete curve and project forward. At the
+root the horns are nearly three inches square, the flat sides
+opposite; they are marked with closely connected ridges and end in a
+tapering flat point.
+
+When the horns grow to a great length, forming a complete curve, the
+tips project on both sides of the head so as to prevent the ram from
+feeding. This, with their great weight, causes the sheep to dwindle to
+a mere skeleton and die. The bighorn sheep feed much in the caverns of
+the Rocky Mountains, eating a kind of moss and grass growing on the
+floors of these caves, and also a peculiar soft, sweet-tasting "clay",
+of which the natives also are fond.
+
+The southern part of British Columbia contains the mule deer of
+western North America (_Mazama macrotis_), and a very strange rodent,
+the sewellel or mountain beaver (_Haplodon_), a creature distantly
+allied to squirrels, marmots, and beavers, but restricted in its
+distribution to a few parts of California, Oregon, and British
+Columbia. Amongst the birds noteworthy in the landscape are the
+white-headed sea eagles and Californian condors (_Pseudogryphus
+californianus_). Humming-birds range through British Columbia and
+Vancouver Island between mid-April and October.
+
+In the regions about the upper Kootenay River (Eastern British
+Columbia), before the railway was constructed, there were wild horses,
+descended, no doubt, from those which had escaped from the Spaniards
+in New Mexico and California. They went in large herds, and in the
+winter when the snow was deep the natives would try to catch them by
+running them down with relays of fresh horses, or driving them up the
+mountains into the deepest snow or some narrow pass. A noose would
+then be thrown about the exhausted animal, which would be instantly
+mounted by an Indian and broken immediately to the saddle. Some of
+these wild horses were exceedingly swift, well-proportioned, and
+handsome in shape, but they seldom proved as docile as those born in
+captivity. When in a wild condition they would snort so loudly through
+the nostrils on descrying an enemy that they could be heard at a
+distance of five hundred yards.
+
+The provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba--the MIDDLE
+WEST--represent mainly the great prairie region of the Canadian
+Dominion. Nearly all the streams here flow from the eastern side of
+the Rocky Mountains and direct their course to the basin of Lake
+Winnipeg and to Hudson's Bay. A few turn south-west to the Missouri
+and Mississippi. The landscapes here remind one more of the middle
+part of the United States. The climate is severe in winter but very
+warm and dry in summer. In the extreme south, within the basin of the
+upper Missouri, the "prickly pear" (_Opuntia_) cactus grows in
+sheltered places, and suggests affinities with distant Colorado and
+California.
+
+These great plains and river courses of the middle West were, until
+about fifty years ago, one of the world's great natural parks or
+zoological gardens. Large numbers of wapiti deer, of the smaller
+Virginian deer,[4] and of the prongbuck "antelope"[5] thronged the
+grassy flats, and elk browsed on the foliage of the thickets along the
+river banks. Grizzly bears and black bears,[6] large grey wolves, the
+small coyote wolf, the pretty little kit fox and large red fox preyed
+on these herbivores, as did also pumas and lynxes. Marmots and prairie
+hares (_Lepus campestris_)--often called rabbits by the pioneers, who
+also named the marmots "wood-chucks"--frolicked in the herbage, and
+formed the principal prey of the numerous rattlesnakes. By the shores
+of streams and lakes stood rows of stately cranes: the whooping crane,
+of large size, pure white, with black quill feathers, the crown of the
+head crimson scarlet and the long legs black; and the purple-brown
+crane, somewhat smaller in size. On hot, calm days in the region of
+Lake Winnipeg the cranes soar to an amazing height, flying in circles,
+till by degrees they are almost out of sight. Yet their loud note
+sounds so distinct and near that the spectator might fancy they were
+close to him.
+
+[Footnote 4: _Mazama americana_, similar to, but quite distinct from,
+the larger mule deer of British Columbia.]
+
+[Footnote 5: The prongbuck (_Antilocapra americana_) is not a true
+antelope, though in outward appearance it resembles a large gazelle.
+It was called "cabri" by the French Canadians.]
+
+[Footnote 6: "Bears make prodigious ravages in the brush and willows;
+the plum trees, and every tree that bears fruit share the same fate.
+The tops of the oaks are also very roughly handled, broken, and torn
+down, to get the acorns. The havoc they commit is astonishing...."
+--Alex. Henry, jun.]
+
+The air at this season is full of great birds--eagles, buzzards,
+hawks, and falcons--soaring in circles to look out for prey among the
+flocks of wild swans, white geese, bernicle geese and brent geese,
+duck and teal, which cover the backwaters and the marshes and shallow
+lagoons. Turkey buzzards, coming up from the south, act as scavengers
+during the summer months. Immense flocks of passenger pigeons,
+buntings, grosbeaks, attack the ripening fruits and the wild rice of
+the swamps. Grouse in uncountable numbers inhabit the drier tablelands
+and open moors.[7]
+
+[Footnote 7: Nowhere in the world are there so many kinds of grouse as
+in North America. In the more northern regions are several species of
+ptarmigan or snow partridges (_Lagopus_), which turn white in winter,
+and the spruce partridges (_Canachites_); in the more genial climate
+of the great plains of eastern Canada and in the Far West the ruffled
+grouse and hazel grouse (_Bonasa_), the sage cocks (_Centrocercus_),
+the prairie hens (_Tympanuchus_), and the blue or pine grouse
+(_Dendrapagus_).
+
+"To snare grouse requires no other process than making a few little
+hedges across a creek, or a few short hedges projecting at right
+angles from the side of an island of willows, which those birds are
+found to frequent. Several openings must be left in each hedge, to
+admit the birds to pass through, and in each of them a snare must be
+set; so that when the grouse are hopping along the edge of the willows
+to feed, which is their usual custom, some of them soon get into the
+snares, where they are confined till they are taken out. I have caught
+from three to ten grouse in a day by this simple contrivance, which
+requires no further attendance than going round them night and
+morning" (Hearne).]
+
+[Illustration: INDIANS LYING IN WAIT FOR MOOSE]
+
+But--a hundred years ago and more--the dominant features in the
+fauna of the Middle West was the bison. Between the Athabaska and
+Saskatchewan Rivers on the north, the Rocky Mountains on the west, and
+Lake Superior on the east the bison passed backwards and forwards over
+the great plains and prairies in millions, when white explorers first
+penetrated these lands. They moved in herds which concealed the ground
+from sight for miles. Here are some word pictures selected from the
+writings of the pioneers between 1770 and 1810:
+
+"The buffaloes chiefly delight in wide open plains, which in those
+parts produce very long coarse grass, or rather a kind of small flags
+and rushes, upon which they feed; but when pursued they always take to
+the woods. They are of such an amazing strength, that when they fly
+through the woods from a pursuer, they frequently brush down trees as
+thick as a man's arm; and be the snow ever so deep, such is their
+strength and agility, that they are enabled to plunge through it
+faster than the swiftest Indian can run in snowshoes. To this I have
+been an eyewitness many times, and once had the vanity to think that I
+could have kept pace with them; but though I was at that time
+celebrated for being particularly fleet of foot in snowshoes, I soon
+found that I was no match for the buffaloes, notwithstanding they were
+then plunging through such deep snow, that their bellies made a
+trench in it as large as if many sacks had been hauled through it. Of
+all the large beasts in those parts the buffalo is easiest to kill,
+and the moose are the most difficult; neither are the (red) deer very
+easy to come at, except in windy weather: indeed it requires much
+practice and a great deal of patience to slay any of them, as they
+will by no means suffer a direct approach, unless the hunter be
+entirely sheltered by woods or willows.
+
+"The flesh of the buffalo is exceedingly good eating, and so entirely
+free from any disagreeable smell or taste, that it resembles beef as
+nearly as possible."
+
+"The spots of wood along the Park River are ravaged by buffaloes
+(bison); none but the large trees are standing, the bark of which is
+rubbed perfectly smooth, and heaps of hair and wool lie at the bottom
+of the trees ... and even the grass is not permitted to grow.... The
+ground is trampled more by these cattle than about the gate of a
+farmyard."
+
+"The Kris informed me they had seen a calf as white as snow in a herd
+of buffalo. White buffalo are very scarce. They are of inestimable
+value among the nations of the Missouri.... There were also some of a
+dirty-grey colour, but these are very rare."
+
+"I brought home two buffalo calves alive; they no sooner lost sight of
+the herd than they followed my horse like dogs, directly into the
+fort. On chasing a herd at this season the calves follow it until they
+are fatigued, when they throw themselves down in high grass and lie
+still, hiding their heads if possible. But seeing only a man and his
+horse they remain quiet and allow themselves to be taken. Having been
+a little handled, they follow like dogs."
+
+In the spring, when the ice melted, innumerable buffaloes were killed
+through attempting to cross the rivers on the melting ice. They would
+drift by an observer (such as Alexander Henry, jun.) in entire herds
+of drowned corpses. Vast numbers perished. They formed one continuous
+line on the current for two days and two nights.
+
+"By this time the river was crowded with them, swimming across,
+bellowing and grunting terribly. The bulls really looked fierce; all
+had their tails up, and each appeared eager to land first. The scene
+would have struck terror to one unaccustomed to such innumerable
+herds. From out in the plains, as far as the eye could reach, to the
+middle of the river, they were rushing toward us, and soon began to
+land about ten yards off. I shot one dead on the spot, my ball having
+broken his neck; my hunter and guide only wounded theirs. This
+discharge suddenly halted those on the south side, and turned those
+that were still in the water."
+
+In the autumn:--"Plains burned in every direction and blind buffalo
+seen every moment wandering about. The poor beasts have all the hair
+singed off; even the skin in many places is shrivelled up and terribly
+burned, and their eyes are swollen and closed fast. It was really
+pitiful to see them staggering about, sometimes running afoul of a
+large stone, at other times tumbling down hill and falling into creeks
+not yet frozen over. In one spot we found a whole herd lying dead."
+
+Throughout British North America, from the Yukon to Newfoundland, and
+from Labrador to Vancouver's Island, the rivers and freshwater lakes
+swarm with fish, and fish that in most cases is exceedingly good to
+eat. Salmon are most strikingly abundant in the rivers of British
+Columbia and Newfoundland, but they also ascend most of the rivers
+flowing into the Atlantic and Hudson's Bay. In the great lakes of
+Canada and of the middle west there are trout and white fish
+(_Coregonus_), pike, bass, chub, barbel, and five species of sturgeon.
+In the rivers and lakes of the far north-west is found the blackfish
+(_Dallia_).
+
+Hearne writes of Lake Athabasca that it swarms with fish, such as
+pike, trout, perch, barbel, and other kinds not easily identified.
+Apparently there is also a form of gar-pike found here (see p. 74);
+this is described as having scales of a very large and stiff kind, and
+being a beautiful bright silver in colour. The size of these gar-pike
+range from two feet to four feet in length. Their flesh was delicately
+white and soft, but so foul and rank in taste that even the Indians
+would not eat it. The trout in Lake Athabaska seem to have been
+enormous, weighing from 35 to 40 pounds, while pike were of about the
+same weight.
+
+The Amerindian tribes and the early European explorers lived mainly on
+fish, which was a palatable and easily obtained food. Yet it must be
+admitted that they had a splendid array of large and small game from
+which to take their toll.
+
+Nor was the whole Dominion, from west to east and up to the Arctic
+zone, wanting in wild vegetable produce fit for man's consumption. The
+sugar maple (_Acer saccharinum_) and its ally the _Negundo_ maple
+provided a delicious syrup; the bark of certain poplars and the bast
+of the sugar pine were chewed for their well-flavoured sweetness; the
+wild rice of the marshes will be further described in the next
+chapter. The wild fruits included delicious strawberries, cherries,
+gooseberries, currants, black currants, grapes (in the south only),
+blackberries of many kinds, whortleberries, cranberries, pears of the
+service tree (_Pyrus canadensis_[8]), and raspberries of various
+types--red, yellow, and black. Southern Canada and Nova Scotia
+contained various nut trees of the walnut order (hickories,
+butter-nuts, &c.), and hazel nuts were found everywhere except in the
+north.
+
+[Footnote 8: Sometimes called _Amelanchier canadensis_.]
+
+We have left undescribed what is still politically the most important
+part of the whole of British North America--UPPER and LOWER CANADA.
+These regions lie within the basin of the great St. Lawrence River,
+beyond all doubt the most important waterway of North America, more
+important even than the Mississippi. The main origin of the St.
+Lawrence in the west is Lake Superior, the largest sea of fresh water
+in the world, which is connected with Lake Nipigon on the north. The
+waters of Lake Superior are carried over the Sault Ste. Marie rapids
+into Lake Huron and find a huge backwater in Lake Michigan.[9] Out of
+Lake Huron again they flow past Detroit into Lake Erie. From Duluth,
+at the westernmost extremity of Lake Superior, to Buffalo, on the
+easternmost point of Lake Erie, including all Lake Michigan and Lake
+Huron, with its bays and channels, a steamer can pass with just the
+one difficulty (easily surmounted) of the rapids at Sault Ste. Marie
+between Lake Superior and Lake Huron. But after you have left Lake
+Erie on the east you find yourself in the Niagara River, which at the
+Niagara Falls plunges several hundred feet downwards into Lake
+Ontario. From Lake Ontario to the sea along the St. Lawrence there is
+uninterrupted navigation, though there are rapids that require careful
+steering both with steamers and boats. Quebec marks the place where
+the St. Lawrence River suddenly broadens from a river into a tidal
+gulf of brackish or salt water. Ocean steamers from all over the world
+can come (except during the height of the winter, when the water
+freezes) to Quebec. But for the ice in wintertime Quebec would be
+_the_ great sea-port of eastern Canada.
+
+[Footnote 9: The south shore of Lake Superior, the whole of Lake
+Michigan, the west shore of Lake Huron, and the south coasts of Lake
+Erie and Lake Ontario are within the territories of the United
+States.]
+
+"If pitiless rock is commonly understood by an 'iron-bound shore',
+then the coasts of the River St. Lawrence along the northern side of
+the Gulf may truly be so styled, as nothing scarcely is to be seen
+for hundreds of leagues but bare rocky mountains, capes and cliffs in
+various shapes and figures, some of which are dotted with a few spruce
+firs, while others present their bald pates deprived of covering by
+the unmerciful hand of time." (James M'Kenzie).
+
+The winters of the Quebec province are extremely cold, but the summer
+and autumn are warm and sunny. The best winter climate, possibly, in
+all Canada (though not as good as that of Vancouver Island, British
+Columbia) is to be found in the small peninsula region, on the shores
+of Lakes Erie and Huron, between Toronto and Detroit. This is the
+district which the Jesuit missionaries described as "an earthly
+paradise" even during the winter-time.
+
+The following extracts, mostly from the journals of Alex. Henry, jun.,
+give a good idea of the difference in climate and temperature between
+the western and the central parts of the Canadian Dominion.
+
+The late spring of northern Canada (Lake Nipigon, 50° N. lat.):--About
+May 15, the tops of the poplars begin to appear green, with fresh
+buds; the hills are changing their hue from a dry straw colour to a
+delightful verdure, and fragrant odours greet us.
+
+"Early in March, 1800, in the Assiniboin country (Manitoba, about 29°
+N. lat.) the snow was entirely gone, for this winter had been an
+abnormally mild one for central Canada. The birds soon realized the
+openness of the season, for, on the 7th of March, turkey-buzzards
+began to arrive from the south, and cormorants, ducks, swans, and
+other spring birds; indeed, by the 24th of March not only had the snow
+quite melted, but the meadows had grown so dry with the hot sun that
+some accidents set them on fire. By April the 11th the weather had
+become excessively hot, and immense flocks of the traveller-pigeon
+(_Ectopistes_) flew northwards over the country."
+
+In somewhat similar latitudes (50°) the spring bursts on the Pacific
+coast region of British Columbia towards the end of February. "The
+tall raspberry bushes were in blossom with a beautiful red flower,
+which appeared more forward than the leaf (_Rubus spectabilis_). The
+elder had sprouts an inch long, the alder was also beginning to
+sprout, and willows were budding."
+
+Although nowhere in Upper and Lower Canada (or in the maritime
+provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia) are the forests so
+splendid as in parts of British Columbia, yet nevertheless when this
+region was first discovered the magnificence of its woodlands greatly
+impressed even the explorers of the sixteenth and seventeenth
+centuries, who were not as much given to praise of landscape beauty as
+are we of later times. These Canadian forests include oaks, elms,
+pines and firs, chestnuts and beeches, birch trees and sycamores,
+maples and poplars, willows, alders, and hazelnuts (these last
+sometimes growing into tall trees with thick trunks). The trees and
+low-growing plants are partly like those of the north-eastern United
+States, and partly resemble those of northern and central Europe.
+
+Nowadays, owing to two centuries of incessant killing, the beasts and
+birds of Upper and Lower Canada are not nearly so abundant as they
+were a hundred years ago. When Canada proper was first discovered, the
+wapiti red deer was still found in the basin of the St. Lawrence; it
+has long since been extinct. There are, however, still lingering,
+reindeer in the north, and elk in the forests of the east. There are
+also Virginian deer (_Mazama_), but there is no bison (and, so far as
+we know, never has been). There is no prongbuck, and many other
+creatures characteristic of the United States and British Columbia are
+not found in Upper and Lower Canada or in the maritime provinces. The
+tree porcupine (_Erethizon dorsatus_), which the Canadians call
+"Urson", or "Little Bear" is found still in the well-wooded regions
+of eastern and southern Canada, as well as in British Columbia and
+Alaska. In southern Canada there is the wood hare (_Lepus
+sylvaticus_), and in the east and north the varying hare (_L.
+americanus_) which turns white in winter.
+
+Perhaps the most characteristic animal of this region was and is still
+the beaver, though the beaver is found all over British North America
+as far north as the Saskatchewan province and westwards into British
+Columbia.
+
+It is curious that the Indians of central Canada had a belief
+(recorded by French and English pioneers) that occasionally in the
+dusk, or at night, they have seen an enormously large beaver in the
+water, so large that at first sight they have taken it for a moose.
+Travellers who have related this have surmised that the Indian perhaps
+saw a bear swimming, or a female moose, and in the dim light mistook
+it for a giant beaver. But as we know that there were once giant
+beavers (_Trogontherium_) as large as a bear, existing in England, it
+is just possible there may have been a gigantic type of beaver
+lingering in Canada before the opening up of the country by Europeans.
+
+The beaver of North America is a very similar animal to the beaver
+which used to exist wild in Wales, England, France, Germany, and
+central Europe, and which still lingers in some parts of the Rhine
+valley, Poland, Russia, and Siberia; but the American form is
+classified as a separate species--_Castor canadensis_.
+
+Beavers were sometimes exterminated or diminished in numbers by an
+epidemic disease, which, according to JAMES TANNER[10], destroyed vast
+quantities of them.
+
+[Footnote 10: A remarkable eighteenth-century pioneer who joined the
+Indians when a boy and lived as one of them.]
+
+"I found them dead or dying in the water, on the ice, and on the land;
+sometimes I found one that, having cut a tree half down, had died at
+its roots; sometimes one who had drawn a stick of timber halfway to
+his lodge was lying dead by his burthen. Many of them which I opened
+were red and bloody about the heart. Those in large rivers and running
+water suffered less; almost all of those that lived in ponds and
+stagnant water, died. Since that year the beaver have never been so
+plentiful in the country of Red River and Hudson's Bay as they used
+formerly to be."
+
+The great attraction which Canada offered to France and England as a
+field of adventure lay in its wonderful supply of furs. The beaver
+skins were perhaps the commonest article of export, and were generally
+regarded as a unit of value, such as a shilling might be. Other skins
+were valued at "so many beavers," or the smaller ones at half or a
+quarter of a beaver each. Besides beaver skins, which were used for
+making hats, as well as capes and coats, the following furs and skins
+were formerly, or are still, exported from Canada. "Buffalo"
+robes--the carefully rubbed-down hides of the bison, rendered, by
+shaving and rubbing, so thin and supple that they could be easily
+folded; reindeer and musk-ox skins treated in the same way; marten or
+sable skins; mink (a kind of polecat); ermine (the white winter dress
+of the stoat); the fishing marten, or pekan; otter skins; black bear
+and white polar bear skins; raccoon, muskwash, squirrel, suslik, and
+marmot skins, and the soft white fur of the polar hare; the white
+skins of the Arctic fox, the skins of the blue fox, black fox, and red
+fox;[11] wolf skins, and the furs of the wolverene or glutton, and of
+the skunk--a handsome black-and-white creature of the weasel family,
+which emits a most disgusting smell from a gland in its body. (The
+skunk only comes from the south-central parts of the Canadian
+Dominion). At one time a good many swans' skins were exported for the
+sake of the down between the feathers, also the skins of grebes.
+
+[Footnote 11: The blue fox is the Arctic fox (_Canis lagopus_) in its
+summer dress; the black fox is a beautiful variety or sub-species of
+the common fox (_C. vulpes_); so also is the red or "cross" fox. There
+is also common throughout the Canadian Dominion the pretty little kit
+fox (_Canis velox_).]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A general fact that must not be forgotten in studying the adventures
+of the pioneers of Canada was the means which Nature and savage man
+had provided or invented for quickly traversing in all directions this
+enormous area of nearly half North America. These means consisted (1)
+of the distribution of salt and fresh water in such a way that by
+means of ocean-sailing ships explorers coming from the east could
+enter through straits and bays of the sea into the heart of Canada;
+and (2) the facility, on quitting the seashore, of passing up
+navigable rivers in boats or canoes into big lakes, and from these
+lakes into other rivers leading to other lakes. Moreover, the
+different river systems approached so closely to one another that even
+the Amerindians and the Eskimo, long before the white man, had
+realized that they had only to pick up their light canoes and carry
+them a few miles, to launch them on fresh waters which might provide
+hundreds or even thousands of miles of continuous travel. These are
+the celebrated "portages" of Canadian history, from the French word
+_porter_, to carry, transport. Sometimes the portages were made still
+easier for loaded canoes by a road being cleared through the scrub and
+over the rocks, and wooden rollers placed across it. Strong men could
+then easily haul a loaded canoe over these wooden rollers until it
+could be launched again in the water. Often these portages were made
+to circumvent dangerous rapids or waterfalls. The Indians and the
+French Canadians soon learnt how to steer canoes down rushes of
+water--rapids--which we should think very dangerous on an English
+river; but of course many of the rivers were obstructed at intervals
+by descents of water which no canoe could traverse up or down, and in
+these cases a path was cut from one smooth part of the river to
+another, and the canoe carried or hauled overland.
+
+In this way the great French and British explorers found it possible
+to travel by water from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean across a
+width of land of something like 2500 miles. The only serious walking
+that had to be done was the crossing somewhere or other of the Rocky
+Mountains, where the streams, of course, were far too precipitate in
+descent to be navigable. In the hot, dusty plains of Assiniboia and
+the upper Missouri region the Amerindians had introduced horses,
+obtained indirectly from Spanish Mexico, and these were of great
+service to the white pioneers, especially in their pursuit of the
+bison.
+
+So much for the summer season, when the rivers were full and
+overflowing, and the ground consisted of bare rock, sand, or soil
+covered with vegetation; the abundance of navigable streams and the
+suitability of the country to horses rendered very little walking
+necessary for those who wished to traverse the Canadian Dominion from
+end to end.
+
+But the winter changed these conditions, the rivers became coated with
+thick ice, and the ground was covered, except in steep places, with an
+unvarying mantle of snow. Yet transport became just as easy as in the
+summertime, though perhaps a trifle more fatiguing. Men and women put
+on snowshoes shaped like tennis rackets, and flew over the hard snow
+quicker than a canoe could travel, dragging after them small sledges
+on which their luggage was packed; or, if they had not much luggage,
+carrying it slung round the shoulders and scurrying away on their
+snowshoes even swifter for the weight they carried; or they travelled
+over the smooth ice of the rivers and lakes.
+
+Winter travellers, however, were sometimes troubled with a disorder
+known as the snowshoe evil. This arose from the placing of an unusual
+strain on the tendons of the leg, occasioned by the weight of the
+snowshoe. It often resulted in severe inflammation of the lower leg.
+The local remedy was a drastic one: it was to place a piece of lighted
+touchwood on the most inflamed part, and to leave it there till the
+flesh was burnt to the nerve!
+
+In the north and the regions round Hudson's Bay, and also in the far
+west--British Columbia and Alaska--there were dogs, more or less of
+the Eskimo breed, trained by Eskimo or by Amerindians to drag the
+sledges. In the months of December and January it is true that the
+daylight in Arctic Canada (north of Lake Athapaska) became so short
+that the sun at its greatest altitude only appeared for two or three
+hours a short distance above the horizon. But there were
+compensations. The brilliancy of the Aurora Borealis, even without the
+assistance of the moon and the stars, made some amends for that
+deficiency, for it was frequently so light all night that travellers
+could see to read a very small print (Samuel Hearne). The importance
+of these "Northern lights" must not be overlooked in forming an
+opinion on the habitability of the far north in the "dark" winter
+months. The display was frequent and brilliant.
+
+The Athapaskan Indians called this phenomenon _Edthin_, that is to
+say, "reindeer". When the Aurora Borealis was particularly bright in
+the sky they would say that deer were plentiful in that part of the
+heavens. Their fancy in this respect was not quite so silly as one
+might think. They had learnt from experience that the Aurora Borealis
+was in some way connected with electricity, and experience had equally
+shown them that the skin of the reindeer, if briskly stroked by the
+hand on a dark night, would emit as many electric sparks as the back
+of a cat. On the other hand, the Amerindians in the southern and more
+temperate regions thought the Aurora Borealis was a vast concourse of
+"spirits of the happy day" dancing in the clouds.
+
+Thus there were no climatic reasons why, both in summer and in winter,
+immense distances should not be quickly covered in Canada between the
+Rocky Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean. This is how a mere hundred of
+white pioneers opened up Canada to the knowledge of the civilized
+world far quicker than the same area could have been discovered in
+Africa or Asia. Sometimes, for about a month, between the melting of
+the snow and ice and the steady flowing of the rivers in the late
+spring, or between the uncertain autumn of November and the confirmed
+winter of December, there might be an interval of a few weeks in which
+journeys had to be made on foot under conditions of great hardship,
+through mud, swamp, and over sharp stones or slippery rocks.
+
+"The plains are covered with water from the melting of the snow so
+suddenly, and our men suffer much, as they are continually on the
+march, looking after Indians in every creek and little river. The
+water is commonly knee deep, in some places up to the middle, and in
+the morning is usually covered with ice, which makes it tedious and
+even dangerous travelling. Some of our men lose the use of their legs
+while still in the prime of life", wrote one eighteenth-century
+pioneer, in the Canadian spring.
+
+Severe as were the winter conditions of climate, the explorers were
+just as willing to travel through the winter as the summer, because in
+the winter they were spared the awful plague of mosquitoes and midges
+which still renders summer and early-autumn travel throughout the
+whole of Canada, from the United States borders on the south to the
+Arctic Ocean on the north, a severe trial, and even an unbearable
+degree of physical suffering.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+The Amerindians and Eskimo: the Aborigines of British North America
+
+
+I have already attempted to describe in the first chapter the ancient
+peopling of America from north-eastern Asia, but it might be useful if
+I gave here some description of the Eskimo and Amerindian tribes of
+the Canadian Dominion at the time of its gradual discovery by
+Europeans, especially during the great explorations of the eighteenth
+and early nineteenth centuries.
+
+It is evident that the ESKIMO--who are quite distinct from the
+Amerindians in physical type, language, customs, and industries--have
+been for thousands of years the only inhabitants of Arctic America.
+When the Norsemen came to the New World they seem to have met with
+Eskimo as far south as New England, but in more recent times the
+Eskimo have only been found inhabiting the extreme north and
+north-east: in Greenland, on the Labrador coast, on Baffin's Land, and
+along the Arctic coast of the North-American continent, between the
+Coppermine River and the westernmost extremity of Alaska, as well as
+on the opposite islands and promontories of Asia.
+
+Their name for themselves as a people is usually "Innuit" (in
+Greenland, "Karalit"). Eskimo is a corruption of _Eskimantsik_, a
+northern Algonkin word meaning "eaters of raw flesh". Although their
+geographical range extends over a distance of about three thousand
+five hundred miles--from north-easternmost Asia to the east coast of
+Greenland--the difference in their dialects is little more than that
+between French and Italian; whereas the difference between the speech
+of one Amerindian tribe and another--even where they belong to the
+same language group--is very great--not less than that between German
+and Latin, or English and French, or even between Russian and
+Hindustani. This fact--of the widespread Eskimo language--makes some
+authorities suppose that the presence of the Eskimo in Arctic America
+cannot be such a very ancient event as, from other evidence, one might
+believe. Perhaps the bold travelling habits of the Eskimo--which makes
+them range over vast distances of ice and snow when hunting seals,
+walruses, whales, musk ox, or reindeer--enables them to keep in touch
+with their far-away relations.
+
+The canoes or _kayaks_ in which they travel (first described by the
+Norsemen in the tenth century) are made out of the hide of the seal or
+walrus. The leather is stretched over a framework constructed from
+driftwood or whales' bones. There is a hole in the middle for the man
+or woman to insert their legs. This hole they fill up with their
+bodies. If the canoe capsizes, the Eskimo cannot fall out, but bobs up
+immediately. He and the canoe are really "one-and-indivisible" when he
+is navigating the seas and lakes, plying deftly a large paddle.
+
+In regard to food they were certainly not particular or squeamish.
+They loved best of all whales' blubber, or to drink the fishy-tasting
+oil from bodies of whales, seals, or walruses. Besides the meat of
+Polar bears and of any fur animals they could catch, or the musky beef
+of the musk ox, they devoured eagerly sea birds' eggs, Iceland moss,
+and even the parasitic insects of their own heads and bodies! Hearne
+relates that they will eat with a relish whole handfuls of maggots
+that have been produced in meat by the eggs of the bluebottle fly! On
+the other hand, they held cannibalism in horror, whereas for two-two's
+their Amerindian neighbours on the west and south would eat human
+flesh without repugnance.
+
+The Eskimo, though occasionally tall, are as a rule stumpy and
+thickset, with very small hands and feet, broad faces, and projecting
+cheekbones, a narrow nose without the aquiline bridge of the
+Amerindian, slanting narrow eyes, and long heads containing large
+well-developed brains. In disposition the Eskimo are nearly always
+merry, affectionate to one another, honest, and modest. Modern
+travellers in the Arctic regions give them invariably a high
+character; but Frobisher, Davis, and the explorers of the sixteenth
+and seventeenth centuries accused them of treachery and an inclination
+to steal. Iron in any shape or form they could hardly resist taking.
+Moreover, if they are the same people as the Skraellings of the Norse
+traditions they must have been of a fiercer disposition a thousand
+years ago.
+
+The Amerindians who inhabited (more or less) the rest of the Canadian
+Dominion, and the whole remainder of the New World, differed in
+physical appearance from the Eskimo mainly in being taller and better
+proportioned, with shorter and rounder heads, larger, fuller eyes, a
+bigger nose, and a handsomer personal appearance. The skin colour, as
+a rule, was darker and browner than the greyish- or pinkish-yellow of
+the Eskimo.
+
+The various human types that went to form the Amerindian race (beside
+the Eskimo element in them) seem to have entered north-west America
+from Asia, and first to have peopled the Pacific slopes of the Rocky
+Mountains, after which they wandered farther and farther south till
+they got into a warmer climate. Then they crossed the Rocky Mountains
+and peopled the centre and east of what is now the United States. As
+they pushed their way north up the valleys of the great rivers, they
+no doubt killed, mingled with, or pushed back the Eskimo. At last
+their northernmost extensions reached to the Mackenzie River, the
+vicinity of Hudson's Bay, Labrador, and Newfoundland. But in all the
+middle, west, and even east of Canada they seem to have been
+_relatively recent arrivals_,[1] not to have inhabited the country for
+a great many centuries before the white man came, and all their
+recorded and legendary movements in North America have been from the
+south-west towards the north-east (after they had got across the Rocky
+Mountains). The few cultivated plants they had, such as maize (Indian
+corn), tobacco, and pumpkins, they brought with them or received from
+the south.
+
+[Footnote 1: There may have been an earlier race inhabiting north-east
+America which was killed out or driven away by the last Glacial
+period.]
+
+The only domestic animal possessed by either Eskimo or Amerindian was
+the dog. We are most of us by now familiar with the type of the Eskimo
+dog--a large, wolf-like animal with prick ears and a bushy tail curled
+over its back. In this carriage of the tail the Eskimo and most other
+true dogs differ from wolves, with whom the tail droops between the
+hind quarters. But there is a small wild American wolf--the
+coyote--which carries its tail more upright, like that of the true
+dog; and the coyote seems indeed an intermediate form between the wolf
+and the original wild dog. Most of the domestic dogs of the
+Amerindians[2] (as distinguished from those of the Eskimo) seem to
+have been derived from the coyote or small wolf of central North
+America.
+
+[Footnote 2: "The dogs of the Northern Indians are of various sizes
+and colours, but all of them have a foxy or wolf-like appearance,
+sharp noses, bushy tails, and sharp ears standing erect." (Samuel
+Hearne).
+
+Hearne also remarks that the northern Indians had a superstitious
+reverence and liking for the wolf. They would frequently go to the
+mouth of the burrows where the female wolves lived with their young,
+take out the puppies and play with them, and even paint the faces of
+the young wolves with vermilion or red ochre.
+
+When first observed by Europeans the unhappy Beothiks (of
+Newfoundland) had apparently no domestic dogs, only "tame wolves",
+whom they distinguished from the wild wolves by marking their ears.
+They were made more angry by the European seamen attacking and killing
+the wolves than by anything else they did. Apparently some kind of
+alliance had been struck up between the Beothiks--a nation of
+hunters--and the wolf packs which followed in their tracks; and the
+Newfoundland wolves were on the way to becoming domesticated "dogs".
+Later on it was realized that the island _did_ produce a special
+breed--the celebrated Newfoundland dog--the original type of which was
+much smaller than the modern type, nearly or entirely black in colour,
+with a sharper muzzle and less pendulous ears. But its feet were as
+strongly webbed and its habits as aquatic as those of the
+"Newfoundland" of the modern breed. Some people have noticed the
+resemblance between the farmers' dogs in Norway and the Newfoundland
+type, and have thought that the latter may not be altogether of wolf
+extraction, but be descended from the dogs brought from Norway and
+Iceland by the Norse adventurers who visited Newfoundland in the tenth
+and eleventh centuries.]
+
+On the Pacific coast there were other types of domestic dog,
+resembling greatly breeds that are found in eastern Asia and the
+Pacific islands. Some of these were naked, and others grew silky hair,
+which was woven by the natives into cloth (see p. 323). The Eskimo dog
+almost certainly has been derived from northern Asia, and is closely
+related to the well-known Chinese breed--the chow dog--and the
+domestic breeds of ancient Europe. Even the commonest type of house
+dog in the Roman Empire was very much like an Eskimo or a chow in
+appearance. There is a true wild dog, however, in the Yukon province
+of the Canadian Dominion and in Alaska--_Canis pambasileus_--a dark,
+blackish-brown in colour. This may have been a parent of the Eskimo
+dog, but it is also doubtless closely allied to the original (extinct)
+wild dog of northern Asia, from which the chow and many other breeds
+are directly descended. The Eskimo never under ordinary circumstances
+ate their dogs; on the other hand, the Amerindians were fond of dog's
+flesh, and in some tribes simply bred dogs for the table.
+
+When Europeans first reached America all these Amerindian tribes, and
+also the Eskimo, were still, for all practical purposes, in the Stone
+Age. Those who lived in the north had discovered the use of copper and
+had shaped for themselves knives and spear blades out of copper, but
+not even this metal was in use to any great extent, and for the most
+part they relied, down to the end of the eighteenth century, for their
+implements and weapons, on polished and sharpened stones, on deer's
+antlers, buffalo horns, sticks, sharp shells, beavers' incisor
+teeth,[3] the claws or spines of crustaceans, flints, and suchlike
+substances--in short, they were leading the same life and using almost
+exactly the same tools as the long-since-vanished hunter races of
+Europe of five thousand to one hundred thousand years ago--the people
+who pursued the mammoth, the bison, the Irish "elk", and the other
+great beasts of prehistoric Europe. Indeed, North America represented
+to some extent, as late as a hundred years ago, what Europe must have
+looked like in the days of palæolithic Man.
+
+[Footnote 3: Of which they made very serviceable chisels.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The AMERINDIANS of the Canadian Dominion (when the country first
+became known to Europeans) belonged to the following groups and
+tribes. The order of enumeration begins in the east and proceeds
+westwards. I have already mentioned the peculiar _Beothiks_ of
+Newfoundland.[4] In Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick,
+and the Gaspé Peninsula there were the _Mikmak_ Indians belonging to
+the widespread ALGONKIN family or stock. West and south of the
+Mikmaks, in New Brunswick and along the borders of New England, were
+other tribes of the Algonkin group: the Etchemins, Abenakis,
+Tarratines, Penobscots, _Mohikans_, and Adirondacks. North of these,
+in the eastern part of the Quebec province, on either side of the Gulf
+of St. Lawrence, were the _Montagnais_. This name, though it looks
+like a French word meaning "mountaineers", was also spellt Montagnet,
+and in various other ways, showing that it was originally a native
+name, pronounced Montanyé. The Montagnais in various clans extended
+northwards across Labrador until they touched the Eskimo, with whom
+they constantly fought. The interior of Labrador was inhabited by
+another Algonkin tribe, the _Naskwapi_, living in a state of rude
+savagery. The _Algonkins_ proper, whose tribe gave their name to the
+whole stock because the French first became acquainted with them as a
+type, dwelt in the vicinity of Montreal, Lake Ontario, and the valley
+of the St. Lawrence. In upper Canada, about the great lakes and the
+St. Lawrence valley, were the Chippeways, or _Ojibwés_, and the
+Ottawas. West and north of Lake Michigan were the Miamis, the
+Potawátomis, and the Fox Indians (the Saks or Sawkis). Between Lake
+Winnipeg and Lake Superior were the _Cheyennes_ (Shians); between
+North and South Saskatchewan, the _Blackfeet_ or Siksika Indians
+(sections of which were also called Bloods, Paigans, Piegans, &c).
+North of Lake Winnipeg, as far as Lake Athabaska, and almost from the
+Rocky Mountains to the shores of Hudson's Bay, were the widespread
+tribe of the _Kris_, or _Knistino_.[5] The Gros Ventres or Big
+Bellies--properly called _Atsina_--inhabited the southern part of the
+middle west, between the Saskatchewan and the Missouri basins; and the
+Monsoni or Maskegon were found in eastern Rupert Land.
+
+[Footnote 4: See also pp. 156, 164, 186, and 199. In this list I have
+put in italics the names of the tribes more important in history, and
+in capitals the principal group names.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Kinistino, Kiristineaux, Kilistino; called "Crees" or
+"Kris" for short.]
+
+All the above-enumerated tribes, except the Beothik indigenes of
+Newfoundland, belong to the great and widespread ALGONKIN group.
+(Algonkin is a word derived from the "Algommequin" of Champlain.) In
+the valley of the St. Lawrence the French first encountered those
+Indians whom they called _Huron_. This was a French word meaning
+"crested", because these people wore their hair in a great crest over
+the top and back of the head, which reminded the French of the
+appearance of a wild boar (_Hure_). The real name of the Hurons, who
+dwelt at a later date between Lakes Huron, Erie, Ontario, and the
+neighbourhood of Montreal, was _Waiandot_ (Wyandot); but they went
+under a variety of other names, according to the clans, such as the
+Eries and the Atiwándoran or Neutral Nation. They were also called the
+"Good" Iroquois, to distinguish them from the six other nations, the
+IROQUOIS proper of the French Canadians, who signalized themselves by
+fiendish and frightful warfare against the French and the various
+tribes of Algonkin Indians. The Hurons and the rest of the six tribes
+grouped under the name of IROQUOIS[6] were of the same stock
+originally, forming a separate group like that of the Algonkins,
+though they are supposed to be related distantly to the Dakota or
+Siou. Amongst the "Six Nations" or tribes banded together in warfare
+and policy were the celebrated "Mohawks" who dwelt on the southern
+borders of the St. Lawrence basin and near Lake Champlain. As the
+others of the six nations (including the Senekas and Onondagas)
+inhabited the eastern United States, well outside the limits of
+Canada, they need not be referred to here.
+
+[Footnote 6: "Iroquois" was a name invented by Champlain (see p. 69).
+Apparently this confederation called themselves _Hodenosauni_. The
+termination "ois" in all French-American names is pronounced
+"wa"--Irokwá.]
+
+Between the South Saskatchewan, the Rocky Mountains, and Lake
+Superior, nearly outside the limits of the Canadian Dominion, was the
+great DAKOTA, or Siou group,[7] divided into the distinct tribe of
+_Assiniboin_ or "Stone" Indians (because they used hot stones in
+cooking), the "Crows" or Absaroka, the Hidatsa or Minitari (also
+called Big Bellies, like the quite distinct Atsina of the Algonkin
+family), the Menómini (the most north-eastern amongst the Siouan
+tribes, and the first met with by the British and French Canadians
+south-west of Lake Superior), the Winnebagos on the southern borders
+of Manitoba, the Yanktons or Yanktonnais, the "_Santi Siou_"
+proper--generally calling themselves _Dakota_ or Mdewakanton--and the
+"Tétons" along the northern Dakota frontier and into the Rocky
+Mountains--also known as _Blackfeet_, Sans Arcs ("without bows"),
+"Two-kettles", "Brulés" or "Burnt" Indians, &c.
+
+[Footnote 7: The far-famed term _Siou_ is said to have been an
+abbreviation of one of the original French names for this type of
+Amerindian, _Nadouessiou_. In early books they are often called the
+Nadouessies.]
+
+Next must be mentioned the very important and widespread ATHAPASKAN or
+Déné (Tinné) group, named after Lake Athapaska (or Athabaska), because
+that sheet of water became a great rallying place for these northern
+tribes. The Athapaskan group of Indians indeed represents the
+"Northern Indians" of the Hudson's Bay Company's reports and
+explorers. They drew a great distinction between the Northern Indians
+(the Athapaskan tribes) and the Southern Indians, which included all
+the other Amerindian groups dwelling to the south of the Athapaskan
+domain. But although nowadays so much associated with the far north
+and north-west of America, the Athabaskan group evidently came from a
+region much farther south, and has been cut in half by other tribal
+movements, wars, and migrations; for the Athapaskan family also
+includes the Apaches and the Navaho of the south-western portions of
+the United States and the adjoining territories of Mexico. The
+northern and southern divisions of the Athapaskan group are separated
+by something like twelve hundred miles. The following are the
+principal tribes into which the Northern ATHAPASKAN group was divided
+at the time of the first explorations of the north-west. There were
+the _Chippewayan_ Indians[8] round about Lake Athapaska, and the
+Caribou Eaters or Ethen-eldeli between Lake Athapaska and Reindeer
+Lake. The "_Slaves_", or Slave Indians of the Great Slave Lake and the
+upper Mackenzie River; the Beaver and Sarsi Indians (known also as the
+Tsékehn), about the Peace River and the northern part of Alberta
+province; and the _Yellow Knives_, or Totsan-ottine (so called from
+their being found with light-coloured copper knives when first
+discovered by Europeans), north-east of the Great Slave Lake and along
+the Coppermine River: the _Dogribs_ between the Great Slave Lake and
+Great Bear Lake, perhaps (except in Alaska) the most northern
+extension of the Amerindian type towards the Arctic regions. West of
+the Dogribs dwelt--and still dwell--the interesting tribe of _Hare_
+Indians, or Kawcho-Tinné. They extend northwards to the Anderson
+River, on the verge of the Arctic Ocean. West of the lower Mackenzie
+River, and stretching thence to the Porcupine or Yukon Rivers, are the
+Squinting Indians ("Loucheux", or Kuchin), who in former times were
+met with much farther to the south-east than at the present day.
+Finally, there are the Nahani Indians, who have penetrated through the
+Rocky Mountains to the Stikine River, reaching thus quite close to the
+Pacific Ocean. This penetration northwards of groups of Athapaskan
+Indians into districts inhabited for the most part by Amerindian
+tribes differing widely in language and customs from all those _east_
+of the Rocky Mountains, explains the way in which stories of the great
+western sea--the Pacific--reached, by means of trading intercourse,
+those Amerindian tribes of the middle-west and upper Canada, and so
+stirred up the French and English explorers of the seventeenth and
+eighteenth centuries to make the marvellous journeys which are
+recounted in this book.
+
+[Footnote 8: These northern Indians are described by Hearne as having
+very low foreheads, small eyes, high cheekbones, Roman noses, broad
+cheeks, and long, broad chins. Their skins were soft, smooth and
+polished, somewhat copper-coloured, and inclining towards a dingy
+brown. The hair of the head was black, strong, and straight. They were
+not in general above middle size, though well proportioned.]
+
+_West_ of the Rocky Mountains, in British Columbia and Vancouver
+Island (besides southern Alaska), the Amerindian tribes form the
+N[¯u]tka-Columbian group, which is markedly distinct from the
+Amerindians _east_ of the Rocky Mountains, from whom they differ
+_widely_ in language, type, and culture. They are divided into quite a
+large number of small separate groups--the Wakashan or _N[¯u]tkas_ of
+Vancouver Island and south-western British Columbia, the Shahaptian or
+"Nez percés" Indians of the Columbia basin, and the Chin[¯u]ks of
+the lower Columbia River, the _Salishan_ or "Flathead" group
+(including the Atn[¯a]s) of the Fraser and Thompson Rivers and central
+British Columbia; and the _Haida_ Indians of Queen Charlotte's Islands
+and the north-west coast of British Columbia. It must be remembered
+that these different groups are only based on the relationships of
+their component tribes in language or dialect, and do not always imply
+that the tribes belonging to them had the same customs and
+dispositions; but they were generally able to communicate with one
+another in speech, whereas if they met the Indians of another group
+the language might be so totally different that they could only
+communicate by means of signs.
+
+[Illustration: AN AMERINDIAN TYPE OF BRITISH COLUMBIA]
+
+Sign and gesture language[9] was extraordinarily developed amongst all
+the Amerindian races from the Arctic Ocean to the Antarctic. Not only
+that, but they were quick to understand the purpose of pictures. They
+could draw maps in the sand to explain the geography of their country,
+and Europeans could often make them understand what they required by
+rough drawings. They themselves related many events by means of a
+picture language--the beginning of hieroglyphics; and in the
+south-eastern parts of Canada, as in the United States, these signs or
+pictographs were recorded in bead-shell work--the celebrated "wampum".
+
+[Footnote 9: "It is surprising how dexterous all these natives of the
+plains are in communicating their ideas by signs. They hold
+conferences for several hours, upon different subjects, during the
+whole of which time not a single word is pronounced upon either side,
+and still they appear to comprehend each other perfectly well. This
+mode of communication is natural to them; their gestures are made with
+the greatest ease, and they never seem to be at a loss for a sign to
+express their meaning" (Alex. Henry the Younger, 1800). But it should
+also be noted that during the last hundred years the peoples belonging
+to the N[¯u]tka-Columbian group have developed a trade language which
+they use in common. This is a mixture of Chin[¯u]k, English, French,
+Chinese, and Hawaaian.]
+
+All these tribes, of course, varied very much in personal appearance,
+though not in disposition. The vanished Beothiks of Newfoundland are
+described as having been a good-looking tall people, with large black
+eyes and a skin so light, when washed free from dirt or paint, that
+the Portuguese compared them to gipsies; and the writer of Fabian's
+_Chronicle_, who saw two of them (brought back by Cabot) at Henry
+VII's Court, in 1499, took them for Englishmen when they were dressed
+in English clothes. It was these people--subsequently killed out by
+the British settlers on Newfoundland--who originated the term "Red
+Indians", or, in French, _Peaux Rouges_, because their skins, like
+those of so many other Amerindians, were painted with red ochre.
+
+Many of the British Columbian peoples made themselves artificially
+ugly by flattening the sides of the head. To press the skull whilst it
+was soft, they squeezed the heads of their children between boards;
+others, such as the warlike tribes of the upper Missouri, had a
+passion for submitting themselves to mutilation by the medicine man of
+the clan, in order to please the sun god. Such would submit to large
+strips being cut from the flesh of their shoulders, arms, or legs, or
+having their cheeks slashed. The result, of course, was to leave their
+limbs and features horribly scarred when they healed up. In some
+tribes, however, a young man could not obtain--or retain--a wife
+unless he had shown his bravery by submitting to this mutilation.
+Women often cut off one or more joints of their fingers to show their
+grief for the death of children.
+
+In some tribes, especially of the far north-west and of the Rocky
+Mountains, the personal habits of men and women, or of the women only,
+were so filthy, and their dislike to bathing so pronounced, that they
+became objects of loathing to white men; in other tribes personal
+cleanliness was highly esteemed, especially on the seacoast of British
+Columbia or along the banks of the great rivers. Usually the men were
+better looking and better developed than the women--for one reason,
+because they were better fed.
+
+Here is a description by PETER GRANT--a pioneer of the North-West
+Company--of the Ojibwé Indians dwelling near the east end of Lake
+Superior at the beginning of the nineteenth century:--
+
+"Their complexion is a whitish cast of copper colour, their hair
+black, long, straight, and of a very strong texture. The young men
+allow several locks of the hair to fall down over the face, ornamented
+with ribbons, silver brooches, &c. They gather up another lock from
+behind the head into a small clump, and wrap it up with very thin
+plates of silver, in which they fix the tail feathers of the eagle or
+any other favourite bird with the wearing of which they have
+distinguished themselves in war. They are very careful with their
+hair, anointing it with bears' oil, which gives it a smooth and glossy
+appearance. The teeth are of a beautiful ivory white, the cheeks
+rather high and prominent, the eyes black and lively. Their
+countenances are generally pleasant, and they might often be called
+handsome. The ears are pierced in infancy, and the lobe is extended to
+an unnatural size by suspending lead or any other heavy metal from the
+outer rim, which in time brings them down near the shoulder. The nose
+ornaments hang down half an inch, and nearly touch the upper lip.
+
+"The men are bold, manly, and graceful in their gait, always carrying
+their bodies erect and easy. On the other hand, the women, by walking
+with the toes of their feet turned inwards, have a disagreeable and
+lame appearance. The men are specially fond of painting their faces
+and bodies with vermilion, white and blue clay, charcoal or soot mixed
+with a little grease or water. With this colour they daub the body,
+legs, and thighs in bars and patches, and take the greatest pains
+about painting the face, usually with red and black. Their skins are
+generally tattooed with figures representing the sun, stars, eagles,
+serpents, &c, especially objects which have appeared to them in their
+dreams. The women's faces are much less painted, usually a spot of red
+on each cheek and a circle of red round the roots of the hair or
+eyes."
+
+Here is a summary of what Alexander Henry, sen., wrote of the _Kri_ or
+_Knistino_ Indians of Lake Athabaska about 1770:--
+
+"The men in general tattoo their bodies and arms very much. The women
+confine this ornamentation to the chin, having three perpendicular
+lines from the middle of the chin to the lip, and one or more running
+on each side, nearly parallel with the corner of the mouth. Their
+dress consists of leather; that of the men is a pair of leggings,
+reaching up to the hip and fastened to the girdle. Between the legs is
+passed a strip of woollen stuff, but when this cannot be procured they
+use a piece of dressed leather about nine inches broad and four feet
+long, whose ends are drawn through the girdle and hang down before and
+behind about a foot.... The shirt is of soft dressed leather, either
+from the prong-buck or young red deer, close about the neck and
+hanging to the middle of the thigh; the sleeves are of the same, loose
+and open under the arms to the elbows, but thence to the wrist sewed
+tight. The cap is commonly a piece of leather, or skin with the hair
+on, shaped to fit the head, and tied under the chin; the top is
+usually decorated with feathers or other ornament. Shoes are made of
+buffalo (bison) hide, dressed in the hair, and mittens of the same.
+Over the whole a buffalo robe is thrown, which serves as covering day
+and night.
+
+"Such is their common dress, but on particular occasions they appear
+to greater advantage, having their cap, shirt, leggings, and shoes
+perfectly clean and white, trimmed with porcupine quills and other
+ingenious work of their women, who are supposed to be the most skilful
+hands in the country at decorations of this kind. The women's dress
+consists of the same materials as the men's. Their leggings do not
+reach above the knee, and are gathered below that joint; their shoes
+always lack decoration. The shift or body garment reaches down to the
+calf, where it is generally fringed and trimmed with quillwork; the
+upper part is fastened over the shoulders by strips of leather; a flap
+or cape hangs down about a foot before and behind, and is ornamented
+with quillwork and fringe. This covering is quite loose, but tied
+around the waist with a belt of stiff parchment fastened on the side,
+where also some ornaments are suspended. The sleeves are detached from
+the body garment; from the wrist to the elbow they are sewed, but
+thence to the shoulder they are open underneath and drawn up to the
+neck, where they are fastened across the breast and back.
+
+"Their ornaments are two or three coils of brass wire twisted around
+the rim of each ear, in which incisions are made for that purpose;
+blue beads, brass rings, quillwork, and fringe occasionally answer.
+Vermilion (a red clay) is much used by the women to paint the face.
+
+"Their hair is generally parted on the crown and fastened behind each
+ear in large knots, from which are suspended bunches of blue beads or
+other ingenious work of their own. The men adjust their hair in
+various forms; some have it parted on top and tied in a tail on each
+side, while others make one long _queue_ which hangs down behind, and
+around which is twisted a strip of otter skin or dressed buffalo
+entrails. This tail is frequently increased in thickness and length by
+adding false hair, but others allow it to flow loose naturally. Combs
+are seldom used by the men, and they never smear the hair with grease,
+but red earth is sometimes put upon it. White earth daubed over the
+hair generally denotes mourning. The young men sometimes have a bunch
+of hair on the crown, about the size of a small teacup, and nearly in
+the shape of that vessel upside down, to which they fasten various
+ornaments of feathers, quillwork, ermine tails, &c. Red and white
+earth and charcoal are much used in their toilets; with the former
+they usually daub their robes and other garments, some red and others
+white. The women comb their hair and use grease on it."
+
+The Slave Indians (a tribe of the Athapaskan family) tattooed their
+cheeks with charcoal inserted under the skin, also daubed their
+bodies, robes, and garments profusely with red earth (generally
+called, in the text of travellers, vermilion), but they had another
+favourite pigment, procured from the regions on the west of the Rocky
+Mountains, some kind of graphite, like the lead of lead pencils. With
+this they marked their faces in black lead after red earth has been
+applied, and thus gave themselves a ghastly and savage appearance.
+Their dress consists of a leather shirt trimmed with human hair and
+porcupine-quill work, and leggings of leather. Their shoes and caps
+were made of bison leather, with the hair outside. Their necklaces
+were strings of grizzly-bear claws, and a "buffalo" robe was thrown
+over all occasionally. Some of them occasionally had quite light
+skins--when free of dirt or paint--and grey eyes, and their hair,
+instead of being black, was greyish-brown. These last features (grey
+eyes and brown hair) characterized many individuals among the northern
+British-Columbian tribes.
+
+The Naskwapis of inland Labrador--allied in speech to the Kris and the
+Montagnais, but in blood to the Eskimo--are described as above the
+middle size in height, slender, and long-legged, their cheeks being
+very prominent, eyes black, nose rather flat, mouth large, lips thick,
+teeth white, hair rough and black, and the complexion a yellowish
+"frog" colour. They were dressed in elaborate and warm garments made
+of reindeer skin. The ordinary covering for the head of the men was
+the skin of a bear's head. "Thus accoutred, with the addition of a
+bow and quiver, a stone axe, and a bone knife, a Naskwapi man
+possessed no small degree of pride and self-importance" (James
+M'Kenzie).
+
+The handsomest tribes of Amerindians encountered by the Canadian
+pioneers seem to have been the Ojibwés of Lake Superior, the Iroquois
+south of the St. Lawrence, and the Mandans of the upper Missouri.
+
+Until well on in the nineteenth century none of the Canadian
+Amerindians were particular about wearing clothes if the weather was
+hot. The men, especially, were either quite oblivious of what was
+seemly in clothing (except perhaps the Iroquois) or thought it
+necessary to go naked into battle, or to remove all clothing before
+taking part in religious ceremonies.
+
+It is commonly supposed that the Red Man was a rather glum person,
+seldom seen to smile and averse to showing any emotion. That is not
+the impression one derives from the many pen portraits of Amerindians
+in the journals of the great pioneers. Here, on the contrary, you see
+the natives laughing, smiling, kissing eagerly their wives and
+children after an absence, displaying exuberant and cordial friendship
+towards the white man who treated them well, having love quarrels and
+fits of raging jealousy, moods of deep remorse after a fight, touching
+devotion to their comrades or chiefs, and above all to their children.
+They are most emotional, indeed, and, apart from this chapter you will
+find frequent descriptions of how they wept at times over the
+remembrance of their dead relations and friends.
+
+Hearne remarked, in 1772, that when two parties of Athapaska Indians
+met, the ceremonies which passed between them were very formal. They
+would advance within twenty or thirty yards of each other, make a full
+halt, and then sit or lie down on the ground, not speaking for some
+minutes. At length one of them, generally an elderly man, broke
+silence by acquainting the other party with every misfortune that had
+befallen him and his companions from the last time they had seen or
+heard of each other, including all deaths and other calamities which
+had happened to any other Indians during the same period. When he
+finished, another orator, belonging to the other party, related in
+like manner all the bad news that had come to _his_ knowledge. If
+these orations contained any news that in the least affected either
+party, it would not be long before some of them began to sigh and sob,
+and soon after to break out into a loud cry, which was generally
+accompanied by most of the grown persons of both sexes; and sometimes
+it was common to hear them all--men, women, and children--joining in
+one universal howl. When the first transports of grief had subsided,
+they advanced by degrees, and both parties mixed with each other, the
+men with the men, the women with the women. They then passed round
+tobacco pipes very freely, and the conversation became general. They
+had now nothing but good news left to tell, and in less than half an
+hour probably nothing but smiles and cheerfulness would be seen on
+every face.
+
+One direction in which the Amerindians did not shine was in their
+treatment of women. This perhaps was worse than in other uncivilized
+races. Woman was very badly used, except perhaps for the first year of
+courtship and marriage. Courtship began by the young man throwing
+sticks at the girl[10] who pleased his fancy, and if she responded he
+asked her in marriage. But not long after she had become a mother she
+sank into the position of a household drudge and beast of burden. For
+example, amongst the Beaver Indians, an Athapaskan tribe of the far
+north-west, it is related by Alexander Mackenzie that the women are
+permanently crippled and injured in physique by the hardships they
+have to undergo. "Having few dogs for transport in that country, the
+women alone perform that labour which is allotted to beasts of burden
+in other countries. It is not uncommon whilst the men carry nothing
+but a gun, that their wives and daughters follow with such weighty
+burdens that if they lay them down they cannot replace them; nor will
+the men deign to perform the service of hoisting them on to their
+backs. So that during their journeys they are frequently obliged to
+lean against a tree for a small degree of temporary relief. When they
+arrive at the place which their tyrants have chosen for their
+encampment, they arrange the tent in a few minutes by forming a curve
+of poles meeting at the top and expanding into a circle of twelve or
+fifteen feet in diameter at the bottom, covered with dressed skins of
+the moose sewn together. During these preparations the men sit down
+quietly to the enjoyment of their pipes, if they happen to have any
+tobacco."
+
+[Footnote 10: The manner of courtship among the Ojibwés seemed to
+Peter Grant not only singular, but rude. "The lover begins his first
+addresses by gently pelting his mistress with bits of clay, snowballs,
+small sticks, or anything he may happen to have in his hand. If she
+returns the compliment, he is encouraged to continue the farce, and
+repeat it for a considerable time, after which more direct proposals
+of marriage are made by word of mouth."]
+
+Among the Ojibwé and Huron Indians of the Great Lakes the men
+sometimes obliged their wives to bring up and nourish young bears
+instead of their own children, so that the bears might eventually be
+fattened for eating. If food was scarce, the women went without before
+even the male slaves of the tribe were unprovided with food. Women
+might never eat in the society of males, not even if these males were
+slaves or prisoners of war. If food was very scarce, the husband as
+likely as not killed and ate a wife; perhaps did this before slaying
+and eating a valuable dog. (On the other hand, Mackenzie instances the
+case of a woman among the Slave Indians who, in a winter of great
+scarcity, managed to kill and devour her husband and several
+relations.) So terrible was the ill-treatment of the women in some
+tribes that these wretched beings sometimes committed suicide to end
+their tortures. Even in this, however, they were not let off lightly,
+for the Siou men invented as a tenet of their religion the saying that
+"Women who hang themselves are the most miserable of all wretches in
+the other world".
+
+On the other hand, the kind treatment of children by fathers as well
+as mothers is an "Indian" trait commented on by writer after writer.
+Here is a typical description by Alexander Henry the Elder, concerning
+the children of the Ojibwé tribe:
+
+"As soon as the boys begin to run about, they are provided with bows
+and arrows, and acquire, as it were 'by instinct', an astonishing
+dexterity in shooting birds, squirrels, butterflies, &c. Hunting in
+miniature may be justly said to comprise the whole of their education
+and childish diversion. Such as excel in this kind of exercise are
+sure of being particularly distinguished by their parents, and seldom
+punished for any misbehaviour, but, on the contrary, indulged in every
+degree of excess and caprice. I have often seen grown-up boys of this
+description, when punished for some serious fault, strike their father
+and spit in his face, calling him 'bad dog', or 'old woman', and,
+sometimes, carrying their insolence so far as to threaten to stab or
+shoot him, and, what is rather singular, these too-indulgent parents
+seem to encourage such unnatural liberties, and even glory in such
+conduct from their favourite children. I heard them boast of having
+sons who promised at an early age to inherit such bold and independent
+sentiments.... Children of nine or ten years of age not only enjoy
+the confidence of the men, but are generally considered as companions
+and very deliberately join in their conversations."
+
+When death overtook anybody the grief of the female relations was
+carried to great excess. They not only cut their hair, cried and
+howled, but they would sometimes, with the utmost deliberation,
+employ some sharp instrument to separate the nail from the finger and
+then force back the flesh beyond the first joint, which they
+immediately amputated. "Many of the old women have so often repeated
+this ceremony that they have not a complete finger remaining on either
+hand" (Mackenzie).
+
+[Illustration: CARIBOU SWIMMING A RIVER]
+
+The Amerindians of North America were religious and superstitious, and
+had a firm faith in a world of spiritual agencies within or outside
+the material world around us. Most of them believed in the existence
+of "fairies",--woodland, earth, mountain, or water spirits--whom they
+declared they could see from time to time in human semblance. Or such
+spirit or demi-god might assume for a time or permanently the form of
+an animal. To all such spirits of earth, air, and water, or to the
+sacred animals they inhabited, sacrifices would be offered and prayers
+made. Great importance was attributed to dreams and visions. They
+accustomed themselves to make long fasts, so that they might become
+light-headed and see visions, or hear spirit voices in a trance. To
+prepare their minds for this state they would go four or five days
+without food, and even abstain from drinking.
+
+Undoubtedly their "medicine men" developed great mesmeric powers, and
+this force, combined with rather clumsy juggling and ventriloquism,
+enabled them to perform a semblance of "miracles". The Iroquois
+offered much opposition to Christianity, thinking it would tame their
+warriors too quickly and affect their national independence; but by
+the greater part of the Amerindians the message of the Gospel brought
+by the French priests was eagerly received, and the converts became
+many and most sincere. Their reverence for the missionaries and belief
+in them was increased when they saw how effectually they were able to
+protect them from too-rapacious white adventurers, fierce soldiers,
+and unscrupulous traders.
+
+The Miamis of Lake Michigan held the symbol of the cross in great
+respect. A young Frenchman who was trading with them got into a
+passion and drew his sword to avenge himself for a theft committed on
+his goods. The Miama chieftain, to appease him, showed him the cross,
+which was planted in the ground at the end of his lodge, and said to
+him: "Behold the tree of the Black Gown; he teaches us to pray and not
+to lose our temper,"--of course, referring to the missionary in the
+black gown who had been amongst them. Before the cross was planted
+here these Miamis kept in their houses one or more bogies, to which
+they appealed in times of distress or sickness. One of these was the
+skull of the bison with its horns. Another was the skin of the bear
+raised on a pole in the middle of the hut and retaining the head,
+which was usually painted green. The women sometimes died of terror
+from the stories told them by the men about these idols, and the
+Jesuits did a great deal of good by getting them abolished in many
+places.
+
+The Supreme Being of the Eskimos was a goddess rather than a god: a
+mother of all things who lived under the sea. On the other hand, most
+of the Amerindian tribes believed in one great God of the Sky--Manito,
+as He was called by the peoples of Algonkin stock, Nainubushan by the
+Siou and their kindred. This Being was usually kindly disposed towards
+man; but they also (in most cases) believed in a _bad_ Manito, who was
+responsible for most of the harm in the world. But sometimes the Great
+Manito was capricious, or apparently made many mistakes which he had
+afterwards to rectify. Thus the Siou tribes of Assiniboia believed
+that the Supreme Being (whom they called Eth-tom-é) first created
+mankind and all living things, and then, through some oversight or
+mistake, caused a great flood to cover the earth's surface. So in a
+hurry he was obliged to make a very large canoe of twigs and
+branches, and into this he put a pair of every kind of bird and beast,
+besides a family of human beings, who were thus saved from drowning,
+and began the world afresh when the waters subsided. This legend was
+something like the story of Noah's ark, but seems in some form or
+another to have existed in the mind of all the North-American peoples
+before the arrival of Christian missionaries. Much the same story was
+told by the Ojibwés about the Great Hare-God, Nainiboju.
+
+The Siou and the Ojibwé (and other tribes also) believed that after
+death the soul lay for a time in a trance, and then found itself
+floating towards a River which must be crossed. Beyond the River lay
+the Happy Hunting Grounds, the Elysian fields; but to oppose the weary
+soul anxious to reach this paradise there ramped on the other side a
+huge, flaming-red bison bull, if it had been ordained by the Great
+Spirit that the soul's time was not yet come, this red bison pushed it
+back, and the soul was obliged to re-enter the body, which then awoke
+from its trance or swoon and resumed its worldly activities.
+
+Suicide was regarded as the most heinous of crimes. Any man killing
+himself deliberately, fell into the river of the ghost world and was
+never heard of again, while women who hanged themselves "were regarded
+as the most miserable of all wretches in the other world".
+
+Their belief in spirits--even ancestral spirits--taking up an abode in
+the bodies of beasts, birds, or reptiles, or even in plants or stones,
+caused them to view with respect of a superstitious kind many natural
+objects. Some one thing--a beast, bird, reptile, fish, plant, or
+strange stone had been fixed on as the abode of his tutelary spirit by
+some father of a family. The family grew into a clan, and the clan to
+a tribe, and the object sacred in the eyes of its father and founder
+became its "totem", crest, or symbol. As a rule, whatever thing was
+the _totem_ of the individual or the clan was held sacred in their
+eyes, and, if it was an animal, was not killed, or, if killed, not
+eaten. Many of the northern Indians would refrain from killing the
+wolf or the glutton, or if they did so, or did it by accident, they
+would refuse to skin the animal. The elder people amongst the
+Athapaskan Indians, in Hearne's day, would reprove the young folk for
+"speaking disrespectfully" of different beasts and birds.
+
+Their ideas of medicine and surgery were much mixed up with a belief
+in magic and in the mysterious powers of their "medicine men". This
+person, who might be of either sex, certainly knew a few simple
+medicines to be made from herbs or decoctions of bark, but for the
+most part he attempted to cure the sick or injured by blowing lustily
+on the part affected or, more wisely, by massage. A universal cure,
+however, for all fevers and mild ailments was sweating. Sweating huts
+were built in nearly every settlement. They were covered over in a way
+to exclude air as much as possible. The inside was heated with red-hot
+stones and glowing embers, on to which from time to time water was
+poured to fill the place with steam. The Amerindians not only went
+through these Turkish baths to cure small ailments but also with the
+idea of clearing the intelligence and as a fitting preliminary to
+negotiations--for peace, or alliance, or even for courtship. In many
+tribes if a young "brave" arrived with proposals of marriage for a
+man's daughter he was invited to enter the sweating house with her
+father, and discuss the bargain calmly over perspiration and the
+tobacco pipe.
+
+Tobacco smoking indeed was almost a religious ceremony, as well as a
+remedy for certain maladies or states of mind. The "pipe of peace" has
+become proverbial. Nevertheless tobacco was still unknown in the
+eighteenth century to many of the Pacific-coast and far-north-west
+tribes, as to the primitive Eskimo. It was not a very old practice in
+the Canadian Dominion when Europeans first arrived there, though it
+appeared to be one of the most characteristic actions of these
+red-skinned savages in the astonished eyes of the first pioneers. They
+used pipes for smoking, however, long before tobacco came among them,
+certain berries taking the place of tobacco.
+
+The Amerindians of the southern parts of Canada and British Columbia
+were more or less settled peoples of towns or villages, of fixed homes
+to which they returned at all seasons of the year, however far afield
+they might range for warfare, trade, or hunting. But the more northern
+tribes were nomads: people shifting their abode from place to place in
+pursuit of game or trade. Unlike the people of the south and west
+(though these only grew potatoes) they were not agriculturists: the
+only vegetable element in their food was the wild rice of the marshes,
+the sweet-tasting layer between the bark and the wood of certain
+trees, and the fruits or fungi of the forest or the lichen growing on
+the rocks. Though these people might in summertime build some hasty
+wigwam of boughs and moss, their ordinary dwelling place was a tent.
+
+The Wood Indians, or Opimitish Ininiwak, of the Athapaskan group
+(writes Alexander Henry, sen.) had no fixed villages; and their lodges
+or huts were so rudely fashioned as to afford them very inadequate
+protection against the weather. The greater part of their year was
+spent in travelling from place to place in search of food. The animal
+on which they chiefly depended was the _hare_--a most prominent animal
+in Amerindian economy and tradition. This they took in springes. From
+its skin they made coverings with much ingenuity, cutting it into
+narrow strips and weaving this into the shape of a blanket, which was
+of a very warm and agreeable quality.
+
+The Naskwapi Algonkins of inland Labrador were savages that led a
+wandering life through the bare, flat parts of that country,
+subsisting chiefly upon flesh, and clothing themselves with the skin
+of the caribou, which they caught in pitfalls or shot with the bow
+and arrow. "Very few sights, I believe, can be more distressing to the
+feelings of humanity than a Labrador savage, surrounded by his wife
+and five or six small children, half-famished with cold and hunger in
+a hole dug out of the snow and screened from the inclemency of the
+weather by the branches of the trees. Their whole furniture is a
+kettle hung over the fire, not for the purpose of cooking victuals,
+but for melting snow" (James M'Kenzie).
+
+A description of the tents of the Kris or Knistino (Algonkins of the
+Athabaska region), written by Alexander Henry, sen., applies with very
+little difference to all the other tribes dwelling to the east of the
+Rocky Mountains.[11]
+
+[Footnote 11: See also p. 249.]
+
+These tents were of dressed leather, erected with poles, generally
+seventeen in number, of which two were tied together about three feet
+from the top. The first two poles being erected and set apart at the
+base, the others were placed against them in a slanting position,
+meeting at the top, so that they all formed nearly a circle, which was
+then covered with the leather. This consisted of ten to fifteen
+dressed skins of the bison, moose, or red deer, well sewed together
+and nicely cut to fit the conical figure of the poles, with an opening
+above, to let out smoke and admit the light. From this opening down to
+the door the two edges of the tent were brought close together and
+well secured with wooden pegs about six inches long, leaving for the
+door an oval aperture about two feet wide and three feet high, below
+which the edges were secured with similar pegs. This small entrance
+did well enough for the natives, who would be brought up to it from
+infancy, but a European might be puzzled to get through, as a piece of
+hide stretched upon a frame of the same shape as the door, but
+somewhat larger, hung outside, and must be first raised by the hand of
+the incomer.
+
+Such tents were usually spacious, measuring twenty feet in diameter.
+The fire was always made in the centre, around which the occupants
+generally placed a range of stones to prevent the ashes from
+scattering and to keep the fire compact. New tents were perfectly
+white; some of them were painted with red and black figures. These
+devices were generally derived from the dreams of the Amerindians,
+being some mythical monster or other hideous animal, whose description
+had been handed down from their ancestors. A large camp of such tents,
+pitched regularly on a level plain, had a fine effect at a distance,
+especially when numerous bands of horses were seen feeding in all
+directions.
+
+The "lodges" or long houses made of poles, fir branches, moss, &c.,
+wherein, among the Iroquois, Algonkin, and Siou peoples, several
+families made a common habitation, are described here and there in the
+course of the narrative. The houses of the coast tribes of British
+Columbia were bigger, more elaborate, and permanent, and in this
+region the natives had acquired some idea of carpentry, and had learnt
+to make planks of wood by splitting with wedges or hewing with adzes.
+
+One of these British Columbian houses was measured, and found to be
+seventy feet long by twenty-five feet wide; the entrance in the gable
+end was cut through a plank five and a half feet wide, and nearly
+oval. A board suspended on the outside answered for a door; on the
+other side of the broad plank was rudely carved a large painted figure
+of a man, between whose legs was the passage. But other houses on the
+Pacific coast, visited by Cook or Vancouver, are said to have been
+large enough to accommodate seven hundred people. These houses of the
+Pacific coast region were exceedingly filthy, sturgeon and salmon
+being strewn about in every direction. The men inhabiting them were
+often disgusting in their behaviour, while the women are declared to
+have been "devoid of shame or decency".
+
+According to Mackenzie, such habitations swarmed with fleas, and even
+the ground round about them "was alive with this vermin". The
+Alexander Henrys, both uncle and nephew, complain of the flea plague
+(partly due to the multitude of dogs) in every Indian village or
+encampment.
+
+The domestic implements of the Amerindians were few. Pottery seems to
+have been unknown amongst the northern tribes to the east and north of
+the Mississippi valley, but earthen jars and vessels were made by the
+Dakota-Siou group in the valley of the Mississippi. Amongst these
+agricultural Indians the hoe was made of a buffalo's blade bone
+fastened to a crooked wooden handle. The Ojibwés manufactured chisels
+out of beavers' teeth. The Eskimo and some of the neighbouring
+Amerindian tribes used oblong "kettles" of stone--simply great blocks
+of stone chipped, rubbed, and hollowed out into receptacles, with
+handles at both ends. (It is suggested that they borrowed the idea of
+these stone vessels for cooking from the early Norse settlers of
+Greenland; see p. 18.)
+
+The Amerindians of the regions west of the Rocky Mountains made
+kettles or cooking vessels out of blocks of "cedar" (_Juniper_) wood;
+east of the Rocky Mountains the birch-bark kettle was universal. Of
+course these vessels of wood or bark could not be placed on the fire
+or embers to heat or boil the contents, as was possible with the
+"kettles" of stone or the cooking pots of clay. So the people using
+them heated the water in which the food or the soup was boiled by
+making stones red-hot in the fire and then dropping them into the
+birch-bark or cedar-wood tubs. Many of the northern Indians got into
+the way of eating their food raw because of the difficulty of making a
+fire away from home.
+
+In regard to food, neither Amerindian nor Eskimo was squeamish. They
+were almost omnivorous, and specially delighted in putrid or noisome
+substances from which a European would turn in loathing, and from the
+eating of which he might conceivably die.
+
+It was only in the extreme south of Canada or in British Columbia
+(potatoes only) that any agriculture was carried on and that the
+natives had maize, pumpkins, and pease to add to their dietary; but
+(as compared to the temperate regions of Europe and Asia) Nature was
+generous in providing wild fruits and grain without trouble of
+husbandry. The fruits and nuts have been enumerated elsewhere, but a
+description might be given here of the "wild oats" (_Avena fatua_) and
+the "wild rice" of the regions of central Canada and the middle west.
+The wild oats made a rough kind of porridge, but were not so important
+and so nourishing as the wild rice which is so often mentioned in the
+stories of the pioneers, who liked this wild grain as much as the
+Indians did.
+
+This wild rice (_Zizania aquatica_) grew naturally in small rivers and
+swampy places. The stems were hollow, jointed at intervals, and the
+grain appeared at the extremity of the stalk. By the month of June
+they had grown two feet above the surface of the shallow water, and
+were ripe for harvesting in September. At this period the Amerindians
+passed in canoes through the water-fields of wild rice, shaking the
+ears into the canoes as they swept by. The grain fell out easily when
+ripe, but in order to clean it from the husk it was dried over a slow
+fire on a wooden grating. After being winnowed it was pounded to flour
+in a mortar, or else boiled like rice, and seasoned with fat. "It had
+a most delicate taste", wrote Alexander Henry the Elder.
+
+Fish was perhaps the staple of Amerindian diet, because in scarcely
+any part of the Canadian Dominion is a lake, river, or brook far away.
+In the region of the Great Lakes fish were caught in large quantities
+in October, and exposed to the weather to be frozen at nighttime. They
+were then stored away in this congealed state, and lasted good--more
+or less--till the following April.
+
+Pemmican--that early form of potted meat so familiar to the readers of
+Red-Indian romances--was made of the lean meat of the bison. The
+strips of meat were dried in the sun, and afterwards pounded in a
+mortar and mixed with an equal quantity of bison fat. Fish "pemmican"
+was sun-dried fish ground to powder.
+
+A favourite dish among the northern Indians was blood mixed with the
+half-digested food found in the stomach of a deer, boiled up with a
+sufficient quantity of water to make it of the consistency of pease
+porridge. Some scraps of fat or tender flesh were shredded small and
+boiled with it. To render this dish more palatable they had a method
+of mixing the blood with the contents of the stomach in the paunch
+itself, and hanging it up in the heat and smoke of the fire for
+several days--in other words, the Scotch haggis. The kidneys of both
+moose and buffalo were usually eaten _raw_ by the southern Indians,
+for no sooner was one of those beasts killed than the hunter ripped up
+its belly, snatched out the kidneys, and ate them warm, before the
+animal was quite dead. They also at times put their mouths to the
+wound the ball or the arrow had made, and sucked the blood; this, they
+said, quenched thirst, and was very nourishing.
+
+The favourite drink of the Ojibwé Indians in the wintertime was hot
+broth poured over a dishful of pure snow.
+
+The Amerindians of the Nipigon country (north of Lake Superior) and
+the Ojibwés and Kris often relapsed into cannibalism when hard up for
+food. Indeed some of them became so addicted to this practice that
+they simply went about stalking their fellow Indians with as much
+industry as if they were hunting animals. "These prowling ogres caused
+such terror that to sight the track of one of them was sufficient to
+make twenty families decamp in all the speed of their terror"
+(Alexander Henry). It was deemed useless to attempt any resistance
+when these monsters were coming to kill and eat. The people would even
+make them presents of clothes and provisions to allow them and their
+children to live. There were women cannibals as well as men (see p.
+171).
+
+As the greater part of their food came from the chase, and their only
+articles of commerce likewise, they devoted themselves more entirely
+to hunting and fishing than to any other pursuit. The women did most
+of the fishing (and all the skin-curing for the fur market and for
+their own dress), while the men pursued with weapons the beasts of the
+chase, trapped them in pitfalls or snares, or drove them into "pounds"
+(excavated enclosures).
+
+Illustrating the wonderful sagacity of the Amerindians as game
+trackers, Alexander Henry the Elder tells the following story in the
+autumn of 1799:--
+
+"We had not gone far from the house before we fell upon the fresh
+tracks of some red deer (wapiti), and soon after discovered the herd
+in a thicket of willows and poplars; we both fired, and the deer
+disappeared in different directions. We pursued them, but to no
+purpose, as the country was unfavourable. We then returned to the spot
+where we had fired, as the Indian suspected that we had wounded some
+of them. We searched to see if we could find any blood; on my part, I
+could find tracks, but no blood. The Indian soon called out, and I
+went to him, but could see no blood, nor any sign that an animal had
+been wounded. However, he pointed out the track of a large buck among
+the many others, and told me that from the manner in which this buck
+had started off he was certain the animal had been wounded. As the
+ground was beaten in every direction by animals, it was only after a
+tedious search that we found where the buck had struck off. But no
+blood was seen until, passing through a thicket of willows, he
+observed a drop upon a leaf, and next a little more. He then began to
+examine more strictly, to find out in what part of the body the
+animal had been wounded; and, judging by the height and other signs,
+he told me the wound must have been somewhere between the shoulder and
+neck. We advanced about a mile, but saw nothing of the deer, and no
+more blood. I was for giving up the chase; but he assured me the wound
+was mortal, and that if the animal should lie down he could not rise
+again. We proceeded two miles farther, when, coming out upon a small
+open space, he told me the animal was at no great distance, and very
+probably in this meadow. We accordingly advanced a few yards, and
+there we found the deer lying at the last gasp. The wound was exactly
+as I had been told. The sagacity of the Saulteurs [Ojibwés] in tracing
+big wood animals is astonishing. I have frequently witnessed
+occurrences of this nature; the bend of a leaf or blade of grass is
+enough to show the hunter the direction the game has taken. Their
+ability is of equally great service to war parties, when they discover
+the footsteps of their enemies."
+
+The Assiniboin Indians (a branch of the Sious) down to about fifty
+years ago captured the bison of the plains in hundreds at a time by
+driving them into large excavated areas below the level of the ground.
+
+Alexander Henry, jun., gives the following description of this
+procedure in 1810:--
+
+"The pounds are of different dimensions, according to the number of
+tents in one camp. The common size is from sixty to one hundred paces
+or yards in circumference, and about five feet in height. Trees are
+cut down, laid upon one another, and interwoven with branches and
+green twigs; small openings are left to admit the dogs to feed upon
+the carcasses of the (old) bulls, which are generally left as useless.
+This enclosure is commonly made between two hummocks, on the declivity
+or at the foot of rising ground. The entrance is about ten paces wide,
+and always fronts the plains. On each side of this entrance commences
+a thick range of fascines, the two ranges spreading asunder as they
+extend to the distance of one hundred yards, beyond which openings are
+left at intervals; but the fascines soon become more thinly planted,
+and continue to spread apart to the right and left until each range
+has been extended about three hundred yards from the pound. The labour
+is then diminished by only placing at intervals three or four cross
+sticks, in imitation of a dog or other animal (sometimes called 'dead
+men'); these extend on the plain for about two miles, and double rows
+of them are planted in several other directions to a still greater
+distance. Young men are usually sent out to collect and bring in the
+buffalo--a tedious task, which requires great patience, for the herd
+must be started by slow degrees. This is done by setting fire to dung
+or grass. Three young men will bring in a herd of several hundred from
+a great distance. When the wind is aft it is most favourable, as they
+can then direct the buffalo with great ease. Having come in sight of
+the ranges, they generally drive the herd faster, until it begins to
+enter the ranges, where a swift-footed person has been stationed with
+a buffalo robe over his head, to imitate that animal; but sometimes a
+horse performs this business. When he sees buffaloes approaching he
+moves slowly toward the pound until they appear to follow him; then he
+sets off at full speed, imitating a buffalo as well as he can, with
+the herd after him. The young men in the rear now discover themselves,
+and drive the herd on with all possible speed. There is always a
+sentinel on some elevated spot to notify the camp when the buffalo
+appear; and this intelligence is no sooner given than every man,
+woman, and child runs to the ranges that lead to the pound to prevent
+the buffalo from taking a wrong direction. Then they lie down between
+the fascines and cross sticks, and, if the buffalo attempt to break
+through, the people wave their robes, which causes the herd to keep
+on, or turn to the opposite side, where other persons do the same.
+When the buffalo have been thus directed to the entrance of the pound,
+the Indian who leads them rushes into it and out at the other side,
+either by jumping over the enclosure or creeping through an opening
+left for that purpose. The buffalo tumble in pell-mell at his heels,
+almost exhausted, but keep moving around the enclosure from east to
+west, and never in a direction against the sun. What appeared
+extraordinary to me on those occasions was that, when word was given
+to the camp of the near approach of the buffalo, the dogs would skulk
+away from the pound and not approach until the herd entered. Many
+buffaloes break their legs and some their necks in jumping into the
+pound, as the descent is generally six or eight feet, and stumps are
+left standing there. The buffalo being caught, the men assembled at
+the enclosure, armed with bows and arrows; every arrow has a
+particular mark of the owner, and they are let fly until the whole
+herd is killed. Then the men enter the pound, and each claims his own;
+but commonly there is what they term the master of the pound, who
+divides the animals and gives each tent an equal share, reserving
+nothing for himself. But in the end he is always the best provided
+for; everyone is obliged to send him a certain portion, as it is in
+his tent that the numerous ceremonies relating to the pound are
+observed. There the young men are always welcome to feast and smoke,
+and no women are allowed to enter, as that tent is set apart for the
+affairs of the pound. Horses are sometimes used to collect and bring
+in buffalo, but this method is less effectual than the other; besides,
+it frightens the herds and soon causes them to withdraw to a great
+distance. When horses are used the buffalo are absolutely driven into
+the pound, but when the other method is pursued they are in a manner
+enticed to their destruction."
+
+A somewhat similar method was adopted by the northern Kris and
+Athapascans for the capture of reindeer.
+
+As regards means of transport, the use of dogs as draught animals was
+by no means confined to the Eskimo: they were used in wintertime to
+draw sledges over the snow or ice by nearly all the northern Indian
+tribes, and by the people of the Rocky Mountains and Pacific coast.
+After the Amerindians of the prairies and plains received horses
+(indirectly through the Spaniards of Mexico)[12] they sometimes
+employed the smaller and poorer kind of ponies as pack animals; but
+for the most part throughout the summer season of the Canadian
+Dominion--from May to October--transport and travel by canoe was the
+favourite method.
+
+[Footnote 12: See p. 150.]
+
+There were four very well marked types of canoe or boat in British
+North America. There was the already-described Eskimo _kayak_, made of
+leather stretched over a framework of wood or bone; the Amerindians of
+the Dominion, south of the Eskimo and east of the Rocky Mountains,
+used the familiar "birch-bark" canoe;[13] the peoples of the Pacific
+coast belt possessed something more like a boat, made out of a
+hollowed tree trunk and built up with planks; and the tribes of the
+Upper Mississippi used round coracles. Here are descriptions of all
+three kinds of Amerindian canoe from the pens of eighteenth-century
+pioneers: The birch-bark canoe used on the Great Lakes was about
+thirty-three feet long by four and a half feet broad, and formed of
+the smooth rind or bark of the birch tree fastened outside a wooden
+framework. It was lined with small splints of juniper cedar, and the
+vessel was further strengthened with ribs of the same wood, of which
+the two ends were fastened to the gunwales. Several bars rather than
+seats were laid across the canoe from gunwale to gunwale, the small
+roots of the spruce fir afforded the fibre with which the bark was
+sewn or stitched, and the gum of the pine tree supplied the place of
+tar and oakum. Bark, some spare fibre, and gum were always carried in
+each canoe for repairs, which were constantly necessary (one
+continually reads in the diaries of the pioneers of "stopping to gum
+the canoe"). The canoes were propelled with paddles, and occasionally
+a sail.
+
+[Footnote 13: In the far north-west, on the rivers of the Pacific
+slope, the natives used spruce-fir bark instead of birch.]
+
+The aborigines of Newfoundland--the Beothiks--are said to have known
+the birch-bark canoe, framework canoe, but to have employed
+"dug-outs"--hollowed tree trunks. The canoes of the Mandans of the
+upper Missouri basin were like coracles, of circular form, made of a
+framework of bent willow branches over which was stretched a raw
+bison-hide with the hair inside. This was sewn tightly round the
+willow rim. In lieu of a paddle they use a pole about five feet long,
+split at one end to admit a piece of board about two feet long and
+half a foot broad, which was lashed to the pole and so formed a kind
+of cross. There was but one for each canoe. The paddler of this
+coracle made directly for the opposite shore; every stroke he gave
+turned his "dish" almost entirely round; to recover his position and
+go on his intended route, he must give a stroke on the other side,
+which brought him up again; and so on till he got over, not without
+drifting down sometimes nearly a mile.
+
+Alexander Henry, jun., thus describes a canoe of the Clatsop people on
+the Lower Columbia (Pacific coast, opposite Vancouver Island): "This
+was a war canoe--the first of the kind I had seen. She was about
+thirty-six feet long and wide in proportion, the stem rising upright
+about six feet, on top of which was a figure of some imaginary monster
+of uncouth sculpture, having the head of a carnivorous animal with
+large erect ears but no body, clinging by arms and legs to the upper
+end of the canoe, and grinning horribly. The ears were painted green,
+the other parts red and black. The stern also rose about five feet in
+height, but had no figure carved on it. On each side of both stem and
+stern broad strips of wood rose about four feet, having holes cut in
+them to shoot arrows through. She had a high sprit-sail made of
+handkerchiefs and pieces of gunny-cloth or jute, forming irregular
+stripes, I am told these Indians commonly have pieces of squared
+timber, not unlike a three-inch plank, high and broad, perforated to
+shoot arrows through; this is fixed on the bow of the war canoe to
+serve as bulwarks in battle."
+
+Canoe voyages were mainly embarked on for trading; but in all
+probability before the coming of the European there was little trading
+done between one tribe and another, except in the region _west_ of the
+Rocky Mountains, in which--especially to the north--the Amerindians
+were so different in their habits and customs from those dwelling east
+of the mountains as to suggest that they must very occasionally have
+been in touch with some world outside America, such as Hawaii,
+Kamschatka, or Japan. In these Pacific coastlands they used a white
+seashell as a currency and a medium of exchange. So also did the
+Iroquois people and the southern Algonkin tribes, in the form of
+"wampum". The principal articles of barter were skins of fur animals,
+porcupine quills, dogs, slaves, and women.
+
+First Hunting (to supply food), then Trading in the products of the
+chase, and lastly War were the main subjects which occupied the
+Amerindian's thoughts before the middle of the nineteenth century.
+They usually went to war to turn other tribes out of profitable
+hunting grounds or productive fisheries; or because they wanted slaves
+or more wives; or because a chief or a medicine man had a dream; or
+because some other notability felt he had given way too much to tears
+over some personal or public sorrow, and must show his manliness by
+killing the people of another tribe. In their wars they knew no mercy
+when their blood was up, and frequently perpetrated frightful
+cruelties for the sheer pleasure of seeing human suffering. Yet these
+devilish moods would alternate with fits of sentimentality. A man or a
+woman would suddenly take a war prisoner, or a person who was wounded
+or half-tortured to death, under their protection, and a short time
+afterwards the whole war party would be greeting this rescued wretch
+(usually a man--they were far more pitiless towards women) as brother,
+son, or friend, and even become quite maudlin over a scratch or a
+bruise; whereas an hour or so before they were on the point of
+disembowelling, or of driving splinters up the nails and setting them
+on fire. In warfare they often gave way to cannibalism.
+
+Though extremely fond of singing--they sang when they were merry; when
+they thought they were going to die; when they were victorious in
+hunting, love, or war; when they were defeated; when they were
+paddling a canoe or sewing a moccasin--they had but a poor range of
+musical instruments. Most of the tribes used flutes made out of the
+wing bones of cranes or out of reeds, and some had small trumpets of
+wood, bark, or buffalo horn. The Pacific coast Indians made gongs or
+"xylophones" out of blocks or slabs of resonant wood.
+
+Here is a specimen of Amerindian singing. It is the song which
+accompanied the famous Calumet dance in celebration of the peacemaking
+qualities of tobacco-smoking. It was taken down by the Jesuit
+missionaries in the seventeenth century from the Ilinwa (Illinois)
+Algonkin Indians of the middle west, and its notation reminds one of
+Japanese music.
+
+  [Musical notation and words:
+
+     THE CALUMET OR TOBACCO-PIPE DANCE
+
+     Ni-na-ha-ni,  ni-na-ha-ni,  ni-na-ha-ni
+     na-ni  on-go;  Ni-na-ha-ni,  ni-na-ha-ni,
+     ni-na-ha-ni  ho-ho; ni-na-ha-ni,  ni-na-ha-ni,
+     ni-na-ha-ni, Ka-wa ban-no-ge  at-chi-cha
+     Ko-ge  a-ke  a-w[¯a]; Ba-no-ge  a-chi-cha
+     sha-go-be  hé, hé,  hé! Min-tin-go  mi-ta-de
+     pi-ni,  pi-ni  hé!  A-chi-cha  lé  ma-chi
+     mi nam ba mik-tan-de, mik-tan-de  pi-ni, pini hé!]
+
+
+     Ninahani, &c, ongo; ninahani, &c, hoho; ninahani, &c.
+     Kawa bannoge atchicha Koge ake aw[¯a];
+     Banoge atchicha shagobe hé hé hé! Mintingo mitade
+     Pini pini hé! Atchicha lé machi mi nam ba miktande,
+     Miktande pini pini hé!
+
+Dancing was little else than posturing and jumping in masks--usually
+made to look like the head of a wild beast. But the men were usually
+very athletic. Wrestling competitions were almost universal,
+especially as a means of winning a wife. The conqueror in a wrestling
+match took the wife or wives of the defeated man. Their running powers
+for endurance and speed became justly celebrated.
+
+"Their principal and most inveterate game is that of the hoop," writes
+Alexander Henry, sen., "which proves as ruinous to them as the platter
+does to the Saulteurs (Ojibwé)." This game was played in the following
+manner. A hoop was made about two feet in diameter, nearly covered
+with dressed leather, and trimmed with quillwork, feathers, bits of
+metal, and other trinkets, on which were certain particular marks. Two
+persons played at the same time, by rolling the hoop and accompanying
+it, one on each side; when it was about to fall, each gently threw one
+arrow in such a manner that the hoop might fall upon it, and according
+to that mark on the hoop which rested on the arrows they reckoned the
+game. They also played another game by holding some article in one
+hand, or putting it into one of two shoes, the other hand or shoe
+being empty. They had another game which required forty to fifty small
+sticks, as thick as a goose quill and about a foot long; these were
+all shuffled together and then divided into two bunches, and according
+to the even or odd numbers of sticks in the bunch chosen, the players
+lost or won.
+
+A favourite game amongst the Ojibwé is described as "the hurdle",
+which is another name for the Canadian national game of La Crosse.
+When about to play, the men, of all ages, would strip themselves
+almost naked, but dress their hair in great style, put ornaments on
+their arms, and belts round their waists, and paint their faces and
+bodies in the most elaborate style. Each man was provided with "a
+hurdle", an instrument made of a small stick of wood about three feet
+long, bent at the end to a small circle, in which a loose piece of
+network is fixed, forming a cavity big enough to receive a leather
+ball about the size of a man's fist. Everything being prepared, a
+level plain about half a mile long was chosen, with proper barriers or
+goals at each end. Having previously formed into two equal parts, they
+assembled in the very middle of the field, and the game began by
+throwing up the ball perpendicularly in the air, when instantly both
+parties (writes an eyewitness) "formed a singular group of naked men,
+painted in different colours and in the most comical attitudes
+imaginable, holding their rackets elevated in the air to catch the
+ball". Whoever was so fortunate as to catch it in his net ran with it
+to the barrier with all his might, supported by his party; whilst the
+opponents were pursuing and endeavouring to knock the ball out of the
+net. He who succeeded in doing so ran in the same manner towards the
+opposite barrier, and was, of course, pursued in his turn. If in
+danger of being overtaken, he might throw it with his hurdle towards
+any of his associates who happened to be nearer the barrier than
+himself. They had a particular knack of throwing it a great distance
+in this manner, so that the best runners had not always the advantage;
+and, by a peculiar way of working their hands and arms while running,
+the ball never dropped out of their "hurdle".
+
+"The best of three heats wins the game, and, besides the honour
+acquired on such occasions, a considerable prize is adjudged to the
+victors. The vanquished, however, generally challenge their
+adversaries to renew the game the next day, which is seldom refused.
+The game then becomes more important, as the honour of the whole
+village is at stake, and it is carried on with redoubled impetuosity,
+every object which might impede them in their career is knocked down
+and trodden under foot without mercy, and before the game is decided,
+it is a common thing to see numbers sprawling on the ground with
+wounded legs and broken heads, yet this never creates any disputes or
+ill-will after the play is decided" (Alexander Henry, sen.).
+
+It has been computed that in the middle of the eighteenth century the
+Amerindian population of the vast territories now known as the
+Dominion of Canada numbered about 300,000. It now stands at an
+approximate 110,000. The chief diminution has taken place in
+Newfoundland, Lower and Upper Canada, New Brunswick, Assiniboia, and
+British Columbia. There may even have been an increase in the north
+and north-west. The first great blow to the Amerindians of these
+regions was the smallpox epidemic of 1780. The next was the effect of
+the strong drink[14] introduced by the agents of the Hudson's Bay and,
+still more, the two North-west Companies. Phthisis or pulmonary
+consumption also seems to have been introduced from Europe (though
+Hearne thought that the Northern Indians had it before the white man
+came). In fact, before the European invaded America neither Eskimo nor
+Amerindian seem to have had many diseases. They suffered from ulcers,
+scurvy, digestive troubles, rheumatism, headache, bronchitis, and
+heart complaints, but from few, if any, "germ" diseases.
+
+[Footnote 14: Before the white man came to _North_ America the natives
+had no form of intoxicating drink.]
+
+Some of the agents of the North-west Company apologize in their
+writings for the amount of rum that was circulated among the
+Amerindians at the orders of that company to stimulate trade, by
+saying that it was seven parts water. Nevertheless it excited them to
+madness, as the following extracts show. These are mostly taken from
+the journals of Alexander Henry the Younger, but they are typical of
+what was recorded by many other writers who describe the far interior
+of British North America between 1775 and 1835.
+
+"To see a house full of drunken Indians, consisting of men, women, and
+children, is a most unpleasant sight; for, in that condition, they
+often wrangle, pull each other by the hair, and fight. At times, ten
+or twelve of both sexes may be seen fighting each other promiscuously,
+until at last they all fall on the floor, one upon another, some
+spilling rum out of a small kettle or dish which they hold in their
+hands, while others are throwing up what they have just drunk. To
+add to this uproar, a number of children, some on their mothers'
+shoulders, and others running about and taking hold of their clothes,
+are constantly bawling, the elder ones, through fear that their
+parents may be stabbed, or that some other misfortune may befal them
+in the fray. These shrieks of the children form a very unpleasant
+chorus to the brutal noise kept up by their drunken parents."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"In a drinking match at the Hills yesterday, Gros Bras (Thick Arms) in
+a fit of jealousy stabbed Aupusoi to death with a hand-dague (dagger);
+the first stroke opened his left side, the second his belly, and the
+third his breast; he never stirred, although he had a knife in his
+belt, and died instantly. Soon after this Aupusoi's brother, a boy
+about ten years of age, took the deceased's gun, loaded it with two
+balls, and approached Gros Bras's tent. Putting the muzzle of the gun
+through the door the boy fired the two balls into his breast and
+killed him dead, just as he was reproaching his wife for her affection
+for Aupusoi, and boasting of the revenge he had taken. The little
+fellow ran into the woods and hid. Little Shell (Petite Coquille)
+found the old woman, Aupusoi's mother, in her tent; he instantly
+stabbed her. Ondainoiache then came in, took the knife, and gave her a
+second stab. Little Shell, in his turn taking the knife, gave a third
+blow. In this manner did these two rascals continue to murder the old
+woman, as long as there was any life in her. The boy escaped into
+Langlois' house, and was kept hid until they were all sober. Next
+morning a hole was dug in the ground, and all three were buried
+together. This affair kept the Indians from hunting, as Gros Bras was
+nearly related to the principal hunters."
+
+     *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Grand' Gueule stabbed Perdrix Blanche with a knife in six places.
+Perdrix Blanche fighting with his wife, fell in the fire and almost
+roasted, but had strength enough left notwithstanding his wounds to
+bite her nose off."
+
+     *       *       *       *       *
+
+"In the first drinking match a murder was committed in an Assiniboine
+tent, but fortunately it was done by an Ojibwé. L'Hiver stabbed
+Mishewashence to the heart three times, and killed him instantly. The
+wife and children cried out, and some of my people ran to the tent
+just as L'Hiver came out with the bloody knife in his hand, expecting
+we would lay hold of him. The first person he met was William Henry,
+whom he attempted to stab in the breast; but Henry avoided the stroke,
+and returned the compliment with a blow of his cudgel on the fellow's
+head. This staggered him; but instantly recovering he made another
+attempt to stab Henry. Foiled in this design, and observing several
+coming out of the fort, he took to his heels and ran into the woods
+like a deer. I chased him with some of my people, but he was too fleet
+for us. We buried the murdered man, who left a widow and five
+helpless orphans, having no relations on this river. The behaviour of
+two of the youngest was really piteous while we were burying the body;
+they called upon their deceased father not to leave them, but to
+return to the tent, and tried to prevent the men from covering the
+corpse with earth, screaming in a terrible manner; the mother was
+obliged to take them away."
+
+     *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Men and women have been drinking a match for three days and nights,
+during which it has been drink, fight--drink, fight--drink, and fight
+again--guns, axes, and knives being their weapons--very disagreeable."
+
+     *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Mithanasconce was so troublesome (in drink) that we were obliged to
+tie him with ropes to prevent his doing mischief. He was stabbed in
+the back in three different places about a month ago. His wounds were
+still open, and had an ugly appearance; in his struggling to get loose
+they burst out afresh and bled a great deal. We had much trouble to
+stop the blood, as the fellow was insensible to pain or danger; his
+only aim was to bite us. We had some narrow escapes, until we secured
+his mouth, and then he fell asleep."
+
+     *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Some Red Lake Indians having traded here for liquor which they took
+to their camp, quarrelled amongst themselves. One jumped on another
+and bit his nose off. It was some time before the piece could be
+found; but, at last, by tumbling and tossing the straw about, it was
+recovered, stuck on, and bandaged, as best the drunken people could,
+in hopes it would grow again" (Alexander Henry, jun.).
+
+     *       *       *       *       *
+
+As regards drunkenness, several authors among the early explorers
+declared that the French Canadian voyageurs were more disagreeable
+when drunk even than the Amerindians, for their quarrels were noisier
+and more deadly. "Indeed I had rather have fifty drunken Indians in
+the fort than sixty-five drunken Canadians", writes Alexander Henry in
+1810. And yet the extracts I have given from his journal show that it
+would be hard to beat the Amerindians for disagreeable ferocity when
+intoxicated.
+
+Henry, summing up his experiences before leaving for the Pacific coast
+in 1811, writes these remarks in his diary:--
+
+"What a different set of people they would be, were there not a drop
+of liquor in the country! If a murder is committed among the Saulteurs
+(Ojibwés), it is always in a drinking match. We may truly say that
+liquor is the root of all evil in the north-west. Great bawling and
+lamentation went on, and I was troubled most of the night for liquor
+to wash away grief."
+
+As a rule, the treatment of the Amerindians by the British and French
+settlers was good, except the thrusting of alcohol on them. But in
+Newfoundland a great crime was perpetrated. Between the middle of the
+seventeenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries the British
+fishermen and settlers on the coasts of Newfoundland had _destroyed_
+the native population of Beothik Indians.
+
+Before the English arrived on the coasts of Newfoundland the Beothiks
+lived an ideal life for savages. They were well clothed with beasts'
+skins, and in the winter these were supplemented by heavy fur robes.
+Countless herds of reindeer roamed through the interior, passing from
+north to south in the autumn and returning in the spring. Vast flocks
+of willow grouse (like ptarmigan) were everywhere to be met with; the
+many lakes were covered with geese, swans, and ducks. The woods were
+full of pigeons; the salmon swarmed up the rivers to breed; the sea
+round the coasts was--except in the wintertime--the richest fishery in
+the world. They caught lobsters in the rock pools, and speared or
+clubbed seals and great walruses for their flesh and oil. An
+occasional whale provided them with oil, blubber, and meat. The Great
+Auk--which could not fly--swarmed in millions on the cliffs and
+islets. So abundant was this bird, and so fat, that its body was
+sometimes used as fuel, or as a lamp. In the summertime their fish and
+flesh diet could be varied by the innumerable berries growing
+wild--strawberries, raspberries, currants, cranberries, and
+whortleberries. The _capillaire_ plant yielded a lusciously sweet,
+sugary substance.[15]
+
+[Footnote 15: This was the Moxie plum or creeping snowberry
+(_Chiogenes hispidula_).]
+
+[Illustration: GREAT AUKS, GANNETS, PUFFINS, AND GUILLEMOTS]
+
+The Beothiks were a tall, good-looking people, with large black eyes
+and a light-coloured skin. The early French and Biscayan seamen, who
+resorted to the coasts of Newfoundland for the whale fisheries,
+reported these "Red Indians" to be "an ingenious and tractable people,
+if well used, who were ready to help the white men with great labour
+and patience in the killing, cutting-up, and boiling of whales, and
+the making of train oil, without other expectation of reward than a
+little bread or some such small hire".
+
+Yet from the beginning of the seventeenth century the Beothiks--then
+about four thousand in number--were ill-treated by the European
+fishermen who frequented the Newfoundland coasts. They soon greatly
+decreased in numbers, and became very shy of white men. The French,
+when they occupied the south coast of Newfoundland, brought over
+Mikmak Indians to chase and kill the Beothiks or "Red" Indians. The
+Eskimo attacked them from Labrador. Finally, when Newfoundland became
+British in the eighteenth century, the English fishermen settlers and
+fur hunters attacked and slew the harmless Beothiks with a wanton
+ferocity (described by horror-struck officers of the British navy)
+which is as bad as anything attributed to the Spaniards in Cuba and
+Hispaniola. By about 1830 they were all extinct. As late as 1823 the
+following anecdote is recorded of two English settlers whose names are
+hidden behind the initials C and A. "When near Badger Bay they fell in
+with an Indian man and woman, who approached, apparently soliciting
+food. The man was first killed, and the woman, who was afterwards
+found to be his daughter, in despair remained calmly to be fired at,
+when she was also shot through the chest and immediately expired. This
+was told Mr. Cormack by the man who did the deed." Even English women
+in the late eighteenth century were celebrated for their skill "in
+shooting Red Indians and seals".
+
+"For a period of nearly two hundred years this barbarity had
+continued, and it was considered meritorious to shoot a Red Indian.
+'To go to look for Indians' came to be as much a phrase as to look for
+partridges (ptarmigan). They were harassed from post to post, from
+island to island; their hunting and fishing stations were
+unscrupulously seized by the invading English. They were shot down
+without the least provocation, or captured to be exposed as
+curiosities to the rabble at the fairs of the western towns of
+Christian England at twopence a piece."[16]
+
+[Footnote 16: These are the remarks of an English chaplain in the
+island, quoted by the Rev. George Patterson, who contributed a most
+interesting article on the vanished Beothiks of Newfoundland to the
+Royal Society of Canada in 1891.]
+
+Too late--when the worry and anxiety of the Napoleonic wars were
+over--the British Government sent a commission of naval officers to
+enquire into the treatment of the Beothiks by the settlers. One woman
+alone remained, as a frightened semi-captive, to be consoled and
+soothed. There are Indians in the south of Newfoundland at the present
+day, but they are Mikmaks who come over from the adjoining regions of
+Cape Breton and Nova Scotia. So tender, indeed, is the modern
+government of the island towards these (out of compunction for the
+past) that they are allowed to kill the reindeer and other wild
+animals without the licence which is exacted from white people, and so
+are actually injuring Newfoundland's resources!
+
+Since the great Dominion of Canada was brought into existence in 1871
+as a unified, responsible government, the treatment of the remaining
+Amerindian natives of British North America has been admirable; and
+splendid work has been done in reclaiming them to a wholesome
+civilization by the Moravian, Roman Catholic, and Church of England
+missionaries.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The Hudson Bay Explorers and the British Conquest of all Canada
+
+
+In a general way the discovery of the main features of the vast
+Canadian Dominion may be thus apportioned amongst the different
+European nations. First came the British, led by an Italian pilot.
+They discovered Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland.
+Then came the Portuguese, who discovered the north-east of
+Newfoundland and the coast of Labrador, while a French expedition
+under an Italian captain reached to Nova Scotia and southern
+Newfoundland. A Spanish expedition under a Portuguese leader shortly
+afterwards reached the coast of New Brunswick. After that the French
+from Brittany, Normandy, and the west coast of France laid bare the
+_west_ coast of Newfoundland, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the River St.
+Lawrence, and the Great Lakes.
+
+Sir Francis Drake led the way in the exploration of the north-west
+coast of North America. He reached, in 1579, as far north on that side
+as the country of Oregon, which he christened New Albion. This action
+stirred up the Spaniards, who explored the coast of California, and in
+1591-2 sent an Ionian Island pilot, Apostolos Valeriano (commonly
+called Juan de Fuca), in charge of an expedition to discover the
+imagined Straits of Anian. He gave strength to this idea of a
+continuous water route across temperate North America by entering (in
+1592) the straits, since called Juan de Fuca, between Vancouver Island
+and the modern State of Washington, and passing thence into the
+Straits of Georgia, which bear a striking resemblance in their
+features to the Straits of Magellan.
+
+French explorers and adventurers, as we have seen, penetrated from the
+basin of the St. Lawrence to the north and west until they touched the
+southern extension of Hudson Bay (James's Bay), discovered Lake
+Winnipeg and the Saskatchewan Rivers, the upper Missouri and the whole
+course of the Mississippi, and finally recorded the existence of the
+Rocky Mountains.
+
+Parallel with these movements the British discovered the broad belt of
+sea between Greenland and North America and the whole area of Hudson
+Bay. After the French had ceased to reign in North America, the
+British were to reveal the great rivers flowing into the Arctic Ocean,
+the coasts and islands of the Arctic Ocean, the Yukon River, and the
+coasts and islands of British Columbia and Alaska.
+
+The first Europeans, however, to reach Alaska were Russians led by
+Vitus Bering, a great Danish sea captain in the Russian service.
+Bering was born in 1680 at Horsens, in the province of Aarhuus, E.
+Denmark, and entered the service of Peter the Great, who was desirous
+of knowing where Asia terminated and America began. Bering discovered
+the straits which bear his name in 1728, and in 1741 was wrecked and
+died on Bering's Island. Captain James Cook, the British discoverer of
+Australia and of so many Pacific islands, completed the work of Bering
+in 1788 in charting the north-west American coast right into the
+Arctic Ocean.
+
+It has already been related in Chapter III how the Hudson's Bay
+Chartered Company came to be founded. Soon after their first pioneers
+were established, in 1670, at Fort Nelson, on the west coast of Hudson
+Bay, near where York Factory now stands, there was born--or brought
+out from England as an infant--a little boy named Henry Kellsey, who
+as a child took a great fancy to the Amerindians who came to trade at
+Fort Nelson. As he played with them, and they returned his affection,
+he learnt their language, and--for some inconceivable reason--this
+gave great offence to the stupid governor of the fort (indeed, when
+Kellsey as a grown man, some years afterwards, compiled a vocabulary
+of the Kri language for the use of traders, the Hudson's Bay Company
+ordered it to be suppressed). Stupid Governor Geyer not only objected
+to Kellsey picking up the Kri language, but punished him most severely
+for that and for his boyish tricks and jokes; so much so, that
+Kellsey, when he was about ten years old, ran away with the returning
+Indians, some of whom had grown very fond of him whilst they stayed at
+Fort Nelson.
+
+Six years afterwards an Indian brought to the governor of the fort a
+letter written by Kellsey in charcoal on a piece of white birch bark.
+In this he asked the governor's pardon for running away, and his
+permission to return to the fort. As a kind reply was sent, Kellsey
+appeared not long afterwards grown into a young man, accompanied by an
+Indian wife and attended by a party of Indians. He was dressed exactly
+like them, but differed from them in the respect which he showed to
+his native wife. She attempted to accompany her husband into the
+factory or place of business, and the governor stopped her; but
+Kellsey at once told him in English that he would not enter himself if
+his wife was not suffered to go with him, and so the governor
+relented. After this Kellsey (who must then have been about seventeen)
+seems to have regularly enrolled himself in 1688 in the service of the
+Company, and he was employed as a kind of commercial traveller who
+made long journeys to the north-west to beat up a fur trade for the
+Company and induce tribes of Indians to make long journeys every
+summer to the Company's factory with the skins they had secured
+between the autumn and the spring. In this way Kellsey penetrated
+into the country of the Assiniboines, and he finally reached a more
+distant tribe or nation called by the long name of Néwátamipoet.[1]
+Kellsey first of all made for Split Lake, up the Nelson River, and
+thence paddled westwards in his canoe for a distance of 71 miles. Here
+he abandoned the canoe, and, for what he estimated as 316 miles, he
+tramped through a wooded country, first covered with fir and pine
+trees, and farther on with poplar and birch. Apparently he then
+reached a river flowing into Reindeer Lake. In a general way his steps
+must have taken him in the direction of Lake Athapaska.
+
+[Footnote 1: Spelt in the documents of the Hudson's Bay Company,
+Naywatame-poet.]
+
+On the way he had much trouble with the Assiniboin Indians and Kris,
+with whom he had caught up, and with whom he was to travel in the
+direction of these mysterious Néwátamipoets. The last-named tribe, who
+were probably of the Athapaskan group, had killed, a few months
+previously, three of the Kri women, and the Kri Indians who belonged
+to Kellsey's party were bent, above all things, on attacking the
+Néwátamipoets and punishing them for this outrage. Kellsey only wished
+to open up peaceful relations with them and create a great trade in
+furs with the Hudson's Bay Company, so he kept pleading with the
+Indians not to go to war with the Néwátamipoets. On this journey,
+however, one of the Kri Indians fell ill and died. The next day the
+body was burnt with much ceremony--first the flesh, and then the
+bones--and after this funeral the companions of the dead man began to
+reason as to the cause of his death, and suddenly blamed Kellsey.
+Kellsey had obstructed them from their purpose of avenging their slain
+women, therefore the gods of the tribe were angry and claimed this
+victim in the man who had died. Kellsey was very near being sent to
+the other world to complete the sacrifice; but he arranged for "a
+feast of tobacco"--in other words, a calm deliberation and the smoking
+of the pipe of peace. He explained to the angry Indians that his
+Company had not supplied him with guns and ammunition with which to go
+to war, but to induce them to embark on the fur trade and to kill wild
+animals for their skins. If, instead of this, they went to war, or
+injured him, they need never again go down to Fort Nelson for any
+further trade or supplies. Four days afterwards, however, the
+attention of the whole party was concentrated on bison.
+
+Bison could now be seen in abundance. Kellsey was already acquainted
+with the musk ox, which he had seen in the colder regions near to
+Hudson Bay; but the bison seemed to him quite different, with horns
+growing like those of an English ox, black and short. In the middle of
+September he reached the country of the Néwátamipoets, and presented
+to their chief, on behalf of the Hudson's Bay Company, a present of
+clothes, knives, awls, tobacco, and a gun, gunpowder, and shot. On
+this journey Kellsey encountered the grizzly bear, a more common
+denizen of the western regions of North America. According to his own
+account, he and one of the Indians with him were attacked by two
+grizzly bears and obliged to climb into the branches of trees. The
+bears followed them; but Kellsey fired and killed one, and later on
+the other also. For this feat he was greatly reverenced by the
+Indians, and received the name of Mistopashish, or "little giant".
+Kellsey afterwards rose to be governor of York Fort, on the west coast
+of Hudson Bay.
+
+The next great explorer ranging westward from Hudson Bay was Anthony
+Hendry.[2] Anthony Hendry left York factory in 1754, with a company of
+Kri Indians, to make a great journey of exploration to the west, and
+with the deliberate intention of wintering with the natives and not
+returning for that purpose to Hudson Bay. By means of canoe travel and
+portages he reached Oxford Lake. From here he gained Moose Lake, and
+soon afterwards "the broad waters of the Saskatchewan--the first
+Englishman to see this great river of the western plains".[3]
+Twenty-two miles upstream from the point where it reached the
+Saskatchewan he came to a French fort which had only been standing for
+a year, and which represented probably the farthest advance northwards
+of the French Canadians.
+
+[Footnote 2: The young or old reader of this and other books dealing
+with the exploration of the Canadian Dominion will be indeed puzzled
+between the various Hendrys and Henrys. The last-named was a prolific
+stock, from which several notable explorers and servants of the
+fur-trading companies were drawn. In this book a careful distinction
+must be made between the _Anthony_ Hendrey or Hendey, who commenced
+his exploration of the west in 1754; the unrelated _Alexander_ Henry
+the Elder, who journeyed between 1761 and 1776; and the nephew of the
+last-named, Alexander Henry the Younger, whose pioneering explorations
+occurred between 1799 and 1814.]
+
+[Footnote 3: _The Search for the Western Sea_, by Lawrence J. Burpee.]
+
+[Illustration: Map of EASTERN CANADA and NEWFOUNDLAND]
+
+The situation was a rather delicate one, for the Hudson's Bay Company
+was a thorn in the side of French Canada. However, in this
+year--1754--the two nations were not actually at war, and the two
+Frenchmen in charge of the fort received him "in a very genteel
+manner", and invited him into their home, where he readily accepted
+their hospitality. At first they spoke of detaining him till the
+commandant of the fort returned, but abandoned this idea after
+reflection, and Hendry continued his journey up the Saskatchewan. He
+then left the river and marched on foot over the plains which separate
+the North and the South Saskatchewan Rivers. The South Saskatchewan
+was found to be a high stream covered with birch, poplar, elder, and
+fir. He and his Indian guides were searching for the horse-riding
+Blackfeet Indians.[4] All the Amerindians known to the Hudson's Bay
+Company hitherto travelled on foot, using snowshoes in the winter; but
+vague rumours had reached the Company that in the far south-west there
+were great nations of Indians which did all their hunting on
+horseback.
+
+[Footnote 4: See p. 159.]
+
+Hendry had now found them, and he also met a small tribe of
+Assiniboins--the Mekesue or Eagle Indians--who differed from the
+surrounding tribes by going about, at any rate in the summertime,
+absolutely naked. Here, too, between the two Saskatchewans, they saw
+herds of bison on the plains grazing like English cattle. But they
+also found elk (moose), wapiti or red deer, hares, grouse, geese, and
+ducks. He records in his journal: "I went with the young men
+a-buffalo-hunting, all armed with bows and arrows; killed several;
+fine sport. We beat them about, lodging twenty arrows in one beast. So
+expert were the natives that they will take the arrows out of the
+buffalo when they are foaming and raging with pain and tearing up the
+ground with their feet and horns until they fall down." The
+Amerindians killed far more of these splendid beasts than they could
+eat, and from these carcasses they merely took the tongues and a few
+choice pieces, leaving the remainder to the wolves and the grizzly
+bears.
+
+At last they arrived at the temporary village of the Blackfeet. Two
+hundred tents or _tipis_ were pitched in two parallel rows, and down
+this avenue marched Anthony Hendry, gazed at silently by many
+Blackfeet Indians until he reached the large house or lodge of their
+great chief, at the end of the avenue of tents. This lodge was large
+enough to contain fifty persons. The chief received him seated on the
+sacred skin of a white buffalo. The pipe of peace was then produced
+and passed round in silence, each person taking a ceremonial puff.
+Boiled bison beef was then brought to the guests in baskets made of
+willow branches. Hendry told the great chief of the Blackfeet that he
+had been sent by the great leader of the white men at Hudson Bay to
+invite the Blackfeet Indians to come to these eastern waters in the
+summertime, and bring with them beaver and wolf skins, for which they
+would get, in return, guns, ammunition, cloth, beads, and other trade
+goods. But this chief, though he listened patiently, pointed out that
+this fort on Hudson Bay was situated at a very great distance, that
+his men only knew how to ride horses, and not how to paddle canoes.
+Moreover, they could not live without bison beef, and disliked fish.
+
+After leaving the headquarters of the Blackfeet, Hendry rambled over
+the beautiful country of fir woods and pine woods until he must have
+got within sight of the Rocky Mountains, though these are not
+mentioned in his journal. Then, after passing the winter (which did
+not begin as regards cold weather till the 2nd of December, and was
+over at the end of March) he returned to the French fort on the
+Saskatchewan, where he was received by the Commandant, de La Corne,
+with great kindness and hospitality. These Frenchmen, he found, were
+able to speak in great perfection several Indian languages; they were
+well dressed, and courtly in manners, and led a civilized life in
+these distant wilds. They had excellent trade goods and were sincerely
+liked by the Indians, but for some reason or other they lacked
+Brazilian tobacco, which seems to have been a commodity much in favour
+amongst the Indians. With this the Hudson's Bay Company were kept well
+supplied, and that alone enabled them in any degree to compete with
+the French. But in ten years more this French fort would be abandoned
+owing to the cession of Canada to Britain.
+
+The British, in fact, all through the first half of the eighteenth
+century, by their superiority in sea power, were steadily strangling
+the French empire in North America. Acadia, or Nova Scotia, and New
+Brunswick had been, as we have seen, recognized as British in 1713,
+and Newfoundland, also, subject to certain conditions, giving France
+the exclusive right to fish on the _western_ and _northern_ coasts of
+Newfoundland. The result was that when "New France", or Canada and
+Louisiana combined, was at its greatest extent of conquered and
+administered territory, France held but a very limited seacoast from
+which to approach it--just the mouth of the Mississippi, and a little
+bit of Alabama on the south and Cape Breton Island on the east. Cape
+Breton Island was commanded by the immensely strong fortress of
+Louisburg, and the possession of this place gave the French some
+security in entering the Gulf of St. Lawrence through Cabot Straits.
+But Louisburg was captured by the British colonists of New England
+(United States) in 1745; and although it was given back to France
+again, it was reoccupied in 1758, and served as a basis for the
+armaments which were directed against Quebec in 1759, and which
+resulted at the close of that year in the surrender of that important
+city. In 1763 all Canada was ceded to the British, and Louisiana
+(which had become the western barrier of the about-to-be-born United
+States) was ceded to Spain; the French flag flew no more on the
+Continent of North America, save in the two little islands of St.
+Pierre and Miquelon adjoining Newfoundland, wherein it still remains
+as a reminder of the splendid achievements of Frenchmen in America.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+The Pioneers from Montreal: Alexander Henry the Elder
+
+
+After 1763, when the two provinces of Canada were definitely ceded to
+Great Britain, the exploring energies of the Hudson's Bay Fur-trading
+Company revived. But before this rather sluggish organization could
+take full advantage of the cessation of French opposition, independent
+British pioneers were on their way to explore the vast north-west and
+west, soon carrying their marvellous journeys beyond the utmost limits
+reached by La Vérendrye and his sons. Eventually these pioneers, who
+had Montreal for their base and who wisely associated themselves in
+business and exploration with French Canadians, founded in 1784 a
+great trading association known as the North-west Trading Company. A
+few years later certain Scottish pioneers brought a rival exploration
+and trading corporation into existence and called it the "X.Y.
+Company". In 1804 these rival Montreal fur-trading associations were
+fused into a new North-west Trading Company. Between this and the old
+Hudson's Bay Company an intensely bitter rivalry and enmity--almost at
+times a state of war--arose, and continued until 1821, when the
+North-west Company and that of Hudson's Bay amalgamated. It is
+necessary that these dry details should be understood in order that
+the reader may comprehend the motives and reasons which prompted the
+journeys which are about to be described.
+
+Jonathan Carver, of Boston, U.S.A., was perhaps the pioneer of all
+the British traders into the far west of Canada, beyond Lake Superior,
+after Canada had been handed over to the British.[1] In 1766-7 he
+reached the Mississippi at its junction with the St. Peter or
+Minnesota River, and journeyed up it to the land of the Dakota. Thomas
+Currie, of Montreal, in 1770 travelled as far as Cedar Lake,[2] where
+there had been established the French post of Fort Bourbon. He was
+succeeded the next year by James Finlay, who extended his explorations
+to the Saskatchewan, whither he was followed by Alexander Henry the
+Elder in 1775.
+
+[Footnote 1: Carver was not so remarkable for his actual journeys as
+for his confident predictions of a feasible transcontinental route
+being found to the Pacific coast.]
+
+[Footnote 2: The white-barked conifer, which gives its name to this
+lake, is _Thuja occidentalis_. There are no real "cedars" in America.]
+
+Alexander Henry (styled The Elder to distinguish him from his famous
+nephew of the same name) was a native of New Jersey (U.S.A.), where he
+was born in 1739. His parents were well-to-do people of the middle
+class who are believed to have emigrated at the beginning of the
+eighteenth century from the West of England, and to have been related
+to Matthew Henry, the Bible commentator. Their son, Alexander,
+received a good education, and after some commercial apprenticeship at
+Albany (New York) came to Quebec when Canada was occupied by the
+British in 1760; at which period he was about twenty-one years old. He
+was in such a hurry to try a trading adventure in the country of the
+great lakes that he ventured into central Canada before it was
+sufficiently calmed down and reconciled to British rule. The
+hostility, curiously enough, manifested itself much more among the
+Amerindians than the settlers of French blood. These white men had not
+been so well treated by the arrogant French officers and officials as
+much to mind the change to the greater freedom of British government.
+But the Indian chiefs and people loved the French, largely owing to
+the goodness and solicitude of the missionaries.
+
+"The hostility of the Indians", wrote Henry in his journal, travelling
+along the coast of Lake Huron, "was exclusively against the English.
+Between them and my Canadian attendants, there appeared the most
+cordial goodwill. This circumstance suggested one means of escape, of
+which, by the advice of my friend, Campion, I resolved to attempt
+availing myself; namely, that of putting on the dress usually worn by
+such of the Canadians as pursue the trade into which I had entered,
+and assimilating myself, as much as I was able, to their appearance
+and manners. To this end I laid aside my English clothes and covered
+myself only with a cloth passed about the middle; a shirt, hanging
+loose; a 'molton', or blanket coat, and a large, red worsted cap. The
+next thing was to smear my face and hands with dirt and grease; and,
+this done, I took the place of one of my men, and, when the Indians
+approached, used the paddle with as much skill as I possessed. I had
+the satisfaction to find, that my disguise enabled me to pass several
+canoes without attracting the smallest notice."
+
+When he reached Fort Michili-makinak[3] he wrote: "At two o'clock in
+the afternoon, the Chipeways came to my house, about sixty in number,
+and headed by Minaváváná, their chief. They walked in single file,
+each with his tomahawk in one hand and scalping knife in the other.
+Their bodies were naked from the waist upward, except in a few
+examples, where blankets were thrown loosely over the shoulders. Their
+faces were painted with charcoal, worked up with grease; their bodies,
+with white clay, in patterns of various fancies. Some had feathers
+thrust through their noses, and their heads decorated with the
+same.... It is unnecessary to dwell on the sensations with which I
+beheld the approach of this uncouth, if not frightful assemblage.
+
+"The chief entered first, and the rest followed without noise. On
+receiving a sign from the former, the latter seated themselves on the
+floor.
+
+"Minaváváná appeared to be about fifty years of age. He was six feet
+in height, and had, in his countenance, an indescribable mixture of
+good and evil.... Looking steadfastly at me, where I sat in ceremony,
+with an interpreter on either hand and several Canadians behind me, he
+entered at the same time into conversation with Campion, enquiring how
+long it was since I left Montreal, and observing that the English, as
+it would seem, were brave men, and not afraid of death, since they
+dared to come, as I had done, fearlessly among their enemies."
+
+[Footnote 3: The famous place of call (the name means "Turtle Island")
+in the narrow strait between Lakes Huron and Michigan, and near Lake
+Superior. (See p. 230.) But some authorities declare that
+Michili-makinak means "Island of the great wounded person".]
+
+The Indians now gravely smoked their pipes, whilst Henry inwardly
+endured tortures of suspense. At length, the pipes being finished, a
+long pause of silence followed. Then Minaváváná, taking a few strings
+of wampum in his hand, began a long speech, of which it is only
+necessary to give a few extracts:--
+
+"Englishman, it is to you that I speak, and I demand your attention!
+
+"Englishman, although you have conquered the French, you have not yet
+conquered us! We are not your slaves. These lakes, these woods and
+mountains, were left to us by our ancestors. They are our inheritance,
+and we will part with them to none. Your nation supposes that we, like
+the white people, cannot live without bread--and pork--and beef! But,
+you ought to know, that He, the Great Spirit and Master of Life, has
+provided food for us in these spacious lakes, and on these woody
+mountains.
+
+"Englishman, our father, the King of France, employed our young men to
+make war upon your nation. In this warfare many of them have been
+killed, and it is our custom to retaliate, until such time as the
+spirits of the slain are satisfied. But the spirits of the slain are
+to be satisfied in either of two ways. The first is by the spilling of
+the blood of the nation by which they fell; the other by covering the
+bodies of the dead, and thus allaying the resentment of their
+relations. This is done by making presents.
+
+"Englishman, your king has never sent us any presents, nor entered
+into any treaty with us, wherefore he and we are still at war; and,
+until he does these things, we must consider that we have no other
+father, nor friend, among the white men, than the King of France; but,
+for you, we have taken into consideration, that you have ventured your
+life among us in the expectation that we should not molest you. You do
+not come armed with an intention to make war; you come in peace, to
+trade with us, and supply us with necessaries, of which we are in
+want. We shall regard you, therefore, as a brother, and you may sleep
+tranquilly, without fear of the Chipeways.... As a token of our
+friendship, we present you with this pipe to smoke."
+
+When Minaváváná had finished his harangue, an Indian presented Henry
+with a pipe, the which, after he had drawn smoke through it three
+times, was carried back to the chief, and after him to every person in
+the room. This ceremony ended, the chief arose, and gave the
+Englishman his hand, in which he was followed by all the rest.
+
+At the Sault Ste Marie, on the river connecting Lake Superior and
+Huron, Henry spent part of the spring of 1763-4, and engaged with a
+few French Canadians and Indians in making maple sugar, the season for
+which--April--was now at hand.
+
+A temporary house for eight persons was built in a convenient part of
+the maple woods, distant about three miles from the fort. The men
+then gathered the bark of white birch trees, and made out of it
+vessels to hold the sap which was to flow from the incisions they cut
+in the bark of the maple trees. Into these cuts they introduced wooden
+spouts or ducts, and under them were placed the birch-bark vessels.
+When these were filled, the sweet liquid was poured into larger
+buckets, and the buckets were emptied into bags of elkskin containing
+perhaps a hundred gallons. Boilers (probably of metal, introduced by
+the French) were next set up in the camp over fires kept burning day
+and night, and the maple sap thus boiled became, by concentration,
+maple sugar.
+
+The women attended to all the business of sugar manufacture, while the
+men cut wood and went out hunting and fishing to secure food for the
+community; though, as a matter of fact, sugar and syrup were their
+main sustenance during all this absence from home. "I have known
+Indians", wrote Henry, "to live for a time wholly on maple sugar and
+syrup and become fat." The sap of the maple had certain medicinal
+qualities which were exceedingly good for persons who had previously
+been eating little else than meat and fish, so that the three weeks of
+sugar-boiling in Canada was, no doubt, a splendid assistance to the
+health of the natives. On this particular occasion described by Henry,
+the party returned, after three weeks' absence, to the Sault Ste Marie
+with 1600 lb. of maple sugar, and 36 gallons of syrup.[4]
+
+[Footnote 4: There are at least two species of maple in Canada
+yielding sugar from their sap; but the best is _Acer saccharinum_. The
+maple leaf is the national emblem of Canada.]
+
+Henry returned in the summer of 1763 to Fort Michili-makinak. The
+place was then held by a British garrison under Major Etherington.
+Shortly after Henry's arrival, an Ojibwé chief named Wáwátam came
+often to his lodgings, and, taking a great fancy to the Englishman,
+asked leave to become his blood brother. He was about forty-five
+years of age, and of an excellent character amongst his nation. He
+warned Henry that he, Wáwátam, had had bad dreams during the winter,
+in which he had been disturbed "by the noises of evil birds", and gave
+him other roundabout warnings that the Indians of different tribes
+were going to attack the British garrison at Michili-Makinak, and
+endeavour to destroy all the English in Upper Canada. Henry did not
+pay over much attention to this warning, because "the Indian manner of
+speech is so extravagantly figurative".
+
+The King's birthday was celebrated with, no doubt, somewhat tipsy
+rejoicings in the summer of 1763. The Ojibwé Indians outside the fort
+pretended they were going to have a great game of La Crosse with the
+S[¯a]ki or "Fox" Indians. This game was got up to find a pretext for
+entering the fort and taking the British officers and garrison at a
+disadvantage. Some of the officers and soldiers, suspecting nothing in
+the way of danger, were outside the fort by the waterside. However,
+the sport commenced, and suddenly the ball was struck over the pickets
+of the fort. At once the Ojibwés, pretending great ardour in their
+game, came leaping, struggling and shouting over the defences into the
+fort as though "in the unrestrained pursuit of a rude, athletic
+exercise". Once inside the fortifications, they attacked the
+unsuspicious and unarmed soldiers and officers, of whom they killed
+seventy out of ninety.
+
+Henry had not gone with the others, but had stayed in his room writing
+letters. Suddenly he heard the Indian warcry and a noise of general
+confusion. Looking out of his window he saw a crowd of Indians inside
+the fort furiously cutting down and scalping every Englishman they
+could reach. Meantime, the French Canadian inhabitants of the fort
+looked on calmly, neither intervening to stop the Indians, nor
+suffering any injury from them. Realizing that all his fellow
+countrymen were practically destroyed, Henry endeavoured to hide
+himself. He entered the house of his next-door neighbour, a Frenchman,
+and found the whole family at the windows gazing at the scene of blood
+before them. He implored this Frenchman to put him into some place of
+safety until the massacre was over. The latter merely shrugged his
+shoulders and intimated that he could do nothing for him; but a Pani
+Indian woman, a slave of this Frenchman, beckoned to Henry to follow
+her, and hid him in a garret. Then the Indians burst into the house
+and asked the Frenchman if he had got any Englishmen concealed, the
+latter returned an evasive answer, telling them to search for
+themselves. Henry hid himself under a heap of birch-bark vessels,
+which were used in maple-sugar manufacture. The door was unlocked, the
+four Indians dashed in, their bodies covered with blood, and armed
+with tomahawks. The hidden man thought that the throbbing of his heart
+must make a noise loud enough to betray him. The Indians searched the
+garret, and one of them approached Henry so closely as almost to touch
+him; yet he remained undiscovered, possibly owing to the dark colour
+of his clothes and the dim light in the room. Then the Indians, after
+describing to the Frenchman how many they had killed and scalped,
+returned downstairs, and the door was locked behind them.
+
+But the next day the Indians insisted on a further search, and,
+regarding every attempt at concealment as vain, Henry, by a desperate
+resolve, rose from his bed and presented himself in full view to the
+Indians as they entered the room. They were all in a state of
+intoxication and entirely naked. One of them, upwards of six feet in
+height, had all his face and body covered with charcoal and grease,
+but with a large white ring encircling each of his eyes. This man,
+walking up to Henry, seized him with one hand by the collar of his
+coat, and in the other held up a large carving knife, making a feint
+as if to plunge it into his breast, his eyes meanwhile fixed
+steadfastly on those of the Englishman. At length, after some seconds
+of the most anxious suspense, he dropped Henry's arm, saying: "I won't
+kill you," adding that he had often fought in war with the English and
+brought away many scalps, but that on a certain occasion he had lost a
+brother whose name was Musinigon, and that he would adopt Henry in his
+place.
+
+One would like the story to have stopped here at this happy turn of
+events, but Wenniway (as this saviour of Henry was called) entertained
+a very fickle regard for his adopted brother, and, though he once or
+twice intervened, subsequently took no great pains to see that his
+life was spared. However, for the time being he was reprieved, and
+regarded Wenniway as his "master". Nevertheless, he was soon haled out
+of the house by another Indian, apparently coming with Wenniway's
+authority. This man ordered him to undress, and then took away all his
+clothes, giving him such dirty rags or strips of leather as he
+possessed himself. He frankly owned that his motive for stripping him
+was that, as he wished afterwards to kill him, Henry's clothes might
+not be stained with blood! With the intention of assassinating him, in
+fact, he dragged Henry along to a region of bushes and sandhills, and
+then produced a knife and attempted to execute his purpose. But with
+the rage and strength of absolute despair Henry wrenched himself free,
+pushed his would-be murderer on one side, and ran for his life towards
+the fort.
+
+Here Wenniway rather indifferently helped him to take refuge in the
+house of the Frenchman in which he had formerly hidden, but the same
+night he was roused from sleep and ordered to come below, where to his
+surprise he found himself in the presence of three of the British
+officers who had formerly commanded in this fort, and who were now
+prisoners of the Ojibwés. The Indian chiefs for the time being had
+handed these men over to the surveillance of the French Canadians,
+together with the seventeen surviving English soldiers and traders.
+Henry, like the others, was almost without clothes. The French
+Canadian in whose house he had taken refuge refused to give him as
+much as a blanket, but another Canadian, less indifferent to the
+sufferings of a fellow white man, did give him a blanket, but for
+which he would certainly have perished from cold.
+
+The next day he and the other English prisoners were embarked in
+canoes and taken away to Lake Michigan. On reaching the mouth of that
+lake, at the Beaver Islands, the Ojibwé canoes, on account of the fog,
+were obliged to approach the lands of the Ottawa Indians. These last
+suddenly seized the canoes as they entered shallow water, and
+professed great indignation at the capture of Fort Michili-Makinak and
+the slaughter of the Englishmen. They declared their intention of
+saving the survivors, and charged the Ojibwés with being about to kill
+and eat them. By the Ottawa Indians, therefore, the twenty Englishmen
+were carried back again and deposited in Fort Michili-Makinak, which
+was now taken possession of by the Ottawas. The English were still
+held as prisoners. After hearing all the Ojibwés had to say, and
+receiving from them large presents, the Ottawas finally decided to
+restore their English prisoners to the Ojibwés, who consequently took
+them away with ropes tied round their necks, and put them into an
+Indian habitation. Here, as they were starving, they were offered
+loaves of bread, but with the horrible accompaniment of seeing the
+slices cut with knives still covered with the blood of the murdered
+English. The Ojibwés moistened this blood on the knife blades with
+their spittle, and rubbed it on the slices of bread, offering this
+food then to their prisoners, so that they might force them to eat the
+blood of their countrymen.
+
+The next morning, however, there appeared before Ménéhewéhná, the
+great war chief of the Ojibwés, Henry's friend and adopted brother,
+Wáwátam. This man made an earnest speech to the council of Ojibwé
+chiefs and braves, in which he pleaded hard for the Englishman's life,
+at the same time tendering from out of his own goods a considerable
+ransom. After much pipe-smoking and an embarrassing silence, the war
+chief rose to his feet and accepted the ransom, giving Wáwátam
+permission to take away into safety his adopted brother. "Wáwátam led
+me to his lodge, which was at the distance of a few yards only from
+the prison lodge. My entrance appeared to give joy to the whole
+family; food was immediately prepared for me; and I now ate the first
+hearty meal which I had made since my capture. I found myself one of
+the family; and, but that I had still my fears as to the other
+Indians, I felt as happy as the situation could allow."
+
+The next day seven of the English prisoners were killed by the
+Ojibwés, and Henry actually saw their dead bodies being dragged out
+into the open. They had been killed in cold blood by an Indian chief
+who had just arrived from a hunting expedition, and who, not having
+been present at the attack on the fort, now desired to satisfy his
+warlike instincts and his agreement with the policy of the Ojibwés by
+going into the lodge where the English officers and men were tied up,
+and slaughtering seven of them in cold blood.
+
+Shortly afterwards two of the Ojibwés took the fattest amongst the
+dead men, cut off his head, and divided his body into five parts, one
+of which was put into each of five kettles hung over as many fires,
+which were kindled for this purpose at the door of the house in which
+the other prisoners were tied up. They then sent to insist on the
+attendance at their cannibal feast of Wáwátam, the adopted brother and
+protector of Henry. The invitation was delivered after the Amerindian
+fashion. A small cutting of cedar wood about four inches in length
+supplies the place of the written or printed invitation to dinner of
+European civilization, and the man who bore the slip of cedar wood
+gave particulars as to place and time by word of mouth. Guests on
+these occasions were expected to bring their own dish and spoon.
+
+In spite of repugnance, Wáwátam, to save his life and that of Henry,
+was obliged to go. He returned after an absence of half an hour,
+bringing back in his dish the portion given to him--a human hand and a
+large piece of flesh. His objection to eat this gruesome food was
+apparently not very deep or persistent. He excused the custom by
+saying that amongst all Amerindian nations there existed this practice
+of making a war feast from out of the bodies of the slain after a
+successful battle.
+
+Soon after this episode of horror the Ojibwés abandoned Fort
+Michili-Makinak, for fear the English should come to attack it. Henry
+was hidden by his adopted brother, Wáwátam, in a cave, where he found
+himself by the light of the next morning sleeping on a bed of human
+bones, which the night before he had taken to be twigs and boughs. The
+whole of the cave was, in fact, filled with these human remains. No
+one knew or remembered the reason. Henry thought that the cave had
+been an ancient receptacle for the bones of persons who had been
+sacrificed and devoured at war feasts; for, however contemptuous they
+may be of the flesh, the Amerindians paid particular attention
+to the bones of human beings--whether friends, relations, or
+enemies--preserving them unbroken, and depositing them in some
+place kept exclusively for that purpose.
+
+The great chief of the Ojibwés, however, advised that Henry, who had
+rejoined Wáwátam, should be dressed in disguise as an Indian to save
+him from any further harm, for the natives all round about were
+preparing for what they believed to be an inevitable war with the
+English.
+
+"I could not but consent to the proposal, and the chief was so kind as
+to assist my friend and his family in effecting that very day the
+desired metamorphosis. My hair was cut off, and my head shaved, with
+the exception of a spot on the crown, of about twice the diameter of a
+crown piece. My face was painted with three or four different colours;
+some parts of it red, and others black. A shirt was provided for me,
+painted with vermilion, mixed with grease. A large collar of wampum[5]
+was put round my neck, and another suspended on my breast. Both my
+arms were decorated with large bands of silver above the elbow,
+besides several smaller ones on the wrists; and my legs were covered
+with _mitasses_, a kind of hose, made, as is the favourite fashion, of
+scarlet cloth. Over all I was to wear a scarlet blanket or mantle, and
+on my head a large bunch of feathers. I parted, not without some
+regret, with the long hair which was natural to it, and which I
+fancied to be ornamental; but the ladies of the family, and of the
+village in general, appeared to think my person improved, and now
+condescended to call me handsome, even among Indians."
+
+[Footnote 5: Shell beads.]
+
+He then went away to live with his protectors, and with them passed a
+by no means unhappy autumn, winter, and spring, hunting and fishing.
+
+Here are some of his adventures at this period.
+
+"To kill beaver, we used to go several miles up the rivers, before the
+approach of night, and after the dusk came on, suffer the canoe to
+drift gently down the current, without noise. The beavers, in this
+part of the evening, come abroad to procure food, or materials for
+repairing their habitations, and as they are not alarmed by the canoe,
+they often pass it within gunshot.
+
+"On entering the River Aux Sables, Wáwátam took a dog, tied its feet
+together, and threw it into the stream, uttering, at the same time, a
+long prayer, which he addressed to the Great Spirit, supplicating his
+blessing on the chase, and his aid in the support of the family,
+through the dangers of a long winter. Our 'lodge' was fifteen miles
+above the mouth of the stream. The principal animals, which the
+country afforded, were red deer (wapiti), the common American deer,
+the bear, racoon, beaver, and marten.
+
+"The beaver feeds in preference on young wood of the birch, aspen, and
+poplar tree[6]; but, in defect of these, on any other tree, those of
+the pine and fir kinds excepted. These latter it employs only for
+building its dams and houses. In wide meadows, where no wood is to be
+found, it resorts, for all its purposes, to the roots of the rush and
+water lily. It consumes great quantities of food, whether of roots or
+wood; and hence often reduces itself to the necessity of removing into
+a new quarter. Its house has an arched dome-like roof, of an
+elliptical figure, and rises from three to four feet above the surface
+of the water. It is always entirely surrounded by water; but, in the
+banks adjacent, the animal provides holes or _washes_, of which the
+entrance is below the surface, and to which it retreats on the first
+alarm.
+
+"The female beaver usually produces two young at a time, but not
+unfrequently more. During the first year, the young remain with their
+parents. In the second, they occupy an adjoining apartment, and assist
+in building, and in procuring food. At two years old, they part, and
+build houses of their own; but often rove about for a considerable
+time before they fix upon a spot. There are beavers, called, by the
+Indians, _old bachelors_, who live by themselves, build no houses, and
+work at no dams, but shelter themselves in holes. The usual method of
+taking these is by traps, formed of iron, or logs, and baited with
+branches of poplar.
+
+"According to the Indians, the beaver is much given to jealousy. If a
+strange male approaches the cabin, a battle immediately ensues. Of
+this the female remains an unconcerned spectator, careless as to which
+party the law of conquest may assign her. The Indians add that the
+male is as constant as he is jealous, never attaching himself to more
+than one female.
+
+"The most common way of taking the beaver is that of breaking up its
+house, which is done with trenching tools, during the winter, when the
+ice is strong enough to allow of approaching them; and when, also, the
+fur is in its most valuable state.
+
+"Breaking up the house, however, is only a preparatory step. During
+this operation, the family make their escape to one or more of their
+_washes_. These are to be discovered by striking the ice along the
+bank, and where the holes are, a hollow sound is returned. After
+discovering and searching many of these in vain, we often heard the
+whole family together in the same wash. I was taught occasionally to
+distinguish a full wash from an empty one, by the motion of the water
+above its entrance, occasioned by the breathing of the animals
+concealed in it. From the washes, they must be taken out with the
+hands; and in doing this, the hunter sometimes receives severe wounds
+from their teeth. Whilst I was a hunter with the Indians, I thought
+beaver flesh was very good; but after that of the ox was again within
+my reach, I could not relish it. The tail is accounted a luxurious
+morsel.
+
+"One evening, on my return from hunting, I found the fire put out, and
+the opening in the top of the lodge covered over with skins--by this
+means excluding, as much as possible, external light. I further
+observed that the ashes were removed from the fireplace, and that dry
+sand was spread where they had been. Soon after, a fire was made
+withoutside the cabin, in the open air, and a kettle hung over it to
+boil.
+
+"I now supposed that a feast was in preparation. I supposed so only,
+for it would have been indecorous to enquire into the meaning of what
+I saw. No person, among the Indians themselves, would use this
+freedom. Good breeding requires that the spectator should patiently
+wait the result.
+
+"As soon as the darkness of night had arrived, the family, including
+myself, were invited into the lodge. I was now requested not to speak,
+as a feast was about to be given to the dead, whose spirits delight in
+uninterrupted silence.
+
+"As we entered, each was presented with his wooden dish and spoon,
+after receiving which we seated ourselves. The door was next shut, and
+we remained in perfect darkness.
+
+"The master of the family was the master of the feast. Still in the
+dark, he asked everyone, by turn, for his dish, and put into each two
+boiled ears of maize. The whole being served, he began to speak. In
+his discourse, which lasted half an hour, he called upon the manes of
+his deceased relations and friends, beseeching them to be present, to
+assist him in the chase, and to partake of the food which he had
+prepared for them. When he had ended, we proceeded to eat our maize,
+which we did without other noise than what was occasioned by our
+teeth. The maize was not half boiled, and it took me an hour to
+consume my share. I was requested not to break the spikes,[7] as this
+would be displeasing to the departed spirits of their friends.
+
+"When all was eaten, Wáwátam made another speech, with which the
+ceremony ended. A new fire was kindled, with fresh sparks, from flint
+and steel; and the pipes being smoked, the spikes were carefully
+buried, in a hole made in the ground for that purpose, within the
+lodge. This done, the whole family began a dance, Wáwátam singing, and
+beating a drum. The dance continued the greater part of the night, to
+the great pleasure of the lodge. The night of the feast was that of
+the first day of November."
+
+[Footnote 6: _Populus nigra_, called by the French Canadians _liard_.]
+
+[Footnote 7: The grains of maize (Indian corn) grow in compact cells,
+round a pithy core.]
+
+In the month of January, Henry happened to observe that the trunk of a
+very large pine tree was much torn by the claws of a bear, made both
+in going up and down. On further examination he saw there was a large
+opening, in the upper part, near which the smaller branches were
+broken. From these marks, and from the additional circumstances that
+there were no tracks on the snow, there was reason to believe that a
+bear lay concealed in the tree.
+
+He communicated his discovery to his Indian friends, and it was agreed
+that all the family should go together in the morning to cut down the
+tree, the girth of which was not less than eighteen feet! This task
+occupied them for one and a half days with their poor little axes,
+till about two o'clock in the second afternoon the tree fell to the
+ground. For a few minutes everything remained quiet, and Henry feared
+that all his expectations would be disappointed; but, as he advanced
+to the opening, there came out a female bear of extraordinary size,
+which he had shot and killed before she had proceeded many yards.
+
+"The bear being dead, all my assistants approached, and all, but more
+particularly my old mother, (as I was won't to call her), took the
+bear's head in their hands, stroking and kissing it several times;
+begging a thousand pardons for taking away her life; calling her their
+relation and grandmother; and requesting her not to lay the fault upon
+them, since it was truly an Englishman that had put her to death.
+
+"This ceremony was not of long duration; and if it was I that killed
+their grandmother, they were not themselves behindhand in what
+remained to be performed. The skin being taken off, we found the fat
+in several places six inches deep. This, being divided into two parts,
+loaded two persons; and the flesh parts were as much as four persons
+could carry. In all, the carcass must have exceeded five
+hundredweight.
+
+"As soon as we reached the lodge, the bear's head was adorned with all
+the trinkets in the possession of the family, such as silver armbands
+and wristbands, and belts of wampum; and then laid upon a scaffold,
+set up for its reception, within the lodge. Near the nose was placed a
+large quantity of tobacco.
+
+"The next morning no sooner appeared, than preparations were made for
+a feast to the manes. The lodge was cleaned and swept; and the head of
+the bear lifted up, and a new Stroud blanket, which had never been
+used before, spread under it. The pipes were now lit; and Wáwátam blew
+tobacco smoke into the nostrils of the bear, telling me to do the
+same, and thus appease the anger of the bear, on account of my having
+killed her.
+
+"At length, the feast being ready, Wáwátam commenced a speech,
+resembling, in many things, his address to the manes of his relations
+and departed companions; but, having this peculiarity, that he here
+deplored the necessity under which men laboured, thus to destroy their
+_friends_. He represented, however, that the misfortune was
+unavoidable, since without doing so, they could by no means subsist.
+The speech ended, we all ate heartily of the bear's flesh; and even
+the head itself, after remaining three days on the scaffold, was put
+into the kettle. The fat of our bear was melted down, and the oil
+filled six porcupine-skin bags. A part of the meat was cut into
+strips, and fire-dried, after which it was put into the vessels
+containing the oil, where it remained in perfect preservation, until
+the middle of summer."
+
+In the spring of 1762 Henry once more returned to Fort
+Michili-Makinak, and went sugar-making with his Indian companions.
+Whilst engaged in this agreeable task, a child belonging to one of the
+party fell into a kettle of boiling syrup. It was instantly snatched
+out, but with little hope of its recovery. So long, however, as it
+lived, a continual feast was observed; and this was made "to the Great
+Spirit and Master of Life", that he might be pleased to save and heal
+the child. At this feast Henry was a constant guest; and often found
+some difficulty in eating the large quantity of food which, on such
+occasions as these, was put upon his dish.
+
+Several sacrifices were also offered; among which were dogs, killed
+and hung upon the tops of poles, with the addition of blankets and
+other articles. These, also, were yielded to the Great Spirit, in the
+humble hope that he would give efficacy to the medicines employed. But
+the child died. To preserve the body from the wolves it was placed
+upon a scaffold, and then later carried to the borders of a lake, on
+the border of which was the burial ground of the family.
+
+"On our arrival there, which happened in the beginning of April, I did
+not fail to attend the funeral. The grave was made of a large size,
+and the whole of the inside lined with birch bark. On the bark was
+laid the body of the child, accompanied with an axe, a pair of
+snowshoes, a small kettle, several pairs of common shoes, its own
+strings of beads, and--because it was a girl--a carrying belt and a
+paddle. The kettle was filled with meat. All this was again covered
+with bark; and at about two feet nearer the surface logs were laid
+across, and these again covered with bark, so that the earth might by
+no means fall upon the corpse.
+
+"The last act before the burial, performed by the mother, crying over
+the dead body of her child, was that of taking from it a lock of hair
+for a memorial. While she did this, I endeavoured to console her by
+offering the usual arguments: that the child was happy in being
+released from the miseries of this present life, and that she should
+forbear to grieve, because it would be restored to her in another
+world, happy and everlasting. She answered that she knew it, and that
+by the lock of hair she should discover her daughter; for she would
+take it with her. In this she alluded to the day when some pious hand
+would place in her own grave, along with the carrying belt and paddle,
+this little relic, hallowed by maternal tears."
+
+After many ups and downs of hope and despair, and many narrow escapes
+of being killed and made into broth for warlike Ojibwés, Henry at
+length obtained permission to travel with a party of Ojibwé Indians
+who were invited to visited Sir William Johnson at Niagara. This
+British Governor of Canada was attempting to enter into friendly
+relations with the Amerindian tribes, and induce them to accept
+quietly the transference of Canada from French to English control.
+
+[Illustration: SCENE ON CANADIAN RIVER: WILD SWANS FLYING UP DISTURBED
+BY BEAR]
+
+Before starting, however, to interview this great White Governor, the
+Ojibwés decided to consult their oracle, the Great Turtle, after which
+Fort Michili-Makinak was named.[8] Behind Fort Michili-Makinak is an
+extraordinary mound or hill of stone supposed to resemble this reptile
+exactly, and in fact to be in some way the residence of a supernatural
+giant turtle.
+
+[Footnote 8: Michili, pronounced "Mishili", means "great", and
+Makinak, "turtle", in the translation of some Canadian writers. The
+turtle in question is, of course, not the turtle of sea waters, but
+the Snapping Turtle (_Chelydra serpentina_) found in most Canadian
+lakes and the big rivers of North America, east of the Rocky
+Mountains.]
+
+For invoking and consulting the Great Turtle, the first thing to be
+done was to build a large house, within which was placed a kind of
+tent, for the use of the priest and reception of the spirit. The tent
+was formed of moose skins, hung over a framework of wood made out of
+five pillars of five different species of timber, about ten feet in
+height and eight inches in diameter, set up in a circle of four feet
+in diameter, with their bases two feet deep in the soil. At the top
+the pillars were bound together by a circular hoop of withies. Over
+the whole of this edifice were spread the moose skins, covering it at
+top and round the sides, and made fast with thongs of the same, except
+that on one side a part was left unfastened, to admit of the entrance
+of the priest.
+
+The ceremonies did not commence till the approach of night. To give
+light inside the house several fires were kindled round the tent.
+Nearly the whole village assembled in the house, Alexander Henry among
+the rest. It was not long before the priest appeared, almost in a
+state of nakedness. As he approached the tent the skins were lifted
+up, as much as was necessary to allow of his creeping under them on
+his hands and knees. His head was scarcely within side when the
+edifice, massive as it has been described, began to shake; and the
+skins were no sooner let fall than the sounds of numerous voices were
+heard beneath them--some yelling, some barking as dogs, some howling
+like wolves; and in this horrible concert were mingled screams and
+sobs of despair, anguish, and the sharpest pain. Articulate speech was
+also uttered, as if from human lips, but in a tongue unknown to any of
+the audience.
+
+After some time these confused and frightful noises were succeeded by
+a perfect silence; and now a voice, not heard before, seemed to
+manifest the arrival of a new character in the tent. This was low and
+feeble, resembling the cry of a young puppy. The sound was no sooner
+distinguished than all the Indians clapped their hands for joy,
+exclaiming that this was the Chief Spirit, the Turtle, the Spirit that
+never lied! Other voices, which they had distinguished from time to
+time, they had previously hissed, as recognizing them to belong to
+evil and lying spirits, the deceivers of mankind.
+
+Then came from the tent a succession of songs, in which a diversity
+of voices met the ear. From his first entrance, till these songs were
+finished, we heard nothing in the proper voice of the priest. But now
+he addressed the multitude, declaring the presence of the Great
+Turtle, and the spirit's readiness to answer such questions as should
+be proposed. The questions were to come from the chief of the village,
+who was silent, however, till after he had put a large quantity of
+tobacco into the tent, introducing it at the aperture. This was a
+sacrifice offered to the spirit; for the spirits were supposed by the
+Indians to be as fond of tobacco as themselves. This done, the chief
+desired the priest to enquire: Whether or not the English were
+preparing to make war upon the Indians? and whether or not there were
+at Fort Niagara a large number of English troops?
+
+The priest was heard to put the questions, and then the tent shook and
+rocked so violently that Henry expected to see it levelled with the
+ground. But apparently answers were given, after which a terrific cry
+announced, with sufficient intelligibility, the departure of the
+Turtle. Subsequently the priest interpreted the Great Turtle's
+answers, which gave a great deal of information regarding the
+disposition and numbers of the English soldiers, and the presents
+which Sir William Johnson was preparing for the Ojibwés; and which
+finally approved the wisdom of the embassy proceeding on its way.
+
+Journeying along the shores of Lake Huron, they stopped to avoid a
+gale of wind and to rest. Henry, gathering firewood, disturbed a
+rattlesnake which manifested hostile intentions. He went back to the
+canoe to fetch his gun; but upon telling the Ojibwés that he was about
+to kill a rattlesnake they begged him to desist. They then seized
+their pipes and tobacco pouches and returned with him to the place
+where he had left the rattlesnake, which was still coiled up and
+angry.
+
+"The Indians, on their part, surrounded it, all addressing it by
+turns, and calling it their _grandfather_; but yet keeping at some
+distance. During this part of the ceremony they filled their pipes;
+and now each blew the smoke towards the snake, who, as it appeared to
+me, really received it with pleasure. In a word, after remaining
+coiled, and receiving incense for the space of half an hour, it
+stretched itself along the ground, in visible good humour. Its length
+was between four and five feet. Having remained outstretched for some
+time, at last it moved slowly away, the Indians following it, and
+still addressing it by the title of grandfather, beseeching it to take
+care of their families during their absence, and to be pleased to open
+the heart of Sir William Johnson, so that he might _show them
+charity_, and fill their canoe with rum.
+
+"One of the chiefs added a petition, that the snake would take no
+notice of the insult which had been offered him by the Englishman, who
+would even have put him to death, but for the interference of the
+Indians, to whom it was hoped he would impute no part of the offence."
+
+Early the next morning they proceeded on their way, with a serene sky
+and very little wind, so that to shorten the journey they determined
+to steer across the lake to an island which just appeared on the
+horizon. But after hoisting a sail the wind increased, and the
+Indians, beginning to be alarmed, frequently called on the rattlesnake
+to come to their assistance. By degrees the waves grew high, and at
+last it blew a hurricane, Henry and his companions expecting every
+moment to be swallowed up. From prayers the Indians now proceeded to
+sacrifices, both alike offered to the god-rattlesnake, or
+_manito-kinibik_. One of the chiefs took a dog, and, after tying its
+fore legs together, threw it overboard, at the same time calling on
+the snake to preserve the party from being drowned, and desiring him
+to satisfy his hunger with the carcass of the dog. The snake was
+unpropitious, and the wind increased. Another chief sacrificed
+another dog, with the addition of some tobacco. In the prayer which
+accompanied these gifts he besought the snake, as before, not to
+avenge upon the Indians the insult which he had received from the
+Englishman. "He assured the snake that I was _absolutely_ an
+Englishman, and of kin neither to him nor to them."
+
+"At the conclusion of this speech, an Indian, who sat near me,
+observed, that if we were drowned it would be for my fault alone, and
+that I ought myself to be sacrificed, to appease the angry manito; nor
+was I without apprehensions, that in case of extremity this would be
+my fate; but, happily for me, the storm at length abated, and we
+reached the island safely."
+
+The next day they arrived at the shore of Lake Ontario. Here they
+remained two days to make canoes out of the bark of the elm tree, in
+which they might travel to Niagara. For this purpose the Indians first
+cut down a tree, then stripped off the bark in one entire sheet of
+about eighteen feet in length, the incision being lengthwise. The
+canoe was now complete as to its bottom and sides. Its ends were next
+closed, by sewing the bark together; and a few ribs and bars being
+introduced, the architecture was finished. In this manner they made
+two canoes; of which one carried eight men, and the other nine.
+
+A few days later Henry was handed over safe and sound to Sir William
+Johnson at Niagara. He was then given the command of a corps of Indian
+allies which was to accompany the expedition under General Bradstreet
+to raise the siege of Detroit, which important place had been long
+invested by a great Indian chief, Pontiac, who still carried on the
+war on behalf of King Louis XV. This enterprise was successful, and
+British control was extended to many places in central Canada. Henry
+returned to Fort Michili-Makinak and regained much of the property
+which he had lost in the Indian attacks. As some compensation for his
+former sufferings he received from the British commandant of
+Michili-Makinak the exclusive fur trade of Lake Superior.
+
+The currency at that period, and long before, in Canadian history, was
+in beaver skins, which were approximately valued at the price of two
+shillings and sixpence a pound. Otter skins were valued at six
+shillings each, and marten skins at one shilling and sixpence, and
+others in proportion; but all these things were classed at being worth
+so many beaver skins or proportion of beaver skins. Thus, for example,
+the native canoemen and porters engaged by Henry for his winter hunts
+were paid each at the rate of a hundred pounds weight of beaver
+skins.[9]
+
+[Footnote 9: The smallest change, so to speak, was the skin of a
+marten, worth one shilling and sixpence. If you went to a canteen for
+a drink you paid your score with a marten skin, unless the value of
+your refreshment exceeded the sum of eighteen pence.]
+
+At various places on the River Ontonagan, which flows into Lake
+Superior, Henry was shown the extraordinary deposits of copper, which
+presented itself to the eye in masses of various weight. The natives
+smelted the copper and beat it into spoons and bracelets. It was so
+absolutely pure of any alloy that it required nothing but to be beaten
+into shape. In one place Henry saw a mass of copper weighing not less
+than five tons, pure and malleable, so that with an axe he was able to
+cut off a portion weighing a hundred pounds. He conjectured that this
+huge mass of copper had at some time been dislodged from the side of a
+lofty hill and thence rolled into the position where he found it.
+Farther to the north of Lake Superior he found pieces of virgin copper
+remarkable for their form, some resembling leaves of vegetables, and
+others the shapes of animals.
+
+In these journeys he collected some of the native traditions, amongst
+others that of the Great Hare, Naniboju, who was represented to him as
+the founder or creator of the Amerindian peoples. An island in Lake
+Superior was called Naniboju's burial place. Henry landed there, and
+"found on the projecting rocks a quantity of tobacco, rotting in the
+rain; together with kettles, broken guns, and a variety of other
+articles. His spirit is supposed to make this its constant residence;
+and here to preside over the lake, and over the Indians, in their
+navigation and fishing."
+
+In the spring of the following year (1768), whilst the snow still lay
+many feet thick on the ground, he and his men made sugar from the
+maple trees on a mountain, and for nearly three weeks none of them ate
+anything but maple sugar, consuming a pound a day, desiring no other
+food, and waxing fat and strong on this diet. Then they returned to
+the banks of the Ontonagan River, where the wild fowl appeared in such
+abundance that one man, with a muzzle-loading gun, could kill in a day
+sufficient birds for the sustenance of fifty men. As soon as the ice
+and snow had melted, parties of Indians came in from their winter's
+hunt, bringing to Henry furs to pay him for all the goods he had
+advanced. In this way the whole of his outstanding credit was
+satisfied, with the exception of thirty skins, which represented the
+contribution due from one Indian who had died. In this case even, the
+man's family had sent all the skins they could gather together, and
+gradually acquitted themselves of the amount due, in order that the
+spirit of the dead man might rest in peace, which it could not do if
+his debts were not acquitted.
+
+In the following autumn he had an experience which showed him how near
+famine was to great abundance, and how ready the Amerindians were in
+cases of even slight privation to turn cannibal, kill and eat the
+weaker members of the party. He was making an excursion to the Sault
+de Sainte Marie, and took with him three half-breed Canadians and a
+young Indian woman who was journeying in that direction to see her
+relations. As the distance was short, and they expected to obtain much
+fish by the way, they only took with them as provisions a quart of
+maize for each person. On the first night of their journey they
+encamped on the island of Naniboju and set their net to catch fish.
+But there arose a violent storm, which continued for three days,
+during which it was impossible for them to take up the net or to leave
+the island. In consequence of this they ate up all their maize. On the
+evening of the third day the storm abated, and they rushed to examine
+the net. It was gone! It was impossible to return to the point of
+their departure, where there would have been plenty of food, on
+account of the strong wind against them. They therefore steered for
+the Sault de Sainte Marie. But the wind veered round, and for nine
+days blew a strong gale against their progress in this direction,
+making the waves of the lake so high that they were obliged to take
+refuge on the shore.
+
+Henry went out perpetually to hunt, but all he got during those nine
+days were two small snow-buntings. The Canadian half-breeds with him
+then calmly proposed to kill and feed upon the young woman. One of
+these men, indeed, admitted that he had had recourse to
+this expedient for sustaining life when wintering in the north-west
+and running out of food. But Henry indignantly repudiated the
+suggestion. Though very weak, he searched everywhere desperately for
+food, and at last found on a very high rock a thick lichen, called by
+the French Canadians _tripe de roche_,[10] looking, in fact, very much
+like slices of tripe. Henry fetched the men and the Indian woman, and
+they set to work gathering quantities of this lichen. The woman was
+well acquainted with the mode of preparing it, which was done by
+boiling it into a thick mucilage, looking rather like the white of an
+egg. On this they made hearty meals, though it had a bitter and
+disagreeable taste. After the ninth day of their sufferings the wind
+fell, they continued their journey, and met with kindly Indians, who
+supplied them with as many fish as they wanted. Nevertheless, they all
+were so ill afterwards that they nearly died, from the effects of the
+lichen diet.
+
+[Footnote 10: See p. 128.]
+
+Some time after this Henry resolved to search for the marvellous
+island of Yellow Sands,[11] an island of Lake Superior which, it is
+true, the French had discovered, but about which they kept up a good
+deal of mystery. The Indian legend was that the sands of this small
+island consisted of gold dust, and the Ojibwé Indians, having
+discovered this, and attempting to bring some away, they were
+disturbed by a supernatural being of amazing size, sixty feet in
+height, which strode into the water and commanded them to deliver back
+what they had taken away. Terrified at his gigantic stature, they
+complied with his request, since which time no Indian has ever dared
+to approach the haunted coast. Henry, however, with his men, finally
+discovered this Island of Yellow Sands in 1771, in the north-east part
+of Lake Superior. It was much smaller than he had been led to expect,
+and very low and studded with small lakes, probably made by the action
+of beavers damming up the little streams. He found no supernatural
+monster to dispute the island with him, but a number of large
+reindeer, so unused to the sight of man that they scarcely got out of
+his way, so that he was able to shoot as many as he wanted. The
+ancestors of these reindeer may have reached the island either by
+floating ice or by swimming. They seem, with the birds, to have been
+the island's only inhabitants, and to have increased and multiplied to
+a remarkable extent, small portions of the island's surface being
+actually formed of immense accumulations of reindeer bones.
+
+[Footnote 11: The Isle of Yellow Sands, famed in legend for its
+terrible serpents and ogre sixty feet high, was subsequently
+identified with the Ile de Pont Chartrain, which is distant sixty
+miles from the north shore of Lake Superior.]
+
+Amongst the birds of the island, besides geese and pigeons, were
+hawks. No serpents whatever were seen by the party, but Henry remarks
+that the hawks nearly made up for them in abundance and ferocity. They
+appeared very angry at the intrusion of these strangers on the sacred
+island, and hovered round perpetually, swooping at their faces and
+even carrying off their caps.
+
+In 1775 Henry, having been greatly disappointed over an attempt to
+work the copper of Lake Superior, entered with vigour into a fur trade
+with the north-west. He penetrated from Lake Superior to the Lake of
+the Woods and reached the great Lake Winnipeg. Here he encountered the
+Kristino,[12] Knistino, or Kri Indians. He found these people very
+different in appearance from the other Amerindian tribes farther
+south. The men were almost entirely naked in spite of the much colder
+climate. Their bodies were painted with an ochre or clay so red that
+it was locally known by the French Canadians as vermilion. Every man
+and boy had his bow strung and in his hand, with the arrow, ready to
+attack in case of need. Their heads were shaved all over except for a
+large spot on the crown. Here the hair grew very long, and was rolled
+and gathered into a tuft; and this tuft, which was the object of the
+greatest care, was covered with a piece of skin. The lobes of their
+ears were pierced, and through the opening was inserted the bones of
+fish or small beasts. The women wore their hair in great length all
+over the head. It was divided by a parting, and on each side was
+collected into a roll fastened above the ear and covered with a piece
+of painted skin or ornamented with beads. The clothing of the women
+was of leather, the dressed skins of buffalo or deer. This cloak was
+fastened round the waist by a girdle, and the legs were covered with
+leather gaiters. The Kristino men were eager that their women should
+marry Europeans, because the half-breed children proved to be bolder
+warriors and better hunters than themselves. Henry found that although
+the Kris were much addicted to drunkenness they were peaceable when
+inebriated, and, moreover, detached two of their number, who refused
+ever to touch the liquor under such circumstances, in order that they
+might guard the white men, and not allow any drunken Indian to
+approach their camp.
+
+[Footnote 12: See p. 166.]
+
+Henry and his party, after crossing Lake Winnipeg, ascended the
+Saskatchewan (in the autumn of 1775). On their way up this river they
+came to a village of Paskwaya Indians, which consisted of thirty
+families, who were lodged in tents of a circular form, composed of
+dressed bison skins stretched upon poles twelve feet in length. On
+their arrival the chief of this village, named Chatik, which name
+meant Pelican,[13] called the party rather imperiously into his lodge
+or meeting house, and then told them very plainly that his armed men
+exceeded theirs in number, and that he would put the whole of the
+party to death unless they were very liberal in their presents. To
+avoid misunderstanding, he added that he would inform them exactly
+what it was that he required: Three casks of gunpowder, four bags of
+shot and ball, two bales of tobacco, three kegs of rum, and three
+guns, together with knives, flints, and other articles. He went on to
+say that he had already seen white men, and knew that they promised
+more than they performed. He, personally, was a peaceful man, who
+contented himself with moderate views in order to avoid quarrels;
+nevertheless, he desired that an immediate answer should be given
+before the strangers quitted his lodge. A hurried consultation took
+place, and Henry could do nothing but comply with the chief's demands,
+for he was powerless to resist. Having, therefore, intimated his
+acceptance of these demands, he was invited to smoke the pipe of
+peace, and then obtained permission to depart. After this the goods
+demanded were handed over, but Chatik managed to snatch more rum from
+them before they got safely away.
+
+[Footnote 13: Elsewhere Henry observes the great numbers of pelicans
+to be seen on Lake Winnipeg.]
+
+In the winter of 1776 Henry, who, together with his party, had
+received welcome hospitality from the Hudson's Bay Company's station
+at Cumberland House, resolved to reach the western region known as the
+Great Plains, or Prairies--that immense tract of country through which
+flow the Athabaska, the Saskatchewan, the Red River, and the Missouri.
+He and his party, of course, travelled on snowshoes, and their goods
+were packed on sledges made of thin boards, and drawn after them by
+the men. The cold was intense, so that, besides wearing very warm
+woollen clothes, they were obliged to wrap themselves in blankets of
+beaver skin and huge bison robes. On these plains there were
+occasional knolls covered with trees, which were usually called
+"islands". These provided the precious fuel which alone enabled the
+travellers to support the intense cold of the nights.
+
+After fifteen days of very difficult travel, during which it had been
+impossible to kill any game, as the beasts were mostly hidden in the
+dense woods on these rare hillocks, the situation of his party became
+alarming. They were now on the borders of the plains, and the trees
+were getting small and scanty. On the twentieth day of their journey
+they had finished the last remains of their provisions. But Henry had
+taken the precaution of concealing a large cake of chocolate[14] as a
+reserve in case of great need. His men had walked till they were
+exhausted, and had lost both strength and hope, when Henry informed
+them of the treasure which was still in store. They filled the big
+kettle with snow. It held two gallons of water, and into this was put
+one square of the chocolate. The quantity was scarcely sufficient to
+give colour to the water, but each man drank off a gallon of this hot
+liquor and felt much refreshed. The next day they marched vigorously
+for six hours on another two gallons of chocolate and water. For five
+days the chocolate kept them going, though more by faith than by any
+actual nourishment that it imparted. They now began to be surrounded
+by large herds of wolves, who seemed to be conscious of their dire
+extremity and the probability that they would soon fall an easy prey,
+yet were cunning enough to keep out of gunshot. At last, however, at
+sunset on the fifth day, they discovered on the ice the remains of an
+elk's carcass on which the wolves had left a little flesh. From these
+elk bones a meal of strong and excellent soup was soon prepared, and
+the men's bodies thrilled with new life.
+
+[Footnote 14: Chocolate from St. Domingue (Haiti) was a favourite form
+of portable nutriment among the French Canadians, who also provided a
+means of subsistence for long journeys called _praline_. This was made
+of roasted Indian corn on which sugar had been sprinkled. It was a
+most nourishing food, as well as being an agreeable sweet-meat.]
+
+"Want had lost his dominion over us. At noon we saw the horns of a red
+deer, standing in the snow, on the river. On examination we found that
+the whole carcass was with them, the animal having broken through the
+ice in the beginning of the winter, in attempting to cross the river,
+too early in the season; while his horns, fastening themselves in the
+ice, had prevented him from sinking. By cutting away the ice we were
+enabled to lay bare a part of the back and shoulders, and thus procure
+a stock of food amply sufficient for the rest of our journey. We
+accordingly encamped, and employed our kettle to good purpose, forgot
+all our misfortunes, and prepared to walk with cheerfulness the twenty
+leagues which, as we reckoned, still lay between ourselves and Fort
+des Prairies. Though the deer must have been in this situation ever
+since the month of November, yet its flesh was perfectly good. Its
+horns alone were five feet high or more, and it will therefore not
+appear extraordinary that they should be seen above the snow."
+
+The next day they reached the Fort des Prairies, established by the
+Hudson's Bay people, on the verge of the Assiniboin country. The
+journey was resumed in company with Messrs. Patterson and Holmes, and
+accompanied by a band of natives. They had entered the bison country,
+and were regaled by the Indians with bison tongue and beef.
+
+"Soon after sunrise we descried a herd of oxen (bison) extending a
+mile and a half in length, and too numerous to be counted. They
+travelled, not one after another, as, in the snow, other animals
+usually do, but, in a broad phalanx, slowly, and sometimes stopping to
+feed.... Their numbers were so great that we dreaded lest they should
+fairly trample down the camp; nor could it have happened otherwise,
+but for the dogs, almost as numerous as they, who were able to keep
+them in check. The Indians killed several when close upon their tents,
+but neither the fire of the Indians nor the noise of the dogs could
+soon drive them away." The poor animals were more frightened of the
+frightful snowstorm which was raging than of what man or dog might do
+to them in the shelter of the woods.
+
+At last the party reached the residence of the great chief of the
+Assiniboins, whose name was "Great Road". These Amerindians received
+Henry and his people with the greatest respect, giving them a
+bodyguard, armed with bows and spears, who escorted them to the lodge
+or tent prepared for their reception. This was of circular form,
+covered with leather, and not less than twenty feet in diameter. On
+the ground within, bison skins were spread for beds and seats.
+
+"One-half of the tent was appropriated to our use. Several women
+waited upon us, to make a fire and bring water, which latter they
+fetched from a neighbouring tent. Shortly after our arrival these
+women brought us water, unasked for, saying that it was for washing.
+The refreshment was exceedingly acceptable, for on our march we had
+become so dirty that our complexions were not very distinguishable
+from those of the Indians themselves."
+
+Invited to feast with the great chief, they proceeded to the tent of
+"Great Road", which they found neither more ornamented nor better
+furnished than the rest. At their entrance the chief arose from his
+seat, saluted them in the Indian manner by shaking hands, and
+addressed them in a few words, in which he offered his thanks for the
+confidence which they had reposed in him in trusting themselves so far
+from their own country. After all were seated, on bearskins spread on
+the ground, the pipe, as usual, was introduced, and presented in
+succession to each person present. Each took his whiff, and then let
+it pass to his neighbour. The stem, which was four feet in length, was
+held by an officer attendant on the chief. The bowl was of red marble
+or pipe stone.
+
+When the pipe had gone its round, the chief, without rising from his
+seat, delivered a speech of some length, after which several of the
+Indians began to weep, and they were soon joined by the whole party.
+"Had I not previously been witness" (writes Henry) "to a weeping scene
+of this description, I should certainly have been apprehensive of some
+disastrous catastrophe; but, as it was, I listened to it with
+tranquillity. It lasted for about ten minutes, after which all tears
+were dried away, and the honours of the feast were performed by the
+attending chiefs." This consisted in giving to every guest a dish
+containing a boiled bison's tongue. Henry having enquired why these
+people always wept at their feasts, and sometimes at their councils,
+he was answered that their tears flowed to the memory of their
+deceased relations, who were formerly present on these occasions, and
+whom they remembered as soon as they saw the feast or the conference
+being got ready.[15]
+
+[Footnote 15: The Assiniboins (whom Henry calls the Osinipoilles) are
+the Issati of older travellers, and have sometimes been called the
+Weeper Indians, from their tendency to tears.]
+
+The chief to whose kindly reception they were so much indebted was
+about five feet ten inches high, and of a complexion rather darker
+than that of the Indians in general. His appearance was greatly
+injured by the condition of his head of hair, and this was the result
+of an extraordinary superstition.
+
+"The Indians universally fix upon a particular object, as sacred to
+themselves; as the giver of their prosperity, and as their preserver
+from evil. The choice is determined either by a dream, or by some
+strong predilection of fancy; and usually falls upon an animal, or
+part of an animal, or something else which is to be met with, by land,
+or by water; but 'Great Road' had made choice of his _hair_--placing,
+like Samson, all his safety in this portion of his proper substance!
+His hair was the fountain of all his happiness; it was his strength
+and his weapon, his spear and his shield. It preserved him in battle,
+directed him in the chase, watched over him on the march, and gave
+length of days to his wife and children. Hair, of a quality like this,
+was not to be profaned by the touch of human hands. I was assured that
+it had never been cut nor combed from his childhood upward, and, that
+when any part of it fell from his head, he treasured up that part with
+care: meanwhile, it did not escape all care, even while growing on the
+head; but was in the special charge of a spirit, who dressed it while
+the owner slept. All this might be; but the spirit's style of
+hairdressing was at least peculiar; the hair being suffered to remain
+very much as if it received no dressing at all, and matted into ropes,
+which spread themselves in all directions."
+
+From this Assiniboin village Henry saw, for the first time, one of
+those herds of horses which the Assiniboins possessed in numbers. The
+herd was feeding on the skirts of the plain. The horses were provided
+with no fodder, but were left to find food for themselves, which they
+did in winter by removing the snow with their feet till they reach
+the grass. This was everywhere on the ground in plenty.
+
+Amongst these people they saw the paunch or stomach of a bison
+employed as a kettle. This was hung in the smoke of a fire and filled
+with snow. As the snow melted, more was added, till the paunch was
+full of water. The lower orifice of the organ was used for drawing off
+the water, and stopped with a plug and string.
+
+Henry also noticed amongst the Assiniboins the celebrated lariat. This
+is formed of a stone of about two pounds weight, which is sewed up in
+leather and made fast to a wooden handle two feet long. In using it
+the stone is whirled round the handle by a warrior sitting on
+horseback and riding at full speed. Every stroke which takes effect
+brings down a man, a horse, or a bison. To prevent the weapon from
+slipping out of the hand, a string, which is tied to the handle, is
+also passed round the wrist of the wearer.
+
+Alexander Henry extended his travels in the north-west within four
+hundred and fifty miles of Lake Athabaska. He met at this point some
+Chipewayan slaves in the possession of the Assiniboins, and heard from
+them (1) of the Peace River in the far west which led one through the
+Rocky Mountains (he uses that name) to a region descending towards a
+great sea (the Pacific Ocean); and (2) of the Slave River which, after
+passing through several lakes, also reached a great sea on the north.
+This, of course, was an allusion to the Mackenzie River. Here were
+given and recorded the chief hints at possible lines of exploration
+which afterwards sent Alexander Mackenzie and other explorers on the
+journeys that carried British-Canadian enterprise and administration
+to the shores of the Pacific and Arctic Oceans.
+
+After 1776 Alexander Henry ceased his notable explorations of the far
+west. In that year he paid a visit to England and France, returning to
+Canada in 1777. Whilst in France he was received at the French Court
+and had the privilege of relating to Queen Marie Antoinette some of
+his wonderful adventures and experiences. After two more visits to
+England he settled down at Montreal as a merchant (autumn of 1780),
+and in 1784 he joined with other great pioneers in founding, at
+Montreal, The North-west Trading Company. Eventually he handed over
+his share in this enterprise to his nephew, Alexander Henry the
+Younger, and established himself completely in a life of ease and
+quiet. He died at Montreal in 1824, aged eighty-five years.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Samuel Hearne
+
+
+The first noteworthy explorer of the far north was SAMUEL HEARNE,[1]
+who had been mate of a vessel in the employ of the whale fishery of
+Hudson Bay. He entered the service of the Hudson's Bay Company about
+1765, and was selected four years afterwards by the Governor of Prince
+of Wales's Fort (a certain Moses Norton, a half-breed) to lead an
+expedition of discovery in search of a mighty river flowing
+northwards, which was rumoured to exist by the Eskimo. This
+"Coppermine" River was said to flow through a region rich in deposits
+of copper. From this district the northern tribes of Indians derived
+their copper ornaments and axeheads.
+
+[Footnote 1: Hearne was born in London in 1745. He entered the Royal
+Navy as a midshipman at the tender age of eleven, and remained in the
+Navy till about 1765, when he went out to Hudson Bay with the rank of
+quartermaster. He must have acquired a considerable education, even in
+botany and zoology. He not only wrote well, and was a good surveyor
+for rough map making, but he had a considerable talent as a
+draughtsman.]
+
+Samuel Hearne started on the 6th of November, 1769, from Prince of
+Wales's Fort at the mouth of the Churchill River, on the north-west
+coast of Hudson Bay. Presumably he and the two "common white men" who
+were with him travelled on snowshoes and hauled small sledges after
+them. Travelling westward they passed over bleak hills with very
+little vegetation--"the barren grounds, where, in general, we thought
+ourselves well off if we could scrape together as many shrubs as would
+make a fire; but it was scarcely ever in our power to make any other
+defence against the weather than by digging a hole in the snow down to
+the moss, wrapping ourselves up in our clothing, and lying down in it,
+with our sledges set up edgeways to windward". But the principal
+Indian guide that he engaged was so obviously determined to make the
+expedition a failure that Hearne returned to his base, Prince of
+Wales's Fort, and made a second start on the 23rd of February, 1770,
+this time taking care not to be accompanied by any other white men,
+and insisting that the Indians who accompanied him should be more
+carefully chosen.
+
+It must be remembered that in all these early expeditions, French and
+English, the explorers relied for their food almost entirely on what
+could be obtained as they went along, in the way of venison, grouse,
+geese, fish, and wild fruits. In the springtime they would probably
+get goose eggs and some form of maple sugar through the Indians. From
+the summer to the autumn there would be an abundance of wild fruits
+and nuts, but for the rest of the year it would be a diet almost
+entirely of flesh or fish. As a stand-by there was probably
+_pemmican_, made in times of plenty from fish, from bison meat and
+fat, or from the dried flesh of deer or musk oxen; but tea, coffee,
+bread, biscuits, and such like accessories were absolutely unknown to
+them, in fact they lived exactly as the Amerindians did. Their
+habitations, of course, were the tents or houses of the natives, or
+what they made for themselves.
+
+In order to pitch an Indian tent in winter it was first necessary to
+search for a level piece of dry ground, and this could only be
+ascertained by thrusting a stick through the snow, down to the ground,
+all over the proposed plot. When a suitable site had been found the
+snow was then cleared away down to the very moss, in the shape of a
+circle. When a prolonged stay was contemplated, even the moss was cut
+up and removed, as it was very liable when dry to catch fire. A
+quantity of poles were then procured, proportionate in number and
+length to the size of the tent cloth and the number of persons the
+tent was intended to contain. Two of the longest poles were tied
+together at the top and raised to an angle of about 45 degrees from
+the ground, so that the lower ends extended on either side as widely
+as the proposed diameter of the tent. The other poles were then
+arranged on either side of the first two, so that they formed a
+complete circle round the bottom, and their points were tied together
+at the top. The tent cloth was usually of thin moose leather, and in
+shape resembled the vane of a fan, so that the large outer curve
+enclosed the bottom of the poles, and the smaller one fitted round the
+apex of the poles at the top, leaving an open space which let out the
+smoke and let in air and light. The fire was made on the ground in the
+centre of the floor, which floor was covered all over with small
+branches of firs and pines serving as seats and beds. Pine foliage and
+branches were laid round the bottom of the poles on the outside, and a
+quantity of snow was packed all round the exterior of the tent, thus
+excluding a great part of the external air, and contributing much to
+the warmth within.
+
+For a month or more Hearne camped in this fashion by the side of a
+lake, waiting till the season was sufficiently open for him to
+continue his journey by water. He and his party of Indians lived
+mainly on fish, but when these became scarce they attempted to snare
+grouse or kill deer. In the intervals of rare meals all the party
+smoked or slept, unless they were obliged to go out to hunt and fish.
+They would delight, after killing deer, in securing as much as
+possible of the blood and turning it into broth by boiling it in a
+kettle with fat and scraps of meat. This was reckoned a dainty dish.
+Their spoons, dishes, and other necessary household furniture were cut
+out of birch bark.
+
+[Illustration: LAKE LOUISE, THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS]
+
+By the 19th of May, geese, swans, ducks, gulls, and other birds of
+passage were so plentiful, flying from south to north, and halting to
+rest at the lake, that Hearne felt the time had come to resume his
+journey, provisions being now very plentiful and the worst of the thaw
+over. The weather was remarkably fine and pleasant as the party
+travelled northwards.
+
+There must have been good patent medicines even in those days. Of
+these Hearne possessed "Turlington's Drops" and "Yellow Basilicon",
+and with these he not only healed the terrible wounds of a valuable
+Indian who had cut his leg most severely (when making birch-bark
+dishes, spoons, &c), but also the hand of another Indian, which was
+shattered with the bursting of a gun. These medicines soon restored
+the use of his hand, so that in a short time he was out of danger,
+while the carver of birch-bark spoons was able to walk. Nevertheless,
+although they were to the south of the 60th degree of latitude, the
+snow was not completely melted until the end of June.
+
+All at once the weather became exceedingly hot, the sledges had to be
+thrown away, and each man had to carry on his back a heavy load. For
+instance, Hearne was obliged to carry his quadrant for taking
+astronomical observations, and its stand; a trunk containing books and
+papers, &c.; a large compass; and a bag containing all his wearing
+apparel; also a hatchet, a number of knives, files, &c., and several
+small articles intended for presents to the natives--in short, a
+weight of _sixty pounds_. Moreover, the barren ground was quite
+unsuited to the pitching of the southern type of tent, the poles of
+which obviously could not be driven into the bare rock, so that Hearne
+was obliged to sleep in the open air in all weathers. Very often he
+was unable to make a fire, and was constantly reduced to eating his
+meat quite raw. "Notwithstanding these accumulated and complicated
+hardships, we continued in perfect health and good spirits." The
+average day's walk was twenty miles, sometimes without any other
+subsistence than a pipe of tobacco and a drink of water.
+
+At last they saw three musk oxen grazing by the side of a small lake.
+This seemed a splendid piece of fortune, but, to their mortification,
+before they could get one of them skinned, a tremendous downpour of
+rain ensued, so as to make it out of their power to have a fire, for
+their only form of fuel was moss. And the flesh of the musk ox eaten
+raw was disgusting; it was coarse and tough, and tasted so strongly of
+musk that Hearne could hardly swallow it. "None of our natural wants,"
+he writes, "except thirst, are so distressing or hard to endure as
+hunger.... For want of action, the stomach so far loses its digestive
+powers that, after long fasting, it resumes its office with pain and
+reluctance." After these prolonged fasts, his stomach was scarcely
+able to contain two or three ounces of food without producing the most
+agonizing pain. "We fasted many times two whole days and nights, and
+twice for three days; once for nearly seven days, during which we
+tasted not a mouthful of anything, except a few cranberries, water,
+scraps of old leather, and burnt bones."
+
+At a place 63° north latitude he bought a canoe for a single knife
+"the full value of which did not exceed one penny", having been told
+that they would soon reach rivers through which they could not wade.
+And, moreover, they found an Indian who was willing to carry it. In
+July his guide persuaded him to join an encampment of natives--about
+six hundred persons living in seventy tents--asserting that, as it was
+no use proceeding much farther north in their search for the
+Coppermine River that season, it would be well to winter to the west,
+and resume their northern journey in the spring. The country, though
+quite devoid of trees, and mostly barren rock, was covered with a herb
+or shrub called by the Indian name of Wishakapakka,[2] from which the
+European servants of the Hudson's Bay Company had long been used to
+prepare a kind of tea by steeping it in boiling water. Here there were
+multitudes of reindeer feeding on the _Cladina_ lichen and the Indians
+with Hearne killed large numbers for the food of the party, and also
+for their skins and the marrow in their bones.
+
+[Footnote 2: This word is said to be a corruption or altered form of
+_Wishakagami[¯u]_, a liquid or broth (Kri language). The drink made
+from this shrub or herb (_Ledum palustre_) is now known as Labrador
+tea. It is a bitter aromatic infusion.]
+
+The Indian who had volunteered to carry the canoe proved unequal to
+his task. But Hearne found another of his carriers who was willing to
+take the burden. In order, therefore, to be readier with his gun to
+shoot deer, he transferred a portion of his own load to the ex-canoe
+carrier. This portion consisted of the invaluable quadrant and its
+stand, and a bag of gunpowder. The gunpowder was of such importance to
+Hearne and his party that one wonders he made this exchange; for if he
+lost this powder he had no means of killing game, and was entirely
+dependent for food on the troop of Indians with whom he was
+travelling, and whom he knew to be most niggardly and inhospitable.
+Judge, therefore, of his horror when, at the end of a day's march,
+this weakly Indian porter was missing with his load. All night Hearne
+was unable to sleep with anxiety, and the whole of the next day he
+spent searching the rocky ground for miles to discover some sign of
+the missing man. At that season of the year it was like looking for a
+needle in a pottle of hay, for there was no snow, and equally no
+herbage, on which a man's foot could leave traces. However, at last,
+by some miracle, they discovered the load by the banks of a little
+river where a party of Indians had crossed.
+
+Shortly afterwards, leaving his quadrant on its stand for a few
+minutes, whilst he went to eat his dinner, a violent wind arose and
+blew the whole thing on to the rocks, so that the quadrant was
+smashed and rendered useless. On this account he determined once more
+to return to Fort Prince of Wales. The Northern Indians[3] with whom
+Hearne travelled backwards towards the fort were most inhospitable,
+not to say dangerous. They robbed him of most of his goods, and
+refused to allow their women to assist his people to dress the
+reindeer skins out of which it would be necessary shortly to make
+coverings to protect them from the severe cold of the autumn. In fact
+Hearne was in rather a desperate condition by September, 1770, when he
+was joined by a party of Indians under a famous leader, whom he calls
+Matonabi.
+
+[Footnote 3: The Indians of the Athapaskan or Déné group were usually
+called the _Northern Indians_ by the Hudson Bay people, in comparison
+to all the other tribes of the more temperate regions farther south,
+who were known as the _Southern Indians_ (Algonkins, &c.).]
+
+Matonabi, though of Athapaskan stock, had, when a boy, resided several
+years at Prince of Wales's Fort, and learnt a little English, and,
+above all, was a master of several Algonkin dialects or languages, so
+that he could discourse with the Southern Indians. As soon as he heard
+of Hearne's distress he furnished him with a good, warm suit of skins,
+and had the reindeer skins dressed for the Indian carriers who
+accompanied Hearne. In journeying together, Matonabi invited him to
+return once more, with himself as guide, to discover the copper mines.
+
+"He attributed all our misfortunes to the misconduct of my guides, and
+the very plan we pursued, by the desire of the Governor, in not taking
+any women with us on this journey, was, he said, the principal thing
+that occasioned all our wants. 'For,' said he, 'when all the men are
+heavy laden, they can neither hunt nor travel to any considerable
+distance; and in case they meet with success in hunting, who is to
+carry the produce of their labour?' 'Women,' added he, 'were made for
+labour; one of them can carry, or haul, as much as two men can do.
+They also pitch our tents, make and mend our clothing, keep us warm at
+night; and, in fact, there is no such thing as travelling any
+considerable distance, or for any length of time, in this country,
+without their assistance.' 'Women,' said he again, 'though they do
+everything, are maintained at a trifling expense; for as they always
+stand cook, the very licking of their fingers in scarce times is
+sufficient for their subsistence.'
+
+"This," added Hearne, "however odd it may appear, is but too true a
+description of the situation of women in this country: it is at least
+so in appearance; for the women always carry the provisions, though it
+is more than probable they help themselves when the men are not
+present."
+
+On the 7th of December, 1770, Samuel Hearne started again
+from Prince of Wales's Fort, Hudsons Bay, but under very much happier
+circumstances, Matonabi being practically in charge of the expedition.
+
+Unfortunately, on reaching the Egg River, where Matonabi's people had
+made a _cache_ or hiding place in which they had stored a quantity of
+provisions and implements, they found that other Indians had
+discovered this hiding place and robbed it of nearly every article.
+This was a great disappointment to Matonabi's people; but Hearne
+remarks the fortitude with which they bore this, nor did one of them
+ever speak of revenge. But the expedition's scarcity of food obliged
+them to push on from morning till night, day after day; yet the road
+being very bad, and their sledges heavy, they were seldom able to do
+more than eighteen miles a day. Hearne himself writes that he never
+spent so dull a Christmas. For the last three days he had not tasted a
+morsel of anything, except a pipe of tobacco and a drink of snow
+water, yet he had to walk daily from morning till night heavily laden.
+However, at the end of December they reached Island Lake, where they
+entered a camp of Matonabi's people, and here they found a little
+food in the way of fish and dried venison. From Island Lake they made
+their way in a zigzag fashion, stopping often to drive reindeer into
+pounds to secure large supplies of venison and of skins, till, in the
+month of April, 1771, they reached a small lake with an almost
+unpronounceable name, which meant "Little Fish Hill", from a high hill
+which stood at the west end of this sheet of water.
+
+On an island in this lake they pitched their tents, as deer were very
+numerous. During this time also they were busily employed in preparing
+staves of birch wood, about seven or eight feet long, to serve as tent
+poles in the summer, and in the winter to be converted into snowshoe
+frames. Here also Chief Matonabi purchased another wife. He had now
+with him no less than seven, most of whom would for size have made
+good grenadiers. He prided himself much on the height and strength of
+his wives, and would frequently say few women could carry off heavier
+loads. In fact in this country wives were very seldom selected for
+their beauty, but rather for their strength.
+
+"Ask a Northern Indian," wrote Hearne, "'What is beauty?' He will
+answer: 'A broad, flat face, small eyes, high cheekbones, three or
+four broad black lines across each cheek, a low forehead, a broad
+chin, a clumsy hook nose, and a tawny hide.'"
+
+But the model woman amongst these Indians was one who was capable of
+dressing all kinds of skins and making them into clothing, and who was
+strong enough to carry a load of about a hundred pounds in weight in
+summer, and to haul perhaps double that weight on a sledge in winter.
+"As to their temper, it is of little consequence; for the men have a
+wonderful facility in making the most stubborn comply with as much
+alacrity as could possibly be expected." When the men kill any large
+beast the women are always sent to bring it to the tent. When it is
+brought there, every operation it undergoes, such as splitting,
+drying, pounding, is performed by the women. When anything is prepared
+for eating it is the women who cook it; and when it is done, not even
+the wives and daughters of the greatest chiefs in the country are
+served until all the males--even the male slaves--have eaten what they
+think proper. In times of scarcity it was frequently the lot of the
+women to be left without a single mouthful; though, no doubt, they
+took good care to help themselves in secret.
+
+[Illustration: SAMUEL HEARNE; ALEXANDER MACKENZIE]
+
+Hearne mentions that in this country among the Northern Indians the
+names of the boys were various and generally derived from some place,
+or season of the year, or animal; whilst the names of the girls were
+chiefly taken from some part or property of a marten,[4] such as the
+white marten, the black marten, the summer marten, the marten's head,
+foot, heart, or tail.
+
+[Footnote 4: A fur-bearing animal (_Mustela americana_), very like the
+British pine marten.]
+
+From the Lake of Little Fish Hill the party moved on to Lake Clowey,
+and here the Northern Indians set to work to build their canoes in the
+warm and dry weather, which was about to come in at the end of May.
+These canoes were very slight and simple in construction and
+wonderfully light, which was necessary, for some of the northern
+portages might be a hundred to one hundred and fifty miles in length,
+over which the canoes would have to be carried by the Indians. All the
+tools employed in those days, in building such canoes and making
+snowshoes and all the other furniture and utensils of Indian life,
+consisted of a _hatchet_, a _knife_, a _file_, and an _awl_ obtained
+from the stores of the Hudson's Bay Company. In the use of these tools
+they were so dexterous that everything they manufactured was done with
+a neatness which could not be excelled by the most expert mechanic.
+These northern canoes were flat-bottomed, with straight, upright
+sides, and sharp prow and peak. The stern part of the canoe was wider
+than the rest in order to receive the baggage. The average length of
+the canoe would be from twelve to thirteen feet, and the breadth in
+the widest part about two feet. Generally but a single paddle was
+used, and that rather attenuated. When transporting the canoes from
+one river to another, a strong band of bark or fibre would be fastened
+round the thwarts of the canoe, and then slung over the breast and
+shoulders of the Indian that was carrying it.
+
+From Lake Clowey the northern progress was made on foot, steady and
+fatiguing walking over the barren grounds. The wooded region had been
+left behind to the south; but for a distance of about twenty miles
+outside the living woods there was a belt of dry stumps more or less
+ancient. According to Hearne, these vestiges of trees to the north of
+the present forest limit were an indication that the climate had grown
+colder during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, because,
+according to the traditions of the Indians and the remembrances of
+their old people, the forest had formerly extended much farther to the
+north.
+
+Whilst they were staying for the canoe building at Lake Clowey, Hearne
+was a great deal bothered by the domestic troubles of his Indian
+friend Matonabi. This man had been constantly trying to add to his
+stock of wives as he passed up country, and at Clowey he had met the
+former husband of one of these women whom he had carried off by force.
+The man ventured to reproach him, whereupon Matonabi went into his
+tent, opened one of his wives' bundles, and with the greatest
+composure took out a new, long, box-handled knife; then proceeded to
+the tent of the man who had complained, and without any parley
+whatever took him by the collar and attempted to stab him to death.
+The man had already received three bad knife wounds in the back before
+other people, rushing in to his assistance, prevented Matonabi from
+finishing him. After this, Matonabi returned to his tent as though
+nothing had happened, called for water, washed the blood off his hands
+and knife, and smoked his pipe as usual, asking Hearne if he did not
+think he had done quite right!
+
+"It has ever been the custom among those people for the men to wrestle
+for any woman to whom they are attached; and of course the strongest
+party always carries off the prize. A weak man, unless he be a good
+hunter and well beloved, is seldom permitted to keep a wife that a
+stronger man thinks worth his notice; for at any time when the wives
+of those strong wrestlers are heavy laden either with furs or
+provisions, they make no scruple of tearing any other man's wife from
+his bosom and making her bear a part of his luggage. This custom
+prevails throughout all their tribes, and causes a great spirit of
+emulation among their youth, who are upon all occasions, from their
+childhood, trying their strength and skill in wrestling. This enables
+them to protect their property, and particularly their wives, from the
+hands of those powerful ravishers, some of whom make almost a
+livelihood by taking what they please from the weaker parties without
+making them any return. Indeed it is represented as an act of great
+generosity if they condescend to make an unequal exchange, as, in
+general, abuse and insult are the only return for the loss which is
+sustained.
+
+"The way in which they tear the women and other property from one
+another, though it has the appearance of the greatest brutality, can
+scarcely be called fighting. I never knew any of them receive the
+least hurt in these _rencontres_; the whole business consists in
+hauling each other about by the hair of the head; they are seldom
+known either to strike or kick one another. It is not uncommon for one
+of them to cut off his hair and to grease his ears immediately before
+the contest begins. This, however, is done privately; and it is
+sometimes truly laughable to see one of the parties strutting about
+with an air of great importance, and calling out: 'Where is he? Why
+does he not come out?' when the other will bolt out with a clean-shorn
+head and greased ears, rush on his antagonist, seize him by the hair,
+and, though perhaps a much weaker man, soon drag him to the ground,
+while the stronger is not able to lay hold of him. It is very frequent
+on those occasions for each party to have spies, to watch the other's
+motions, which puts them more on a footing of equality. For want of
+hair to pull, they seize each other about the waist, with legs wide
+extended, and try their strength by endeavouring to vie who can first
+throw the other down."
+
+"Early in the morning of the twenty-ninth 'Captain' Keelshies (an
+Indian) joined us. He delivered to me a packet of letters and a
+two-quart keg of French brandy, but assured me that the powder, shot,
+tobacco, knives, &c, which he received at the fort for me, were all
+expended. He endeavoured to make some apology for this by saying that
+some of his relations died in the winter, and that he had, according
+to native custom, thrown all his own things away; after which he was
+obliged to have recourse to my ammunition and other goods to support
+himself and a numerous family. The very affecting manner in which he
+related this story, often crying like a child, was a great proof of
+his extreme sorrow, which he wished to persuade me arose from the
+recollection of his having embezzled so much of my property; but I was
+of a different opinion, and attributed his grief to arise from the
+remembrance of his deceased relations. However, as a small recompense
+for my loss, he presented me with four ready-dressed moose skins,
+which was, he said, the only retribution he could then make. The moose
+skins, though not the twentieth part of the value of the goods which
+he had embezzled, were in reality more acceptable to me than the
+ammunition and the other articles would have been, on account of their
+great use as shoe leather, which at that time was a very scarce
+article with us, whereas we had plenty of powder and shot."
+
+During Hearne's stay at Lake Clowey a great number of Indians entered
+into a combination with those of his party to travel together to the
+Coppermine River, with no other intent than to murder the Eskimo who
+frequented that river in considerable numbers. Before leaving Lake
+Clowey all the Northern Indians who had assembled there prepared their
+arms for the encounter, and did not forget to make shields before they
+left the woods of Clowey. These shields were composed of thin boards
+about three-quarters of an inch thick, two feet broad, and three feet
+long, and were intended to ward off the arrows of the Eskimo.
+
+When the now large expedition reached a river with the fearful name of
+Congecathawhachaga, they found a portion of the tribe known as Copper
+Indians,[5] and these had never before seen a white man. They gave a
+very friendly reception to Hearne on account of Matonabi.
+
+[Footnote 5: Or "Tantsawh[¯u]ts". Like the "Dog-rib" Indians,
+mentioned farther on, they belonged to the "Northern", Tinné,
+Athabaskan type.]
+
+"They expressed as much desire to examine me from top to toe as a
+European naturalist would a nondescript animal. They, however, found
+and pronounced me to be a perfect human being, except in the colour of
+my hair and eyes; the former, they said, was like the stained hair of
+a buffalo's tail, and the latter, being light, were like those of a
+gull. The whiteness of my skin also was, in their opinion, no
+ornament, as they said it resembled meat which had been sodden in
+water till all the blood was extracted. On the whole I was viewed as
+so great a curiosity in this part of the world that during my stay
+there, whenever I combed my head, some or other of them never failed
+to ask for the hairs that came off, which they carefully wrapped up,
+saying: 'When I see you again, you shall again see your hair'."
+
+The Copper Indians sent a detachment of their men in the double
+capacity of guides and warriors, and the whole party now turned
+towards the north-west, and after some days' walking reached the Stony
+Mountains. "Surely no part of the world better deserves that name",
+wrote, Hearne. They appeared to be a confused heap of stones quite
+inaccessible to the foot of man. Nevertheless, with the Copper Indians
+as guides, they got over this range, though not without being obliged
+frequently to crawl on hands and knees. This range, however, had been
+so often crossed by Indians coming to and fro that there was a very
+visible path the whole way, the rocks, even in the most difficult
+places, being worn quite smooth. By the side of the path there were
+several large, flat stones covered with thousands of small pebbles.
+These marks had been gradually built up by passengers going to and fro
+from the copper mines in the far north. The weather all this time,
+although the month was July, was very bad--constant snow, sleet, and
+rain. Hearne seldom had a dry garment of any kind, and in the caves
+where they lodged at night the water was constantly dropping from the
+roof. Their food all this time was raw venison. One snowstorm which
+fell on them was heavier than was customary even in the winter, but at
+last the weather cleared up and sunshine made the journey far more
+tolerable.
+
+As they descended the northern side of the Stony Mountains they
+crossed a large lake, passing over its unmelted ice, and called it
+Musk-ox Lake, from the number of these creatures which they found
+grazing on the margin of it.
+
+This was not the first time that Hearne had seen the musk ox. These
+animals were wont to come down as far south as the shores of Hudson
+Bay.
+
+On the northern side of the Stony Mountains Hearne was taken by the
+Indians to see a place which he called Grizzly-bear Hill, which took
+its name from the numbers of those animals (presumably what we call
+grizzly bears) which resorted here for the purpose of bringing forth
+their young in a cave in this hill. On the east side of the adjoining
+marsh Hearne was amazed at the sight of the many hills and dry ridges,
+which were turned over like ploughed land by the long claws of these
+bears in searching for the ground squirrels and mice which constitute
+a favourite part of their food. It was surprising to see the enormous
+stones rolled out of their beds by the bears on these occasions.
+
+As they neared the Coppermine River the weather became very warm, and
+the country had a good supply of firewood. Reindeer were abundant,
+and, the Indians having killed some of these, Hearne sat down to the
+most comfortable meal he had had for some months.
+
+It was a kind of haggis, called by the Amerindians "biati", made with
+the blood of the reindeer, a good quantity of fat shredded small, some
+of the tenderest of the flesh, together with the heart and lungs, cut,
+or more commonly torn, into small slivers--all which would be put into
+the stomach, and roasted by being suspended before the fire by a
+string. Care had to be taken that it did not get too much heat at
+first, as the bag would thereby be liable to be burnt and the contents
+be let out. When it was sufficiently done it emitted steam, "which",
+writes Hearne, "is as much as to say: 'Come, eat me now'; and if it be
+taken in time, before the blood and other contents are too much done,
+it is certainly a most delicious morsel, even without pepper, salt, or
+any other seasoning."
+
+It was now almost impossible to sleep at night for the mosquitoes,
+which swarmed in myriads as soon as the warmth of the sun melted the
+ice and snow. When Hearne actually reached the banks of the Coppermine
+River he was a little disappointed at its appearance, as it seemed to
+be only one hundred and eighty yards wide, shallow, and full of
+shoals. The Chipewayan Amerindians with him now sent out their spies
+to try and locate the Eskimo. Presently they found that there were
+five tents of them on the west side of the river.
+
+"When the Indians received this intelligence no further attendance or
+attention was paid to my survey, but their whole thoughts were
+immediately engaged in planning the best method of attack, and how
+they might steal on the poor Eskimo the ensuing night and kill them
+all when asleep. To accomplish this bloody design more effectually the
+Indians thought it necessary to cross the river as soon as possible;
+and, by the account of the spies, it appeared that no part was more
+convenient for the purpose than that where we had met them, it being
+there very smooth, and at a considerable distance from any fall.
+Accordingly, after the Indians had put all their guns, spears,
+shields, &c, in good order, we crossed the river....
+
+"When we arrived on the west side of the river, each painted the front
+of his shield; some with the figure of the sun, others with that of
+the moon, several with different kinds of birds and beasts of prey,
+and many with the images of imaginary beings, which, according to
+their silly notions, are the inhabitants of the different elements,
+Earth, Sea, Air, &c. On enquiring the reason of their doing so, I
+learned that each man painted his shield with the image of that being
+on which he relied most for success in the intended engagement. Some
+were content with a single representation; while others, doubtful, as
+I suppose, of the quality and power of any single being, had their
+shields covered to the very margin with a group of hieroglyphics quite
+unintelligible to everyone except the painter. Indeed, from the hurry
+in which this business was necessarily done, the want of every colour
+but red and black, and the deficiency of skill in the artist, most of
+those paintings had more the appearance of a number of accidental
+blotches, than 'of anything that is on the earth, or in the water
+under the earth'....
+
+"After this piece of superstition was completed, we began to advance
+towards the Eskimo tents; but were very careful to avoid crossing any
+hills, or talking loud, for fear of being seen or overheard by the
+inhabitants."
+
+When the attacking party was within two hundred yards of the Eskimo
+tents, they lay in ambush for some time, watching the motions of their
+intended victims; and here the Indians wanted Hearne (for whom they
+had a sincere affection) to stay till the fight was over; but to this
+he would not consent, lest, when the Eskimo came to be surprised, they
+should try every way to escape, and, finding him alone, kill him in
+their desperation.
+
+While they lay in ambush the Northern Indians performed the last
+ceremonies which were thought necessary before the engagement. These
+chiefly consisted in painting their faces: some all black, some all
+red, and others with a mixture of the two; and to prevent their hair
+from blowing into their eyes, it was either tied before or behind, and
+on both sides, or else cut short all round. The next thing they
+considered was to make themselves as light as possible for running,
+which they did by pulling off their stockings, and either cutting off
+the sleeves of their jackets, or rolling them up close to their
+armpits; and though the mosquitoes at that time "were so numerous as
+to surpass all credibility", yet some of the Indians actually pulled
+off their jackets and entered the lists nearly or quite naked. Hearne,
+fearing he might have occasion to run with the rest, thought it also
+advisable to pull off his stockings and cap, and to tie his hair as
+close up as possible.
+
+By the time the Indians had made themselves thus "completely
+frightful", it was nearly one in the morning. Then, finding all the
+Eskimo quiet in their tents, they rushed forth from their ambuscade,
+and fell on the poor, unsuspecting creatures, unperceived till they
+were close to the very eaves of the tents. A horrible massacre
+forthwith took place, while Hearne stood neutral in the rear.
+
+"The scene was shocking beyond description. The poor unhappy victims
+were surprised in the midst of their sleep, and had neither time nor
+power to make any resistance; men, women, and children, in all upward
+of twenty, ran out of their tents stark naked, and endeavoured to make
+their escape; but the Indians having possession of all the landside,
+to no place could they fly for shelter. One alternative only remained,
+that of jumping into the river; but, as none of them attempted it,
+they all fell a sacrifice to Indian barbarity!
+
+"The shrieks and groans of the poor expiring wretches were truly
+dreadful; and my horror was much increased at seeing a young girl,
+seemingly about eighteen years of age, killed so near me, that when
+the first spear was stuck into her side she fell down at my feet, and
+twisted round my legs, so that it was with difficulty that I could
+disengage myself from her dying grasp. As two Indian men pursued this
+unfortunate victim, I solicited very hard for her life; but the
+murderers made no reply till they had stuck both their spears through
+her body, and transfixed her to the ground. They then looked me
+sternly in the face, and began to ridicule me by asking if I wanted an
+Eskimo wife; and paid not the smallest regard to the shrieks and agony
+of the poor wretch, who was twining round their spears like an eel!"
+
+On his requesting that they would at least put the woman out of her
+misery, one of the Indians hastily drew his spear from the place where
+it was first lodged, and pierced it through her breast near the heart.
+The love of life, however, even in this most miserable state, was so
+predominant, that "though this might justly be called the most
+merciful act that could be done for the poor creature, it seemed to be
+unwelcome, for, though much exhausted by pain and loss of blood, she
+made several efforts to ward off the friendly blow."... "My own
+situation and the terror of my mind at beholding this butchery,
+cannot easily be conceived, much less described; though I summed up
+all the fortitude I was master of on the occasion, it was with
+difficulty that I could refrain from tears; and I am confident that my
+features must have feelingly expressed how sincerely I was affected at
+the barbarous scene I then witnessed; even at this hour I cannot
+reflect on the transactions of that horrid day without shedding
+tears."
+
+There were other Eskimo on the opposite shore of the river. Though
+they took up their arms to defend themselves, they did not attempt to
+abandon their tents, for they were utterly unacquainted with the
+nature of firearms; so much so that when the bullets struck the
+ground, they ran in crowds to see what was sent them, and seemed
+anxious to examine all the pieces of lead which they found flattened
+against the rocks. At length one of the Eskimo men was shot in the
+calf of his leg, which put them in great confusion. They all
+immediately embarked in their little canoes, and paddled to a shoal in
+the middle of the river, which being somewhat more than a gunshot from
+any part of the shore, put them out of the reach of our barbarians.
+
+"When the savages discovered that the surviving Eskimo had gained the
+shore above-mentioned, the Northern Indians began to plunder the
+tents of the deceased of all the copper utensils they could find; such
+as hatchets, bayonets, knives, &c, after which they assembled on the
+top of an adjacent hill, and, standing all in a cluster, so as to form
+a solid circle, with their spears erect in the air, gave many shouts
+of victory, constantly clashing their spears against each other, and
+frequently calling out _tima! tima!_[6] by way of derision to the poor
+surviving Eskimo, who were standing on the shoal almost knee deep in
+water."
+
+[Footnote 6: "_Tima_ in the Eskimo language is a friendly word similar
+to _what cheer_?"--Hearne.]
+
+"It ought to have been mentioned in its proper place," writes Hearne,
+after describing further atrocities, "that in making our retreat up
+the river, after killing the Eskimo on the west side, we saw an old
+woman sitting by the side of the water killing salmon, which lay at
+the foot of the fall as thick as a shoal of herrings. Whether from the
+noise of the fall, or a natural defect in the old woman's hearing, it
+is hard to determine, but certain it is, she had no knowledge of the
+tragical scene which had been so lately transacted at the tents,
+though she was not more than two hundred yards from the place. When we
+first perceived her she seemed perfectly at ease, and was entirely
+surrounded with the produce of her labour. From her manner of
+behaviour, and the appearance of her eyes, which were as red as blood,
+it is more than probable that her sight was not very good; for she
+scarcely discerned that the Indians were enemies, till they were
+within twice the length of their spears of her. It was in vain that
+she attempted to fly, for the wretches of my crew transfixed her to
+the ground in a few seconds, and butchered her in the most savage
+manner. There was scarcely a man among them who had not a thrust at
+her with his spear; and many in doing this aimed at torture rather
+than immediate death, as they not only poked out her eyes, but stabbed
+her in many parts very remote from those which are vital.
+
+"It may appear strange that a person supposed to be almost blind
+should be employed in the business of fishing, and particularly with
+any degree of success; but when the multitude of the fish is taken
+into the account, the wonder will cease. Indeed they were so numerous
+at the foot of the fall, that when a light pole, armed with a few
+spikes, which was the instrument the old woman used, was put under
+water, and hauled up with a jerk, it was scarcely possible to miss
+them. Some of my Indians tried the method, for curiosity, with the old
+woman's staff, and seldom got less than two at a jerk, sometimes
+three or four. Those fish, though very fine, and beautifully red, are
+but small, seldom weighing more (as near as I could judge) than six or
+seven pounds, and in general much less. Their numbers at this place
+were almost incredible, perhaps equal to anything that is related of
+the salmon in Kamschatka, or any other part of the world."
+
+Hearne seems to have been so intent on geographical discovery that he
+did not allow his feelings to influence him very long against the
+society of his Amerindian companions, who apparently sat down and ate
+a dish of salmon with him an hour or so after they had killed this
+last old woman! The Indians now told him that they were ready again to
+assist him in making an end of his survey, and apparently on foot, for
+the Coppermine River was not navigable here, even for a boat.
+
+Thus, first of all white men coming overland, he reached the sea coast
+of the Arctic Ocean. The tide was then out, and a good deal of the sea
+surface was covered with ice, on which he observed many seals lying
+about. Along the sea coast and river banks were many birds; gulls,
+divers or loons, golden plovers, green plovers, curlews, geese, and
+swans. The country a little way inland was obviously inhabited by
+numbers of musk oxen, reindeer, bears, wolves, gluttons, foxes, polar
+hares, snowy owls, ravens, ptarmigans, gopher ground-squirrels, stoats
+(ermines), and mice. In this region also he saw a bird which the
+Copper Indians called the Alarm Bird. He tells us that in size and
+colour it resembles a "Cobadekoock"; but as none of us know what that
+is, we can only go on to imagine that the Alarm Bird was a kind of
+owl, as Hearne says it was "of the owl genus". When it perceived
+people or beasts it directed its way towards them immediately, and,
+after hovering over them for some time, flew over them in circles or
+went away with them in the same direction as they walked. All this
+time the bird made a loud screaming noise like the cry of a child.
+These owls were sometimes accustomed to follow the Indians for a whole
+day, and the Copper Indians believed that they would in some way
+conduct them to herds of deer and musk oxen, which without the birds'
+assistance might never be found. They also warned Indians of the
+arrival of strangers. The Eskimo, according to Hearne, paid no heed to
+these birds, and it was thus that they allowed themselves to be
+surprised and massacred, for if they had looked out from the direction
+in which the Chipewayans were lying in ambush, they would have seen a
+large flock of these owls continually flying about and making
+sufficient noise to awaken any man out of the soundest sleep.
+
+The country on either side of the estuary of the Coppermine River was
+not without vegetation. There were stunted pines and tufts of dwarf
+willows, and the ground was covered with a lichen or herb, which the
+English of the Hudson's Bay Company knew by the name of
+Wishakapaka,[7] and which they dried and used instead of tea. There
+were also cranberry and heathberry bushes, but without fruit. The
+scrub grew gradually thinner and smaller as one approached the sea,
+and at the mouth of the river there was nothing but barren hills and
+marsh.
+
+[Footnote 7: _Ledum palustre_.]
+
+The unfortunate Eskimo of this region, judging by the examples seen by
+Hearne, were of low stature, with broad thickset bodies. Their
+complexion was a dirty copper colour, but some of the women were
+almost fair and ruddy. Their dress, their arms and fishing tackle were
+precisely similar to those of the Greenland Eskimo. Their tents were
+made of deerskins, and were pitched in a circular form. But these were
+only their summer habitations, those for the winter being partly
+underground, with a roof framework of poles, over which skins were
+stretched; and of course Nature did the rest, covering the roof with
+several feet of snow. Owing to being almost entirely surrounded by
+snow, these winter houses were very warm. Their household furniture
+consisted of stone kettles and wooden troughs of various sizes, also
+dishes, scoops, and spoons made of musk-ox horns. The stone kettles
+(which some people think they borrowed from the Norse discoverers of
+America in the eleventh century) were as large as to be capable of
+containing five or six gallons. They were, of course, carved out of
+solid blocks of stone, every one of them being ornamented with neat
+moulding round the rims, and some of the large ones with fluted work
+at each corner. In shape they were oblong, wider at the top than the
+bottom, and strong handles of solid stone were left at each end to
+lift them up.
+
+The Eskimo hatchets were made of a thick lump of copper about five or
+six inches long, and one and a half to two inches broad. They were
+bevelled away at one end like a chisel. This piece of copper was
+lashed into the end of a piece of wood about twelve or fourteen inches
+long. The men's daggers and the women's knives were also made of
+copper. The former were in shape like the ace of spades, and the
+handle was made of reindeer antler.
+
+With the Eskimo was a fine breed of dogs, with erect ears, sharp
+noses, bushy tails. They were all tethered to stones to prevent them
+from eating the flesh that was spread all over the rocks to dry.
+Apparently, these beautiful dogs were left behind still tethered by
+the wicked Amerindians, after the massacre of their owners. Hearne,
+however, noticed with these Coppermine River Eskimo that the men were
+entirely bald, having all their head hair pulled out by the roots. The
+women wore their hair at the usual length.
+
+Before leaving this region to return southwards, Hearne was led by the
+Indians to one of the copper mines about thirty miles south-east of
+the river mouth. It was no more than a jumble of rocks and gravel,
+which had been rent in many ways, apparently by an earthquake shock.
+This mine was at the time of Hearne's visit very poor in copper, much
+of the metal having already been removed.
+
+The Copper Indians set a great value on this native metal even at the
+present day, and prefer it to iron for almost every use except that of
+a hatchet, a knife, and an awl. "For these three necessary
+implements", writes Hearne, "copper makes but a very poor substitute."
+
+On the return journey, in the course of which the Great Slave
+Lake--which Hearne calls "Lake Athapuscow"--was discovered and crossed
+on the ice, the party travelled so hard and stayed so seldom to rest
+that Hearne suffered terribly with his legs and feet. "I had so little
+power to direct my feet when walking, that I frequently knocked them
+against the stones with such force, as not only to jar and disorder
+them, but my legs also; and the nails of my toes were bruised to such
+a degree, that several of them festered and dropped off. To add to
+this mishap, the skin was entirely chafed off from the tops of both my
+feet, and between every toe; so that the sand and gravel, which I
+could by no means exclude, irritated the raw parts so much, that for a
+whole day before we arrived at the women's tents, I left the print of
+my feet in blood almost at every step I took. Several of the Indians
+began to complain that their feet also were sore; but, on examination,
+not one of them was the twentieth part in so bad a state as mine. This
+being the first time I had been in such a situation, or seen anybody
+foot-foundered, I was much alarmed, and under great apprehensions for
+the consequences. Though I was but little fatigued in body, yet the
+excruciating pain I suffered when walking had such an effect on my
+spirits, that if the Indians had continued to travel two or three days
+longer at that unmerciful rate, I must unavoidably have been left
+behind; for my feet were in many places quite honeycombed by the dirt
+and gravel eating into the raw flesh."
+
+"Among the various superstitious customs of those people, it is worth
+remarking, and ought to have been mentioned in its proper place, that
+immediately after my companions had killed the Eskimo at the Copper
+River, they considered themselves in a state of uncleanness, which
+induced them to practise some very curious unusual ceremonies. In the
+first place, all who were absolutely concerned in the murder were
+prohibited from cooking any kind of victuals, either for themselves or
+others. As luckily there were two in company who had not shed blood,
+they were employed always as cooks till we joined the women. This
+circumstance was exceedingly favourable on my side; for had there been
+no persons of the above description in company, that task, I was told,
+would have fallen on me; which would have been no less fatiguing and
+troublesome, than humiliating and vexatious.
+
+"When the victuals were cooked, all the murderers took a kind of red
+earth, or ochre, and painted all the space between the nose and chin,
+as well as the greater part of their cheeks, almost to the ears,
+before they would taste a bit, and would not drink out of any other
+dish, or smoke out of any other pipe, but their own; and none of the
+others seemed willing to drink or smoke out of theirs."
+
+He goes on to relate that they practised the custom of painting the
+mouth and part of the cheeks before each meal, and drinking and
+smoking out of their own utensils, till the winter began to set in,
+and during the whole of that time they would never kiss any of their
+wives or children. They refrained also from eating many parts of the
+deer and other animals, particularly the head, entrails, and blood;
+and during their "uncleanness" their food was never cooked in water,
+but dried in the sun, eaten quite raw, or broiled. When the time
+arrived that was to put an end to these ceremonies, the men, without a
+female being present, made a fire at some distance from the tents,
+into which they threw all their ornaments, pipe stems, and dishes,
+which were soon consumed to ashes; after which a feast was prepared,
+consisting of such articles as they had long been prohibited from
+eating, and when all was over each man was at liberty to eat, drink,
+and smoke as he pleased, "and also to kiss his wives and children at
+discretion, which they seemed to do with more raptures than I had ever
+known them to do it either before or since".
+
+On the 11th of January, as some of Hearne's companions were hunting,
+they saw the track of a strange snowshoe, which they followed, and at
+a considerable distance came to a little hut, where they discovered a
+young woman sitting alone. As they found that she understood their
+language, they brought her with them to the tents. On examination she
+proved to be one of the Western Dog-rib Indians, who had been taken
+prisoner by the Athapaska Indians in the summer of 1770. From these,
+in the following summer, she had escaped, with the intention of
+returning to her own country, but the distance being so great, and the
+way being unknown to her, she forgot the track, so she built the hut
+in which they found her, to protect her from the weather during the
+winter, and here she had resided from the first setting in of the cold
+weather. For seven months she had seen no human face. During all this
+time she had supported herself in comparative comfort by snaring
+grouse, rabbits, and squirrels; she had also killed two or three
+beaver, and some porcupines. That she did not seem to have been in
+want was evident, as she had a small stock of provisions by her when
+she was discovered, and was in good health and condition; and Hearne
+thought her "one of the finest women", of the real Indian type, that
+he had seen in any part of North America.
+
+"The methods practised by this poor creature to procure a livelihood
+were truly admirable, and are great proofs that necessity is the real
+mother of invention. When the few deer sinews that she had an
+opportunity of taking with her were all expended in making snares and
+sewing her clothing, she had nothing to supply their place but the
+sinews of the rabbits' [he means hares'] legs and feet; these she
+twisted together for that purpose with great dexterity and success.
+The rabbits, &c, which she caught in those snares, not only furnished
+her with a comfortable subsistence, but of the skins she made a suit
+of neat and warm clothing for the winter. It is scarcely possible to
+conceive that a person in her forlorn situation could be so composed
+as to be capable of contriving or executing anything that was not
+absolutely necessary to her existence; but there were sufficient
+proofs that she had extended her care much farther, as all her
+clothing, beside being calculated for real service, showed great taste
+and exhibited no little variety of ornament. The materials, though
+rude, were very curiously wrought and so judiciously placed as to make
+the whole of her garb have a very pleasing, though rather romantic,
+appearance.
+
+"Her leisure hours from hunting had been employed in twisting the
+inner rind or bark of willows into small lines, like net twine, of
+which she had some hundred fathoms by her; with this she intended to
+make a fishing net as soon as the spring advanced. It is of the inner
+bark of willows, twisted in this manner, that the Dog-rib Indians make
+their fishing nets, and they are much preferable to those made by the
+Northern Indians.
+
+"Five or six inches of an iron hoop, made into a knife, and the shank
+of an arrowhead of iron, which served her as an awl, were all the
+metals this poor woman had with her when she eloped, and with these
+implements she had made herself complete snowshoes, and several other
+useful articles.
+
+"Her method of making a fire was equally singular and curious, having
+no other materials for that purpose than two hard sulphurous stones.
+These, by long friction and hard knocking, produced a few sparks,
+which at length communicated to some touchwood (a species of fungus
+which grew on decayed poplars); but as this method was attended with
+great trouble, and not always with success, she did not suffer her
+fire to go out all the winter...."
+
+Hearne regained Prince of Wales's Fort on Hudson Bay in June, 1772.
+Subsequently he was dispatched, in the year 1774, to found the first
+great inland trading station and fort of the Hudson's Bay Company
+which was established at any considerable distance westward of Hudson
+Bay--the first step, in fact, which led to this chartered company
+becoming in time the ruler and colonizing agent of Alberta and British
+Columbia. Hearne chose for his station of "Cumberland House" a site at
+the entrance to Pine Island Lake on the lower Saskatchewan River.
+
+In 1775 he became Governor of his old starting-point on Hudson
+Bay--Fort Prince of Wales. During the American war with France, the
+French admiral, La Pérouse, made a daring excursion into Hudson Bay
+(1782), and summoned Hearne to surrender his fort. This he felt
+obliged to do, not deeming his small garrison strong enough to resist
+the French force.
+
+Samuel Hearne returned to England in 1787, and died (probably in
+London) in 1792.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Alexander Mackenzie's Journeys
+
+
+It has been already mentioned that the conquest of Canada by the
+British led to a great increase in travel for the development of the
+fur trade. Previously, under the French, permission was only granted
+to a few persons to penetrate into the interior to trade with the
+natives, commerce being regarded as a special privilege or monopoly to
+be sold or granted by the Crown. But after the British had completely
+assumed control, nothing was done to bar access to the interior. So
+long as the Catholic missionaries had been practically placed in
+charge of the Amerindians, and had served as buffers between them and
+unscrupulous traders, they--the Amerindians--had been saved from two
+scourges, smallpox and strong drink.[1] But now, unhappily, all
+restrictions about trade in alcohol were removed. In their eagerness
+to obtain ardent spirits and "high" wine, the Indians eagerly welcomed
+British traders and French Canadians in their midst. The fur trade
+developed fast. The Hudson's Bay Company had established its trading
+stations only in the vicinity or on the coasts of that inland sea, far
+away from the two Canadas, from the Middle West and the vast North
+West. After a little reluctance and suspicion, most of the northern
+Amerindian tribes were persuaded to deflect their caravans from the
+routes leading to Hudson Bay, and to meet the British, the New
+Englander ("Bostonian"), and the French Canadian traders at various
+rendezvous on Lake Winnipeg and its tributary lakes and rivers. The
+principal depot and starting-point for the north-west traders was
+_Grand Portage_, on the north-west coast of Lake Superior, whence
+canoes and goods were transferred by a nine-mile portage to the waters
+flowing to Rainy Lake, and so onwards to the Winnipeg River and the
+vast system of the Saskatchewan, the Red River, and the Assiniboine.
+
+[Footnote 1: See Sir Alexander Mackenzie's _Travels_, p. 5.]
+
+Amongst the pioneers in this new development of the fur trade, who
+became also the great explorers of northernmost America, was Alexander
+Henry (already described), THOMAS CURRIE, JAMES FINLAY, PETER POND,[2]
+JOSEPH and BENJAMIN FROBISHER, and SIMON M'TAVISH. These and some of
+their supporting merchants in Montreal resolved to form a great
+fur-trading association, the celebrated North-west Trading Company,
+and did so in 1784.
+
+[Footnote 2: Peter Pond was a native of Connecticut, and in the
+opinion of his trading associates rather a ruffian. He was strongly
+suspected of having murdered an amiable Swiss fur trader named Wadin,
+and at a later date he actually did kill his trading partner, Ross.]
+
+Two of the Montreal merchant firms participating in this confederation
+(Gregory and M'Leod) were inclined to play a somewhat independent
+part, and called themselves the New North-west Trading Company. They
+had the foresight to engage as their principal agents in the
+north-west (Sir) ALEXANDER MACKENZIE and his cousin RODERICK
+MACKENZIE. Both these young men were Highlanders, probably of Norse
+origin. Alexander Mackenzie was born at Stornoway, in the Island of
+Lewis (Hebrides), in 1763. He was only sixteen when he started for
+Canada to take up a position as clerk in the partnership concern of
+Gregory & M'Leod at Montreal.
+
+It may be said here briefly that this "New North-west Company" went at
+first by the nickname of "The Little Company" or "The Potties", this
+last being an Amerindian corruption of the French _Les Petits_. Later
+it developed into the "X.Y. Company", or "Sir Alexander Mackenzie &
+Co.". Although much in rivalry with the original "Nor'-westers", the
+rivalry never degenerated into the actual warfare, the indefensible
+deeds of violence and treachery, which later on were perpetrated by
+the Hudson's Bay Company on the agents of the North-west, and returned
+with interest by the latter. Often the New North-west agents and the
+original Nor'-westers would camp or build side by side, and share
+equably in the fur trade with the natives; their canoemen and
+French-Canadian _voyageurs_ would sing their boating songs in chorus
+as they paddled side by side across the lakes and down the rivers, or
+marched with their heavy loads over the portages and along the trails.
+Eventually, in 1804, the X.Y. Company and the North-west fused into
+the North-west Trading Company, which until 1821 fought a hard fight
+against the encroachments and jealousy of the Hudson's Bay Company.
+
+During the period, however, from 1785 to 1812 the men of the
+north-west, of Montreal, and Grand Portage (as contrasted with those
+of Hudson Bay) effected a revolution in Canadian geography. They
+played the rôle of imperial pioneers with a stubborn heroism, with
+little thought of personal gain, and in most cases with full
+foreknowledge and appreciation of what would accrue to the British
+Empire through their success. It is impossible to relate the
+adventures of all of them within the space of any one book, or even of
+several volumes. Moreover, this has been done already, not only in
+their own published journals and books, but in the admirable works of
+Elliot Coues, Dr. George Bryce, Dr. S.J. Dawson, Alexander Ross, and
+others. I must confine myself here to a description of the adventures
+of Sir Alexander Mackenzie, with a glance at incidents recorded by
+Simon Fraser and by Alexander Henry the Younger.
+
+Mackenzie, having been appointed at the age of twenty-two a partner in
+the New North-west Company, proceeded to Grand Portage in 1785, and
+by the year 1788 (after founding Fort Chipewayan on Lake Athabaska)
+conceived the idea of following the mysterious Slave River to its
+ultimate outlet into the Arctic or the Pacific Ocean. He left Fort
+Chipewayan on June 3, 1789, accompanied by four French-Canadian
+_voyageurs_, two French-Canadian women (wives of two _voyageurs_), a
+young German named John Steinbruck, and an Amerindian guide known as
+"English Chief". This last was a follower and pupil of the Matonabi
+who had guided Hearne to the Coppermine River and the eastern end of
+the Great Slave Lake. The party of eight whites packed themselves and
+their goods into one birch-bark canoe. English Chief and his two
+wives, together with an additional Amerindian guide and a hunter,
+travelled in a second and smaller canoe. The expedition, moreover, was
+accompanied as far as Slave River by LE ROUX, a celebrated
+French-Canadian exploring trader who worked for the X.Y. Company. The
+journey down the Slave River was rendered difficult and dangerous by
+the rapids. Several times the canoes and their loads had to be lugged
+past these falls by an overland portage. Mosquitoes tortured the whole
+party almost past bearance. The leaders of the expedition and their
+Indian hunter had to be busily engaged (the Indian women also) in
+hunting and fishing in order to get food for the support of the party,
+who seemed to have had little reserve provisions with them. Pemmican
+was made of fish dried in the sun and rubbed to powder. Swans, geese,
+cranes, and ducks fell to the guns; an occasional beaver was also
+added to the pot. When they reached the Great Slave Lake they found
+its islands--notwithstanding their barren appearance--covered with
+bushes producing a great variety of palatable fruits--cranberries,
+juniper berries, raspberries, partridge berries, gooseberries, and the
+"pathogomenan", a fruit like a raspberry.
+
+Slave Lake, however, was still, in mid-June, under the spell of
+winter, its surface obstructed with drifting ice. In attempting to
+cross the lake the frail birch-bark canoes ran a great risk of being
+crushed between the ice floes. However, at length, after halting at
+several islands and leaving Le Roux to go to the trading station he
+had founded on the shores of Slave Lake, Mackenzie and his two canoes
+found their way to the river outlet of Slave Lake, that river which
+was henceforth to be called by his name. Great mountains approached
+near to the west of their course. They appeared to be sprinkled with
+white stones, called by the natives "spirit stones"--indeed over a
+great part of North America the Rocky Mountains were called "the
+Mountains of Bright Stones"--yet these brilliant patches were nothing
+more wonderful than unmelted snow.
+
+A few days later the party encountered Amerindians of the Slave and
+Dog-rib tribes, who were so aloof from even "Indian" civilization that
+they did not know the use of tobacco, and were still in the Stone Age
+as regards their weapons and implements. These people, though they
+furnished a guide, foretold disaster and famine to the expedition, and
+greatly exaggerated the obstacles which would be met with--rapids near
+the entrance of the tributary from Great Bear Lake--before the salt
+water was reached.
+
+The canoes of these Slave and Dog-rib tribes of the Athapaskan (Tinné)
+group were covered, not with birch bark, but with the bark of the
+spruce fir.
+
+The lodges of the Slave Indians were of very simple structure: a few
+poles supported by a fork and forming a semicircle at the bottom, with
+some branches or a piece of bark as a covering. They built two of
+these huts facing each other, and made a fire between them. The
+furniture consisted of a few dishes of wood, bark, or horn. The
+vessels in which they cooked their victuals were in the shape of a
+gourd, narrow at the top and wide at the bottom, and made of _wátápé_.
+
+This was the name given to the divided roots of the spruce fir, which
+the natives wove into a degree of compactness that rendered it capable
+of containing a fluid. Wátápé fibre was also used to sew together
+different parts of the bark canoes. They also made fibre or thread
+from willow bark. Their cooking vessels made of this wátápé not only
+contained water, but water which was made to boil by putting a
+succession of hot stones into it. It would, of course, be impossible
+to place these vessels of fibre on a fire, and apparently none of the
+Amerindians of temperate North America knew anything about pottery.
+Those that were in some degree in touch with the Eskimo used kettles
+or cauldrons of stone. Elsewhere the vessels for boiling water and
+cooking were made of bark or fibre, and the water therein was made to
+boil by the dropping in of red-hot stones. The arrows of these Slave
+Indians were two and a half feet long, and the barb was made of bone,
+horn, flint, or copper. Iron had been quite lately introduced,
+indirectly obtained from the Russians in Alaska. Their spears were
+pointed with barbed bone, and their daggers were made of horn or bone.
+Their great club, the _pógamagán_, was made of a reindeer's antler.
+Axes were manufactured out of a piece of brown or grey stone, six to
+eight inches long and two inches thick. They kindled fire by striking
+together a piece of iron pyrites and touchwood, and never travelled
+without a small bag containing such materials.
+
+The Amerindians along the lower Mackenzie had heard vague and terrible
+legends about the Russians, far, far away on the coast of Alaska; they
+were represented as beings of gigantic stature, and adorned with
+wings; which, however, they never employed in flying (possibly the
+sails of their ships). They fed on large birds, and killed them with
+the greatest ease. They also possessed the extraordinary power of
+killing with their eyes (no doubt putting up a gun to aim), and they
+travelled in canoes of very large dimensions.
+
+[Illustration: BIG-HORNED SHEEP OF ROCKY MOUNTAINS]
+
+"I engaged one of these Indians," writes Mackenzie, "by a bribe of
+some beads, to describe the surrounding country upon the sand. This
+singular map he immediately undertook to delineate, and accordingly
+traced out a very long point of land between the rivers ... which he
+represented as running into the great lake, at the extremity of which
+he had been told by Indians of other nations there was a white man's
+fort." The same people described plainly the Yukon River westward of
+the mountains, and told Mackenzie it was a far greater stream than the
+one he was exploring. This was the first "hint" of the existence of
+the great Alaskan river which was ever recorded. They also spoke to
+Mackenzie of "small white buffaloes" (?the mountain goat), which they
+found in the mountains west of the Mackenzie.
+
+Whenever and wherever Mackenzie's party met these northernmost tribes
+of Athapascan Indians they were always ready to dance in between short
+spells of talking. This dancing and jumping was their only amusement,
+and in it old and young, male and female, went to such exertions that
+their strength was exhausted. As they jumped up and down they imitated
+the various noises produced by the reindeer, the bear, and the wolf.
+
+In descending the Mackenzie River, and again on the return journey
+upstream, Mackenzie notices the abundance of berries on the banks of
+the river, especially the kind which was called "pears" by the French
+Canadians. These were of a purple hue, rather bigger than a pea, and
+of a luscious taste. There were also gooseberries and a few
+strawberries. Quantities of berries were collected and dried, but
+while on the lower Mackenzie the expedition fed mainly on fat geese.
+On the beach of the great river they found an abundance of a sweet
+fragrant root which Mackenzie calls "liquorice".
+
+Mackenzie seemed to think that along the lower Mackenzie River, near
+the sea, there were not only reindeer, bears, wolverines, martens,
+foxes, and hares, but a species of white buffalo or white musk ox,
+which may have been the mountain goat above referred to. He noted, in
+the cliffs or banks of the lower Mackenzie, pieces of "petroleum"
+which bore a resemblance to yellow wax but was more friable. His
+Indian guide informed him that rocks of a similar kind were scattered
+about the country at the back of the Slave Lake, near where the
+Chipewayans collected copper. If so, there may be a great oilfield yet
+to be discovered in Arctic Canada.
+
+On the river coming out of the Bear Lake Mackenzie discovered coal;
+the whole beach was strewn with it. He was attracted towards it by
+seeing smoke and noticing a strong sulphurous smell. The whole bank of
+the river was on fire for a considerable distance, and he thought this
+was due to the natives having camped there and set fire to the coal in
+the bank from their hearths. But subsequent travellers have also found
+this lignite coal burning to waste, and imagine that, being full of
+gas, it catches fire spontaneously if any landslip or other accident
+exposes it to moist air. In 1906 it was still burning!
+
+According to Mackenzie, the ground in the regions about the lower
+reaches of the Mackenzie River is always frozen at least five inches
+down from the surface, yet he found small spruce trees growing in
+patches near the delta of this river, besides pale-yellow raspberries
+of an agreeable flavour, and a great variety of other plants and
+herbs.
+
+As the expedition drew near to the estuary of the great Mackenzie
+River a range of lofty snowy mountains rose into sight on the west.
+These mountains were said by the natives to swarm with large
+bears--probably of the huge chocolate-coloured Alaska type; and again
+a mention was made of "small white buffaloes", which were in all
+probability the large white mountain goat (_Oreamnus_). The
+Amerindians along the river greatly magnified the dangers, predicting
+impassable rapids between the confluence of the Great Bear River and
+the sea. But these stories were greatly exaggerated. Every now and
+then the river would narrow and flow between white precipitous
+limestone walls of rock, but there was no obstacle to navigation,
+though it was very deep and the current fast.
+
+The travellers now began to get within touch of the Eskimo and to hear
+of their occasional raids up the river from the sea. They were said to
+use slings, from which they flung stones with such dexterity as to
+prove formidable in their fights with the Amerindians, who regarded
+them with great respect, the more so because of their intercourse with
+the mysterious white people (Russians) from whom they obtained iron.
+
+Mackenzie just managed to reach within sight of the sea, beyond the
+delta of the river, his most northern point being about 69° 14" north
+latitude. Hence he gazed out northwards over a vast expanse of
+piled-up ice in which several small islands were embedded. In the
+spaces of open water whales were visible (the small white whale,
+_Beluga_). The water in between the islands was affected by the tide.
+The travellers had, in fact, reached the Arctic ocean. But, owing to
+the fickleness of their guides, and the danger of being detained by
+some obstacle in these northern latitudes without proper supplies for
+the winter, Mackenzie was afraid to stay for further investigations,
+and on July 16, 1789, turned his back on the sea and commenced his
+return journey up the stream of the great river which was henceforth
+to bear his name.
+
+The strength of the current made the homeward travel much more
+lengthy and tedious. The Indians of the party were troublesome, and
+the principal guide, English Chief, was sulky and disobedient. This
+man had insisted on being accompanied by two of his wives, of whom he
+was so morbidly jealous that he could scarcely bring himself to leave
+them for an hour in order to go hunting or to prospect the country;
+consequently he did little or nothing in the killing of game, and this
+kept the expedition on very small rations. Mackenzie got wroth with
+him, and so gave him a sound rating. This irritated English Chief to a
+high degree, and after a long and vehement harangue he burst into
+tears and loud and bitter lamentations. Thereat his friends and wives
+commenced crying and wailing vociferously, though they declared that
+their tears were shed, not for any trouble between the white man and
+English Chief, but because they suddenly recollected all the friends
+and relations they had lost within the last few years! "I did not
+interrupt their grief for two hours, but as I could not well do
+without them, I was at length obliged to sooth it and induce the chief
+to change his resolution (to leave me), which he did with great
+apparent reluctance."
+
+Later on English Chief told Mackenzie that he feared he might have to
+go to war, because it was a custom amongst the Athapaskan chiefs to
+make war after they had given way to the disgrace attached to such a
+feminine weakness as shedding tears. Therefore he would undertake a
+warlike expedition in the following spring, but in the meantime he
+would continue with Mackenzie as long as he wanted him.
+
+Mackenzie, rejoining Le Roux at the Slave Lake, safely reached his
+station at Fort Chipewayan on September 12, 1789, just as the approach
+of winter was making travel in these northern regions dangerous to
+those who relied on unfrozen water as a means of transit.
+
+Mackenzie seems to have been a little disappointed with the results
+of his northward journey; perhaps he had thought that the outlet of
+Slave Lake and the Mackenzie River would be into the Pacific, the _Mer
+de l'Ouest_ of his Canadian _voyageurs_. Yet he must have realized
+that he had discovered something very wonderful after all: the
+beginning of Alaska, the approach to a region which, though lying
+within the Arctic circle, has climatic conditions permitting the
+existence of trees, abundant vegetation, and large, strange beasts,
+and which, moreover, is highly mineralized. His work in this
+direction, however (and that of Hearne), was to be completed in the
+next century by SIR JOHN FRANKLIN, SIR GEORGE BACK, SIR JOHN
+RICHARDSON, and SIR JOHN ROSS--all knighthoods earned by magnificent
+services in geographical exploration--and by THOMAS SIMPSON, Dr. John
+Rae,[3] WARREN DEASE, JOHN M'LEOD, ROBERT CAMPBELL, and other servants
+of the Hudson's Bay Company.
+
+[Footnote 3: See p. 125.]
+
+In October, 1792, Mackenzie had determined to make a great attempt to
+reach the Pacific Ocean. By this time he and his colleagues had
+explored the Peace River (the main tributary of Slave Lake), and had
+realized that they could travel up it into the heart of the Rocky
+Mountains. He wintered and traded at a place which he called "New
+Establishment", on the banks of the Peace River, near the foothills of
+the Rocky Mountains. He left this station on May 9, 1793, accompanied
+by ALEXANDER MACKAY,[4] six French Canadians, and two Indian guides.
+They travelled up the Peace River in a twenty-five-foot canoe, and at
+first passed through scenery the most beautiful Mackenzie had ever
+beheld. He describes it as follows:--
+
+"The ground rises at intervals to a considerable height, and
+stretching inwards to a considerable distance: at every interval or
+pause in the rise, there is a very gently ascending space or lawn,
+which is alternate with abrupt precipices to the summit of the whole,
+or at least as far as the eye could distinguish. This magnificent
+theatre of nature has all the decorations which the trees and animals
+of the country can afford it: groves of poplars in every shape vary
+the scene; and their intervals are enlivened with vast herds of elks
+and buffaloes: the former choosing the steeps and uplands and the
+latter preferring the plains. At this time the buffaloes were attended
+with their young ones, who were striking about them; and it appeared
+that the elks would soon exhibit the same enlivening circumstance. The
+whole country displayed an exuberant verdure; the trees that bear a
+blossom were advancing fast to that delightful appearance, and the
+velvet rind of their branches reflecting the oblique rays of a rising
+or setting sun, added a splendid gaiety to the scene which no
+expressions of mine are qualified to describe."
+
+[Footnote 4: Alexander Mackay long afterwards left the service of the
+North-west Company, and was killed by savages on the Alaska coast,
+near Nutka Sound.]
+
+Of course, as they neared the Rocky Mountains the navigation of the
+Peace River became more and more difficult. At last they left the
+river to find their way across the mountains till they should reach
+the headwaters of a stream flowing towards the Pacific Ocean.
+Sometimes they only accomplished three miles a day, having to carry
+all their goods and their canoe. The mountainous country was covered
+with splendid forests of spruce, pine, cypress, poplar, birch, willow,
+and many other kinds of trees, with an undergrowth of gooseberries,
+currants, and briar roses. The travellers generally followed paths
+made by the elk,[5] just as in the dense forests of Africa the way
+sometimes is cleared for human travellers by the elephant. Every now
+and again they resumed their journey on the river between the falls
+and cascades. The mountains seemed to be a solid mass of limestone, in
+some places without any covering of foliage.
+
+[Footnote 5: For the word "elk" Mackenzie uses "moose deer". "Elk" in
+the Canadian Dominion is misapplied to the great Wapiti red deer.]
+
+"In no part of the north-west", writes Mackenzie, "did I see so much
+beaver work" (along the eastern branch of the Peace River). In some
+places the beavers had cut down acres of large poplars, and were
+busily at work on their labours of dam-making during the night,
+between the setting and the rising sun.
+
+Gnats and mosquitoes came with the intense heat of June to make life
+almost unbearable. As they got close to the Rocky Mountains they
+encountered Amerindians who had never seen a white man before, and who
+at first received them with demonstrations of great hostility and
+fright. But owing to the diplomatic skill of Mackenzie they gradually
+yielded to a more friendly attitude, and here he decided to camp until
+the natives had become familiarized with him and his party, and could
+give them information as to his route. But they could only tell that,
+away to the west beyond the mountains, a month's travel, there was a
+vast "lake of stinking water", to which came, for purposes of trade,
+other white men with vessels as big as islands.
+
+These Rocky Mountain Indians made their canoes from spruce bark[6] in
+the following manner: The bark is taken off the spruce fir to the
+whole length of the intended canoe, only about eighteen feet, and is
+sewed with _wátápé_ at both ends. Two laths are then laid across the
+end of the gunwale. In these are fixed the bars, and against them the
+ribs or timbers, that are cut to the length to which the bark can be
+stretched; and to give additional strength, strips of wood are laid
+between them. To make the whole water-tight, gum is abundantly
+employed.
+
+[Footnote 6: See p. 281.]
+
+Obtaining a guide from these people, Mackenzie continued his journey
+along the Parsnip, or southern branch of the upper Peace River,
+partly by water, partly by land till he reached its source,[7] a lake,
+on the banks of which he saw innumerable swans, geese, and ducks. Wild
+parsnips grew here in abundance, and were a grateful addition to the
+diet of the travellers. As to birds, they not only saw blue jays and
+yellow birds, but the first humming bird which Mackenzie had ever
+beheld in the north-west.[8]
+
+[Footnote 7: Mr. Burpee points out that this was really the
+southernmost source of the mighty congeries of streams which flowed
+northwards to form the Mackenzie River system. Having traced the
+Mackenzie to the sea, its discoverer now stood four years afterwards
+at its most remote source, 2420 miles from its mouth at which he had
+seen the ice floes and the whales.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Humming birds arrive annually in British Columbia between
+April and May, and stay there till the autumn. They winter in the
+warmer parts of California.]
+
+From this tiny lake he made his way over lofty mountains to another
+lake at no great distance, and from this a small stream called the Bad
+River flowed southwards to join a still bigger stream, which Mackenzie
+thought might prove to be one of the branches of the mighty Columbia
+River that flows out into the Pacific through the State of Oregon. It
+really was the Fraser River, and of the upper waters of the Fraser
+Mackenzie was the discoverer.[9]
+
+[Footnote 9: The great surveyor and map maker, David Thompson, was the
+first white man to reach the upper waters of the _Columbia_ River. The
+Fraser River was afterwards followed to its outlet in the Straits of
+Georgia (opposite Vancouver Island) by Simon Fraser.]
+
+[Illustration: THE UPPER WATERS OF THE FRASER RIVER]
+
+Their experiences down the little mountain stream which was to take
+them into the Fraser nearly ended in complete disaster. "The violence
+of the current being so great as to drive the canoe sideways down the
+river, and break her by the first bar, I instantly jumped into the
+water and the men followed my example; but before we could set her
+straight, or stop her, we came to deeper water, so that we were
+obliged to re-embark with the utmost precipitation.... We had hardly
+regained our situations when we drove against a rock which shattered
+the stern of the canoe in such a manner, that it held only by the
+gunwales, so that the steersman could no longer keep his place. The
+violence of this stroke drove us to the opposite side of the river,
+which is but narrow, when the bow met with the same fate as the
+stern.... In a few moments, we came across a cascade which broke
+several large holes in the bottom of the canoe, and started all the
+bars.... The wreck becoming flat on the water, we all jumped out ...
+and held fast to the wreck; to which fortunate resolution we owed our
+safety, as we should otherwise have been dashed against the rocks by
+the force of the water, or driven over the cascades.... At length we
+most fortunately arrived in shallow water, and at a small eddy, where
+we were enabled to make a stand, from the weight of the canoe resting
+on the stones, rather than from any exertions of our exhausted
+strength.... The Indians, when they saw our deplorable situation,
+instead of making the least effort to help us, sat down and gave vent
+to their tears."
+
+Nobody, however, had been killed, though much of the luggage was lost,
+and what remained had to be spread out to dry. Many of Mackenzie's
+people, however, when they took stock of their misfortunes, were
+rather pleased than otherwise, as they thought the disaster would stop
+him from any further attempt to reach the Western Sea. He wisely
+listened to their observations without replying, till their panic was
+dispelled, and they had got themselves warm and comfortable with a
+hearty meal and a glass of rum; though a little later only by their
+indifferent carelessness they nearly exploded the whole of the
+expedition's stock of gunpowder.
+
+Fortunately the weather was fine. Mackenzie and his fellow
+countryman, Mackay, allowed nothing to dismay them or damp their
+spirits. Bark was obtained from the forest, the canoe was repaired,
+and they heard from their guide that this violent little stream
+would before long join a great and much smoother river. But they
+were tormented with sandflies and mosquitoes, and a day or two
+afterwards the guide bolted, while the expedition had to cross
+morasses in which they were nearly engulfed, and the water journey
+was constantly obstructed by driftwood. Nevertheless, at last they
+had "the inexpressible satisfaction of finding themselves on the
+bank of a navigable river on the western side of the first great
+range of mountains". Here they re-embarked, and were cheerful in
+spite of heavy rain.
+
+As they paddled down this great stream, more than two hundred yards
+wide, snow-capped mountains rose immediately above the river. The
+current was strong, but perfectly safe. Flocks of ducks, entirely
+white, except the bill and a part of the wing, rose before them. Smoke
+ascending in columns from many parts of the woods showed that the
+country was well inhabited, and the air was fragrant with the strong
+odour of the gum of cypress and spruce fir.
+
+Then came a series of cascades and falls and a most arduous portage
+of the heavy canoe. These labours were somewhat lightened by the
+discovery of quantities of wild onions growing on the banks; but
+these, when mixed with the pemmican, on which the party was
+subsisting, stimulated their appetites to an inconvenient degree,
+seeing that they were on short commons. Meeting with strange Indians
+they found no one to interpret, and had to use signs. But on the banks
+of the Fraser they were lucky enough to find the "real red deer", the
+great wapiti stag, which is absent from the far north-west, beyond the
+region of the Saskatchewan. The canoe was loaded with venison. The
+banks of the Fraser River sank to a moderate height and were covered
+with poplars and cypresses, birch trees, junipers, alders, and
+willows. The deserted house or lodge of some Amerindian tribe was
+visited on the banks. It was a finer structure than anything that
+Mackenzie had seen since he left Fort Michili-Makinak in upper
+Canada. It had been constructed for three families. There were three
+fireplaces and three beds and a kind of larder for the purpose of
+keeping fish. The whole "lodge" was twenty feet long by three wide,
+and had three doors. The walls were formed of straight spruce timbers
+with some skill of carpentry. The roof was covered with bark, and
+large rods were fixed across the upper part of the building, where
+fish might hang and dry.
+
+As they continued to descend the Fraser River, with here and there a
+rapid which nearly swamped the canoe, and lofty cliffs of red and
+white clay like the ruins of ancient castles (stopping on their way to
+bury supplies of pemmican against their return, and to light a fire on
+the top of the burial place so as to mislead bears or other animals
+that might dig it up), they were more or less compelled to seek
+intercourse with the new tribes of Amerindians, whose presence on the
+river banks was obvious. As usual, Mackenzie had to exercise great
+bravery, tact, and guile to get into peaceful conversation with these
+half-frightened, half-angry people. The peacemaking generally
+concluded with the distribution of trinkets amongst the men and women,
+and presents of sugar to the children. Talking with these folk,
+however, through such interpreters as there were amongst the Indians
+of his crew, he learnt that lower down on the Fraser River there was a
+peculiarly fierce, malignant race, living in vast caves or
+subterranean dwellings, who would certainly massacre the Europeans if
+they attempted to pass through their country on their way to the sea.
+He therefore stopped and set some of his men to work to make a new
+canoe. He noticed, by the by, that these Amerindians of the Fraser had
+small pointed canoes, "made after the fashion of the Eskimo".
+
+Renewing their voyage, they reached a house the roof of which just
+appeared above the ground. It was deserted by its inhabitants, who had
+been alarmed at the approach of the white men, but in the
+neighbourhood appeared gesticulating warriors with bows and arrows.
+Yet these people of underground houses turned out to be friendly and
+very ready to give information, partly because they were in
+communication with the Amerindian tribes to the east of the Rocky
+Mountains. From the elderly men of this tribe Mackenzie ascertained
+that the Fraser River flowed south by east, was often obstructed by
+rapids, and, though it would finally bring them to a salt lake or
+inlet, and then to the sea, it would cause them to travel for a great
+distance to the south. He noticed the complete difference in the
+language of these Atna or Carrier Indians[10] and that of the Nagailer
+or Chin Indians of the Athapaskan group on the eastern side of the
+Rocky Mountains.
+
+[Footnote 10: Apparently these were of the Sikanni tribe, and only
+another branch of the great Tinné (Athapaskan) stock.]
+
+He, however, learnt from these Atna Indians that although the Fraser
+was out of the question as a quick route to the sea, if he retraced
+his journey a little up this river he would find another stream
+entering it from the west, and along this they could travel upstream.
+And then the route to the water "which was unfit to drink", and the
+region to which came people with large ships, would be of no great
+length. Accordingly, after having had a tree engraved with Mackenzie's
+name and the date, by the bank of the Fraser River, the expedition
+returned to the subterranean house which they had seen the day before.
+
+"We were in our canoe by four this morning, and passed by the Indian
+hut, which appeared in a state of perfect tranquillity. We soon came
+in sight of the point where we first saw the natives, and at eight
+were much surprised and disappointed at seeing Mr. Mackay and our two
+Indians coming alone from the ruins of a house that had been partly
+carried away by the ice and water, at a short distance below the place
+where we had appointed to meet. Nor was our surprise and apprehension
+diminished by the alarm which was painted in their countenances....
+They informed me they had taken refuge in that place, with the
+determination to sell their lives ... as dear as possible. In a very
+short time after we had separated, they met a party of the Indians,
+whom we had known at this place, and were probably those whom we had
+seen landing from their canoe. These Indians appeared to be in a state
+of extreme rage, and had their bows bent, with their arrows across
+them. The guide stopped to ask them some questions, which our people
+did not understand, and then set off with his utmost speed. Mr.
+Mackay, however, followed, and did not leave him till they were both
+exhausted with running.... The guide then said that some treacherous
+design was meditated against them, ... and conducted them through very
+bad ways as fast as they could run. When he was desired to slacken his
+pace, he answered that they might follow him in any manner they
+pleased, but that he was impatient to get to his family, in order to
+prepare shoes and other necessaries for his journey. They did not,
+however, think it prudent to quit him, and he would not stop till ten
+at night. On passing a track that was but lately made, they began to
+be seriously alarmed, and on enquiring of the guide where they were,
+he pretended not to understand. Then they all laid down, exhausted
+with fatigue, and without any kind of covering; they were cold, wet,
+and hungry, but dared not light a fire, from the apprehension of an
+enemy. This comfortless spot they left at the dawn of day, and, on
+their arrival at the lodges, found them deserted; the property of the
+Indians being scattered about, as if abandoned for ever. The guide
+then made two or three trips into the woods, calling aloud, and
+bellowing like a madman. At length he set off in the same direction as
+they had come, and had not since appeared. To heighten their misery,
+as they did not find us at the place appointed, they concluded that
+we were all destroyed, and had already formed their plan to take to
+the woods, and cross in as direct a line as they could proceed, to the
+waters of the Peace River, a scheme which could only be suggested by
+despair. They intended to have waited for us till noon, and if we did
+not appear by that time, to have entered without further delay on
+their desperate expedition."
+
+Making preparations for warfare, if necessary, yet neglecting no
+chance of re-entering into friendly relations with the natives,
+Mackenzie set to work to repair the wretched canoe, which was
+constantly having holes knocked through her. He dealt tactfully with
+the almost open mutiny of his French Canadians and Indians. At last
+everyone settled down to the making of a new canoe, on an island in
+the river where there were plenty of spruce firs to provide the
+necessary bark. Even here they were plagued with thunderstorms.
+Nevertheless, the men set to work, and as they worked Mackenzie
+addressed them with simple fervour, saying he knew of their plans to
+desert him, but, come what might, _he_ was resolved to travel on to
+the westwards until he reached the waters of the Pacific.
+
+This calmed down the mutineers, and, to the great relief of all
+concerned, that very afternoon the runaway guide of the Atna people
+returned and apologized for having deserted them. He then offered once
+again to conduct them to the seacoast. Nevertheless, again he fled,
+and Mackenzie was obliged to guide the expedition, according to the
+information he had gathered from the natives, up the small western
+affluent of the upper Fraser, which he called the West Road River (now
+known as the Blackwater).
+
+His perseverance was rewarded, for after proceeding up this river for
+some distance he saw two canoes coming towards them containing the
+runaway guide and six of his relations. The guide was dressed in a
+painted beaver robe, and looked so splendid that they scarcely knew
+him again. Once more he declared it really was his intention not to
+disappoint them. Soon afterwards they landed, buried their property
+and provisions, and placed their canoe on a stage, shaded by a
+covering of small trees and branches from the sun. Each man carried on
+his back four bags and a half of pemmican, of an average weight of
+eighty-five pounds, or other loads (instruments, goods for presents,
+ammunition, &c.) of ninety pounds in weight. Moreover, each of the
+Canadians carried a gun. The Amerindian servants of the expedition
+were only asked to carry loads of forty-five pounds in weight.
+Mackenzie's pack, and that of his companion, Mackay, amounted to about
+seventy pounds. Loaded like this they had to scramble up the wooded
+mountains, first soaked in perspiration from the heat and then
+drenched with heavy rain. Nevertheless they walked for about thirteen
+miles the first day. Now they began to meet natives who were closely
+in touch with the seacoast, which lay to the west at a distance of
+about six days' journey.
+
+"We had no sooner laid ourselves down to rest last night than the
+natives began to sing, in a manner very different from what I had been
+accustomed to hear among savages. It was not accompanied either with
+dancing, drum, or rattle; but consisted of soft, plaintive tones, and
+a modulation that was rather agreeable: it had somewhat the air of
+church music." The country through which they travelled abounded in
+beavers. It was the month of July, however, and they were harassed
+with thunderstorms, some of which were followed by hailstones as big
+as musket balls. After one such storm the ground was whitened for two
+miles with these balls of ice.
+
+In order not to be deserted by all of their new guides, Mackenzie was
+obliged to insist on one of them sharing his hut. This young
+Amerindian was dressed in beaver garments which were a nest of
+vermin. His hair was greased with fish oil, and his body smeared with
+red earth, so that at first Mackenzie thought he would never be able
+to sleep; but such was his fatigue that he passed a night of profound
+repose, and found the guide still there in the morning. In this region
+he notes that the balsam fir of Canada was abundant, the tree which
+provided the gum that cured Cartier's expedition of scurvy. Some of
+the natives with whom they now came into contact were remarkable for
+their grey eyes, a feature often observed amongst the Amerindians of
+the North Pacific coast.
+
+"On observing some people before us, our guides hastened to meet them,
+and, on their approach, one of them stepped forward with an axe in his
+hand. This party consisted only of a man, two women, and the same
+number of children. The eldest of the women, who probably was the
+man's mother, was engaged, when we joined them, in clearing a circular
+spot, of about five feet in diameter, of the weeds that infested it;
+nor did our arrival interrupt her employment, which was sacred to the
+memory of the dead. The spot to which her pious care was devoted
+contained the grave of a husband and a son, and whenever she passed
+this way she always stopped to pay this tribute of affection."
+
+By this time, exposure to wind and sun, the attacks of mosquitoes and
+flies, the difficulty of washing or of changing their clothes, had
+made all the Europeans of the party as dark in skin colour as the
+Amerindians, so that such natives as they met who had the courage to
+examine them, did so with the intention of discovering whether they
+had any white skin left. The natives whom they now encountered
+(belonging to the maritime tribes) were comely in appearance, and far
+more cleanly than the tribes of the north-west. As already mentioned,
+they had grey eyes, sometimes tinged with hazel. Their stature was
+noble, one man measuring at least six feet four inches. They were
+clothed in leather, and their hair was nicely combed and dressed with
+beads. One of a travelling band of these Indians, finding that
+Mackenzie's party was on short rations and very hungry, offered to
+boil them a kettle of fish roes.
+
+"He took the roes out of a bag, and having bruised them between two
+stones, put them in water to soak. His wife then took an handful of
+dry grass in her hand, with which she squeezed them through her
+fingers. In the meantime her husband was employed in gathering wood to
+make a fire, for the purpose of heating stones. When she had finished
+her operation, she filled a _wátápé_ kettle nearly full of water, and
+poured the roes into it. When the stones were sufficiently heated,
+some of them were put into the kettle, and others were thrown in from
+time to time, till the water was in a state of boiling. The woman also
+continued stirring the contents of the kettle, till they were brought
+to a thick consistency; the stones were then taken out, and the whole
+was seasoned with about a pint of strong rancid oil. The smell of this
+curious dish was sufficient to sicken me without tasting it, but the
+hunger of my people surmounted the nauseous meal. When unadulterated
+by the stinking oil these boiled roes are not unpalatable food."
+
+Farther on their journey their hunger was alleviated by wild parsnips,
+also roots which appeared, when pulled up, like a bunch of white peas,
+with the colour and taste of a potato. On their way they were obliged
+to cross snow mountains, where the snow was so compact that their feet
+hardly made any perceptible impression. "Before us appeared a
+stupendous mountain, whose snow-clad summit was lost in the clouds."
+These mountains, according to the Indians, abounded in white
+goats.[11] Emerging from the mountains on to the lower ground, sloping
+towards the sea, at nightfall they came upon a native village in the
+thickness of the woods. Desperate with his fatigue, and risking any
+danger to obtain rest, Mackenzie walked straight into one of the
+houses, where people were busily employed in cooking fish, threw down
+his burden, shook hands with the people, and sat down.
+
+[Footnote 1: _Oreamnus_.]
+
+"They received me without the least appearance of surprise, but soon
+made signs for me to go up to the large house, which was erected, on
+upright posts, at some distance from the ground. A broad piece of
+timber with steps cut in it led to the scaffolding even with the
+floor, and by this curious kind of ladder I entered the house at one
+end; and having passed three fires, at equal distances in the middle
+of the building, I was received by several people, sitting upon a very
+wide board, at the upper end of it. I shook hands with them, and
+seated myself beside a man, the dignity of whose countenance induced
+me to give him that preference...."
+
+Later on, this man, seeing Mackenzie's people arriving tired and
+hungry, rose and fetched from behind a plank, four feet wide, a
+quantity of roasted salmon. A whole salmon was offered to Mackenzie,
+and another to Mackay; half a salmon was given to each of the French
+Canadian _voyageurs_. Their host further invited them to sleep in the
+house, but, Mackenzie thinking it preferable to camp outside, a fire
+was lit to warm the weary travellers, and each was lent a thick board
+on which to sleep, so that he might not lie on the bare ground.
+
+"We had not long been seated round the fire when we received a dish of
+salmon roes, pounded fine and beat up with water so as to have the
+appearance of a cream. Nor was it without some kind of seasoning that
+gave it a bitter taste. Another dish soon followed, the principal
+article of which was also salmon roes, with a large proportion of
+gooseberries, and an herb that appeared to be sorrel. Its acidity
+rendered it more agreeable to my taste than the former preparation.
+Having been regaled with these delicacies, for such they were
+considered by that hospitable spirit which provided them, we laid
+ourselves down to rest with no other canopy than the sky. But I never
+enjoyed a more sound and refreshing rest, though I had a board for my
+bed and a billet for my pillow."
+
+The gooseberries, wortleberries, and raspberries which Mackenzie ate
+at this hospitable village were the finest he ever saw or tasted of
+their respective kinds. They were generally eaten together with the
+dry roes of salmon. Salmon was the staple food of the country, and
+very abundant in the river which Mackenzie was following down to the
+Pacific shore. The fish were usually caught in weirs, and also by
+dipping nets. The natives were so superstitious about the salmon, that
+they believed they would give offence to the spirits if they ate any
+other animal food, especially meat. They would scarcely allow
+Mackenzie to carry venison in his canoe, in case the salmon should
+smell it and abandon the river.
+
+After this welcome rest they embarked in two canoes on the stream
+which Mackenzie calls the Salmon River. The stream was rapid, and they
+proceeded at a great rate, stopping every now and then to get out and
+walk round salmon weirs. Nevertheless, although other Indians ran
+before them announcing their approach towards a village, the noise of
+which was apparent in the distance, they were received at this place
+in a very hostile way, the men rapidly arming themselves with bows and
+arrows, spears, and axes. But Mackenzie walked on alone to greet them,
+and shook hands with the nearest man. Thereupon an elderly man broke
+from the crowd and took Mackenzie in his arms. Another then came and
+paid him the same compliment. One man to whom he presented his hand
+broke the string of a handsome robe of sea-otter skin and threw it
+over Mackenzie.
+
+The chief made signs to the white men to follow him to his house,
+which Mackenzie found to be of larger dimensions and better materials
+than any he had yet seen. "Very clean mats" were spread in this house
+for the chief, his counsellors, and the two white men. A small roasted
+salmon was then placed before each person.
+
+"When we had satisfied ourselves with the fish, one of the people who
+came with us from the last village approached, with a kind of ladle in
+one hand, containing oil, and in the other something that resembled
+the inner rind of the cocoanut, but of a lighter colour. This he
+dipped in the oil, and, having eaten it, indicated by his gestures how
+palatable he thought it. He then presented me with a small piece of
+it, which I chose to taste in its dry state, though the oil was free
+from any unpleasant smell. A square cake of this was next produced,
+when a man took it to the water near the house, and having thoroughly
+soaked it, he returned, and, after he had pulled it to pieces like
+oakum, put it into a well-made trough, about three feet long, nine
+inches wide, and five deep. He then plentifully sprinkled it with
+salmon oil, and manifested by his own example that we were to eat of
+it. I just tasted it, and found the oil perfectly sweet, without which
+the other ingredient would have been very insipid. The chief partook
+of it with great avidity after it had received an additional quantity
+of oil. This dish is considered by these people as a great delicacy;
+and on examination, I discovered it to consist of the inner rind of
+the hemlock pine tree, taken off early in summer, and put into a
+frame, which shapes it into cakes of fifteen inches long, ten broad,
+and half an inch thick; and in this form I should suppose it may be
+preserved for a great length of time. This discovery satisfied me
+respecting the many hemlock trees which I had observed stripped of
+their bark."
+
+Mackenzie found some of the older men here with long beards, and to
+one of them he presented a pair of scissors for clipping his beard.
+
+After describing some remarkable oblong "tables" (as they might be
+called) of cedar wood--twenty feet long by eight feet broad--made of
+thick cedar boards joined together with the utmost neatness, and
+painted with hieroglyphics and the figures of animals; and his visit
+to a kind of temple in the village, into the architecture of which
+strangely carved and painted figures were interwoven; Mackenzie
+goes on to relate an episode giving one a very vivid idea of the
+helplessness of "native" medicine in many diseases.
+
+He was taken to see a son of the chief, who was suffering from a
+terrible ulcer in the small of his back, round which the flesh was
+gangrened, one of his knees being afflicted in the same way. The poor
+fellow was reduced to a skeleton, and apparently drawing very near to
+death.
+
+"I found the native physicians busy in practising their skill and art
+on the patient. They blew on him, and then whistled; at times they
+pressed their extended fingers with all their strength on his stomach;
+they also put their forefingers doubled into his mouth, and spouted
+water from their own with great violence into his face. To support
+these operations the wretched sufferer was held up in a sitting
+posture, and when they were concluded he was laid down and covered
+with a new robe made of the skin of a lynx. I had observed that his
+belly and breast were covered with scars, and I understood that they
+were caused by a custom prevalent among them of applying pieces of
+lighted touchwood to their flesh, in order to relieve pain or
+demonstrate their courage. He was now placed on a broad plank, and
+carried by six men into the woods, where I was invited to accompany
+them. I could not conjecture what would be the end of this ceremony,
+particularly as I saw one man carry fire, another an axe, and a third
+dry wood. I was, indeed, disposed to suspect that, as it was their
+custom to burn the dead, they intended to relieve the poor man from
+his pain, and perform the last sad duty of surviving affection. When
+they had advanced a short distance into the wood, they laid him upon a
+clear spot, and kindled a fire against his back, when the physician
+began to scarify the ulcer with a very blunt instrument, the cruel
+pain of which operation the patient bore with incredible resolution.
+The scene afflicted me, and I left it."
+
+The chief of this village had probably met Captain Cook about ten
+years before. He had been down in a large canoe[12] with forty of his
+people to the seacoast, where he saw two large vessels.
+
+[Footnote 12: Mackenzie thus describes one of the large sea-going
+canoes of the coast natives: "This canoe was built of cedar,
+forty-five feet long, four feet broad, and three and a half in depth.
+It was painted black and decorated with white figures of different
+kinds. The gunwale fore and aft was inlaid with the teeth of the sea
+otter." He adds that "these coast tribes (north of Vancouver Island
+and of Queen Charlotte Sound) had been in indirect contact with the
+Spaniards since the middle of the sixteenth century, and with the
+Russians from the middle of the eighteenth century. Therefore, from
+these two directions they had learnt the use of metal, and had
+obtained copper, brass, and iron. They may possibly have had copper
+earlier still from the Northern Indians on the other side of the Rocky
+Mountains; but brass and iron they could, of course, only have
+obtained from Europeans. They had already become very deft at dealing
+with these metals, and twisted the iron into collars which weighed
+upwards of twelve pounds, also beating it into plates for their
+daggers and knives."]
+
+Farther down the river the natives, instead of regaling them with
+fish, placed before them a long, clean, and well-made trough full of
+berries, most of them resembling blackberries, though white in colour,
+and others similar to huckleberries. In this region the women were
+employed in beating and preparing the inner rind of the juniper bark,
+to which they gave the appearance of flax, and others were spinning
+with a distaff; again, others were weaving robes of this fibrous
+thread, intermixed with strips of sea-otter skin. The men were fishing
+on the river with drag nets between two canoes, thus intercepting the
+salmon coming up the river.
+
+At last, on Saturday, the 20th of July, 1793, they emerged from the
+Salmon River into an arm of the sea (probably near King Island). The
+tide was out, and had left a large space covered with seaweed. The
+surrounding hills were involved in fog.... The bay appeared to be some
+three miles in breadth, and on the coast the travellers saw a great
+number of sea otters.[13] At two in the afternoon the swell was so
+high, and the wind, which was against them, so boisterous, that they
+could not proceed along the seacoast in their leaky canoe. A young
+chief who had come with them as one of their guides, and who had been
+allowed to leave when the seacoast was reached, returned bearing a
+large porcupine on his back. He first cut the animal open and threw
+its entrails into the sea, then singed the skin and boiled it in
+separate pieces; nor did he go to rest till, with the assistance of
+two others who happened to be awake, every morsel of it had been
+devoured. This was fortunate, because their stock of provisions was
+reduced to twenty pounds' weight of pemmican, sixteen pounds of rice,
+and six pounds of flour amongst ten men, "in a leaky vessel, and on a
+barbarous coast".
+
+[Footnote 13: These _may_ have been small seals, but the sea otter
+(_Enhydris lutris_), now nearly extinct, was at one time found in
+numbers along the north-west American coast, from the Aleutian Islands
+and Alaska to Oregon. Owing to persecution it now leads an almost
+entirely aquatic life, resting at times on the masses of floating
+seaweed.]
+
+The rise and fall of the tide here was noted at fifteen feet in
+height. Mr. Mackay collected a quantity of small mussels, which were
+boiled and eaten by the two Scotchmen, but not by the Canadians, who
+were quite unacquainted with sea shellfish.
+
+Near Point Menzies, which had already been reached and named by
+Captain VANCOUVER in the spring of 1793 on his great voyage of
+discovery up the North American coast,[14] Alexander Mackenzie met a
+party of Amerindians, amongst whom was a man of insolent aspect, who,
+by means of signs and exclamations, made him understand that he and
+his friends had been fired at by a white man named Makuba (Vancouver),
+and that another white man, called "Bensins", had struck him on the
+back with the flat of his sword. This man more or less compelled
+Mackenzie to accompany him in the direction of his village, and on the
+way explained that "Makuba" had come there with his "big boat".
+Indeed, Mackenzie's party perceived the remains of sheds or buildings
+on the shore where Europeans had probably made a camp, and here they
+established themselves, taking up a position of defence, because the
+attitude of the natives was rather threatening.
+
+[Footnote 14: GEORGE VANCOUVER (born about 1758, and probably
+descended from Dutch or Flemish ancestors) was one of the great
+pioneers of the British Empire. His name is commemorated in
+Vancouver's Island, an important portion of British Columbia.
+Vancouver entered the navy when only thirteen, sailed with Captain
+Cook, and eventually was appointed to command a naval expedition sent
+out in 1791 to survey and take over from the Spaniards the north-west
+American coast north of Oregon. It is remarkable that he should only
+have missed Mackenzie's arrival at Point Menzies by about two months.
+With what amazed rejoicing would these two heroic explorers have
+greeted one another had they met on this remote point of the Pacific
+coast, the one coming overland (so to speak) from Quebec and the
+Atlantic, and the other all the way by sea from Falmouth via the Cape
+of Good Hope, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, and Hawaii.]
+
+At this camp there was a rock, and on this Alexander Mackenzie, mixing
+up some vermilion or red clay in melted grease, inscribed in large
+characters the following words: "Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by
+land, the twenty-second of July, one thousand seven hundred and
+ninety-three". He then shifted his camp to a place three miles to the
+north-east, below a precipice from which issued streams of fine water
+as cold as ice. And here he took careful observations with his
+astronomical and surveying instruments, in order to fix his position.
+Fortunately the day was one of bright sunshine. Otherwise, had there
+been a long persistence of cloud, he might have been obliged to leave
+the Pacific coast without being able to fix precisely the place where
+he had reached the sea.
+
+Then he yielded to the passionate desire of his people to withdraw
+inland from the possibly dangerous inhabitants of the coast, and
+returned with them to the encampment where the porcupine had been
+eaten. Here the guide made off into the woods. Mackenzie followed him,
+and thus reached a village from which two men issued armed with
+daggers and intending to attack him. While stopping to defend himself,
+many other people assembled, and amongst them he recognized the
+irritating person who incessantly repeated the names "Makuba" and
+"Benzins". However, this threatened danger was narrowly averted, and
+eventually they left the village with a supply of food; but also in a
+state of considerable irritation with--fleas! For some of the houses
+of these Pacific coast villages swarmed with fleas to such an extent
+that Mackenzie and his men were obliged to take to the water to rid
+themselves of these vermin, which swarmed also on the ground that was
+bare of grass.
+
+The return journey up the Salmon River was a series of bewildering
+vicissitudes. Sometimes Mackenzie and his party were received in the
+most threatening way by persons who had been warm friends on their
+downward journey, then seemingly inevitable war was transformed into
+peace, but guides deserted, or the Amerindians from across the Rocky
+Mountains attempted to mutiny. However, they struggled through all
+their difficulties, till at last they reached the place known as the
+Friendly Village, and were here fortunately received with great
+kindness, being once more entertained "with the most respectful
+hospitality". "In short, the chief behaved to us with so much
+attention and kindness that I did not withhold anything in my power to
+give which might afford him satisfaction.... I presented him with two
+yards of blue cloth, an axe, knives, and various other articles. He
+gave me in return a large shell which resembled the under shell of a
+Guernsey oyster, but was somewhat larger. Where they procure them I
+could not discover, but they cut and polish them for bracelets,
+ear-rings, and other personal ornaments...."
+
+The women of this place were employed in boiling sorrel and different
+kinds of berries in large square kettles made of cedar wood. This
+pottage, when it had attained a certain consistency, they took out
+with ladles, and poured it into frames about twelve inches square.
+These were then exposed to the sun, until their contents became so
+many dried cakes. This was their principal article of food, and
+probably of traffic. These people had also made portable chests of
+cedar, in which they packed these cakes, as well as their salmon, both
+dried and roasted. The only flesh they ate in addition to the salmon
+was that of the sea otter and the seal; except that one instance
+already mentioned of the young Indian who feasted on the flesh of the
+porcupine.
+
+"Their faces are round, with high cheekbones, and their complexion
+between olive and copper. They have small grey eyes with a tinge of
+red,... their hair is of a dark-brown colour." The men wore their hair
+long, and either kept it well combed and hanging loose over the
+shoulders, or plaited it and bedaubed it with brown earth so as to
+make it quite impervious to the comb. Those who adopted this fashion
+had to carry a bone bodkin about with them to ease the frequent
+irritation which arose from the excessive abundance of vermin in their
+hair.
+
+The women, on the other hand, usually wore their hair short. Mackenzie
+noticed that the infants had their heads enclosed with boards covered
+with leather, to press the skull into the shape of a wedge. The women
+wore a fringed apron, and over that a long robe made of skins or
+leather, either loose or tied round the middle with a girdle. Over
+these in wet weather was worn a cap in the shape of an inverted bowl
+or dish. The men also wore this cap, and in cold weather used the
+robe, but in warm weather went about in no clothing at all, except
+that their feet were protected with shoes made of dressed elks' skins.
+In wet weather, over their robe they wore a circular mat with an
+opening in the middle sufficiently large to admit the head. This,
+spreading over the shoulders, threw off the wet. As compared with the
+Indians of the Rocky Mountains and the great plains, the men and boys
+were very cleanly, being constantly in the water. The women, however,
+were dirty.
+
+At the end of July, 1793, Mackenzie left what he calls the Friendly
+Village, and prepared to return to the east across the Rocky
+Mountains, having distributed to each man about twenty pounds weight
+of smoked salmon, flour, and pemmican. The fatigue of ascending the
+precipices of the mountains was past description. When they arrived at
+a spot where water could be obtained, and a camp made, they were in
+such an extremity of weariness they could hardly crawl about to gather
+wood for the purpose of making a fire; but two hours afterwards the
+Amerindians of their party arrived and came to their assistance. Then
+when they were sitting round a blazing fire, and some of their fatigue
+had lessened, they could sit and talk of past dangers, and indulge in
+the delightful reflection that they were thus far advanced on their
+homeward journey. "Nor was it possible to be in this situation without
+contemplating the wonders of it. Such was the depth of the precipices
+below, and the height of the mountains above, with the rude and wild
+magnificence of the scenery around, that I shall not attempt to
+describe such an astonishing and awful combination of objects.... Even
+at this place, which is only, as it were, the first step towards
+gaining the summit of the mountains, the climate was very sensibly
+changed. The air that fanned the village which we left at noon, was
+mild and cheering; the grass was verdant, and the wild fruits ripe
+around it. But here the snow was not yet dissolved, the ground was
+still bound by the frost, the herbage had scarce begun to spring, and
+the crowberry bushes were just beginning to blossom."
+
+Eventually they found their canoe, and the property which they had
+left behind, in perfect safety. At this camp, where the canoe had been
+left behind, many natives arrived both from the upper and lower parts
+of the river, all of them dressed in beaver robes, which they were
+ready enough to sell for large knives. It struck Alexander Mackenzie
+as being very extraordinary that these people, who had left absolutely
+untouched the property stored at this place--when anyone passing by
+could have stolen it and never have been detected--should now be so
+ready to pilfer articles and utensils from the camp. So many small
+things had been picked up and taken away by them, when coming to sell
+their beaver robes, that he was obliged to take some action. So,
+before all these beaver-clad Amerindians had departed on their
+westward journey, he told the rearguard that he had noticed the
+thefts, and scarcely thought their relations who were guilty of
+stealing realized the awful mischief that would result from this
+dishonesty; that they were on their way now to the sea to procure
+large quantities of salmon from the rivers, but the salmon, which was
+absolutely necessary to their existence, came from the sea which
+belonged to the white men, and it only needed a message from the white
+men to the powers of nature to prevent the fish coming up from the sea
+into the rivers; and if this word were spoken they and their children
+might starve. He consequently advised them to hurry after their
+friends, and see that all the stolen articles were sent back. This
+plan succeeded. The stolen articles were restored, and then Mackenzie
+purchased from these people several large salmon, and his party
+enjoyed a delicious meal.
+
+Mackenzie declared that there were no bison to be found on the west
+side of the Rocky Mountains[15] (British Columbia), and no wolves.
+
+[Footnote 15: He was not quite accurate: there were a few "wood" bison
+in the north and east of British Columbia.]
+
+Resuming their journey up the Fraser River, they passed through the
+narrow gut between mountainous rocks, which on the outward journey had
+been a passage of some risk. But now the state of the water was such
+that, they got up without difficulty, and had more time to examine
+these extraordinary rocks, which were as perpendicular as a wall, and
+gave the traveller the idea of a succession of enormous Gothic
+cathedrals. With little difficulty they transported their canoe across
+the water parting to the Peace River.
+
+As they began to glide down this stream, homeward bound, they noticed
+at the entrance of a small tributary an object which proved to be four
+beaver skins hung up to attract their attention. These were the skins
+which had been given to Mackenzie as a present by a native as he
+travelled westwards. Not wishing to add to his loads, he had left the
+skins behind, saying he would call for them on his return. Mackenzie
+imagined, therefore, that, being under the necessity of leaving the
+river, this Indian had hung up the skins in the hope that they would
+attract the attention of the travellers on their return. "To reward
+his honesty, I left three times the value of the skins in trade goods
+in their place." As the Peace River carried them away from the great
+mountains, and the plains extended before their sight, they stopped to
+repair the canoe and to get in supplies of food from the herds of game
+that were visible. They began with a hearty meal of bison beef. "Every
+fear of future want was removed." Soon afterwards they killed an elk,
+the carcass of which weighed over two hundred and fifty pounds. "As we
+had taken a very hearty meal at one o'clock, it might naturally be
+supposed that we should not be very voracious at supper; nevertheless,
+a kettleful of elk flesh was boiled and eaten, and that vessel
+replenished with more meat and put on the fire. All that remained of
+the bones, &c, were placed after the Indian fashion round the fire to
+roast, and at ten the next morning the whole was consumed by ten
+persons and a large dog, who was allowed his share of the banquet. Nor
+did any inconvenience result from what may be considered as an
+inordinate indulgence."
+
+On the 24th of August, 1793, Mackenzie was back again at Fort
+Chipewayan, after an absence of eleven months, having been the first
+white man to cross the broad continent of North America from the
+Atlantic to the Pacific, north of Mexico.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Mackenzie's Successors
+
+
+The Spaniards of California had been aware in the middle of the
+eighteenth century that there was a big river entering the sea to the
+north of the savage country known as Oregon. The estuary of this river
+was reached in May, 1792, by an American sea captain of a whaling
+ship--ROBERT GRAY, of Boston. He crossed the bar, and named the great
+stream after his own ship, the _Columbia_. Five months afterwards
+(October, 1792) Lieutenant BROUGHTON, of the Vancouver expedition,
+entered the Columbia from the sea, explored it upstream for a hundred
+miles, and formally took possession of it for the King of Great
+Britain. The news of this discovery reached Alexander Mackenzie (no
+doubt after his return from his overland journey to the Pacific
+coast), and he at once jumped to the conclusion that the powerful
+stream he had discovered in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, and had
+partially followed on its way to the Pacific, must be the Columbia. As
+a matter of fact it was the river afterwards called Fraser.
+
+If you look at the map of British North America, and then at the map
+of Russian Asia--Siberia--you will notice a marked difference in the
+arrangement of the waterways. Those of the Canadian Dominion, on the
+whole, flow more eastwards and westwards, or at any rate radiate in
+all directions, so as to constitute the most wonderful system of
+natural canals possessed by any country or continent. On the contrary,
+the rivers of Siberia flow usually in somewhat parallel lines from
+south to north. Siberia also is far less well provided than British
+North America with an abundance of navigable rivers, streams, and
+great lakes. Therefore the traveller in pre-railway days wishing to
+cross Siberia from west to east or east to west was obliged to have
+recourse to wheeled traffic, to ride, or to walk. Consequently, until
+the beginning of the twentieth century, the "exploitation" (or turning
+to useful account) of Siberia was a far more difficult process than
+the development of North America, once the question of British
+_versus_ French or Spanish was settled. Siberia at one time was almost
+as rich in fur-bearing animals as British North America; yet so
+difficult was transport (and so severe were the rigours of the
+climate) that the Russians, once they reached the shores of the
+Pacific at the beginning of the eighteenth century, began to stretch
+out their influence to the opposite peninsula of Alaska mainly on
+account of the fur trade. For it was easier and less expensive to
+bring furs from Alaska round Cape Horn, or the Cape of Good Hope, to
+Europe than to convey them overland from eastern Siberia. Then, also,
+the Chinese market was becoming of importance to the fur trade.
+Already Mackenzie, at the end of the eighteenth century, is found
+considering whether a sea trade between China and a British port on
+the North Pacific coast could not be arranged so as to develop a
+profitable market among the mandarins and grandees of the Celestial
+Empire for a good proportion of the North-west Company's skins.
+
+[Illustration: Map of Part of the Coast Region of BRITISH COLUMBIA]
+
+Peter Pond, already referred to on p. 278, is said to have expressed
+his intention (in 1788) of going to treat with the Empress Catherine
+II for a Russian occupation of the Alaskan and Columbian coasts. For
+this reason, or the mere desire to have a proportion of this
+fur-producing country, the Emperor Paul, in 1799, created a Russian
+Chartered Company to occupy the Alaska and north Columbian coasts.
+Great Britain offered no objection--in spite of having acquired some
+rights here by an agreement with Spain--and that is why, when you look
+at the map of the vast Canadian Dominion, you find with surprise that
+it has been robbed (one might almost say) of at least half of its
+legitimate Pacific seaboard. The Russian Company was allowed to claim
+the north Columbian coast between Alaska proper and Queen Charlotte
+Islands.
+
+In 1867 the Russian Government sold all Alaska and the north Columbian
+coast to the United States, partly to annoy Great Britain, whom it had
+not forgiven for the Crimean War.
+
+You will have noticed that quite a number of United States citizens
+(mostly born British subjects in New England) had taken part in the
+north-west fur trade immediately after the British conquest of Canada
+disposed of French monopolies. There were Jonathan Carver and Peter
+Pond, for example; and a much more worthy person than the last
+named--Daniel W. Harmon, a New Englander, who entered the service of
+the North-west Company in 1800, and followed in Mackenzie's footsteps
+to the upper Fraser River and the vicinity of the Skeena. Simon Fraser
+also, whose tracing of the Fraser River from its upper waters to the
+Pacific coast we shall presently deal with, was a native of Vermont,
+though his father came from Scotland. The furs which began to
+penetrate into the United States by way of Detroit and Niagara, the
+rising scale of luxury in dress in the towns of the eastern seaboard
+of the United States, the voyages of American whalers up the west
+coast of North America (including the discovery of the Columbia River
+in 1792 by Captain Robert Gray), the purchase of Louisiana from the
+Emperor Napoleon in 1804--with the vague claim it gave to the coast
+line of Oregon on the Pacific: all these circumstances inspired
+far-sighted persons in the United States at the beginning of the
+nineteenth century with a wish to secure for their Government and
+commerce a share in the fur trade and in these wonderful new lands of
+the Pacific watershed. American ships (whaling ships) had already
+become accustomed to sail round Cape Horn and to visit the Oregon and
+Alaskan coasts. The American Government therefore, immediately after
+the Louisiana purchase, dispatched an American expedition under
+Captains Meriwether Lewis and Jonathan Clarke to travel up the
+Missouri River and so across the mountains to the coast of Oregon, a
+wonderful expedition, which they carried out with great success in two
+years (1804-6), reaching the lower Columbia River and following it
+down to the sea.
+
+Consequently, with all this in the air, it is not very surprising that
+the far-sighted John Jacob Astor, a wealthy German merchant of New
+York, should have conceived the idea of founding a great American
+fur-trading company and of establishing it at the mouth of the
+Columbia River.
+
+At the beginning of the nineteenth century he had entered into
+arrangements with an Anglo-Canadian Company (the Mackinaw), which
+worked the southernmost part of Canada, to fuse its enterprise with
+his, and thus founded the _South-west Company_, the name of which (at
+any rate in current speech) was afterwards changed into the Pacific
+Fur-trading Company. After attempting in vain to come to a working
+arrangement with the great North-west Company, he decided to act quite
+independently and to establish the headquarters of his new concern at
+the mouth of the Columbia River. Accordingly, the expedition was sent
+out in duplicate to the mouth of the Columbia River, one-half going a
+six-months' voyage round Cape Horn in a sailing ship, the _Tonquin_,
+and the other marching overland or canoeing on lakes and rivers in
+eighteen months from Montreal via the Mississippi and Missouri. These
+two parties together founded "Astoria", at the mouth of the Columbia.
+But most of Astor's employees were British subjects derived from men
+of the North-west and Mackinaw Companies; and when, in 1812, war
+broke out between the United States and Great Britain, a British war
+vessel came up the Pacific coast to Astoria and promptly turned it
+into "Fort George". Forthwith the North-west Company bought up the
+derelict property of Mr. Astor's Company from his not very honest
+British employees, and the few Americans in the concern retreated
+inland, and, after almost incredible sufferings from the attacks of
+unfriendly Indians, succeeded in reaching the Mississippi.
+
+
+[Illustration: THE KOOTENAY OR HEAD STREAM OF THE COLUMBIA RIVER]
+
+This Columbia River had in reality been discovered at its sources, and
+traced down to the sea, between 1807 and 1811 by DAVID THOMPSON (once
+a Blue-coat boy in London; from 1784 to 1792 in the service of the
+Hudson's Bay Company, and after that one of the most famous of the
+Nor'-westers). The upper course of this river and its northern
+affluents were annexed as British by David Thompson; the lower course
+did not at once become the political property of the United States,
+but was considered vaguely to be the joint property of both nations,
+till the Oregon settlement of 1846. By the treaty of 1792, the
+southern boundary of central Canada was agreed upon as being the 49th
+degree of north latitude, but only between the Lake of the Woods and
+the Rocky Mountains. The agreement of 1846 continued the 49th degree
+boundary to the shore of the Pacific opposite Vancouver Island.
+
+Prominent among the agents of the North-western Company who followed
+Sir Alexander Mackenzie as a pioneer towards the Pacific shores was
+ALEXANDER HENRY THE YOUNGER,[1] regarding whose journeys some extracts
+may be given.
+
+[Footnote 1: The nephew of the Alexander Henry already mentioned as an
+explorer between 1761 and 1775.]
+
+The first entry in his diary of 1799 is not particularly romantic, but
+shows some of the unexpected dangers attending the life of an
+adventurer in the far north-west. He had been riding through the
+Assiniboin country in the autumn of 1799, probably after one of the
+very indigestible meals which he describes here and there in his
+pages. Alone, and crossing an open plain swarming with wolves, he was
+seized suddenly with a violent colic, the pain of which was so
+terrible that he could not remain in the saddle. He dismounted,
+hobbled his horse, and threw himself on the grass, where he lay in
+agony for two hours, expecting every moment would be his last, till,
+quite exhausted, he fell asleep. He was awakened, however, by the
+howling of the wolves advancing to tear him to pieces; yet he was so
+weak that he was scarcely able to mount his horse, and then could only
+proceed at a slow walk, with the wolves snapping at his horse's heels.
+
+Near the site of the present city of Winnipeg, in the late summer of
+1800, he and his expedition were much troubled by swarms of water
+snakes. They were harmless but not pleasant in their familiarity, for
+they entered the tents and took refuge in the explorers' beds; and as
+they apparently came from their breeding places in Amerindian graves
+which covered the remains of people who had died of smallpox in a
+recent epidemic, they were additionally loathsome.
+
+Smallpox indeed played a very important part in the historical
+development of western North America. Prior to 1780 the Amerindian
+tribes between the upper Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, and
+between the Saskatchewans and the Missouri, were numerous and warlike.
+At first, about 1765, they received in very friendly fashion the
+pioneer British traders and French Canadians who attempted to resume
+the fur trade where it had been dropped by the French monopolists in
+1760. But fifteen years afterwards, enraged at the violence and
+wrongdoing of the British and Canadian traders, and maddened by strong
+drink, they were planning a universal massacre of the whites, when
+suddenly smallpox (introduced by the Spaniards into New Mexico) came
+on them as a scourge, which destroyed whole tribes, and depopulated
+much of western North America.
+
+Alexander Henry had many adventures with the bison of the plains. Here
+is one of them.
+
+"Just as I came up to him at full speed and prepared to fire, my horse
+suddenly stopped. The bull had turned about to face my horse, which
+was naturally afraid of buffaloes, and startled at such a frightful
+object; he leaped to one side to avoid the bull. As I was not prepared
+for this I was pitched over his head, and fell within a few yards of
+the bull's nose; but fortunately for me he paid no more attention to
+my horse than to me. The grass was long, and I lay quiet until a
+favourable opportunity offered as he presented his placotte. I
+discharged both barrels of my double gun at him; he turned and made
+one plunge toward me, but had not time to repeat it before he fell,
+with his nose not more than three paces off.... I had to return on
+foot as my horse had bolted."
+
+At this place--near the Red River (the season September)--the country
+swarmed with big game such as North America will never see any more:
+enormous numbers of bison, of wapiti or Canadian red deer, moose or
+elk, prong-buck, and of grizzly bears and black bears who followed the
+herds to attack them. The rivers swarmed with otters and beavers. The
+ground along the banks of the river was worn into a smooth, hard
+pavement by the hoofs of the thousands of buffaloes. Racoons, red
+foxes, wolves, and pumas frequented the bush country and the chumps of
+forest. A large white wolf, prowling rather imprudently, came within a
+few yards of Henry, and was shot dead. "We observed on the opposite
+beach no fewer than seven bears drinking all at the same time. Red
+deer were whistling in every direction, but our minds were not
+sufficiently at ease to enjoy our situation." Large flocks of swans
+(_Cygnus columbianus_) rose out of the Red River apparently in a state
+of alarm and confusion, possibly caused by the many herds of buffaloes
+rushing down to the river to drink. At night everything was quiet
+except the bellowing of buffaloes and the whistling of red deer. "I
+climbed up a tall oak at the entrance of the plain, from the top of
+which I had an extensive view of the country. Buffalo and red deer
+were everywhere in sight passing to and fro."
+
+But the prairie had its nuisances as well as its wonders of animal
+life. From the end of April to the end of July the woods and grass
+swarmed with ticks (_Ixodes_), which covered the clothes of the
+Europeans and entered their ears and there caused serious
+inflammations. They would in time get such a firm hold by the
+insertion of their heads into the skin that they could not be removed
+without pulling the body from the head, which caused a terrible
+itching lasting for months. If left alone they adhered to the flesh
+until they swelled to the size of a musket ball, when they fell off of
+themselves. In the summertime gadflies were exasperating in their
+attacks on men and cattle. Mosquitoes were a veritable plague, and
+midges also, between June and the end of September.
+
+Not the least of the terrors of life in the far north-west in those
+days was the vermin that collected in the houses or huts built for a
+winter sojourn. It is frequently mentioned, in the records of the
+pioneers, how the lodges or tents of the Amerindians swarmed with
+fleas and lice. Henry notes on the 19th of April, 1803: "The men began
+to demolish our dwelling houses, which were built of bad wood, and to
+build new ones of oak. The nests of mice we found, and the swarms of
+fleas hopping in every direction, were astonishing."
+
+Henry reached the Pacific coast in 1814, by way of the Kootenay,
+Spokane, and Columbia River route, which had been discovered by David
+Thompson. He describes well the forests of remarkable trees on this
+portion of the Pacific coast, opposite the south end of Vancouver
+Island: the crooked oaks loaded with mistletoe, the tall wild cherry
+trees, the hazels with trunks thicker than a man's thigh, the
+evergreen arbutus, the bracken fern, blackberries, and black
+raspberries; and the game in these glades of trees and fern: small
+Columbian _Mazama_ deer, large lynxes, bears, gluttons, wolves, foxes,
+racoons, and squirrels. Overhead soared huge Californian condors
+(_Pseudogryphus_).
+
+Henry was drowned in 1812 in the estuary of the Columbia River,
+through the capsizing of a boat.
+
+The question of the identity of the great river flowing to the Pacific
+from near the headwaters of the Peace--the river which Mackenzie had
+discovered and been forced to leave--was finally decided by SIMON
+FRASER, one of the most celebrated among the North-west Company's
+pioneers. Like Mackenzie, he believed this stream to be the upper
+Columbia.
+
+Accompanied by John Stuart and Jules Quesnel, he left the Fraser River
+at its junction with the Nechaco on May 22, 1807, and, keeping as near
+as he could to the course of the river, found himself in the country
+of the Atna tribe, Amerindians of a diminutive size but active
+appearance, from whom he obtained an invaluable guide and faithful
+interpreter, Little Fellow, but for whose bravery, wise advice, and
+clever diplomacy the journey must have ended in disaster or
+disappointment--a remark which might be made about nearly all the
+Amerindian guides of the pioneers.
+
+The Atna Indians were dressed in skins with the hair outside, and were
+armed with bows and arrows. They besmeared their bodies with fish oil
+and red earth, and painted their faces in different colours. Bison
+were quite unknown to them, being very seldom found in those latitudes
+on the western side of the Rocky Mountains. The country of the Atna
+Indians on the upper Fraser abounded in elk, wapiti, reindeer, bighorn
+sheep, mountain goats,[2] and beaver.
+
+[Footnote 2: This remarkable beast (_Oreamnus_) they called "Aspai",
+and wove from its white wool an excellent cloth for their clothing.]
+
+Here is a description by Fraser of some of the rapids in the upper
+part of the river named after him.
+
+"The channel contracts to about forty yards, and is enclosed by two
+precipices of immense height, which bending towards each other make it
+narrower above than below. The water which rolls down this
+extraordinary passage in tumultuous waves and with great velocity has
+a frightful appearance. However, it being impossible to carry canoes
+by land, all hands without hesitation embarked, as it were, _à corps
+perdu_ upon the mercy of this awful tide. Once engaged, the die was
+cast. Our great difficulty consisted in keeping the canoes in the
+middle of the stream, that is, clear of the precipice on the one side,
+and of the gulfs formed by the waves on the other. Thus, skimming
+along as fast as lightning, the crews, cool and determined, followed
+each other in awful silence, and when we arrived at the end we stood
+gazing at each other in silent gratification at our narrow escape from
+total destruction.... I scarcely ever saw anything so dreary and
+dangerous in any country (such precipices, mountains, and rapids), and
+I still seem to see, whichever way I turn my eyes, mountains upon
+mountains whose summits are covered with eternal snow."
+
+[Illustration: A HUNTER'S "SHACK" IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: AFTER A
+SUCCESSFUL SHOOT OF BLUE GROUSE]
+
+They had to take to these same mountains, the river being unnavigable.
+The Asketti Indians brought them different kinds of roots, especially
+wild onions boiled into a syrup, excellent dried salmon, and some
+berries. These Indians had visited the seacoast, and had seen ships of
+war come there with white men, "very well dressed, and very proud,
+for," continued the chief, getting up and clapping his two hands upon
+his hips, and then striding about the place with an air of
+importance, "this is the way they go". In this country of the Hakamaw
+and Asketti Indians, dogs were much in use for carrying purposes, and
+could draw from one hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds. They were
+considered by the French Canadians very good eating, though only the
+smaller kinds were eaten, the large dogs being of another race and
+having a rank taste. They also shaved these dogs in the summer time,
+and wove rugs from their hair. These rugs were striped in different
+colours, crossing at right angles, and resembling at a distance a
+Highland plaid.
+
+The tombs of the Indian villages on this western side of the Rocky
+Mountains were superior to anything that Fraser had ever seen amongst
+savages. They were about fifteen feet long, and of the form of a chest
+of drawers. Upon the boards and posts, beasts and birds were carved in
+a curious but crude manner, and pretty well proportioned. Returning to
+the river, when the worst of the rapids were passed, they descended it
+rapidly, helped by a strong current, and at length entered a lake
+where they saw seals, which showed that they had got near to the
+Pacific Ocean. They also beheld a round mountain, the now celebrated
+Mount Baker, which is visible from so much of the surrounding country
+of British Columbia and Vancouver Island. The trees were splendid,
+junipers thirty feet in circumference in their trunks and two or three
+hundred feet high. Mosquitoes, however, were in clouds. Nearer to the
+coast the Indians often appeared in the distance like white men, for
+the very literal reason that they had covered their skins with white
+paint. Their houses were built of cedar planks, and were six hundred
+and forty feet long by sixty feet broad, all under one roof, but of
+course separated into a great number of partitions for different
+families. On the outside the boards (as Mackenzie had noticed) were
+carved with figures of men, beasts, and birds as large as life. Simon
+Fraser, however, when he reached sea water, near the site of New
+Westminster, was greatly disappointed that any view of the main ocean
+should be obstructed by distant lands. He had believed all along that
+he was tracing the far-famed Columbia River to its entrance into the
+Pacific Ocean; and now that, instead of this, he had discovered an
+entirely new river, henceforth to be called after him but without so
+long a course as the Columbia, his vanity was hurt.
+
+The Amerindians of the sea coast, opposite Vancouver Island, showed
+hostility to Fraser's party, as they had done farther north to
+Mackenzie. The Canadian _voyageurs_ got alarmed, and told Fraser's
+assistant, John Stuart, that they had made up their minds to return by
+land across the Rocky Mountains. Fraser and the other officers of the
+expedition joined in arguing with them and recalling them to their
+senses. Finally each member of the party swore a solemn oath before
+Almighty God that they would sooner perish than forsake in distress
+any of the crew in the present voyage. After this ceremony was over
+all hands dressed in their best apparel, and each took charge of his
+own bundle. They therefore returned as much as possible by the Fraser
+River, and only took to the mountains when obliged by the rapids. They
+had to pass many difficult rocks, defiles, precipices, in which there
+was a beaten path made by the natives, and made possible by means of
+scaffolds, bridges, and ladders, so peculiarly constructed that it
+required no small degree of necessity, dexterity, and courage in
+strangers to undertake them. For instance, they had to ascend
+precipices by means of ladders composed of two long poles placed
+upright, with sticks tied crosswise with twigs; upon the end of these
+others were placed, and so on to any height; add to this that the
+ladders were often so slack that the smallest breeze put them in
+motion, swinging them against the rocks, while the steps leading from
+scaffold to scaffold were so narrow and irregular that they could
+scarcely be traced by the feet without the greatest care and
+circumspection; but the most perilous part was when another rock
+projected over the one they were clearing.
+
+The Hakamaw Indians certainly deserved Fraser's grateful remembrance
+for their able assistance throughout these alarming situations. The
+descents were, if possible, still more difficult; in these places the
+white men were under the necessity of trusting their property to the
+Indians, even the precious guns were handed from one Indian to
+another; yet they thought nothing of it, they went up and down these
+wild places with the same agility as sailors do on a ship. After
+escaping innumerable perils in the course of the day, the party
+encamped about sunset, being supplied by the natives with plenty of
+dried fish.
+
+Thus the main lines of the exploration of the great Canadian Dominion
+were completed. Alexander Mackenzie went to England in 1799 and
+received a knighthood for his remarkable achievements. On his return
+he first definitely created the New North-west or "X.Y." Company, and
+then brought about its fusion (after several years of bitter rivalry)
+with the old North-west Company; and it was this united and
+strengthened organization which, between 1804 and 1819, sent out so
+many bold pioneers to fill in the details of the map between the
+Columbia and Missouri on the south, and the Great Slave Lake and Liard
+River on the north. But during these years the energies of the
+Hudson's Bay Company were reviving under a strange personality--THOMAS
+DOUGLAS, EARL OF SELKIRK. Lord Selkirk conceived the idea of putting
+new life into the Hudson's Bay Company, reviving the monopolies of
+trading granted in its old charter, and turning its vague rights to
+land into the absolute ownership of the enormous area of North
+America north and west of the Canadian provinces. No regard of course
+was paid to any rights of the natives, who as a matter of fact were
+dying out rapidly from the effects of bad alcohol and epidemic
+diseases.
+
+His motive was to establish large colonies of stalwart Highlanders as
+the tenants of a Chartered Company. Alexander Mackenzie had already
+called the north-west country "New Caledonia". Lord Selkirk wished to
+make it so in its population.
+
+Already he had been instrumental in establishing a Scottish colony on
+Prince Edward's Island,[3] which, after some difficulties at the
+beginning, had soon begun to prosper. Two or three years later he came
+to Montreal, and there collected all the information he could obtain
+from the partners in the North-west Company regarding the prospects of
+trade and colonization in the far west. In the year 1811 he had
+managed to acquire the greater part of the shares in the Hudson's Bay
+Company, and, placing himself at its head, he sent out his first
+hundred Highlanders and Irish to form a feudatory colony in the Red
+River district (the modern Manitoba). He also dispatched an official
+to govern what might be called the Middle West on behalf of the
+Hudson's Bay Company. This person, acting under instructions, claimed
+the whole region beyond the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada as the
+private property of the Hudson's Bay Company, on the strength of their
+antiquated charter issued by Charles II. The agents of the North-west
+Company were warned (as also the two or three thousand French
+Canadians and half-breeds in their pay) that henceforth they must not
+cut wood, fish or hunt, build or cultivate, save by the permission and
+as the tenants of the Hudson's Bay Company.
+
+[Footnote 3: Prince Edward's Island is off the north coast of New
+Brunswick. It was named after Queen Victoria's father, the Duke of
+Kent.]
+
+It is not surprising that such an outrageous demand, when it was
+followed up by the use of armed force, soon provoked bloodshed and a
+state of civil war throughout the North-west Territories. Lord Selkirk
+himself took command on the Red River, with a small army of
+disciplined soldiers. At length, in 1817, the British Government
+intervened through the Governor-General of Canada, and in 1818 Lord
+Selkirk left North America disgusted, and two years afterwards died at
+Pau, in France, from an illness brought on by grief at the failure of
+his projects.
+
+Sir Alexander Mackenzie also died suddenly in 1820, in Scotland. For
+twelve years he had been member of parliament for Huntingdon, and
+since 1812 had been the determined opponent in England of Lord
+Selkirk's plans of forcible colonization. After his death, however, in
+1821, a sudden movement for reconciliation took place between the two
+Companies. Thenceforth the Hudson's Bay Company ruled over the vast
+regions of British North America, beyond Newfoundland, New Brunswick,
+Nova Scotia, and the two Canadian provinces. Under their government
+the work of geographical exploration went on apace. In 1834 one of
+their officers, J. M'Leod, discovered the Stikine River in northern
+British Columbia, and by 1848 J. Bell and Robert Campbell had revealed
+the Porcupine and Yukon Rivers. By the time Thomas Simpson, Warren
+Dease, and Dr. John Rae, on behalf of the Hudson's Bay Company; and
+Franklin, Back, Parry, Richardson, and M'Clintock, for the Imperial
+Government, had completed the explorations mentioned in Chapter VI,
+all the main features of Canadian geography were made known. The next
+series of pioneers were to be those of the mining industry--it was the
+discovery of gold in 1856 which created British Columbia; of
+agriculture--the wheat-growers of the Red River region made the
+province of Manitoba; of the steamboat; and above all the railway.
+Developments of science scarcely yet dreamt of will demand in further
+time their pioneers, and these will not come from abroad, but will
+assuredly be found in this splendid Canadian people, the descendants
+of the men or of the types of men I have attempted to describe.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13003 ***
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13003 ***</div>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Pioneers in Canada, by Sir Harry Johnston,
+Illustrated by E. Wallcousins</h1>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="image-0001"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc01.jpg" width="282" height="450"
+alt="Type of Ship Sailed in by the English Or French
+Pioneers in the Sixteenth Century
+">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>TYPE OF SHIP SAILED IN BY THE ENGLISH OR FRENCH
+PIONEERS<br>
+IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY</h5>
+<hr>
+<a name="top"></a>
+<h1>
+    PIONEERS IN CANADA
+</h1>
+<br>
+<h2>
+    By SIR HARRY JOHNSTON
+</h2>
+<p class="note">
+   G.C.M.G., K.C.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<p class="note">
+    <i>WITH EIGHT COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS<br> BY E. WALLCOUSINS</i>
+</p>
+<center>
+<img src="images/tp.jpg" width="130" height="150"
+alt="title page decoration">
+</center>
+<h5>1912</h5>
+<hr>
+<p class="note3">
+     <big><b>The Pioneer Library</b></big><br><br>
+
+     A standard series by Sir Harry<br>
+     Johnston. Tastefully bound.<br><br>
+
+     <b>Pioneers in Australasia</b>.<br>
+     <b>Pioneers in Canada</b>. <br>
+     <b>Pioneers in South Africa</b>. <br>
+     <b>Pioneers in West Africa</b>. <br>
+     <b>Pioneers in Tropical America</b>. <br>
+     <b>Pioneers in India</b>.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="2H_PREF"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    PREFACE
+</h2>
+<br>
+<p>
+    I have been asked to write a series of works which should deal with
+    "real adventures", in parts of the world either wild and uncontrolled
+    by any civilized government, or at any rate regions full of dangers,
+    of wonderful discoveries; in which the daring and heroism of white men
+    (and sometimes of white women) stood out clearly against backgrounds
+    of unfamiliar landscapes, peopled with strange nations, savage tribes,
+    dangerous beasts, or wonderful birds. These books would again and
+    again illustrate the first coming of the white race into regions
+    inhabited by people of a different type, with brown, black, or yellow
+    skins; how the European was received, and how he treated these races
+    of the soil which gradually came under his rule owing to his superior
+    knowledge, weapons, wealth, or powers of persuasion. The books were to
+    tell the plain truth, even if here and there they showed the white man
+    to have behaved badly, or if they revealed the fact that the American
+    Indian, the Negro, the Malay, the black Australian was sometimes cruel
+    and treacherous.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A request thus framed was almost equivalent to asking me to write
+    stories of those pioneers who founded the British Empire; in any case,
+    the first volumes of this series do relate the adventures of those who
+    created the greater part of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, by
+    their perilous explorations of unknown lands and waters. In many
+    instances the travellers were all unconscious of their destinies, of
+    the results which would arise from their actions. In some cases they
+    would have bitterly railed at Fate had they known that the result of
+    their splendid efforts was to be the enlargement of an empire under
+    the British flag. Perhaps if they could know by now that we are
+    striving under that flag to be just and generous to all types of men,
+    and not to use our empire solely for the benefit of English-speaking
+    men and women, the French who founded the Canadian nation, the Germans
+    and Dutch who helped to create British Africa, Malaysia, and
+    Australia, the Spaniards who preceded us in the West Indies, and the
+    Portuguese in West, Central, and East Africa, in Newfoundland and
+    Ceylon, might&mdash;if they have any consciousness or care for things in
+    this world&mdash;be not so sorry after all that we are reaping where they
+    sowed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is (as you will see) impossible to tell the tale of these early
+    days in the British Dominions beyond the Seas, without describing here
+    and there the adventures of men of enterprise and daring who were not
+    of our own nationality. The majority, nevertheless, were of British
+    stock; that is to say, they were English, Welsh, Scots, Irish, perhaps
+    here and there a Channel Islander and a Manxman; or Nova Scotians,
+    Canadians, and New Englanders. The bulk of them were good fellows, a
+    few were saints, a few were ruffians with redeeming features.
+    Sometimes they were common men who blundered into great discoveries
+    which will for ever preserve their names from perishing; occasionally
+    they were men of Fate, predestined, one might say, to change the
+    history of the world by their revelations of new peoples, new lands,
+    new rivers, new lakes, snow mountains, and gold mines. Here and there
+    is a martyr like Marquette, or Livingstone, or Gordon, dying for the
+    cause of a race not his own. And others again are mere boys, whose
+    adventures come to them because they are adventurous, and whose feats
+    of arms, escapes, perils, and successes are quite as wonderful as
+    those attributed to the juvenile heroes of Marryat, Stevenson, and the
+    author of <i>The Swiss Family Robinson</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have tried, in describing these adventures, to give my readers some
+    idea of the scenery, animals, and vegetation of the new lands through
+    which these pioneers passed on their great and small purposes; as well
+    as of the people, native to the soil, with whom they came in contact.
+    And in treating of these subjects I have thought it best to give the
+    scientific names of the plant or animal which was of importance in my
+    story, so that any of my readers who were really interested in natural
+    history could at once ascertain for themselves the exact type alluded
+    to, and, if they wished, look it up in a museum, a garden, or a
+    natural history book.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I hope this attempt at scientific accuracy will not frighten away
+    readers young and old; and, if you can have patience with the author,
+    you will, by reading this series of books on the great pioneers of
+    British West Africa, Canada, Malaysia, West Indies, South Africa, and
+    Australasia, get a clear idea of how the British Colonial Empire came
+    to be founded.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You will find that I have often tried to tell the story in the words
+    of the pioneers, but in these quotations I have adopted the modern
+    spelling, not only in my transcript of the English original or
+    translation, but also in the place and tribal names, so as not to
+    puzzle or delay the reader. Otherwise, if you were to look out some of
+    the geographical names of the old writers, you might not be able to
+    recognize them on the modern atlas. The pronunciation of this modern
+    geographical spelling is very simple and clear: the vowels are
+    pronounced <i>a</i> = ah, <i>e</i> = eh, <i>i</i> = ee, <i>o</i> = o, <i>ô</i> = oh,
+    <i>&#333;</i> = aw, <i>ö</i> = u in 'hurt', and <i>u</i> = oo, as in German, Italian, or
+    most other European languages; and the consonants as in English.
+</p>
+<p class="ar">
+    <big>H. H. J</big>OHNSTON.
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+
+
+<div style="height: 3em;"><br><br><br></div>
+
+<a name="contents"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+  <h3>CONTENTS</h3>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_PREF">Preface</a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_LIST">
+List of Illustrations
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_AUTH">
+List of the Chief Authorities
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0001">
+I. THE WHITE MAN'S DISCOVERY OF NORTH AMERICA
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0002">
+II. JACQUES CARTIER
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0003">
+III. ELIZABETHAN PIONEERS IN NORTH AMERICA
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0004">
+IV. CHAMPLAIN AND THE FOUNDATION OF CANADA
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0005">
+V. AFTER CHAMPLAIN: FROM MONTREAL TO THE MISSISSIPPI
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0006">
+VI. THE GEOGRAPHICAL CONDITIONS OF THE CANADIAN DOMINION
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0007">
+VII. THE AMERINDIANS AND ESKIMO:  THE ABORIGINES OF BRITISH NORTH AMERICA
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0008">
+VIII. THE HUDSON BAY EXPLORERS AND THE BRITISH CONQUEST OF ALL CANADA
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0009">
+IX. THE PIONEERS FROM MONTREAL:  ALEXANDER HENRY THE ELDER
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0010">
+X. SAMUEL HEARNE
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0011">
+XI. ALEXANDER MACKENZIE'S JOURNEYS
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0012">
+XII. MACKENZIE'S SUCCESSORS
+</a></p>
+
+<div style="height: 3em;"><br><br><br></div>
+
+
+<a name="2H_LIST"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<h3>
+    LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+</h3>
+<center><small>
+    COLOURED PLATES</small>
+</center>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0001">
+    Type of Ship sailed in by the English or French Pioneers in the
+    Sixteenth Century</a> <small><i>Frontispiece</i></small>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0003">
+    Icebergs and Polar Bears</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0005">
+    Indians hunting Bison</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0007">
+    Indians lying in wait for Moose</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0009">
+    Caribou swimming a River</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0011">
+    Great Auks, Gannets, Puffins, and Guillemots</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0013">
+    Scene on Canadian River: Wild Swans flying up, disturbed by Bear</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0016">
+    Big-horned Sheep of Rocky Mountains</a>
+</p>
+<br>
+<center>
+    <small>BLACK-AND-WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS</small>
+</center>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0002">
+    Jacques Cartier</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0004">
+    Samuel de Champlain and Alexander Henry the Elder</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0008">
+    An Amerindian Type of British Columbia</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0014">
+    Lake Louise, the Rocky Mountains</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0015">
+    Samuel Hearne and Alexander Mackenzie</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0017">
+    The Upper Waters of the Fraser River</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0019">
+    The Kootenay or Head Stream of the Columbia River</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0020">
+    A Hunter's "Shack" in British Columbia: After a successful Shoot of
+    Blue Grouse</a>
+</p>
+<br>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0006">
+    Map of Canada</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0012">
+    Map of Eastern Canada and Newfoundland</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0018">
+    Map of Part of the Coast Region of British Columbia</a>
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr class="short">
+
+<a name="2H_AUTH"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    List of the Chief Authorities
+</h2>
+<p class="note2">
+    FROM WHOM THE PRINCIPAL FACTS AND INCIDENTS OF THIS BOOK HAVE BEEN
+    DERIVED, IN ADDITION TO THE AUTHOR'S OWN RESEARCHES AND EXPERIENCES,
+    AND INFORMATION SUPPLIED BY PROFESSOR R. RAMSAY WRIGHT, OF TORONTO
+    UNIVERSITY
+</p>
+<br>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>The Saint Lawrence Basin</b>. By Dr. S.E. DAWSON. London. 1905.
+    Lawrence &amp; Bullen.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>Relation Originale du Voyage de Jacques Cartier au Canada en
+    1534</b>; Documents inédits, &amp;c. Publiés par H. MICHELANT et A. RAME.
+    Paris. Librairie Tross. 1867.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>Voyage de Jacques Cartier au Canada en 1534</b>, &amp;c. Par H.
+    MICHELANT. Paris. 1865.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>Champlain's Voyages</b>: The Publications of the Prince Society.
+    Boston. 1878. Three volumes.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>Voyage of Verrazano</b>, &amp;c. By HENRY C. MURPHY. New York. 1875.
+    (Also the Essay on the Journeys of Verrazano, by Alessandro Bacchiani,
+    in the Bollettino della Societá Geografica Italiana. Rome. November,
+    1909.)
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>Volume IX of the Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of
+    Canada</b>. (For the History of Cape Breton and of the Beothiks of
+    Newfoundland.)
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>The Search for the Western Sea</b>. By Lawrence J. Burpee. London.
+    Alston Rivers. 1908.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New
+    France</b>, &amp;c. Edited by REUBEN GOLD THWAITES. Vol. LIX. Cleveland,
+    U.S.A. Burrows Bros. 1900.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>Travels and Explorations in Canada and the Indian Territories between
+    the years 1760 and 1776</b>. By ALEXANDER HENRY, Esq. New York. 1809.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>Voyages from Montreal on the River St. Lawrence through the Continent
+    of North America to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans, in the years 1789
+    and 1793</b>, &amp;c. &amp;c. By ALEXANDER MACKENZIE, Esq. London. 1801.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>A Journey from Prince of Wales's Fort in Hudson's Bay to the Northern
+    Ocean</b>, &amp;c. By SAMUEL HEARNE. London. 1795.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>Les Bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest</b>. By L.R. MASSON.
+    Quebec. 1890. Two volumes.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>New Light on the Early History of the Greater North-West</b>: The
+    Manuscript Journals of Alexander Henry, Jun., and of David Thompson.
+    Edited by ELLIOTT COUES. Three Volumes. New York. Harper. 1897.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>Sport and Travel in the Northland of Canada</b>. By DAVID T. HANBURY.
+    London. Edward Arnold. 1904.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>Henry Hudson the Navigator</b>, &amp;c. By G.M. ASHER. London. Hakluyt
+    Society, 1860.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher</b>. By Rear-Admiral RICHARD
+    COLLINSON. London. Hakluyt Society. 1867.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>The Voyages and Works of John Davis the Navigator</b>. By Admiral Sir
+    ALBERT HASTINGS MARKHAM. London. Hakluyt Society. 1880.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>The Voyages of William Baffin, 1612-1622</b>. By Sir CLEMENTS R.
+    MARKHAM. London. 1881.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2HCH0001"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER I
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    The White Man's Discovery of North America
+</h3>
+<p>
+    So far as our knowledge goes, it is almost a matter of certainty that
+    Man originated in the Old World&mdash;in Asia possibly. Long after this
+    wonderful event in the Earth's history, when the human species was
+    spread over a good deal of Asia, Europe, and Africa, migration to the
+    American continents began in attempts to find new feeding grounds and
+    unoccupied areas for hunting and fishing. How many thousands or
+    hundreds of thousands of years ago it was since the first men entered
+    America we do not yet know, any more than we can determine the route
+    by which they travelled from Asia. Curiously enough, the oldest traces
+    of man as yet discovered in the New World are not only in South
+    America, but in the south-eastern parts of South America. Although the
+    most obvious recent land connection between the Old and New Worlds is
+    the Aleutian chain of islands connecting Kamschatka with Alaska, the
+    ethnologist is occasionally led to think by certain evidence that
+    there may, both earlier and later, have existed another way of
+    reaching western America from south-eastern Asia through Pacific
+    archipelagoes and islets now sunk below the sea. In any case it seems
+    quite probable that men of Mongolian or Polynesian type reached
+    America on its western coasts long before the European came from the
+    north-east and east, and that they were helped on this long journey by
+    touching at islands since submerged by earthquake shocks or tidal
+    waves.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The aboriginal natives of North and South America seem to be of
+    entirely Asiatic origin; and such resemblances as there are between
+    the North-American Indians and the peoples of northern Europe do not
+    arise (we believe) from any ancient colonization of America from
+    western or northern Europe, but mainly from the fact that the
+    North-American Indians and the Eskimo (two distinct types of people)
+    are descended from the same human stocks as the ancient populations of
+    the northern part of Europe and Asia.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was&mdash;we think&mdash;from the far <i>north-west</i> of Europe that America was
+    first visited by the true White man, though there has been an ancient
+    immigration of imperfect "White" men (Ainu) from Kamschatka. Three or
+    four hundred years after the birth of Christ there were great race
+    movements in northern and central Europe, due to an increase of
+    population and insufficiency of food. Not only did these white
+    barbarians (though they were not as barbarous as we were led to think
+    by Greek and Roman literature) invade southern Europe, North Africa,
+    and Asia Minor, but from the fourth century of the Christian era
+    onwards they began to cross over to England and Scotland. At the same
+    time they took more complete possession of Scandinavia, driving north
+    before their advance the more primitive peoples like the Lapps and
+    Finns, who were allied to the stock from which arose both the Eskimo
+    and the Amerindian.<a name="1-1"></a><a href="#note-1-1"><small>[1]</small></a> All this time the Goths and Scandinavians
+    were either learning ideas of navigation from the Romans of the
+    Mediterranean or the Greeks of the Black Sea, or they were inventing
+    for themselves better ways of constructing ships; and although they
+    propelled them mainly by oars, they used masts and sails as well.<a name="1-2"></a><a href="#note-1-2"><small>[2]</small></a>
+    Having got over the fear of the sea sufficiently to reach the coasts
+    of England and Scotland, the Hebrides, Orkneys, and Shetlands, they
+    became still more venturesome in their voyages from Norway, until they
+    discovered the Faroe Archipelago (which tradition says they found
+    inhabited by wild sheep), and then the large island of Iceland, which
+    had, however, already been reached and settled by the northern Irish.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Iceland, though it lies so far to the north that it is partly within
+    the Arctic Circle, is, like Norway, Scotland, and Ireland, affected by
+    the Gulf Stream, so that considerable portions of it are quite
+    habitable. It is not almost entirely covered with ice, as Greenland
+    is; in fact, Iceland should be called Greenland (from the large extent
+    of its grassy pastures), and Greenland should be called Iceland.
+    Instead of this, however, the early Norwegian explorers called these
+    countries by the names they still bear.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Norse rovers from Norway and the Hebrides colonized Iceland from
+    the year 850; and about a hundred and thirty-six years afterwards, in
+    their venturesome journeys in search of new lands, they reached the
+    south-east and south-west coasts of Greenland. Owing to the glacial
+    conditions and elevated character of this vast continental island
+    (more than 500,000 sq. miles in area)&mdash;for the whole interior of
+    Greenland rises abruptly from the sea-coast to altitudes of from 5000
+    to 11,000 ft.&mdash;this discovery was of small use to the early Norwegians
+    or their Iceland colony. After it was governed by the kingdom of
+    Norway in the thirteenth century, the Norse colonization of south-west
+    Greenland faded away under the attacks of the Eskimo, <a name="p18"></a>until it ceased
+    completely in the fifteenth century. When Denmark united herself with
+    the kingdom of Norway in 1397, the Danish king became also the ruler
+    of Iceland. In the eighteenth century the Norwegian and Danish
+    settlements were re-established along the south-east and south-west
+    coasts of Greenland, mainly on account of the value of the whale,
+    seal, and cod fisheries in the seas around this enormous frozen
+    island; and all Greenland is now regarded as a Danish possession.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the adventurous Norsemen who first reached Greenland from Iceland
+    attempted to push their investigations farther to the south-west, in
+    the hope of discovering more habitable lands; and in this way it was
+    supposed that their voyages extended as far as Massachusetts and Rhode
+    Island, but in all probability they reached no farther than
+    Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. This portion of North America they
+    called "Vinland", more from the abundance of cranberries (<i>vinbær</i>) on
+    the open spaces than the few vines to be found in the woods of Nova
+    Scotia.<a name="1-3"></a><a href="#note-1-3"><small>[3]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    This brings us down to the year 1008. The Icelandic Norsemen then
+    ceased their investigations of the North-American Continent, and were
+    too ignorant to realize the value of their discoveries. Their colonies
+    on the coasts of Nova Scotia ("Vinland") and Newfoundland
+    ("Estotiland") were attacked probably by Eskimos, at any rate by a
+    short, thick-set, yellow-skinned ugly people whom the Norsemen called
+    "Skræling",<a name="1-4"></a><a href="#note-1-4"><small>[4]</small></a> who overcame the unfortunate settlers, murdered some,
+    and carried off others into the interior.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But about this period, when Europe was going through that dismal era,
+    the Dark Age which followed the downfall of the Roman Empire of the
+    west, various impulses were already directing the attention of
+    European adventurers to the Western Ocean, the Atlantic. One cause was
+    the increased hold of Roman and Greek Christianity over the peoples of
+    Europe. These Churches imposed fasts either for single days or for
+    continuous periods. When people fasted it meant that they were chiefly
+    denied any form of meat, and therefore must eat fish if they were not
+    content with oil, bread, or vegetables. So that there was an enormous
+    and increasing demand for fish, not only amongst those fortunate
+    people who lived by the seashore, and could get it fresh whenever they
+    liked, but among those who lived at a distance inland, and were still
+    required to fast when the Church so directed. Of course in many parts
+    of Europe they could get freshwater fish from the rivers or lakes. But
+    the supply was not equal to the demand; and fish sent up from the
+    seacoast soon went bad, so that the plan of salting and curing fish
+    was adopted. The Norsemen found it a paying business to fish
+    industriously in the seas round Iceland, Norway, Scotland, and
+    Ireland, salt and cure the fish, and then carry it to more southern
+    countries, where they exchanged it against wine, oil, clothing
+    materials, and other goods. This led to the Venetians (who had
+    absorbed so much of the carrying trade of the Mediterranean) sending
+    their ships through the Straits of Gibraltar into the northern seas
+    and trading with the Baltic for amber and salt fish. In the course of
+    this trade some Venetians, such as Antonio Zeno, found their way to
+    Norway and Iceland.<a name="1-5"></a><a href="#note-1-5"><small>[5]</small></a> It is thought that by this means Venice became
+    acquainted with the records of the Icelandic voyages to North
+    America, and that her explorers thus grew to entertain the idea of a
+    sea journey westward, or north-westward, of Britain, bringing mariners
+    to a New World represented by the far-eastern extension of Asia.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Christopher Columbus, the Genoese, conceived a similar idea, which
+    also may have owed something to the tradition of the Norsemen's
+    discovery of Vinland. But Columbus's theories were based on better
+    evidence, such as the discovery on the coasts of the Azores
+    archipelago, Madeira, and Portugal of strange seeds, tree trunks,
+    objects of human workmanship, and even (it is said) the bodies of
+    drowned savages&mdash;Amerindians&mdash;which had somehow drifted across, borne
+    by the current of the Gulf Stream, and escaping the notice of the
+    sharks.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Whilst Columbus was bestirring himself to find Asia across the
+    Atlantic, a sea pilot, JOHN CABOT (Zuan Cabota)&mdash;Genoese by birth, but
+    a naturalized subject of Venice&mdash;came to England and offered himself
+    to King Henry VII as a discoverer of new lands across the ocean. At
+    first he was employed at Copenhagen to settle fishery quarrels about
+    Iceland, and probably Cabota, or Cabot, visited Iceland in King
+    Henry's service, and there heard of the Icelandic colonies on the
+    other side of the Atlantic, only recently abandoned.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In 1496 King Henry VII provided money to cover some of the expense of
+    a voyage of discovery to search for the rumoured island across the
+    ocean. The people of Bristol were ordered to assist John Cabot, and by
+    them he was furnished with a small sailing ship, the <i>Matthew</i>, and a
+    crew of fifteen mariners. Cabot, with his two sons, Luis and Sancio,
+    sailed for Ireland and the unknown West in May, 1497, and, after a sea
+    voyage quite as wonderful as that of Columbus, reached the coast of
+    Cape Breton Island (or "the New Isle", as it was first named<a name="1-6"></a><a href="#note-1-6"><small>[6]</small></a>) on
+    June 24, 1497. They found "the land excellent, and the climate
+    temperate". The sea was so full of fish along these coasts that the
+    mariners opined (truly) that henceforth Bristol need not trouble about
+    the Iceland trade. Here along this "new isle" were the predestined
+    fisheries of Britain.<a name="1-7"></a><a href="#note-1-7"><small>[7]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    They encountered no inhabitants, though they found numerous traces of
+    their existence in the form of snares, notched trees, and bone netting
+    needles. John Cabot hoisted the English flag of St. George and the
+    Venetian standard of St. Mark; then&mdash;perhaps after coasting a little
+    along Nova Scotia&mdash;fearful that a longer stay might cause them to run
+    short of provisions, he turned the prow of the <i>Matthew</i> eastward, and
+    reached Bristol once more about August 6, and London on August 10,
+    1497, with his report to King Henry VII, who rewarded him with a
+    donation of £10. He was further granted a pension of £20 a year (which
+    he only drew for two years, probably because he died after returning
+    from a second voyage to the North-American coast), and he received a
+    renewal of his patent of discovery in February, 1498. In this patent
+    it is evidently inferred that King Henry VII assumed a sovereignty
+    over these distant regions because of John Cabot's hoisting of the
+    English flag on "the new Isle" (Cape Breton Island) in the preceding
+    year.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The new expedition of 1498 was a relatively important affair. The
+    king assisted to finance the ventures of the Bristol captains, and
+    five of his ships formed part of the little fleet. It is probable that
+    John Cabot was in command, and almost certain that his young son
+    Sebastian was a passenger, possibly an assistant pilot. The course
+    followed lay much farther to the north, and brought the little sailing
+    vessels amongst the icebergs, ice floes, polar bears, and stormy seas
+    of Greenland and Labrador. Commercially the voyage was a failure,
+    almost a disaster. The ships returned singly, and after a considerable
+    interval of time. Nevertheless, some of the king's loans were repaid
+    to him; and in 1501 a regular chartered company was formed (perhaps at
+    Bristol), with three Bristolians and three Portuguese as directors.
+    Henry VII not only gave a royal patent to this association, but lent
+    more money to enable it to explore and colonize these new lands across
+    the western sea.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There can be little doubt that between 1498 and 1505 these Bristol
+    ships, directed by Italian, English, and Portuguese pilots, first
+    revealed to the civilized world of western Europe the coasts of
+    Newfoundland, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Massachusetts, and
+    Delaware. They must have got as far south as the State of Delaware
+    (according to Sebastian Cabot, their southern limit was lat. 38°),
+    because in 1505 they were able to bring back parrots ("popyngays"), as
+    well as hawks and lynxes ("catts of the mountaigne"), for the
+    delectation of King Henry; and parrots even at that period could not
+    have been obtained from farther north than the latitude of New
+    York.<a name="1-8"></a><a href="#note-1-8"><small>[8]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    But after 1505 English interest in "the Newe founde launde" and the
+    "Newe Isle" languished; the exploration of North America was taken up
+    and carried farther by Portuguese, Bretons and Normans of France,
+    Italians, and Spaniards.<a name="1-9"></a><a href="#note-1-9"><small>[9]</small></a> It revived again under Henry VIII, owing
+    to the irresistible attraction of the Newfoundland fisheries and the
+    knowledge that the ships from France were returning every autumn with
+    great supplies of fish cured and salted; for an adequate supply of
+    salt fish was becoming a matter of great importance to the markets of
+    western Europe. In 1527 Henry VIII sent two ships under the command of
+    John Rut to explore the North-American coast, and Captain Rut seems
+    to have reached the Straits of Belle Isle between Newfoundland
+    and Labrador (then blocked with ice so that he took them for
+    a bay), and afterwards to have passed along the east coast of
+    Newfoundland&mdash;already much frequented by the Bretons, Normans, and
+    Portuguese&mdash;and to have stopped at the harbour of St. John's, thence
+    sailing as far south as Massachusetts.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Portuguese monarchy had begun to take possession of the Azores
+    archipelago from the year 1432. These islands were probably known to
+    the Phoenicians, and even to the Arabs of the Middle Ages; between the
+    fourteenth and fifteenth centuries they had been rediscovered by
+    Catalans, Genoese, Flemings, and Portuguese; and after 1444 the Azores
+    began to prove very useful to the sea adventurers of this wonderful
+    fifteenth century, as they became a shelter and a place of call for
+    fresh water and provisions almost in the middle of the Atlantic, 800
+    to 1000 miles due west of Portugal. Portuguese vessels sailed
+    northwards from the Azores in search of fishing grounds, and thus
+    reached Iceland, which they called Terra do Bacalhao.<a name="1-10"></a><a href="#note-1-10"><small>[10]</small></a> They may
+    even before Cabot have visited in an unrecorded fashion the wonderful
+    banks of Newfoundland&mdash;an immense area of shallow sea swarming with
+    codfish.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As soon as the news of the Cabot voyages reached the King of Portugal
+    he arranged to send an expedition of discovery to the far north-west,
+    perhaps to find a northern sea route to Eastern Asia. He gave the
+    command to Gaspar Corte-Real, a Portuguese noble connected through
+    family property with the Azores. Starting from the Azores in the
+    summer of 1500, Corte-Real discovered Newfoundland, and called it
+    "Terra Verde" from its dense woods of fir trees, which are now being
+    churned into wood pulp to make paper for British books and newspapers.
+    He then sailed along the coast of Labrador,<a name="1-11"></a><a href="#note-1-11"><small>[11]</small></a> and thence crossed
+    over to Greenland, the southern half of which he mapped with fair
+    accuracy. His records of this voyage take particular note of the great
+    icebergs off the coast of Greenland. His men were surprised to find
+    that sea water frozen becomes perfectly fresh&mdash;all the salt is left
+    out in the process. So that his two ships could supply themselves
+    with fresh water of the purest, by hacking ice from the masses
+    floating in these Greenland summer seas. The next year he started
+    again, but on a more westerly course. His two ships reached the coasts
+    of New Jersey and Massachusetts, and sailed north once more to
+    Labrador. They captured a number of Amerindian aborigines, but only
+    one of the two ships (with seven of these savages on board) reached
+    Portugal; Gaspar Corte-Real was never heard of again. His brother
+    Miguel went out in search of him, but he likewise disappeared without
+    a trace.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nevertheless these Portuguese expeditions to North America have left
+    ineffaceable traces in the geography of the Newfoundland coast, of
+    which (under the name of Terra Nova<a name="1-12"></a><a href="#note-1-12"><small>[12]</small></a>) the governorship was made
+    hereditary in the Corte-Real family. Cape Race for example&mdash;the most
+    prominent point of the island&mdash;is really the Portuguese <i>Cabo
+    Raso</i>&mdash;the bare or "shaved" cape&mdash;and this was by the Spaniards
+    regarded as the westernmost limit of Portuguese sovereignty in that
+    direction. For the Spaniards were by no means pleased at the intrusion
+    of other nations into a New World which they desired to monopolize
+    entirely for the Spanish Crown. They did not so much mind sharing it,
+    along the line agreed upon in the Treaty of Tordesillas, with the
+    Portuguese, but the ingress of the English and French infuriated them.
+    The Basque people of the north-east corner of Spain were a hardy
+    seafaring folk, especially bold in the pursuit of whales in the Bay of
+    Biscay, and eager to take a share in the salt-fish trade. This desire
+    took them in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to Ireland and
+    Iceland. They began to fish off the Newfoundland coasts perhaps as
+    early as 1525. About this time also the Emperor Charles V, King of
+    Spain, having through one great Portuguese sea captain&mdash;Magalhães
+    (Magellan)&mdash;discovered the passage from Atlantic to Pacific across
+    the extremity of South America, thought by employing another
+    Portuguese&mdash;Estevão Gomez&mdash;to find a similar sea route through North
+    America, which would prove a short cut from Europe to China. This was
+    the famous "North-west Passage" the search for which drew so many
+    great and brave adventurers into the Arctic sea of America between
+    1500 and 1853, to be revealed at last by our fellow countrymen, but to
+    prove useless to navigation on account of the enormous accumulation of
+    ice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Gomez left Corunna in the winter of 1524-5, and reached the
+    North-American coast somewhere about Florida. He probably only began
+    to investigate closely after he passed into the broad gulf of Maine,
+    between Cape Cod and Nova Scotia. Here he sighted from the sea the
+    lofty mountains of New Hampshire, and steered for the mouth of the
+    Penobscot River (which he named the River of Deer), a title which
+    sticks to the locality&mdash;in Deer Island&mdash;at the present day. But this
+    being no opening of a broad strait, he passed on into the Bay of Fundy
+    (from Portuguese word, <i>Fundo</i>, the bottom of a sack or passage),
+    explored its two terminal gulfs, then returned along the coast of Nova
+    Scotia,<a name="1-13"></a><a href="#note-1-13"><small>[13]</small></a> past Cape Sable, and so to the "gut" or Canal of Canso.
+    Gomez realized that Cape Breton was an island (we now know that it is
+    two islands separated by a narrow watercourse), but thought that Cabot
+    Strait was a great bay, and guessed nothing of the Gulf of St.
+    Lawrence, and the chance of securing for Spain the possession of this
+    mighty waterway into the heart of North America.
+</p>
+<p>
+    From Cape North he crossed over to the south coast of Newfoundland,
+    and followed this more or less till he came to Cape Race. Newfoundland
+    was a "very cold and savage land", and Gomez decided it was no use
+    prosecuting any farther his enquiry as to a water passage across North
+    America, because, if it existed, it must lie in latitudes of frozen
+    sea and be unnavigable.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At different places along the east coast of North America he kidnapped
+    natives, and eventually returned to Spain (via Florida and Cuba) with
+    a cargo of Amerindian slaves.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He had been preceded, by seven or eight months, in his explorations
+    along the same coast by GIOVANNI DA VERRAZANO, a native of Florence,
+    who as a navigator and explorer had visited the East, and had
+    associated himself a good deal with the shipowners of Dieppe. Ever
+    since the issue of Cabot's voyages was known&mdash;at any rate from
+    1504&mdash;ships from Brittany and Normandy had made their way to Cape
+    Breton Island and Newfoundland for the cod fisheries. In 1508 a Norman
+    named Aubert was sent out by Jean Ango&mdash;a great merchant of Dieppe of
+    that day&mdash;to found a colony in Newfoundland. Aubert failed to do this,
+    but he captured and brought away at least seven of the natives, no
+    doubt of the Beothik tribe, from Newfoundland to Rouen, with their
+    canoe, clothing, and weapons. A good many ships also went out from La
+    Rochelle on the west coast of France, and took part in the fishing off
+    the coast of Newfoundland: together with the ships of Brittany and
+    Dieppe there may have been a French fishing fleet of seventy to eighty
+    ships plying every summer season between France, Newfoundland, and
+    Cape Breton. So that when "John from Verrazano" offered his services
+    to Francis I to make discoveries across the ocean, which should become
+    possessions of the French Crown, he was quickly provided with the
+    requisite funds and ships.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Verrazano started on the 17th of January, 1524, for the coast of
+    North America, but I shall say little about his expedition here,
+    because it resulted chiefly in the discovery and mapping of what is
+    now the east coast of the United States. He reached as far as the
+    south coast of Newfoundland, it is true; he also gave the names of
+    Nova Gallia and Francesca to the coast regions of eastern North
+    America, and distinctly intended to take possession of these on behalf
+    of the French Crown. But his work in this direction did not lead
+    directly to the creation of the French colony of Canada, because, when
+    he returned from America, Francis I was at war with Spain, and could
+    pay no attention to Verrazano's projects. His voyage is worth
+    recording in the present volume only for these two reasons: he
+    certainly put it into the minds of French people that they might found
+    an empire in North America; and he inspired geographers for another
+    hundred years with the false idea that the great North American
+    Continent had a very narrow waist, like the Isthmus of Panama, and
+    that the Pacific Ocean covered the greater part of what is now called
+    the United States. This mistake arose from his looking across the
+    narrow belts or peninsulas of sand in North Carolina and Virginia, and
+    seeing vast stretches of open water to the west. These were found, a
+    hundred years afterwards, to be merely large shallow lagoons of sea
+    water, but Verrazano thought they were an extension of the Pacific
+    Ocean.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nevertheless, Verrazano's voyage developed into the French
+    colonization of Canada, just as Cabot drew the British to
+    Newfoundland, Columbus the Spaniards to Central and South America, and
+    Amerigo Vespucci showed the Portuguese the way to Brazil. The modern
+    nations of western Europe owe the inception of their great colonies in
+    America to four Italians.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short">
+
+<a name="note-1-1"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#1-1"><u>1</u></a> This is a convenient name for the race formerly called
+    "American Indian". They are not Indians (i.e. natives of India), and
+    they are not the only Americans, since there are now about 110,000,000
+    white Americans of European origin and 24,000,000 negroes and
+    negroids. The total approximate "Amerindian" or aboriginal population
+    of the New World at the present day is 16,000,000, of whom about
+    111,000 live in the Canadian Dominion, and 300,000 in the United
+    States, the remainder in Central and South America.
+</p>
+<a name="note-1-2"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#1-2">
+<u>2</u></a>  It is doubtful whether actual masts and sails were known
+    in America till the coming of Europeans, though the ancient Peruvians
+    are said to have used mat sails in their canoes. But the northern
+    Amerindians had got as far as placing bushes or branches of fir trees
+    upright in their canoes to catch the force of the wind.
+</p>
+<a name="note-1-3"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#1-3"><u>3</u></a> The grapes and vines so often alluded to by the early
+    explorers of North America ripened, according to the species, between
+    August and October. They belong to the same genus&mdash;<i>Vitis</i>&mdash;as that of
+    the grape vines of the Old World, but they were quite distinct in
+    species. Nowadays they are known as the Fox Grapes (<i>Vitis vulpina</i>),
+    the Frost Grape (<i>V. cordifolia</i>), the <i>V. aestivalis</i>, the <i>V.
+    labruska</i>, &amp;c. The fruit of the Fox Grape is dark purple, with a very
+    dusky skin and a musky flavour. The Frost Grape has a very small
+    berry, which is black or leaden-blue when covered with bloom. It is
+    very acid to the taste, but from all these grapes it is easy to make a
+    delicious, refreshing drink. Champlain, however, says that the wild
+    grapes were often quite large in size, and his men found them
+    delicious to eat.
+</p>
+<a name="note-1-4"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#1-4"><u>4</u></a>  Perhaps from the Eastern Eskimo national name <i>Karalit</i>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-1-5"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#1-5"><u>5</u></a> Antonio Zeno served as pilot to Earl Sinclair of the
+    Faeroe Islands and of Roslyn, a Norman-Scottish nobleman who owed
+    joint fealty to the kings of Norway and Scotland. Sinclair was so
+    impressed with the stories of a "Newland" beyond Greenland that he
+    sailed to find it about 1390, but only reached Greenland.
+</p>
+<a name="note-1-6"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#1-6"><u>6</u></a>  Cape Breton was not then, or for nearly two hundred years
+    afterwards, known to be an island. It was thought to be part of the
+    "island" (peninsula) of what we now call Nova Scotia, and the whole of
+    this region which advances so prominently into the Atlantic was
+    believed to be at first the great unknown "New Island" of Irish and
+    English legends&mdash;legends based on the Norse discoveries of the
+    eleventh century. Cape Breton was thus named by the Breton seaman who
+    came thither soon after the Cabot expeditions to fish for cod. This
+    large island is separated from Nova Scotia by the Gut of Canso, a
+    strait no broader than a river.
+</p>
+<a name="note-1-7"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#1-7"><u>7</u></a> Dr. S.E. DAWSON (<i>The St. Lawrence Basin</i>) says of this
+    voyage: "When the forest wilderness of Cape Breton listened to the
+    voices of Cabot's little company (of Bristol mariners) it was the
+    first faint whisper of the mighty flood of English speech which was
+    destined to overflow the continent to the shores of another
+    ocean...."
+</p>
+<a name="note-1-8"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#1-8"><u>8</u></a> Almost certainly this was <i>Conurus carolinensis</i>, a green
+    and orange parrakeet still found in the south-eastern States of North
+    America, but formerly met with as far north as New York and Boston.
+</p>
+<a name="note-1-9"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#1-9"><u>9</u></a>  The name <i>America</i> probably appears for the first time in
+    English print in the old play or masque the <i>Four Elements</i>, which was
+    published about 1518. In a review of the geography of the Earth, as
+    known at that period, a description is given of this vast New World
+    across the Ocean: "But these new landys found lately, been called
+    America, because only Americus did find them first". Americus was a
+    Florentine bank clerk&mdash;Amerigo Vespucci&mdash;at Seville who gave up the
+    counting-house for adventure, sailed with a Spanish captain to the
+    West Indies and the mainland of Venezuela (off which he notes that he
+    met an English sailing vessel, and this as early as 1499!), and then
+    joined the first exploring voyage of the Portuguese to Brazil. He
+    returned to Europe, and in a letter to a fellow countryman at Paris,
+    written in the late autumn of 1502, he claimed to have discovered a
+    New World across the Ocean. His clear statement about what was really
+    the South American Continent aroused so much enthusiasm in civilized
+    Europe that five years afterwards the New World was called after him
+    by a German printer (Walzmüller) at the little Alsatian University of
+    St. Dié. By 1518 the English writers and mariners were probably aware
+    that the discoveries of Cabot, Columbus, and the Portuguese indicated
+    the extension of "America" from the Arctic to the Antarctic, but not
+    till about 1553 did the scholars and adventurers of England show
+    themselves fully alive to the gigantic importance of this New World.
+    Between 1530 and 1553 their attention was distracted from geography
+    and over-sea adventure by the religious troubles of the Reformation.
+</p>
+<a name="note-1-10"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#1-10"><u>10</u></a>  <i>Bacalhao</i> in Portuguese (and a similar word in Spanish,
+    old French, and Italian) means dried, salted fish. It comes from a
+    Latin word meaning "a small stick", because the fish were split open
+    and held up flat to dry by means of a cross or framework of small
+    sticks, the Norse name "stokfiske" meant the same: stockfish or
+    stickfish.
+</p>
+<a name="note-1-11"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#1-11"><u>11</u></a>  <i>Labrador</i> (<i>Lavrador</i> in Portuguese) means a labourer,
+    a serf. The Portuguese are supposed to have brought some Red Indians
+    from this coast to be sold as slaves.
+</p>
+<a name="note-1-12"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#1-12"><u>12</u></a>  Corte-Real's name of Terra Verde ("Greenland") was soon
+    dropped in favour of the older English name "New Land" (Newfoundland,
+    Terra Nova). This was at once adopted by the French seamen as "Terre
+    Neuve".
+</p>
+<a name="note-1-13"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#1-13"><u>13</u></a>  The name Nova Scotia was not applied to this peninsula
+    until 1621, by the British Government. It was at first included with
+    New Brunswick under the Spanish name of Norumbega, and after 1603 was
+    called by the French "Acadie".
+<p class="return">[<a href="#contents">TABLE OF CONTENTS</a>]
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="2HCH0002"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER II
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    Jacques Cartier
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Verrazano and Gomez, and probably the English captain, John Rut, had
+    all sought for the opening of a strait of salt water&mdash;like Magellan's
+    Straits in the far south&mdash;which should lead them through the great
+    North-American continent to the regions of China and Japan. Yet in
+    some incomprehensible way they overlooked the two broad passages to
+    the north and south of Newfoundland&mdash;the Straits of Belle Isle and of
+    Cabot&mdash;which would at any rate lead them into the vast Gulf of St.
+    Lawrence, and thence to the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes; a
+    natural system of waterways connected each with the other and all with
+    the Mississippi and Missouri, the Arctic Ocean, and Hudson's Bay; nay,
+    more, with the North Pacific also; so that with a few "portages", or
+    carryings of canoes from one watershed to another, a traveller of any
+    enterprise, accompanied by a sturdy crew, can cross the broad
+    continent of North America at its broadest from sea to sea without
+    much walking.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Estevão Gomez noticed Cabot Straits between Cape Breton and
+    Newfoundland, but thought them only a very deep bay. John Rut and
+    others discerned the Straits of Belle Isle as a wide recess in the
+    coast rather than the mouth of a channel leading far inland. And yet,
+    after thirty years of Breton, English, and Portuguese fishing
+    operations in these waters, there must have been glimmerings of the
+    existence of the great Gulf of St. Lawrence behind Newfoundland: and
+    JACQUES CARTIER (or Quartier), who had probably made already one
+    voyage to Newfoundland (besides a visit to Brazil), suspected that
+    between Newfoundland and Labrador there lay the opening of the great
+    sea passage "leading to China". He proposed himself to Philippe de
+    Chabot, the Admiral of France, as the leader of a new French adventure
+    to find the North-west Passage, was accepted by King Francis, and at
+    the age of forty-three years set out, with two ships, from St. Malo in
+    Brittany, on April 20, 1534, ten years after Verrazano's voyage, and
+    reached the coast of Newfoundland after a voyage of only twenty days.
+    As he sailed northwards, past the deeply indented fiords and bays of
+    eastern Newfoundland (the shores of which were still hugged by the
+    winter ice), he and his men were much impressed with the incredible
+    numbers of the sea fowl settled for nesting purposes on the rocky
+    islands, especially on Funk Island.<a name="2-1"></a><a href="#note-2-1"><small>[1]</small></a> These birds were guillemots,
+    puffins, great auks,<a name="2-2"></a><a href="#note-2-2"><small>[2]</small></a> gannets (called by Cartier <i>margaulx</i>), and
+    probably gulls and eider duck. To his sailors&mdash;always hungry and
+    partly fed on salted provisions, as seamen were down to a few years
+    ago&mdash;this inexhaustible supply of fresh food was a source of great
+    enjoyment. They were indifferent, no doubt, to the fishy flavour of
+    the auks and the guillemots, and only noticed that they were
+    splendidly fat. Moreover, the birds attracted Polar bears "as large as
+    cows and as white as swans". The bears would swim off from the shore
+    to the islands (unless they could reach them by crossing the ice), and
+    the sailors occasionally killed the bears and ate their flesh, which
+    they compared in excellence and taste to veal.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Passing through the Straits of Belle Isle, Cartier's ships entered
+    the Gulf of St. Lawrence. They had previously visited the adjoining
+    coast of Labrador, and there had encountered their first "natives",
+    members of some Algonkin tribe from Canada, who had come north for
+    seal fishing (Cartier is clever enough to notice and describe their
+    birch-bark canoes). After examining the west coast of Newfoundland,
+    Cartier's ships sailed on past the Magdalen Islands (stopping every
+    now and then off some islet to collect supplies of sea birds, for the
+    rocky ground was covered with them as thickly as a meadow with
+    grass).<a name="2-3"></a><a href="#note-2-3"><small>[3]</small></a> He reached the north coast of Prince Edward Island, and
+    this lovely country received from him an enthusiastic description. The
+    pine trees, the junipers, yews, elms, poplars, ash, and willows, the
+    beeches and the maples, made the forest not only full of delicious and
+    stimulating odours, but lovely in its varied tints of green. In the
+    natural meadows and forest clearings there were red and white
+    currants, gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries, a vetch which
+    produced edible peas, and a grass with a grain like rye. The forest
+    abounded in pigeons, and the climate was pleasant and warm.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Later on he coasted New Brunswick, and paused for a time over Chaleur
+    Bay, hoping it might be the opening to the strait across the continent
+    of which he was in search; but finding it was not, he continued
+    northwards till he had almost rounded the Gaspé Peninsula, a course
+    which would have led him straight away into the wonderful discovery of
+    the St. Lawrence River, but that, being forced by bad weather into
+    Gaspé Bay, and perhaps hindered by fog, instead of entering the St.
+    Lawrence he sailed right across to Anticosti Island. After that,
+    being baffled by bad weather and doubtful as to his resources lasting
+    out, he decided to return to France through the Strait of Belle Isle.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So far he had failed to realize two of the most important things in
+    the geography of this region: the broad southern entrance into the
+    Gulf of St. Lawrence (subsequently called Cabot Strait), which
+    separates Newfoundland on the north from Cape Breton Island on the
+    south, and the broad entrance into the River St. Lawrence between
+    Anticosti Island and the Gaspé Peninsula.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yet, whilst staying in Gaspé Bay, he had a very important meeting with
+    Amerindian natives of the Huron-Iroquois stock, who had come down the
+    River St. Lawrence from the neighbourhood of Quebec, fishing for
+    mackerel. These bold, friendly people welcomed the French heartily,
+    greeting them with songs and dances. But when they saw Cartier erect a
+    great cross on the land at the entrance to Gaspé Bay (a cross bearing
+    a shield with the arms of France and the letters "Vive le Roi de
+    France"), they were ill at ease. It is certain that not one word could
+    be understood in language between the two parties, for there were as
+    yet no interpreters; but the Amerindians were probably shrewd enough
+    to perceive that Cartier was making some claim on the land, and they
+    explained by signs that they considered all this country belonged to
+    themselves. Nevertheless, Cartier persuaded two youths, the sons of
+    one of the chiefs, to go back with him to France on his ship, to learn
+    the French language, to see what France looked like, and to return
+    afterwards as interpreters. The boys, though they were practically
+    kidnapped at first, were soon reconciled to going, especially when
+    they were dressed in French clothes!
+</p>
+<a name="image-0002"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc02.jpg" width="268" height="425"
+alt="Jacques Cartier">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>JACQUES CARTIER</h5>
+<p>
+    When Cartier was on his way home he sailed in a north-easterly
+    direction in such a way as to overlook the broad channel between the
+    Gaspé Peninsula and Anticosti Island, but having rounded the
+    easternmost extremity of that large island, he coasted along its
+    northern shores until he caught sight of the opening of the Canadian
+    channel to the west. He believed then that he had discovered the
+    long-looked-for opening of the trans-continental passage, and sailed
+    for France with his wonderful news.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the 19th of May, 1535, Cartier started again from St. Malo with
+    three ships, the biggest of which was only 120 tons, while the others
+    were respectively 60 and 40 tons capacity. The crew consisted of about
+    112 persons, and in addition there were the two Indian youths who had
+    been kidnapped on the previous voyage, and were now returning as
+    interpreters. Instead, however, of reaching Newfoundland in twenty
+    days, he spent five weeks crossing the Atlantic before he reached his
+    rendezvous with the other ships at Blanc Sablon, on the south coast of
+    Labrador; for the easy access to the Gulf of St. Lawrence through
+    Cabot Strait (between Newfoundland and Cape Breton) was not yet
+    realized. Once past Anticosti Island, the two Huron interpreters began
+    to recognize the scenery.<a name="2-4"></a><a href="#note-2-4"><small>[4]</small></a> They now explained to Cartier that he had
+    entered the estuary of a vast river. This they said he had only to
+    pursue in ships and boats and he would reach "Canada" (which was the
+    name they gave to the district round about Quebec), and that beyond
+    "Canada" no man had ever been known to reach the end of this great
+    water; but, they added, it was fresh water, not salt, and this last
+    piece of information much disheartened Cartier, who feared that he had
+    not, after all, discovered the water route across North America to the
+    Pacific Ocean. He therefore turned about and once more searched the
+    opposite coast of Labrador most minutely, displaying, as he did so, a
+    seamanship which was little else than marvellous, for it is a very
+    dangerous coast, the seas are very stormy, and the look-out often
+    hampered by a sudden rising of dense fog; there are islands and rocks
+    (some of them almost hidden by the water) and sandbanks; but Cartier
+    made this survey of southern Labrador without an accident.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At this period, some three hundred and seventy-five years ago, the
+    northern coasts of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and of Anticosti Island
+    swarmed with huge walruses, which were described by Cartier as sea
+    horses that spent the night on land and the day in the water. They
+    have long since been exterminated by the English and French seamen and
+    settlers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At last Cartier set sail for the south-west, intending to explore this
+    wonderful river and to reach the kingdom of Canada. According to his
+    understanding of the Amerindian interpreters, the waters of the St.
+    Lawrence flowed through three great states: <i>Saguenay</i>, which was the
+    mountainous Gaspé Peninsula and the opposite coast; <i>Canada</i>, Quebec
+    and its neighbourhood; and <i>Hochelaga</i>, the region between Montreal
+    and Lake Ontario. At the mouth of the Saguenay River, where Tadoussac
+    is now situated, he encountered large numbers of white whales&mdash;the
+    Beluga. These are really huge porpoises, allied to the narwhals, but
+    without the narwhal's exaggerated tusk. When he reached the vicinity
+    of the modern Quebec,<a name="2-5"></a><a href="#note-2-5"><small>[5]</small></a> and his Amerindian interpreters found
+    themselves at their actual home (for they were far away from home on a
+    fishing expedition when he caught them in Gaspé Bay) there was great
+    rejoicing; for they were able to tell their relations of the wonderful
+    country to which they had been across the ocean. Cartier was delighted
+    with the surroundings of "Canada" (Quebec), near which at that time
+    was a large settlement (Stadacona) of Huron Indians under a chief
+    named Donnacona. He decided to lay up his ships here for the winter,
+    and to pursue the rest of his western explorations in his boats.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the Amerindians for some reason were not willing that he should go
+    any farther, and attempted to scare him from his projects by arranging
+    for three of their number to come down river in a canoe, dressed in
+    dogs' skins, with their faces blackened, and with bisons' horns
+    fastened to their heads. These devils pretended to take no notice of
+    the French, but to die suddenly as they reached the shore, while the
+    rest of the natives gave vent to howlings of despair and
+    consternation. The three devils were pretending to have brought a
+    message from a god to these Hurons of "Canada" that the country up
+    river (Hochelaga) was so full of ice and snow that it would be death
+    for anyone to go there.
+</p>
+<p>
+    However, this made little or no impression on Cartier; but he consented
+    to leave a proportion of his party behind with the chief Donnacona as
+    hostages, and then started up country in his boats with about seventy
+    picked officers and men. On the 2nd of October, 1535, they reached the
+    vicinity of the modern Montreal, the chief settlement of Hochelaga.
+    The Huron town at the foot of the hills was circular in outline,
+    surrounded by a stockade of three rows of upright tree trunks, which
+    rose to its highest point in the middle, where the timbers of the
+    inner and outward sides sloped to meet one another, the height of the
+    central row being about 8 feet above the ground. All round the inside
+    there was a platform or rampart on which were stored heavy stones to
+    be hurled at any enemy who should attempt to scale the fence. The town
+    was entered by only one doorway, and contained about fifty houses
+    surrounding an open space whereon the towns-people made their
+    bonfires. Each house was about 50 feet long by 12 to 15 feet wide.
+    They were roofed with bark, and usually had attics which were
+    storerooms for food. In the centre of each of these long houses there
+    was a fireplace where the cooking for the whole of the house
+    inhabitants was done. Each family had its own room, but each house
+    probably contained five families. Almost the only furniture, except
+    cooking pots, was mats on which the people sat and slept. The food of
+    the people consisted, besides fish and the flesh of beavers and deer,
+    of maize and beans. Cartier at once recognized the maize or Indian
+    corn as the same grain ("a large millet") as that which he had seen in
+    Brazil.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He gives a description of how they made the maize into bread (or
+    rather "dampers", "ashcakes"); but as this is not altogether clear, it
+    is better to combine it with Champlain's description, written a good
+    many years later, but still at a time when the Hurons were unaffected
+    by the white man's civilization. According to both Cartier and
+    Champlain, the women pounded the corn to meal in a wooden mortar, and
+    removed the bran by means of fans made of the bark of trees. From this
+    meal they made bread, sometimes mixing with the meal the beans
+    (<i>Phaseolus vulgaris</i>), which had been boiled and mashed. Or they
+    would boil both Indian corn and beans into a thick soup, adding to the
+    soup blueberries,<a name="2-6"></a><a href="#note-2-6"><small>[6]</small></a> dried raspberries, or pieces of deer's fat. The
+    meal derived from the corn and beans they would make into bread,
+    baking it in the ashes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Or they would take the pounded Indian corn without removing the bran,
+    and put two or three handfuls of it into an earthen pot full of water,
+    stirring it from time to time, when it boiled, so that it might not
+    adhere to the pot. To this was added a small quantity of fish, fresh
+    or dry, according to the season, to give a flavour to the <i>migane</i> or
+    porridge. When the dried fish was used the porridge smelt very badly
+    in the nostrils of Europeans, but worst of all when the porridge was
+    mixed with dried venison, which was sometimes nearly putrid! If fish
+    was put into this porridge it was boiled whole in the mealy water,
+    then taken out without any attempt to remove the fins, scales, or
+    entrails, and the whole of the boiled fish was pounded up and put back
+    into the porridge. Sometimes a great birch-bark "kettle" would be
+    filled with water, fish, and meat, and red-hot stones be dropped in
+    till it boiled. Then with a spoon they would collect from the surface
+    the fat and oil arising from the fish or meat. This they afterwards
+    mixed with the meal of roasted Indian corn, stirring it with this fat
+    till they had made a thick soup. Sometimes, however, they were content
+    to eat the young corn-cobs freshly roasted, which as a matter of fact
+    (with a little salt) is one of the most delicious things in the world.
+    Or they would take ears of Indian corn and bury them in wet mud,
+    leaving them thus for two or three months; then the cobs would be
+    removed and the rotted grain eaten with meat and fish, though it was
+    all muddy and smelt horribly. Cartier also noticed that these Huron
+    Indians had melons and pumpkins, and described their wampum or shell
+    money.<a name="2-7"></a><a href="#note-2-7"><small>[7]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    From the eminence on which the Huron city stood, Cartier obtained a
+    splendid view of rivers and mountains and magnificent forests, and
+    called the place then and there, in his Norman French, Mont Real, or
+    Royal Eminence, a name which it will probably bear for all time,
+    though the actual city of Montreal lies a few miles below.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Montreal was the limit of Cartier's explorations on this journey. He
+    returned thence to "Canada" or Stadacona, where his men built a fort
+    armed with artillery, and where his ships were anchored. Here he had
+    to stay from the middle of November, 1535, to the middle of April,
+    1536, his ships being shut in by the ice. The experiences of the
+    French during these five months were mostly unhappy. At first Cartier
+    gave himself up to the collecting of information. He noticed for the
+    first time the smoking of tobacco,<a name="2-8"></a><a href="#note-2-8"><small>[8]</small></a> and collected information about
+    the products and features of "Canada". The Indians told him of great
+    lakes in the far west, one of which was so vast that no man had seen
+    the end of it. They told him that anyone travelling up the Richelieu
+    River (as it was called sixty years later) would eventually reach a
+    land in the south where in the winter there was no ice or snow, and
+    where fruit and nut trees grew in abundance. Cartier thought that they
+    were talking to him of Florida, but their geographical information can
+    scarcely have stretched so far; they probably referred to the milder
+    regions of New Jersey and Virginia, which would be reached by
+    following southwards the valley of the Hudson and keeping to the
+    lowlands of the eastern United States.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As the winter set in with its customary Canadian severity the real
+    trouble of the French began. They did not suffer from the cold, but
+    they were dying of scurvy. This disease, from which the natives also
+    suffered to some extent, was due to their eating nothing but salt or
+    smoked provisions&mdash;forms of meat or fish. They lived, of course, shut
+    up in the fort, and Cartier's fixed idea was to keep the Hurons from
+    the knowledge of his misfortune, fearing lest, if they realized how
+    the garrison was reduced, they might treacherously attack and massacre
+    the rest; for in spite of the extravagant joy with which their arrival
+    had been greeted, the Amerindians&mdash;notably the two interpreters who
+    had been to France and returned&mdash;showed at intervals signs of disquiet
+    and a longing to be rid of these mysterious white men, whose coming
+    might involve the country in unknown misfortunes. In January and
+    February, also, Donnacona and these two interpreters and many of the
+    Huron men had been absent hunting in the forests, so that there was no
+    one among the Amerindians to whom the French could turn for
+    information regarding this strange disease. At last 25 out of the 112
+    who had left France were dead, and of the remainder only 10 men,
+    including Cartier, were not grievously ill. Those who were living
+    found it sometimes beyond their strength to bury the dead in the
+    frozen ground, and simply placed their bodies in deep snow. Once or
+    twice, when Cartier left the fort to go out to the ships, he met
+    Domagaya, one of the two interpreters, and found that he also was
+    suffering from this mysterious disease, though not nearly so badly as
+    the French people. On the body of one young man who died of scurvy
+    Cartier and his officers, shuddering, made investigations, opening the
+    corpse and examining the organs to try and find the cause of death.
+    This was on the afternoon of a day on which they had held a solemn
+    service before a statue erected to the Virgin Mary on the shore
+    opposite to the ships. All who were fit to walk went in procession
+    from the fort to the statue, singing penitential psalms and the Litany
+    and celebrating Mass.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Some days after this religious service Cartier met the interpreter,
+    Domagaya, and to his surprise found him perfectly well and strong. He
+    asked him for an explanation, and was told that the medicine which
+    cured this disease was made from the leaves and bark of a tree called
+    ameda.<a name="2-9"></a><a href="#note-2-9"><small>[9]</small></a> Cartier then ventured to say that one of his servants was
+    sick of this unknown disease, and Domagaya sent for two women, who
+    taught the French people how to make an extract from the balsam fir
+    for drinking, and how to apply the same liquid to the inflamed skin.
+    The effect on the crews was miraculous. In six days all the sick were
+    well and strong.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then came the sudden spring. Between April 15th and May 1st the ice on
+    the river was all melted, and on the 6th May, 1536, Cartier started
+    from the vicinity of Quebec to return to France. But before leaving he
+    had managed to kidnap Donnacona, the chief of the Huron settlement,
+    and six or seven other Amerindians, amongst them Tainyoanyi, one of
+    the two interpreters who had already been to France. He seized these
+    men, it appears, partly because he wanted hostages and had good reason
+    to fear that the Indians meditated a treacherous attack on his ships
+    before they could get away. He also wished for native witnesses at
+    Court, when he reached France, to testify to the truth of his
+    discoveries, and even more to convince the King of France that there
+    was great profit to be obtained from giving effect to Cartier's
+    explorations. The chief, Donnacona, was full of wonderful stories of
+    the Saguenay region, and of the great lakes to the northwards of
+    Quebec. Probably he was only alluding to the wealth of copper now
+    known to exist in northern Canada, but to Cartier and the other
+    Frenchmen it seemed as though he spoke of gold and silver, rubies, and
+    other precious stones.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Donnacona's people howled and wept when their chief was seized; but
+    Cartier obliged the chief to reassure them, and to say that the French
+    had promised to bring him back after he had paid a visit to their
+    great king, who would return him to his country with great presents.
+    As a matter of fact, not one of these Indians rapt away by Cartier
+    ever saw Canada again. But this was not the fault of Cartier, but of
+    the distractions of the times which turned away the thoughts of King
+    Francis I from American adventures. The Indians were well and kindly
+    treated in France, but all of them died there before Cartier left St.
+    Malo to return to Canada in 1541.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One advantage he derived from sailing away with these hostages was (no
+    doubt) that they could give him geographical information of importance
+    which materially shortened the return journey. For the first time he
+    made use of the broad strait between Anticosti Island and Gaspé
+    Peninsula, and, better still, entered the Atlantic, not by the
+    dangerous northern route through the straits of Belle Isle, but by
+    means of Cabot Strait, between Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island. Of
+    these discoveries he availed himself on his third and last voyage in
+    1541.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When in that year he once more anchored his ships near Quebec he found
+    the attitude of the Hurons changed. They enquired about their friends
+    and relations who had been carried off five years before, and although
+    they pretended to be reconciled to their fate when they heard (not
+    altogether truly) that one or two were dead, and the others had become
+    great lords in France and had married French women, they really felt a
+    disappointment so bitter and a hostility so great that Cartier guessed
+    their expressions of welcome to be false. However, he sent back to
+    France two of the ships under his command and beached the other three,
+    landed his stores, built two forts at Cap Rouge, above and below, and
+    then started off with a few of his men and two boats to revisit the
+    country of Hochelaga. Here he intended to examine the three rapids or
+    "saults"&mdash;interruptions to the navigation of the St. Lawrence&mdash;which
+    he had observed on his previous journey, and which were later named
+    the La Chine Rapids (in the belief that they were obstacles on the
+    river route to China). But these falls proved insuperable obstacles to
+    his boats, and he gave up any further idea of westward exploration,
+    returned to his forts and ships near Quebec, and there laid the
+    foundations of a fortified town, which he called Charlesbourg Royal.
+    Here he spent a very difficult winter, the Hurons in the neighbourhood
+    becoming increasingly hostile, and at last, when the spring came, as
+    he had received no relief from France, he took to his three ships,
+    abandoned Charlesbourg Royal (having probably to do some fighting
+    before he could get safely away) and thence sailed for France. Off the
+    Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland he met the other ships of the
+    expedition which was to have occupied Canada for France. These were
+    under the command of the Sieur de Roberval, a French nobleman, who had
+    really been made head of the whole enterprise, with Cartier as a
+    subordinate officer, but who, the year before, had allowed Cartier to
+    go off to Canada and prepare the way, promising to follow immediately.
+    The interview between Cartier and Roberval, near where the capital of
+    Newfoundland (St. John's) now stands, was a stormy one. Roberval
+    ordered Cartier to return at once to Charlesbourg and await his
+    arrival. However, in the middle of the night which followed this
+    interview, Cartier took advantage of a favourable wind and set sail
+    for France, arriving soon afterwards at St. Malo.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But Roberval arrived at Charlesbourg (going the roundabout way through
+    the straits of Belle Isle, for Cartier had told him nothing of the
+    convenient passage through Cabot Strait), and there spent the winter
+    of 1542-3, sending his ships back to France. This winter was one of
+    horrors. Roberval was a headstrong, passionate man, perfectly reckless
+    of human life. He maintained discipline by ferocious sentences,
+    putting many of his men in irons, whipping others cruelly, women as
+    well as men, and shooting those who seemed the most rebellious. Even
+    the Indians were moved to pity, and wept at the sight of the woes of
+    these unhappy French men and women under the control of a bloodthirsty
+    tyrant, and many of them dying of scurvy, or miserably weak from that
+    disease.<a name="2-10"></a><a href="#note-2-10"><small>[10]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    However, when the weather was warm again, in June, 1543, Roberval
+    started up the St. Lawrence River in boats to reach the wonderful
+    country of Saguenay. Apparently he met with little success, and, being
+    relieved by French ships in the late summer of 1543, he returned to
+    France.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Thus the splendid work achieved by Cartier seemed to have come to
+    nothing, for neither he nor Roberval revisited America. The French
+    settlement near Quebec was abandoned, so far as the officers of the
+    French king were concerned, and between 1545 and about 1583, if any
+    other Frenchman or European visited Canada it was some private
+    adventurer who traded with the natives in furs, or Basques from France
+    and Spain who frequented the waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence on
+    account of the abundance of whales, walruses, and seals. In fact, at
+    the close of the sixteenth century, the Spanish Basques had
+    established themselves on shore at Tadoussac and other places, and
+    seemed likely to colonize the country.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short">
+
+<a name="note-2-1"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#2-1"><u>1</u></a> Funk Island&mdash;called by Cartier "the Island of Birds"&mdash;is
+    only about 3 miles round, and 46 feet above the sea level. It is 3
+    miles distant from the coast.
+</p>
+<a name="note-2-2"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#2-2"><u>2</u></a> The Great Auk (<i>Alca impennis</i>), extinct since about 1844
+    in Europe and 1870 in Labrador, once had in ancient times a
+    geographical range from Massachusetts and Newfoundland to Iceland,
+    Ireland, Scotland, N.E. England, and Denmark. Perhaps nowhere was it
+    found so abundantly as on the coasts of Eastern Newfoundland and on
+    Funk Island hard by. The Great Auk was in such numbers on the
+    north-east coast of Newfoundland that the Amerindians of that country
+    and of southern Labrador used it as fuel in the winter time, its body
+    being very full of oil and burning with a splendid flame. The French
+    seamen called it <i>pingouin</i> ("penguin") from its fatness, and this
+    name was much later transferred to the real penguins of the southern
+    seas which are quite unrelated to the auks.
+</p>
+<a name="note-2-3"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#2-3"><u>3</u></a> On the shores of these islands they noticed "several
+    great beasts like oxen, which have two tusks in the mouth similar to
+    those of the elephant". These were walruses.
+</p>
+<a name="note-2-4"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#2-4"><u>4</u></a> Anticosti Island received from Cartier the name of "the
+    Island of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin", in consequence of his
+    having discovered it to be an island on the feast day of that name. It
+    did not receive its present title until the late seventeenth century.
+</p>
+<a name="note-2-5"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#2-5"><u>5</u></a> Then called "Canada". The word Quebec (pronounced
+    <i>Kebek</i>) means the narrow part of a river.
+</p>
+<a name="note-2-6"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#2-6"><u>6</u></a> The Canada Blueberry (<i>Vaccinium canadense</i>), called by
+    the French <i>bluës</i> or <i>bluëts</i>. These bluës were collected and dried
+    by the Amerindians, and made a sweet nutriment for eating in the
+    winter.
+</p>
+<a name="note-2-7"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#2-7"><u>7</u></a> Cartier, in Hakluyt's translation, is made to say (I
+    modernize the spelling): "They dig their grounds with certain pieces
+    of wood as big as half a sword, on which ground groweth their corn,
+    which they call 'offici'; it is as big as our small peason.... They
+    have also great store of musk melons, pompions, gourds, cucumbers,
+    peas, and beans of every colour, yet differing from ours."<br><br>
+
+    Wampum, or shell money (which recalls the shell money of the Pacific
+    Islands), consisted either of beads made from the interior parts of
+    sea shells or land shells, or of strings of perforated sea shells. The
+    most elaborate kind of wampum was that of the Amerindians of Canada
+    and the eastern United States, the shell beads of which were generally
+    white. The commoner wampum beads were black and violet. Wampum belts
+    were made which illustrated events, dates, treaties of peace, &amp;c, by a
+    rude symbolism (figures of men and animals, upright lines, &amp;c), and
+    these were worked neatly on string by employing different-coloured
+    beads.
+</p>
+<a name="note-2-8"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#2-8"><u>8</u></a> "There groweth also a certain kind of herb whereof in
+    summer they make a great provision for all the year, making great
+    account of it, and only men use it; and first they cause it to be
+    dried in the sun, then wear it about their necks wrapped in a little
+    beast's skin made like a bag, together with a hollow piece of stone or
+    wood like a pipe. Then when they please they make powder of it and put
+    it in one of the ends of the said cornet or pipe, and laying a coal of
+    fire upon it at the other end, suck so long that they fill their
+    bodies full of smoke, till that it cometh out of their mouth and
+    nostrils, even as out of the tunnel of a chimney. They say that this
+    doth keep them warm and in health: they never go without some of it
+    about them. We ourselves have tried the same smoke, and having put it
+    in our mouths, it seemed almost as hot as pepper." The foregoing is
+    one of the earliest descriptions of tobacco smoking in any European
+    language, the original words being in Cartier's Norman French.
+</p>
+<a name="note-2-9"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#2-9"><u>9</u></a> This tree was the balsam fir, <i>Abies balsamea</i>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-2-10"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#2-10"><u>10</u></a> A story was subsequently told of Roberval's stern
+    treatment which had a germ of truth in it, though it has since been
+    the foundation of many a romance. On the journey out from France it is
+    said that Roberval took with him his niece Marguerite, a high-born
+    lady, who was accompanied by an old companion or nurse. Marguerite was
+    travelling with her uncle because, unknown to him, she had a lover who
+    had sailed with him on this expedition and whom she hoped to marry. As
+    they crossed the Atlantic these facts leaked out, and Roberval
+    resolved to bide his time and punish his niece for her deception. As
+    they passed the coast of Southern Labrador Marguerite and her old
+    nurse were seized and put into a boat, Roberval ordering his sailors
+    to row them ashore to an island, and leave them to their fate. They
+    were given four guns with ammunition and a small supply of provisions.
+    But, as the boat was leaving the ship, Marguerite's lover threw
+    himself into the sea and swam to the island. Here, according to the
+    story which Marguerite is supposed to have told afterwards, they
+    endeavoured to live by killing the wild animals and eating their
+    flesh; but her lover-husband died, so also did her child soon after it
+    was born, and then the old nurse, and the unhappy Marguerite was left
+    alone with the wild beasts, especially the white Polar bears, who
+    thronged round her hut. Nevertheless she kept them at bay with her
+    arquebus, and managed somehow to support an existence, until after
+    nineteen months' isolation the ascending smoke of her fire was seen by
+    people on one of the many fishing vessels which, by this time,
+    frequented the coasts of Newfoundland. She was taken off the island
+    and restored to her home in France. The island to which this tradition
+    more especially relates is now called Grand Meccatina.
+</p>
+<p class="return">[<a href="#contents">TABLE OF CONTENTS</a>]
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="2HCH0003"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER III
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    Elizabethan Pioneers in North America
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Except that the ships of Bristol still no doubt continued to resort to
+    the banks of Newfoundland for fishing, and that even the captains of
+    these ships were occasionally elected admirals of the French, Basque,
+    Portuguese, and English fishing fleets during the summer, the English,
+    as a nation, took no part in claiming political dominion over North
+    America after the voyage of Captain John Rut in 1527. This was the
+    fault of Sebastian Cabot, the son of the man who founded British
+    America, and who had returned to England long afterwards as the Grand
+    Pilot appointed by Edward VI to further the discovery of a northern
+    sea passage to China. Through him the attention of adventurers for a
+    time was diverted from America to the "discovery" of Russia (as it has
+    been called). The efforts of Sebastion Cabot were directed towards the
+    revelation of a north-east passage by way of Arctic Russia to the
+    Pacific, rather than past Newfoundland and Labrador and across Arctic
+    America.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But as soon as Elizabeth came to the throne the sea adventurers of
+    Britain, freed from any subservience to Spanish wishes, developed
+    maritime intercourse between England, Morocco, and West Africa on the
+    one hand, and Tropical and North America on the other. Once more the
+    discovery of the North-west Passage across America to China came into
+    favour. MARTIN FROBISHER<a name="3-1"></a><a href="#note-3-1"><small>[1]</small></a> offered himself as a discoverer, and the
+    Earl of Warwick found the means which provided him with two small
+    sailing vessels of 25 and 20 tons each, besides a pinnace of 10
+    tons.<a name="3-2"></a><a href="#note-3-2"><small>[2]</small></a> Queen Elizabeth confined herself, in the way of
+    encouragement, to waving her lily hand from her palace of Greenwich as
+    these three little boats dropped down the Thames on the 8th of June,
+    1576. She also sent them "an honourable message", which no doubt
+    reached them at Tilbury.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the pinnace was soon swallowed up in the high seas; the seamen in
+    the vessel of 20 tons lost heart and turned their ship homewards.
+    Frobisher alone, in his 25-ton bark, sailed on and on across the
+    stormy Atlantic, past the south end of Greenland, and over the great
+    gulf that separates Greenland from Labrador. He missed the entrance to
+    Hudson's Bay, but reached a great "island" which he named Meta
+    Incognita<a name="3-3"></a><a href="#note-3-3"><small>[3]</small></a>. Here he gathered up stones and, as he believed,
+    minerals, besides capturing at least one Eskimo, and then returned.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One of his stones was declared by the refiners of London to contain
+    gold. There was at once&mdash;as we should say in modern slang&mdash;a boom for
+    these Arctic regions. Queen Elizabeth took part in it, and on the 27th
+    of May, 1577, a considerable fleet, under the command of Frobisher,
+    sailed past the Orkneys for the south end of Greenland. It did not
+    reach as far as Meta Incognita, but it brought back large heaps of
+    earth and pieces of rock, probably from northern Labrador, which
+    almost certainly contained mica schist, and were therefore believed
+    to be full of gold. The following year 1578, Frobisher started on his
+    third American voyage with a fleet of fifteen vessels, mainly financed
+    by Queen Elizabeth, and manned to a great extent by the sons of the
+    aristocracy, besides a hundred persons who were going out as
+    colonists. For this region of ice and snow which was believed to be a
+    mass of gold-bearing rocks! But the result was one of bitter
+    disappointment. The captains were bewildered by the immense icebergs,
+    "so vast that, as they melted, torrents poured from them in sparkling
+    waterfalls". One iceberg toppled over on to a ship and crushed it,
+    though most of the sailors were picked up in the sea and saved. In the
+    thick mists the greater part of the fleet blundered into Hudson's
+    Straits, yet did not realize that they had found a passage into the
+    heart of Canada. At last, disgusted with this land of bare rocks, ice,
+    and snow, they filled up the ships with cargoes of stones supposed to
+    contain gold, and straggled back to England. No gold was extracted,
+    however, from these cargoes, and much discouragement ensued.
+</p>
+<p>
+    SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT, one of the brilliant figures of Elizabeth's
+    reign&mdash;scholar, poet, courageous adventurer, and man of
+    chivalry&mdash;stimulated by the discoveries of Frobisher, obtained a
+    patent or charter in 1578, and, after several unsuccessful attempts,
+    led an expedition of small sailing ships to Newfoundland, where he
+    entered St. John's Bay, and in the presence of the Basque, Portuguese,
+    and Breton fishermen took formal possession of the country for Queen
+    Elizabeth, raising a pillar on which the arms of England were engraved
+    as a token. He then proceeded to grant lands to the fishermen to
+    reassure them, and loaded his ships with rocks brought from the
+    interior mountains and supposed to contain minerals. But in his
+    further explorations of the southern coast of Newfoundland one of the
+    ships was lost and nearly a hundred men intended as colonists were
+    drowned.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Gilbert then determined to return to England in his small frigate of
+    10 tons named the <i>Squirrel</i>. He was accompanied by a larger vessel,
+    the <i>Golden Hinde</i>, but refused to leave the men on the <i>Squirrel</i> to
+    their fate. Consequently, between the Azores and the north coast of
+    Spain, when the <i>Squirrel</i> was overwhelmed by the heavy seas, Sir
+    Humphrey Gilbert perished together with all on board.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In spite, however, of the disappointing results of Gilbert's attempt
+    to found a colony in Newfoundland, the importance of the cod fishery
+    and the ivory tusks and oil of the walruses drew ever more and more
+    ships from Bristol and Devonshire to the coasts of that great island
+    and to the Gulf of St. Lawrence beyond. In 1592 the English
+    adventurers got as far west as Anticosti Island (in a ship from
+    Bristol), and in 1597 there is the first record of English ships (from
+    London&mdash;the <i>Hopewell</i> and the <i>Chancewell</i>) sailing up the St.
+    Lawrence River, perhaps as far west as Quebec.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In 1602, stimulated by Sir Walter Raleigh,<a name="3-4"></a><a href="#note-3-4"><small>[4]</small></a> Bartholomew Gosnold
+    sailed direct to the coast of North America south of the Newfoundland
+    latitudes, and anchored his bark off the coast of Massachusetts on the
+    26th of March, 1602. Failing to find a good harbour here, he stood out
+    for the south and definitely discovered and named Cape Cod, not far
+    from the modern city of Boston. From Cape Cod he made his way to the
+    Elizabeth Islands in Buzzard's Bay, and here he built a storehouse and
+    fort, and may be said to have laid the foundations of the future
+    colony of New England. He brought back with him a cargo of sassafras
+    root, which was then much esteemed as a valuable medicine and a remedy
+    for almost all diseases.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Subsequent expeditions of English ships explored and mapped the coast
+    of Maine, and took on board Amerindians for exhibition in England.
+    Their adventures, together with those of the colonists farther south,
+    led to the creation of chartered companies, and to the great British
+    colonies of New England, New York, Virginia, the Carolinas, and
+    Georgia, which were to become in time the United States of America&mdash;a
+    vast field of adventure which we cannot follow farther in this book.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As regards Newfoundland, James I, in 1610, granted a patent to a
+    Bristol merchant for the foundation there of a colony, and although
+    this attempt, and another under Sir George Calvert (Lord Baltimore) in
+    1616, came almost to nothing through the attacks of the French and the
+    dislike of the crews of the fishing vessels to permanent settlers who
+    might interfere with the fishing industry, the English colonization of
+    Newfoundland to some extent caught hold, so that in 1650 there were
+    about two thousand colonists of English descent along the east and
+    south-east coasts of the island. But settlement was prohibited within
+    six miles of the shore, to please the fishermen, and this regulation
+    checked for more than two hundred years the colonization of
+    Newfoundland.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nova Scotia as a British colony also came into being as another result
+    of these adventurous British expeditions to North America in the reign
+    of James I. Under the name of Acadie this region had been declared to
+    be a portion of New France by De Monts and Champlain in 1604-14. But
+    the English colonists in 1614 drove the French out of the peninsula of
+    Nova Scotia on the plea that it was a part of the discoveries made by
+    the Cabots on behalf of the British Crown. In 1621 James I gave a
+    grant of all this territory to Sir William Alexander under the name of
+    Nova Scotia, and both Charles I and Cromwell encouraged settlement in
+    this beautiful region. When Charles II ceded it to France in 1667 the
+    English and Scottish colonists who were residing there, and the
+    English settlers of New England, refused to recognize the effects of
+    the Treaty of Bréda, and so harassed the French in the years which
+    followed that in 1713 Nova Scotia was, together with Newfoundland,
+    recognized as belonging to Great Britain. The French colonists were
+    allowed to remain, but during the course of the eighteenth century
+    they combined with the Amerindians (who liked the French and disliked
+    the British) and made the position of the British colonists so
+    precarious that they were finally expelled and obliged to transfer
+    themselves to Louisiana and Canada. This was the departure of the
+    Acadians so touchingly described by Longfellow.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The British had become tenacious of their rights over the east coast
+    of Newfoundland, because from the middle of the seventeenth century
+    onwards they were becoming increasingly interested in the whale
+    fisheries and the fur trade of the lands bordering on Hudson's Bay,
+    and would not tolerate any blocking of the sea route thither by the
+    French.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the explorations of Arctic America, Frobisher's expeditions had
+    been succeeded by those of JOHN DAVIS, who in the course of three
+    voyages, beginning in June, 1585, passed the entrance of Hudson's
+    Straits and reached a point as far north as 72° 41', a lofty granite
+    island, which he named Sanderson's Hope. He saw beyond him a great
+    sea, free, large, very salt, and blue, unobstructed by ice and of an
+    unsearchable depth, and believed that he had completely discovered the
+    eastern entrance of the North-West Passage.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0003"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc03.jpg" width="283" height="450"
+alt="Icebergs and Polar Bears">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>ICEBERGS AND POLAR BEARS</h5>
+<p>
+    HENRY HUDSON, the great English navigator, who had made two voyages
+    (1607-8) for the English-Moscovy Company to discover a north-east
+    passage to India, past Siberia, commanded a third experiment in 1609
+    at the expense of the Dutch East India Company. He was to discover the
+    North-West Passage. For this purpose he entered the river now named
+    the Hudson, but soon found it was only a river; though he returned to
+    Holland with such an encouraging account of the surrounding country
+    that the Dutch a little later on, founded on the banks of the Hudson
+    River their colony of New Amsterdam (afterwards the State of New
+    York). In 1610 Hudson accepted a British commission to sail beyond
+    where Davis and Frobisher had passed, and once more seek for the
+    north-west passage to China. Instead he found the way into Hudson's
+    Bay. Here his men, alarmed at the idea of being lost in these regions
+    of ice and snow, mutinied against him, placed him and those who were
+    faithful to him in a boat, and cast them off, themselves returning to
+    England with the news of his discovery. Hudson was never heard of
+    again, and, strange to say, the mutineers apparently received no
+    punishment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Between 1602 and 1668, English adventurers from London and Bristol,
+    notable amongst whom were WILLIAM BAFFIN, LUKE FOX, and CAPTAIN JAMES,
+    mapped the coasts of Hudson's Bay and Baffin's Bay and brought to the
+    notice of merchants in England the abundance of whales in these Arctic
+    waters, and of fur-bearing beasts and fur-trading Indians in the
+    region of Hudson's Bay.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This last point was most forcibly presented to Charles II and his
+    Government by a disappointed French Canadian, Pierre Esprit Radisson,
+    whose adventures will later on be described. Radisson, conceiving
+    himself to be badly treated by the French Governor of Canada, crossed
+    over to England with his brother-in-law, Chouart, and the two were
+    warmly taken up by Prince Rupert of Bavaria, the cousin of Charles II.
+    They were sent out by Prince Rupert in command of an expedition
+    financed by him and a number of London merchants, and in 1669 the New
+    England captain, Gillam, returned to England with Chouart and the
+    first cargo of furs from Hudson's Bay. This cargo so completely met
+    the expectations of those who had promoted the venture that it led in
+    1670 to the foundation of the Governor and Company of Adventurers of
+    England trading into Hudson's Bay, a company chartered by Charles II
+    and presided over by Prince Rupert, and an association which proved to
+    be the germ of British North America, of the vast three-quarters of
+    the present Dominion of Canada.
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="note-3-1"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#3-1"><u>1</u></a> The name was also spelt Furbusher, and in other ways. He
+    became Sir Martin Frobisher over the wars of the Armada, and died Lord
+    High Admiral of England in 1592.
+</p>
+<a name="note-3-2"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#3-2"><u>2</u></a> It may be of interest to set forth the kind of rations
+    shipped in those Elizabethan times for the food of the sailors.
+    According to Frobisher's accounts these consisted of salted beef, salt
+    pork, salt fish, biscuit, meal for making bread, dried peas, oatmeal,
+    rice, cheese, butter, beer, and wine, with brandy for emergencies. As
+    regards beer, the men were to have a ration of 1 gallon a day each.
+    Altogether it may be said that these rations were superior in
+    variety&mdash;and no doubt in quality&mdash;to the food given to seamen in the
+    British merchant marine in the nineteenth century.
+</p>
+<a name="note-3-3"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#3-3"><u>3</u></a> We now know Meta Incognita to be the southernmost
+    peninsula of the vast Baffin Island.
+</p>
+<a name="note-3-4"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#3-4"><u>4</u></a> In 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh, the half-brother of Sir
+    Humphrey Gilbert, financed an expedition to sail to the coast of North
+    America in a more southerly direction. In this way was founded the
+    (afterwards abandoned) colony of Roanoke, in North Carolina. It was to
+    this region that Queen Elizabeth applied the title of Virginia, which
+    some years afterwards was transferred to the first English colony on
+    the James River.
+</p>
+<p class="return">[<a href="#contents">TABLE OF CONTENTS</a>]
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="2HCH0004"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER IV
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    Champlain and the Foundation of Canada
+</h3>
+<p>
+    From the first voyage of Cartier onwards, Canada was called
+    intermittently New France, and its possibilities were not lost sight
+    of by a few intelligent Frenchmen on account of the fur trade. Amongst
+    these was Amyard de Chastes, at one time Governor of Dieppe, who got
+    into correspondence with the adventurers who had settled as fur
+    traders at Tadoussac, prominent amongst whom was Du Pont-Gravé. De
+    Chastes dispatched with Pont-Gravé a young man whose acquaintance he
+    had just made, SAMUEL CHAMPLAIN.<a name="4-1"></a><a href="#note-4-1"><small>[1]</small></a> This was the man who, more than
+    any other, created French Canada.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Champlain had had already a most adventurous life. He was born about
+    1567, at Brouage, in the Saintonge, opposite to the Island of Héron,
+    on the coast of western France. From his earliest years he had a
+    passion for the sea, but he also served as a soldier for six years.
+    His father had been a sea captain, and his uncle as an experienced
+    navigator was commissioned by the King of Spain to transport by sea to
+    that country the remainder of the Spanish soldiers who had been
+    serving in Brittany. The uncle took his nephew with him. Young
+    Champlain when in Spain managed to ingratiate himself so much with the
+    Spanish authorities that he was actually commissioned as a captain to
+    take a king's ship out to the West Indies. No sooner did he reach
+    Spanish America than he availed himself of the first chance to
+    explore it. For two years he travelled over Cuba, and above all
+    Mexico. He visited the narrowest part of Central America and conceived
+    the possibility of making a trans-oceanic canal across the Panama
+    isthmus.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When he got back to France he placed before Henry IV a report on
+    Spanish Central America, together with a project for making a canal at
+    Panama. Henry IV was so pleased with his work and enterprise that he
+    gave him a pension and the title of Geographer to the King. Shortly
+    afterwards he met Governor de Chastes at Dieppe, and was by him sent
+    out to Canada. The ship which carried Champlain, PONT-GRAVÉ,<a name="4-2"></a><a href="#note-4-2"><small>[2]</small></a> the
+    SIEUR DE MONTS,<a name="4-3"></a><a href="#note-4-3"><small>[3]</small></a> and other French adventurers (together with two
+    Amerindian interpreters whom Pont-Gravé had brought from Canada to
+    learn French) arrived at Tadoussac on May 24, 1603.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Champlain lost no time in commencing his explorations. Tadoussac was
+    at the mouth of an important river, called by the French the Saguenay,
+    a name which they also applied to the mysterious and wonderful country
+    through which it flowed in the far north; a country rich in copper and
+    possibly other precious metals. Champlain ascended the Saguenay River
+    for sixty miles as far as the rapids of Chicoutima. The Amerindians
+    whom he met here told him of Lake St. John, lying at a short distance
+    to the west, and that beyond this lake and the many streams which
+    entered it there lay a region of uplands strewn with other lakes and
+    pools; and farther away still began the sloping of the land to the
+    north till the traveller sighted a great arm of the salt sea, and
+    found himself amongst tribes (probably the Eskimo) who ate raw flesh,
+    and to the Indians appeared absolute savages.<a name="4-4"></a><a href="#note-4-4"><small>[4]</small></a> This was probably
+    the first allusion, recorded by a European, to the existence of
+    Hudson's Bay, that huge inlet of the sea, which is one of the leading
+    features in the geography of British North America.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Montagnais Indians round about Tadoussac received Champlain with
+    great protestations of friendship, and at the headquarters of their
+    principal chief or "Sagamore" celebrated this new friendship and
+    alliance with a feast in a very large hut. The banquet, as usual, was
+    preceded by a long address from the Sagamore in answer to the
+    description of France, given by one of the Indian interpreters. The
+    address was accompanied by the solemn smoking of tobacco, and at every
+    pause in this grave oration the natives present shouted with one
+    voice: "Ho! ho! ho!" The repast consisted of elk's meat (which struck
+    the Frenchmen as being like beef), also the flesh of bear, seal,
+    beaver, and wild fowl. There were eight or ten stone boilers or
+    cauldrons full of meats in the middle of the great hut, separated each
+    six feet from each other, and each one having its own fire. Every
+    native used a porringer or vessel made of birch bark. When the meat
+    was cooked a man in authority distributed it to each person. But
+    Champlain thought the Indians ate in a very filthy manner. When their
+    hands were covered with fat or grease they would rub them on their own
+    heads or on the hair of their dogs. Before the meat was cooked each
+    guest arose, took a dog, and hopped round the boilers from one end of
+    the great hut to the other. Arriving in front of the chief, the
+    Montagnais Indian feaster would throw his dog violently to the ground,
+    exclaiming: "Ho! ho! ho!" after which he returned to his place.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the close of the banquet every one danced, with the skulls of
+    their Iroquois enemies slung over their backs. As they danced they
+    slapped their knees with their hands, and shouted: "Ho! ho! ho!" till
+    they were out of breath.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The huts of these Indians were low and made like tents, being covered
+    with the bark of the birch tree. An opening about a foot of the top
+    was left uncovered to admit light and to allow the smoke to escape.
+    Though low, the huts were sometimes quite large, and would accommodate
+    ten families. These slept higgledy-piggledy on skins, with their dogs
+    amongst them. The dogs in appearance were something like what we know
+    as Eskimo dogs, and also rather resembled the Chinese chow, with broad
+    heads and rather short muzzles, prick ears, and a tail inclined to
+    curl over the back. "All these people have a very cheerful
+    disposition, laughing often, yet at the same time they are somewhat
+    phlegmatic. They talk very deliberately, as if desiring to make
+    themselves well understood, and, stopping suddenly, they reflect for a
+    long time, when they resume their discourse."
+</p>
+<p>
+    They were agile, well-proportioned people, who in the summertime went
+    about nearly naked, but in the winter were covered with good furs of
+    elk, otter, beaver, bear, seal, and deer. The colour of their skin was
+    usually a pale olive, but the women for some reason made themselves
+    much darker-skinned than the men by rubbing their bodies with pigments
+    which turned them to a dark brown. At times they suffered very much
+    from lack of food, being obliged then to frequent the shore of the
+    river or gulf to obtain shellfish. When pressed very hard by famine
+    they would eat their dogs (their only domestic animal) and even the
+    leather of the skins with which they clothed themselves. In the autumn
+    they were much given to fishing for eels, and they dried a good deal
+    of eel flesh, to last them through the winter. During the height of
+    the winter they hunted the beaver, and later on the elk. Though they
+    ate wild roots and fruits whenever they could obtain them, they do
+    not seem to have cultivated any grain or vegetables. In the early
+    spring they were sometimes dying of hunger, and looked so thin and
+    haggard that they were mere walking skeletons. They were then ready to
+    eat carrion that was putrid, so that it is little wonder that they
+    suffered much from scurvy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yet the rivers and the gulf abounded in fish, and as soon as the
+    waters were unlocked by the melting of the ice in April, the surviving
+    Indians rapidly grew fat and well, and of course the late summer and
+    the autumn brought them nuts (hickory and other kinds of walnut, and
+    hazel nuts), wild cherries, wild plums, raspberries, strawberries,
+    gooseberries, blackberries, currants,<a name="4-5"></a><a href="#note-4-5"><small>[5]</small></a> cranberries, and grapes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Champlain observed amongst them for the first time the far-famed
+    Amerindian snowshoes, which he compares very aptly for shape to a
+    racquet used in tennis.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Champlain next visited the site of Stadacona, but there was no longer
+    any settlement of Europeans at that place, nor were the native
+    Amerindians the descendants of the Hurons that had received Jacques
+    Cartier. For the first time the name Quebec (pronounced Kebek) is
+    applied to this point where the great River St. Lawrence narrows
+    before dividing to encircle the Isle of Orleans. In fact, Quebec meant
+    in the Algonkin speech a place where a river narrows; for a tribe of
+    the great Algonkin family, <i>the</i> Algonkins, allied to the tribes of
+    Maine and New Brunswick, had replaced the Hurons as the native
+    inhabitants of this region.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the shore of Quebec he noticed "diamonds" in some slate rocks&mdash;no
+    doubt quartz crystals. Proceeding on up the River St. Lawrence he
+    observed the extensive woods of fir and cypress (some kind of <i>Thuja</i>
+    or <i>Juniper</i>), the undergrowth of vines, "wild pears", hazel nuts,
+    cherries, red currants and green currants, and "certain little
+    radishes of the size of a small nut, resembling truffles in taste,
+    which are very good when roasted or boiled". As they advanced towards
+    the interior the country became increasingly mountainous on the south
+    (the green mountains of New Hampshire), and was more and more
+    beautiful&mdash;"the pleasantest land yet seen". Landing on the south bank
+    of the St. Lawrence, west of the entrance of the river of the Iroquois
+    (the Richelieu), he found magnificent forests, which, besides the
+    trees already mentioned, included oaks, chestnuts, maples, pines,
+    walnut-like nut trees,<a name="4-6"></a><a href="#note-4-6"><small>[6]</small></a> aspens, poplars, and beeches; with climbing
+    hops and vines, strawberries trailing over the ground, and raspberry
+    canes and currant bushes "growing in the thick grass". These splendid
+    woods on the islands and banks of the broad river were full of game:
+    elks,<a name="4-7"></a><a href="#note-4-7"><small>[7]</small></a> wapiti deer, Virginian deer, bears, porcupines, hares, foxes,
+    beavers, otters, and musk rats, besides many animals he could not
+    recognize.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At last his little expedition in "a skiff and canoe" had to draw into
+    the bank, warned by the noise that they were approaching a great fall
+    of water&mdash;the La Chine or St. Louis Rapids. Champlain wrote: "I saw,
+    to my astonishment, a torrent of water descending with an impetuosity
+    such as I have never before witnessed.... It descends as if in steps,
+    and at each descent there is a remarkable boiling, owing to the force
+    and swiftness with which the water traverses the fall, which is about
+    a league in length.... The territory on the side of the fall where we
+    went overland consists, so far as we saw it, of very open wood, where
+    one can go with his armour without much difficulty."
+</p>
+<p>
+    From the Algonkin Indians in the neighbourhood of these St. Louis
+    Rapids, and also from those living near Quebec, Champlain obtained a
+    good deal of geographical information to add to his own observations.
+    He was given an idea, more or less correct, of Lake Ontario, the Falls
+    of Niagara, Lake Erie and Lake Huron, and perhaps also of Lake
+    Superior, a sea so vast, said the Amerindians, that the sun set on its
+    horizon. This sheet of water, Champlain calculated, must be 1200 miles
+    distant to the west, and therefore identical with the "Mer du sud"
+    (Pacific Ocean), which all North-American explorers for three
+    centuries wished to reach.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After collecting much information about possible copper mines in the
+    regions north and south of the Lower St. Lawrence, and of silver<a name="4-8"></a><a href="#note-4-8"><small>[8]</small></a> in
+    New Brunswick or Nova Scotia, and a terrible story which he more than
+    half believed about a monster of prodigious size, the <i>Gougou</i>,<a name="4-9"></a><a href="#note-4-9"><small>[9]</small></a>
+    Champlain set sail for France at the end of August, 1603.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In April, 1604, Champlain accompanied the Sieur de Monts (who had
+    succeeded the dead Amyard de Chastes as head of a chartered
+    fur-trading association) in a fresh expedition to North America,
+    together with a hundred and twenty artisans and several noblemen.
+    They were to occupy the lands of "Cadie" (Acadia, Nova Scotia),
+    Canada, and other places in New France. De Monts thought Tadoussac and
+    Quebec too cold in wintertime, and preferred the sunnier east coast
+    regions. He aimed indeed at colonizing what is now New England.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the way to Nova Scotia, the expedition was nearly wrecked on Sable
+    Island, about one hundred and twenty miles south of Cape Breton
+    Island, and noticed there the large red cattle run wild from the bulls
+    and cows landed on Sable Island by the Portuguese some sixty years
+    earlier. (The Portuguese of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
+    deserved well of humanity for the generous way in which they left
+    cattle, goats, pigs, and rabbits to run wild on desert islands and
+    serve as provender for shipwrecked mariners like Robinson Crusoe.)
+    Champlain also speaks of the "fine large black foxes" which he and
+    other voyagers noticed on Sable Island. How they came there is a
+    mystery, unless the island had once been part of the mainland.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This same Sable Island had been the scene of an extraordinary
+    experiment at the end of the previous century. In 1598 the Marquis de
+    la Roche, given a commission to colonize New France, sailed in a small
+    ship for North America with sixty convicts from French prisons as
+    colonists. He landed them on Sable Island, and went away to look for
+    some good site for his colony. But then a storm arose, and his little
+    ship was literally blown back to France. The convicts, abandoned thus,
+    built themselves shelters out of the driftwood of wrecks; killed and
+    ate the cattle and caught fish. They made themselves warm clothes out
+    of the skins of the seals which frequented the island coast in
+    thousands. But these convicts quarrelled and fought among themselves
+    so fiercely that when at last a ship from Normandy came to take them
+    away, there were only twelve left&mdash;twelve shaggy men with long tangled
+    hair and beards; and, a legend says, in addition a Franciscan monk
+    who had been landed on the island with them as a kind of missionary or
+    chaplain, and who had been so heartbroken at their bloody quarrels and
+    horrible deeds that when the Norman ship arrived to take the castaways
+    back to France, the Franciscan refused to go with them, believing
+    himself to be dying and wishing to end his life undisturbed. So he was
+    left behind. But after the ship had sailed away he slowly mended, grew
+    well and strong, and cultivated eagerly his little garden. For food he
+    ate the whelks, mussels, and oysters that were so abundant on the
+    shore. Occasionally ships (then as now) were wrecked on Sable Island
+    in stormy weather, and the good monk ministered to the mariners who
+    reached the shore. Also he was visited, ever and again, by the Breton
+    fishing boats, which brought him supplies of necessaries and the bread
+    and wine for celebrating Mass. Long after his death his spirit was
+    thought to haunt the desolate island.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Champlain and his companions passed on from Sable Island to the
+    south-east coast of Nova Scotia, noticing as they landed here and
+    there the abundance of rabbits<a name="4-10"></a><a href="#note-4-10"><small>[10]</small></a> and sea birds, especially the Great
+    Auk, of which they killed numbers with sticks, cormorants (whose fishy
+    eggs they ate with enjoyment), puffins, guillemots, gulls, terns,
+    scissorbills, divers, ospreys, buzzards, and falcons; and no doubt the
+    typical American white-tailed sea eagles, ravens, ducks, geese,
+    curlews, herons, and cranes. Here and there they found the shore
+    "completely covered with sea wolves"&mdash;seals, of course, probably the
+    common seal and the grey seal. Of these they captured as many as they
+    wanted, for the seals, like most of the birds, were quite unafraid of
+    man.
+</p>
+<p>
+    They then explored the Bay of Fundy, and, after zig-zagging about,
+    decided to fix on the harbour of St. John's (New Brunswick) as the
+    site for their colony. The future capital of New France, therefore,
+    was begun on La Sainte Croix (Dochet) Island, near the mouth of the
+    wonderful tidal estuary of the Uigudi (Ouygoudy) River.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here they passed the winter, but suffered so badly from scurvy<a name="4-11"></a><a href="#note-4-11"><small>[11]</small></a>
+    that, when in the spring of 1605 Du Pont Gravé arrived from Brittany
+    with supplies, the remnant of the colony was removed to the opposite
+    coast of Nova Scotia to Port Royal (afterwards named by the English
+    Annapolis<a name="4-12"></a><a href="#note-4-12"><small>[12]</small></a>). The French seem to have fallen in love with this place
+    from the very first. Nevertheless here they suffered from scurvy
+    during the winter as elsewhere. Before moving over here, however,
+    Champlain, together with De Monts, had explored the west of New
+    England south of New Brunswick as far as Plymouth, just south of
+    Boston.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Off the coast of Maine (Richmond's Island) they encountered
+    agricultural Amerindians of a new tribe, the Penobskot probably, who
+    cultivated a form of rank narcotic tobacco (<i>Nicotiana rustica</i>),
+    which they called <i>Petun</i>. (A variety of this has produced the
+    handsome garden flower <i>Petunia</i>, whose Latin name is derived from
+    this native word Petun.) They also grew maize or Indian corn, planting
+    very carefully three or four seeds in little mounds three feet apart
+    one from the other, the soil in between being kept clear of weeds. The
+    American farmers of to-day cannot adopt any better method.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The islands round about Portland (Maine) were matted all over with
+    wild red currants, so that the eye could scarcely discern anything
+    else. Attracted by this fruit, clouds of wild pigeons had
+    assembled<a name="4-13"></a><a href="#note-4-13"><small>[13]</small></a>. They manifested hardly any fear of the French, who
+    captured large numbers of them in snares, or killed them with guns.
+    The natives of southern Maine fled with dismay on sighting the French
+    ships, for they had never before seen sailing vessels, but later on
+    they timidly approached the French ships in a canoe, then landed and
+    went through a wild dance on the shore to typify friendliness.
+    Champlain took with him some drawing paper and a pencil or crayon,
+    together with a quantity of knives and ship's biscuit. Landing alone,
+    he attracted the natives towards him by offering them biscuits, and
+    having gathered them round him (being of course as much unable to
+    understand their speech as they were French), he proceeded to ask
+    questions by means of certain drawings, chiefly the outlines of the
+    coast. The savages at once seized his idea, and taking up his pencil
+    drew on the paper an accurate outline of Massachusetts Bay, adding
+    also rivers and islands unknown to the French. They went on by further
+    intelligent signs to supply information. For instance, they placed six
+    pebbles at equal distances to intimate that Massachusetts Bay was
+    occupied by six tribes and governed by as many chiefs. By drawings of
+    growing maize and other plants they intimated that all these people
+    lived by agriculture.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Champlain thought Massachusetts (in his first voyage) a most
+    attractive region in the summer, what with the blue water of the
+    enclosed arms of the sea, the lofty forest trees, and the fields of
+    Indian corn and other crops.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When these French explorers reached the harbour of Boston, the islands
+    and mainland were swarming with the native population. The Amerindians
+    were intensely interested in the arrival of the first sailing vessel
+    they had ever seen. Although it was only a small barque, its size was
+    greater than any canoe known to them. As it seemed to spread huge
+    white wings and to glide silently through the water without the use of
+    paddles or oars, it filled them with surprise and admiration. They
+    manned all their canoes<a name="4-14"></a><a href="#note-4-14"><small>[14]</small></a> and came out in a flotilla to express
+    their honour and reverence for the wonderful white men. But when the
+    French took their leave, it was equally obvious that the natives
+    experienced a sense of relief, for they were disquieted as well as
+    filled with admiration at the arrival of these wonderful beings from
+    an unknown world.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Champlain describes the wigwams or native huts as being cone-shaped,
+    heavily thatched with reeds, with an opening at the top of the roof
+    for the smoke to escape. Inside the huts was a low bed raised a foot
+    from the ground and made of short posts driven into the ground, with a
+    surface made of boards split from trees. On these boards were laid
+    either the dressed skins of deer or bear, or thick mattresses made of
+    reeds or rushes. The beds were large enough for several people to lie
+    on. Champlain describes the huts as being full of fleas, and likewise
+    the persons of the nearly naked Indians, who carried these fleas out
+    with them into the fields when they were working, so that the
+    Frenchmen by stopping to talk to the natives became covered with
+    fleas to such an extent that they were obliged to change their
+    clothes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the fields were cultivated not only maize, but beans similar to the
+    beans grown by the natives of Brazil, vegetable marrows or pumpkins,
+    Jerusalem artichokes<a name="4-15"></a><a href="#note-4-15"><small>[15]</small></a>, radishes, and tobacco. The woods were filled
+    with oaks, walnut trees<a name="4-16"></a><a href="#note-4-16"><small>[16]</small></a>, and the red "cedar" of North America,
+    really a very large juniper, the foliage of which in the summertime
+    often assumes a reddish colour, together with the trunk. This
+    Virginian juniper or "red cedar" is now quite a common tree in
+    England. In warm weather it exhales a delicious aromatic scent.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All these natives of the Massachusetts coast were described by
+    Champlain as being almost naked in the summertime, wearing at most a
+    small piece of leather round the waist, and a short robe of spun hemp
+    which hung down over the shoulders. Their faces were painted red,
+    black and yellow. The men pulled out any hairs which might come on the
+    chin, and thus were beardless. They were armed with pikes, clubs,
+    bows, and arrows. The pikes were probably made of wood with the ends
+    hardened by being burnt to a point in the fire, and the arrow tips
+    were made of the sharp termination of the tail of the great
+    king-crab<a name="4-17"></a><a href="#note-4-17"><small>[17]</small></a>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These Massachusetts "Indians" described to Champlain a wonderful bird
+    which at some seasons of the year they caught in snares and ate. This
+    Champlain at once guessed was the wild turkey, now, of course, quite
+    extinct in that region. This wild turkey of the eastern half of North
+    America (including southern Canada) was quite a distinct form from the
+    Mexican bird, which last is the origin of our domestic turkey.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In July, 1606, as De Monts had not returned from France, and the
+    little colony at Port Royal was without supplies, they decided to
+    leave two Frenchmen in charge of the local chief of the Mikmak
+    Indians, and find their way along the coast to Cape Breton, where they
+    might get a fishing vessel to take them back to France. But after
+    travelling in an open boat&mdash;a chaloupe&mdash;round the coast of Nova Scotia
+    they met another small boat off Cape Sable, under the charge of the
+    secretary of De Monts, and learnt that Lieutenant-General DE
+    POUTRINCOURT<a name="4-18"></a><a href="#note-4-18"><small>[18]</small></a> (one of the great names amongst the pioneers of
+    Canada, and the man who had really chosen Port Royal for the French
+    headquarters at Nova Scotia) had already returned from France with
+    fresh supplies. Consequently, Champlain and his companions returned to
+    Port Royal, and all set to work with eagerness to develop the
+    settlement. Champlain relates in his book how he created vegetable
+    gardens, trout streams and ponds, and a reservoir of salt water for
+    sea fish; but he was soon off again on a fresh journey of exploration,
+    because De Monts was not satisfied with Nova Scotia on account of the
+    cold in winter. Accordingly Champlain examined the whole coast round
+    the Bay of Fundy, and down to Cape Cod, and the islands of Martha's
+    Vineyard and Nantucket. But in this region, already visited in past
+    times by French, Spanish, and English ships, they found the natives
+    treacherous and hostile. An unprovoked attack was made on the French
+    after they landed, and several of the seamen were killed with arrows.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the 24th of May, 1607, a small barque of six or seven tons burden
+    (fancy crossing the wide Atlantic from Brittany to Nova Scotia in a
+    ship of that size at the present day!) arrived outside Port Royal from
+    France, with an abrupt notification that De Monts' ten years' monopoly
+    and charter were <i>cancelled</i> by Henry IV, and that all the colony was
+    to be withdrawn and brought back to France. Henry IV took this action
+    simply because De Monts attempted to make his monopoly a real one,<a name="4-19"></a><a href="#note-4-19"><small>[19]</small></a>
+    and stop the ships of fur traders who were trading with the
+    Amerindians of Cape Breton without his licence. These fur traders of
+    Normandy then complained bitterly that because De Monts was a
+    Protestant he was allowed not only to have this monopoly, but to
+    endanger the spiritual welfare of the savages by spreading his false
+    doctrines! So King Henry IV, volatile and capricious, like most of the
+    French kings, cancelled a charter which had led to such heroic and
+    remarkable results.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The greater part of the little colony had to leave Port Royal and make
+    its way in small boats along the Nova Scotia coasts till they reached
+    Cape Breton Island. Here fishing vessels conveyed them back to
+    Brittany. It was in this boat journeying along the coast of Nova
+    Scotia that Champlain discovered Halifax Harbour, then called by the
+    Indian name of Shebuktu. As they passed along this coast with its many
+    islands, they feasted on ripe raspberries, which grew everywhere "in
+    the greatest possible quantity".
+</p>
+<p>
+    Poutrincourt, however, had succeeded in taking back with him samples
+    of the corn, wheat, rye, barley, and oats which had been so
+    successfully grown on the island of Sainte Croix and at Port Royal,
+    and also presented to that monarch five brent-geese<a name="4-20"></a><a href="#note-4-20"><small>[20]</small></a> which he had
+    reared up from eggs hatched under a hen. The king was so delighted at
+    these presents that he once more veered about and gave to De Monts the
+    monopoly of the fur trade for one more year, in order to enable him to
+    renew his colonies in New France.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Sieur de Monts was again appointed by Henry IV Lieutenant-General
+    in New France. The latter engaged Champlain as his lieutenant, and
+    also sent out Du Pont Gravé in command of the second vessel, as head
+    of the trading operations. This time, on the advice of Champlain, the
+    expedition made its way directly to the St. Lawrence River, stopping
+    first at Tadoussac, where Du Pont Gravé proceeded to take very strong
+    measures with the Basque seamen, who were infringing his monopoly by
+    trading with the natives in furs. Apparently they were still allowed
+    to continue their whale fishery.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Once more Champlain heard from the Montagnais Indians of the great
+    Salt Sea to the north of Saguenay, in other words, the southern
+    extension of Hudson's Bay; and in his book he notes that the English
+    in these latter years "had gone thither to find their way to China".
+    However, he kept his intent fixed on the establishment of a French
+    colony along the St. Lawrence, and may be said to have founded the
+    city of Quebec (the site of which was then covered with nut trees) on
+    the 4th of July, 1608. Then his enterprise was near being wrecked by a
+    base conspiracy got up between a surgeon and a number of French
+    artisans, who believed that by seizing and killing Champlain, and then
+    handing over the infant settlement to the Spanish <a name="p69"></a>Basques, they might
+    enable these traders and fishermen with their good strong ships to
+    overcome Du Pont Gravé, and seize the whole country. Naturally (they
+    believed) the Basques would reward the conspirators, who would thus at
+    a stroke become rich men. They none of them wished to go to France,
+    but would live here independent of outside interference. A
+    conspirator, however, revealed the plot to Champlain as he was
+    planting one of the little gardens which he started as soon as he had
+    been in a place a few days. He went about his business very
+    discreetly, arrested all the leading conspirators, gave them a fair
+    trial, had the ringleader executed by Pont Gravé, and sent three
+    others back to France. After this he settled down at Quebec for the
+    winter, taking care, however, in the month of October, to plant seeds
+    and vines for coming up in the spring.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the summer of 1609 Champlain, apparently with the idea of thus
+    exploring the country south of the St. Lawrence, decided to accompany
+    a party of Algonkins and Hurons from Georgian Bay and the
+    neighbourhood of Montreal, who were bent on attacking the Iroquois
+    confederacy in the Mohawk country at the headwaters of the Hudson
+    River. He was accompanied by two French soldiers&mdash;Des Marais and La
+    Routte&mdash;and by a few Montagnais Indians from Tadoussac.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Hurons<a name="4-21"></a><a href="#note-4-21"><small>[21]</small></a> were really of the same group (as regards language and
+    descent) as the Iroquois (Irokwá), but in those days held aloof from
+    the five other tribes who had formed a confederacy<a name="4-22"></a><a href="#note-4-22"><small>[22]</small></a> and alliance
+    under the name of <i>Ongwehonwe</i>&mdash;"Superior Men". The Iroquois
+    (Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Kayugas, and Senekas) dominated much of
+    what is now New York State, and from the mountain country of the
+    Adirondaks and Catskills descended on the St. Lawrence valley and the
+    shores of Lakes Ontario and Huron to rob and massacre.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The route into the enemy's country lay along the Richelieu River and
+    across Lake Champlain to its southern end, in sight of the majestic
+    snow-crowned Adirondak Mountains. On the way the allies stopped at an
+    island, held a kind of review, and explained their tactics to
+    Champlain. They set no sentries and kept no strict watch at night,
+    being too tired; but during the daytime the army advanced as follows:
+    The main body marched in the centre along the warpath; a portion of
+    the troops diverged on either side to hunt up food for the expedition;
+    and a third section was told off for "intelligence" work, namely, they
+    ran on ahead and roundabout to locate the enemy, looking out
+    especially along the rivers for marks or signals showing whether
+    friends or enemies had passed that way. These marks were devised by
+    the chiefs of the different tribes, and were duly communicated to the
+    war leaders of tribes in friendship or alliance, like our cipher
+    codes; and equally they were changed from time to time to baffle the
+    enemy. Neither hunters nor main body ever got in front of the advance
+    guard, lest they should give an alarm. Thus they travelled until they
+    got within two days or so of the enemies' headquarters; thenceforward
+    they only marched by night, and hid in the woods by day, making no
+    fires or noise, and subsisting only on cooked maize meal.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At intervals the soothsayers accompanying the army were consulted for
+    signs and omens; and when the war-chiefs decided on their plan of
+    campaign they summoned all the fighting men to a smooth place in a
+    wood, cut sticks a foot long (as many as there were warriors), and
+    each leader of a division "put the sticks in such order as seemed to
+    him best, indicating to his followers the rank and order they were to
+    observe in battle. The warriors watched carefully this proceeding,
+    observing attentively the outline which their chief had made with the
+    sticks. Then they would go away and set to placing themselves in such
+    order as the sticks were in. This manoeuvre they repeated several
+    times, and at all their encampments, without needing a sergeant to
+    maintain them in the proper order they were able to keep accurately
+    the positions assigned to them" (Champlain).
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Hurons who were accompanying Champlain frequently questioned him
+    as to his dreams, they themselves having a great belief in the value
+    of dreams as omens and indications of future events. One day, when
+    they were approaching the country of the Iroquois, Champlain actually
+    did have a dream. In this he imagined that he saw the Iroquois enemies
+    drowning in a lake near a mountain. Moved to pity in his dream he
+    wished to help them, but his savage allies insisted that they must be
+    allowed to die. When he awoke he told the Amerindians of his dream,
+    and they were greatly impressed, as they regarded it as a good omen.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Near the modern town of Ticonderoga the Hurons and Algonkins of
+    Georgian Bay and Ottawa met a party of Iroquois, probably of the
+    Mohawk tribe. The Iroquois had built rapidly a stockade in which to
+    retreat if things should go badly with them, but the battle at first
+    began in the old heroic style with as much ceremony as a French duel.
+    First the allies from the St. Lawrence asked the Iroquois what time it
+    would suit them to begin fighting the next day; then the latter
+    replied: "When the sun is well up, if you don't mind? We can see
+    better then to kill you all." Accordingly in the bright morning the
+    Hurons and Algonkins advanced against the circular stockade of the
+    Iroquois, and the Iroquois marched out to fight in great pomp, their
+    leaders wearing plumed headdresses. With this exception both parties
+    fought quite naked, and armed only with bows and arrows.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I marched twenty paces in advance of the rest" (wrote Champlain)
+    "till I was within about thirty paces of the Iroquois.... I rested my
+    musket against my cheek, and aimed directly at one of the three
+    chiefs. With the same shot two fell to the ground, and one of their
+    men was so wounded that he died some time afterwards. I had loaded my
+    musket with four balls. When they saw I had shot so favourably for
+    them, they (the Algonkins and Hurons) raised such loud cries that one
+    could not have heard it thunder.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Meantime the arrows flew on both sides. The Iroquois were greatly
+    astonished that two men had been so quickly killed, though they were
+    equipped with armour woven from copper thread and with wood, which was
+    proof against their arrows."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Whilst Champlain was loading to fire again one of his two companions
+    fired a shot from the woods, whereupon the Iroquois took to flight,
+    abandoning their camp and fort. As they fled they threw off their
+    armour of wooden boards and cotton cloth.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As to the way in which the Hurons tortured their Iroquois prisoners,
+    Champlain writes of one instance.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They commanded him (the prisoner) to sing, if he had courage, which
+    he did, but it was a very sad song." The Hurons kindled a fire, and
+    when it was well alight they each took a brand from the blaze, the end
+    of which was red-hot, and with this burnt the bodies of their
+    prisoners tied to stakes. Every now and then they stopped and threw
+    water over them to restore them from fainting. Then they tore out
+    their finger nails and applied fire to the extremities of the fingers.
+    After that they tore the scalps off their heads, and poured over the
+    raw and bleeding flesh a kind of hot gum. Then they pierced the arms
+    of the prisoners near the wrists, and drew up their sinews with sticks
+    inserted underneath, trying to tear them out by force, and, if
+    failing, cutting them. One poor wretch "uttered such terrible cries
+    that it excited my pity to see him treated in this manner, yet at
+    other times he showed such firmness that one would have said he
+    suffered scarcely any pain at all".
+</p>
+<p>
+    In this case Champlain, seeing that the man could not recover from his
+    injuries, drew apart and shot him dead, "thus putting an end to all
+    the tortures he would have suffered".
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the savage Hurons were not yet satisfied. They opened the corpse
+    and threw its entrails into the lake. Then they cut off head, arms,
+    and legs, and cut out the heart; this they minced up, and endeavoured
+    to force the other prisoners to eat it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    With those of his allies who were Montagnais Indians from Tadoussac,
+    Champlain returned to that place. As they neared the shore the
+    Montagnais women undressed themselves, jumped into the river, and swam
+    to the prows of the canoes, from which they took the heads of the
+    slain Iroquois. These they hung about their necks as if they had been
+    some costly chain, singing and dancing meanwhile.
+</p>
+<p>
+    However, in spite of these and other horrors, Champlain had "separated
+    from his Upper Canadian allies with loud protestations of mutual
+    friendship", promising to go again into their country and assist them
+    with continued "fraternal" relations.
+</p>
+<p>
+    From this expedition Champlain learned much regarding the geography of
+    eastern North America, and he brought back with him to France, to
+    present to King Henry IV, two scarlet tanagers&mdash;one of the commonest
+    and most beautiful birds of the eastern United States&mdash;a girdle of
+    porcupine quills made from the Canadian <a name="p74"></a>porcupine, and the head of a
+    gar-pike caught in Lake Champlain.<a name="4-23"></a><a href="#note-4-23"><small>[23]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    On Champlain's return from France in 1610 (he and other Frenchmen and
+    Englishmen of the time made surprisingly little fuss about crossing
+    the North Atlantic in small sailing vessels, in spite of the storms of
+    spring and autumn) he found the Iroquois question still agitating the
+    minds of the Algonkins, Montagnais, and Hurons. Representatives of
+    these tribes were ready to meet this great captain of the <i>Mistigosh</i>
+    or <i>Matigosh</i><a name="4-24"></a><a href="#note-4-24"><small>[24]</small></a> (as they called the French), and implored him to
+    keep his promise to take part in another attack on the dreaded enemy
+    of the Adirondak heights. Apparently the Iroquois (Mohawks) this time
+    had advanced to meet the attack, and were ensconced in a round
+    fortress of logs built near the Richelieu River.<a name="4-25"></a><a href="#note-4-25"><small>[25]</small></a> The Algonkins and
+    their allies on this expedition were armed with clubs, swords, and
+    shields, as well as bows and arrows. The swords of copper(?) were
+    really knife blades attached to long sticks like billhooks. Before the
+    barricade, as usual, both parties commenced the fight by hurling
+    insults at each other till they were out of breath, and shouting "till
+    one could not have heard it thunder". The circular log barricade,
+    however, would never have been taken by the Algonkins and their
+    allies but for the assistance of Champlain and three or four
+    Frenchmen, who with their musketry fire at short range paralysed the
+    Iroquois. Champlain and one other Frenchman were wounded with arrows
+    in the neck and arm, but not seriously. The victory of the allies was
+    followed by the usual torture of prisoners, which Champlain made a
+    slight&mdash;only slight&mdash;attempt to prevent.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But results far more serious arose from these two skirmishes with the
+    Iroquois in 1609 and 1610. The Confederacy of the Five Nations
+    (afterwards six) realized that they had been attacked unprovoked by
+    the dominant white men of the St. Lawrence, called by the Montagnais
+    <i>Mistigosh</i>, and by the Iroquois <i>Adoreset&#363;i</i> ("men of iron", from
+    their armour). They became the bitter enemies of the French, and
+    tendered help first to the Dutch to establish themselves in the valley
+    of the Hudson, and secondly to the English. In the great Colonial wars
+    of the early eighteenth century the Iroquois were invaluable allies to
+    the British forces, Colonial and Imperial, and counted for much in the
+    struggle which eventually cost France Nova Scotia, New Brunswick,
+    Maine, the two Canadas, and Louisiana. On the other hand, the French
+    alliance with the Hurons, Algonkins, and Montagnais, begun by this
+    brotherhood-in-arms with Champlain, secured for France and the French
+    such widespread liking among the tribes of Algonkin speech, and their
+    allies and friends, that the two Canadas and much of the Middle West,
+    together with Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois, became French in
+    sympathy without any war of conquest. When the French dominion over
+    North America fell, in 1759, with the capture of Quebec by Wolfe's
+    army, tribes of Amerindians went on fighting for five years afterwards
+    to uphold the banner and the rule of the beloved French king.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On Champlain's next visit to Canada, in 1610, he handed over to the
+    Algonkin Indians a French youth named Étienne Brulé (see p. <a href="#p88">88</a>), to
+    be taught the Algonkin language (the use of which was spread far and
+    wide over north-east America), and, further, sent a Huron youth to
+    France to be taught French. Between 1611 and 1616 he had explored much
+    of the country between Montreal (the foundations of which city he may
+    be said to have laid on May 29, 1611, for his stockaded camp is now in
+    the centre of it) and Lakes Huron and Ontario, especially along the
+    Ottawa River, that convenient short cut (as a water route) between the
+    St. Lawrence at Sault St. Louis (Montreal) and Lakes Huron and
+    Superior. With short portages you can get in canoes from Montreal to
+    the waters of Hudson Bay, or to Lake Winnipeg and the base of the
+    Rocky Mountains.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In exploring this "River of the Algonkins" (as he called it),
+    Champlain was nearly drowned between two rocks, and much hurt, from
+    over bravery and want of knowledge of how to deal with a canoe on
+    troubled water; but on June 4, 1613, he stood on the site of the
+    modern city of Ottawa&mdash;the capital of the vast Canadian Dominion&mdash;and
+    gazed at the marvellous Rideau or Curtain Fall, where the Rideau River
+    enters the Ottawa. But the air was resonant with the sound of falling
+    water. Three miles above the falls of the Gatineau and the Rideau, the
+    main Ottawa River descended with a roar and a whirl of white foam and
+    rainbow-tinted mist into the chasm called the Chaudière or Kettle. On
+    a later occasion he describes the way in which the Algonkins
+    propitiated the Spirit of the Chasm:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Continuing our way, we came to the Chaudière Falls, where the savages
+    carried out their customary ceremony. After transporting their canoes
+    to the foot of the fall they assemble in one spot, where one of them
+    takes up a collection on a wooden platter, into which each person puts
+    a bit of tobacco. The collection having been made, the plate is placed
+    in the midst of the troop, and all dance about it, singing after
+    their style. Then one of the captains makes an harangue, setting forth
+    that for a long time they have been accustomed to make this offering,
+    by which means they are ensured protection against their enemies, that
+    otherwise misfortune would befall them from the evil spirit. This
+    done, the maker of the harangue takes the plate and throws the tobacco
+    into the midst of the cauldron (the chasm of foaming water), whereupon
+    they all together raise a loud cry. These poor people are so
+    superstitious, that they would not believe it possible for them to
+    make a prosperous journey without observing this ceremony at this
+    place; for sometimes their enemies (Iroquois) await them at this
+    portage, not venturing to go any farther on account of the difficulty
+    of the journey. Consequently they are occasionally surprised and
+    killed by the Iroquois at this place (the south bank of the Ottawa)."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Above the Chaudière Champlain met the Algonkin chief, Tessouat, and
+    thus described the burial places of his tribe:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "On visiting the island I observed their cemeteries, and was struck
+    with wonder as I saw sepulchres of a shape like shrines, made of
+    pieces of wood fixed in the ground at a distance of about three feet
+    from each other, and intersecting at the upper end. On the
+    intersections above they place a large piece of wood, and in front
+    another upright piece on which is carved roughly, as would be
+    expected, the figure of the male or female interred. If it is a man,
+    they add a shield, a sword attached to a handle after their manner, a
+    mace, and bow and arrows. If it is a chief, there is a plume on his
+    head, and some other <i>matachia</i> or embellishment. If it is a child,
+    they give it a bow and arrow, if a woman or girl, a boiler, an earthen
+    vessel, a wooden spoon, and an oar. The entire sepulchre is six or
+    seven feet long at most, and four wide; others are smaller. They are
+    painted yellow and red, with various ornaments as neatly done as the
+    carving. The deceased is buried with his dress of beaver or other
+    skins which he wore when living, and they lay by his side all his
+    possessions, as hatchets, knives, boilers, and awls, so that these
+    things may serve him in the land whither he goes; for they believe in
+    the immortality of the soul, as I have elsewhere observed. These
+    carved sepulchres are only made for the warriors, for in respect to
+    others they add no more than in the case of women, who are considered
+    a useless class, accordingly but little is added in their case."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the summer of 1615 Champlain, returning from France, made his way
+    up the Ottawa River, and, by a short portage, to Lake Nipissing,
+    thence down French River to the waters of Lake Huron. On the banks of
+    the French River he met a detachment of the Ottawa tribe (of the
+    Algonkin family). These people he styled the <i>Cheveux Relevés</i>,
+    because the men's hair was gathered up and dressed more carefully and
+    becomingly on the top of the head than (he says) could at that time be
+    done by a hairdresser in France. This arrangement of the hair gave the
+    men a very handsome appearance, but here their toilet ended, for they
+    wore no clothes whatever (in the summertime), making up for this
+    simplicity by painting their faces in different colours, piercing
+    their ears and nostrils and decorating them with shell beads, and
+    tattooing their bodies and limbs with elaborate patterns.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These Ottawas carried a club, a long bow and arrows, and a round
+    shield of dressed leather, made (wrote Champlain) "from the skin of an
+    animal like the buffalo".<a name="4-26"></a><a href="#note-4-26"><small>[26]</small></a> The chief of the party explained many
+    things to the white man by drawing with a piece of charcoal on the
+    white bark of the birch tree. He gave him to understand that the
+    present occupation of his band of warriors was the gathering of
+    blueberries, which would be dried in the sun, and could then be
+    preserved for eating during the winter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    From French River, Champlain passed southwards to the homeland of the
+    Hurons, which lay to the east of what Champlain called "the Fresh
+    Water Sea" (Lake Huron). This country he describes in enthusiastic
+    terms. The Hurons, like the other Iroquois tribes (and unlike the
+    hunting races to the north of them), were agriculturists, and
+    cultivated pumpkins, sunflowers,<a name="4-27"></a><a href="#note-4-27"><small>[27]</small></a> beans and Indian corn.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Hurons persuaded Champlain to go with them to attack the Iroquois
+    tribe of the Senekas (Entuhónorons) on the south shores of Lake
+    Ontario. On the way thither he noticed the abundance of stags and
+    bears, and, near the lake, of cranes, white and purple-brown.<a name="4-28"></a><a href="#note-4-28"><small>[28]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the southern shores of the lake<a name="4-29"></a><a href="#note-4-29"><small>[29]</small></a> were large numbers <a name="p80"></a>of chestnut
+    trees, "whose fruit was still in the burr. The chestnuts are small but
+    of a good flavour." The southern country was covered with forests,
+    with very few clearings. After crossing the Oneida River the Hurons
+    captured eleven of the Senekas, four women, one girl, three boys, and
+    three men. The people had left the stockade in which their relations
+    were living to go and fish by the lake shore. One of the Huron
+    chiefs&mdash;the celebrated Iroquet, who had been so much associated with
+    Champlain from the time of his arrival&mdash;proceeded at once to cut off
+    the finger of one of these women prisoners. Whereupon Champlain,
+    firmer than in years gone by, interposed and reprimanded him, pointing
+    out that it was not the act of a warrior such as he declared himself
+    to be, to conduct himself with cruelty towards women "who had no
+    defence but their tears, so that one should treat them with humanity
+    on account of their helplessness and weakness". Champlain went on to
+    say that this act was base and brutal, and that if he committed any
+    more of such cruelties he, Champlain, "would have no heart to assist
+    or favour them in the war". To this Iroquet replied that their enemies
+    treated them in the same manner, but that since this was displeasing
+    to the Frenchmen he would not do anything more to women, but he would
+    not promise to refrain from torturing the men.
+</p>
+<p>
+    However, in the subsequent fighting which occurred when they reached
+    the six-sided stockade of the Senekas (a strong fortification which
+    faced a large pond on one side, and was surrounded by a moat
+    everywhere else except at the entrance), the Hurons and Algonkins
+    showed a great lack of discipline. Champlain and the few Frenchmen
+    with him, by using their arquebuses, drove the enemy back into the
+    fort, but not without having some of their Indian allies wounded or
+    killed. Champlain proposed to the Hurons that they should erect what
+    was styled in French a <i>cavalier</i>&mdash;a kind of box, with high, loopholed
+    sides, which was erected on a tall scaffolding of stout timbers. This
+    was to be carried by the Hurons to within a pike's length of the
+    stockade. Four French arquebusiers then scrambled up into the
+    <i>cavalier</i> and fired through the loopholes into the huts of the Seneka
+    town. Meantime the Hurons were to set fire, if possible, to the wooden
+    stockade. They managed the whole business so stupidly that the fire
+    produced no effect, the flames being blown in the opposite direction
+    to that which was desired. The brave Senekas threw water on to the
+    blazing sticks and put out the fire. Champlain was wounded by an arrow
+    in the leg and knee. The reinforcement of the five hundred Hurons
+    expected by the allies did not turn up. The Hurons with Champlain lost
+    heart, and insisted on retreating. Only the dread of the French
+    firearms prevented the retreat being converted into a complete
+    disaster. Whenever the Senekas came near enough to get speech with the
+    French they asked them "why they interfered with native quarrels".
+</p>
+<p>
+    Champlain being unable to walk, the Hurons made a kind of basket,
+    similar to that in which they carried their wounded. In this he was so
+    crowded into a heap, and bound and pinioned, that it was as impossible
+    for him to move "as it would be for an infant in his swaddling
+    clothes". This treatment caused him considerable pain after he had
+    been carried for some days; in fact he suffered agonies while fastened
+    in this way on to the back of a savage.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He was afterwards obliged to pass the winter of 1615-6 in the Huron
+    country. At that time it swarmed with game. Amongst birds, there were
+    swans, white cranes, brent-geese, ducks, teal, the redbreasted thrush
+    (which the Americans call "robin"), brown larks (<i>Anthus</i>), snipe, and
+    other birds too numerous to mention, which Champlain seems to have
+    brought down with his fowling-piece in sufficient quantities to feed
+    the whole party whilst waiting for the capture of deer on a large
+    scale.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Meanwhile, many of the Indians were catching fish, "trout and pike of
+    prodigious size". When they desired to secure a large number of deer,
+    they would make an enclosure in a fir forest in the form of the two
+    converging sides of a triangle, with an open base. The two sides of
+    these traps were made of great stakes of wood closely pressed
+    together, from 8 to 9 feet high; and each of the sides was 1000 yards
+    long. At the point of the triangle there was a little enclosure. The
+    Hurons were so expeditious in this work that in less than ten days
+    these long fences and the "pound" or enclosure at their convergence
+    were finished. They then started before daybreak and scattered
+    themselves in the woods at a considerable distance behind the
+    commencement of these fences, each man separated from his fellow by
+    about 80 yards. Every Huron carried two pieces of wood, one like a
+    drumstick and the other like a flat, resonant board. They struck the
+    flat piece of wood with the drumstick and it made a loud clanging
+    sound. The deer who swarmed in the forest, hearing this noise, fled
+    before the savages, who drove them steadily towards the converging
+    fences. As they closed up, the Hurons imitated very cleverly the
+    yapping of wolves. This frightened the deer still more, so that they
+    huddled at last into the final enclosure, where they were so tightly
+    packed that they were completely at the men's mercy. "I assure you,"
+    writes Champlain, "there is a singular pleasure in this chase, which
+    takes place every two days, and has been so successful that in
+    thirty-eight days one hundred and twenty deer were captured. These
+    were made good use of, the fat being kept for the winter to be used as
+    we do butter, and some of the flesh to be taken to their homes for
+    their festivities."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Champlain himself, in the winter of 1615, pursuing one day a
+    remarkable bird "which was the size of a hen, had a beak like a parrot
+    and was entirely yellow, except for a red head and blue wings, and
+    which had the flight of the partridge"&mdash;a bird I cannot
+    identify&mdash;lost his way in the woods. For two days he wandered in the
+    wilderness, sustaining himself by shooting birds and roasting them.
+    But at last he found his way back to a river which he recognized, and
+    reached the camp of the Hurons, who were extremely delighted at his
+    return. Had they not found him, or had he not come back of himself,
+    they told him that they could never again have visited the French for
+    fear of being held responsible for his death.
+</p>
+<p>
+    By the month of December of this year (1615) the rivers, lakes, and
+    ponds were all frozen. Hitherto, Champlain had had to walk when he
+    could not travel in a canoe, and carry a load of twenty pounds, while
+    the Indians carried a hundred pounds each. But now the water was
+    frozen the Hurons set to work and made their sledges. These were
+    constructed of two pieces of board, manufactured from the trunks of
+    trees by the patient use of a stone axe and by the application of
+    fire. These boards were about 6 inches wide, and 6 or 7 feet long,
+    curved upwards at the forward end and bound together by cross pieces.
+    The sides were bordered with strips of wood, which served as brackets
+    to which was fastened the strap that bound the baggage upon the
+    sledge. The load was dragged by a rope or strap of leather passing
+    round the breast of the Indian, and attached to the end of the sledge.
+    The sledge was so narrow that it could be drawn easily without
+    impediment wherever an Indian could thread his way over the snow
+    through the pathless forests.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The rest of the winter and early spring Champlain spent alone, or in
+    company with Father Joseph Le Caron (one of the Recollet
+    missionaries), visiting the Algonkin and Huron tribes in the region
+    east of Lake Huron. He has left this description of the modern country
+    of Simcoe, the home, three hundred years ago, of the long-vanished
+    Hurons<a name="4-30"></a><a href="#note-4-30"><small>[30]</small></a>; and gives us the following particulars of their home
+    life. The Huron country was a pleasant land, most of it cleared of
+    forest. It contained eighteen villages, six of which were enclosed and
+    fortified by palisades of wood in triple rows, bound together, on the
+    top of which were galleries provided with stores of stones, and
+    birch-bark buckets of water; the stones to throw at an enemy, and the
+    water to extinguish any fire which might be put to the palisades.
+    These eighteen villages contained about two thousand warriors, and
+    about thirty thousand people in all. The houses were in the shape of
+    tunnels, and were thatched with the bark of trees. Each lodge or house
+    would be about 120 feet long, more or less, and 36 feet wide, with a
+    10-foot passage-way through the middle from one end to the other. On
+    either side of the tunnel were placed benches 4 feet high, on which
+    the people slept in summer in order to avoid the annoyance of the
+    fleas which swarmed in these habitations. In winter time they slept on
+    the ground on mats near the fire. In the summer the cabins were filled
+    with stocks of wood to dry and be ready for burning in winter. At the
+    end of each of these long houses was a space in which the Indian corn
+    was preserved in great casks made of the bark of trees. Inside the
+    long houses pieces of wood were suspended from the roof, on to which
+    were fastened the clothes, provisions, and other things of the
+    inmates, to keep them from the attacks of the mice which swarmed in
+    these villages. Each hut might be inhabited by twenty-four families,
+    who would maintain twelve fires. The smoke, having no proper means of
+    egress except at either end of the long dwelling, and through the
+    chinks of the roof, so injured their eyes during the winter season
+    that many people lost their sight as they grew old.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Their life", writes Champlain, "is a miserable one in comparison
+    with our own, but they are happy amongst themselves, not having
+    experienced anything better, nor imagining that anything more
+    excellent could be found."
+</p>
+<p>
+    These Amerindians ordinarily ate two meals a day, and although
+    Champlain and his men fasted all through Lent, "in order to influence
+    them by our example", that was one of the practices they did <i>not</i>
+    copy from the French.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Hurons of this period painted their faces black and red, mixing
+    the colours with oil made from sunflower seed, or with bears' fat. The
+    hair was carefully combed and oiled, and sometimes dyed a reddish
+    colour; it might be worn long or short, or only on one side of the
+    head. The women usually dressed theirs in one long plait. Sometimes it
+    was done up into a knot at the back of the head, bound with eelskin.
+    The men were usually dressed in deerskin breeches, with gaiters of
+    soft leather. The shoes ("Moccasins") were made of the skin of deer,
+    bears, or beavers. In addition to this the men in cold weather wore a
+    great cloak. The edges of these cloaks would often be decorated with
+    bands of brown and red colour alternating with strips of a
+    whitish-blue, and ornamented with bands of porcupine quills. These,
+    which were originally white or grey in colour, had been previously
+    dyed a fine scarlet with colouring matter from the root of the
+    bed-straw (<i>Galium tinctorum</i>). The women were loaded with necklaces
+    of violet or white shell beads, bracelets, ear-rings, and great
+    strings of beads falling below the waist. Sometimes they would have
+    plates of leather studded with shell beads and hanging over the back.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0004"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc04.jpg" width="270" height="425"
+alt="Samuel de Champlain; Alexander Henry the Elder">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN and ALEXANDER HENRY THE ELDER</h5>
+<p>
+    In 1616 Champlain returned to France, but visited Quebec in 1617 and
+    1618. During the years spent at Quebec, which followed his
+    explorations of 1616, he was greatly impeded in his work of
+    consolidating Canada as a French colony by the religious strife
+    between the Catholics and Huguenots, and the narrow-minded greed of
+    the Chartered company of fur-trading merchants for whom he worked. But
+    in 1620 he came back to Canada as Lieutenant-Governor (bringing his
+    wife with him), and after attending to the settlement of a violent
+    commercial dispute between fur-trading companies he tried to compose
+    the quarrel between the Iroquois and the Algonkins, and brought about
+    a truce which lasted till 1627.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In 1628 came the first English attack on Canada. A French fleet was
+    defeated and captured in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and in the
+    following year Champlain, having been obliged to surrender Quebec (he
+    had only sixteen soldiers as a garrison, owing to lack of food),
+    voyaged to England more or less as a prisoner of state in the summer
+    of 1629. He found, on arriving there, that the cession of Quebec was
+    null and void, peace having been concluded between Britain and France
+    two months before the cession. Charles I remained true to his compact
+    with Louis XIII, and Quebec and Nova Scotia were restored to French
+    keeping. In 1633 Champlain returned to Canada as Governor, bringing
+    with him a considerable number of French colonists. <i>It is from 1633
+    that the real French colonization of Canada begins</i>: hitherto there
+    had been only one family of settlers in the fixed sense of the word;
+    the other Frenchmen were fur traders, soldiers, and missionaries. But
+    Champlain only lived two years after his triumphant return, and died
+    at Quebec on Christmas Day, 1635.
+</p>
+<p>
+    His character has been so well summed up by Dr. S.E. Dawson, in his
+    admirable book on the <i>Story of the St. Lawrence Basin</i>, that I cannot
+    do better than quote his words:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Champlain was as much at home in the brilliant court of France as in
+    a wigwam on a Canadian lake, as patient and politic with a wild band
+    of savages on Lake Huron as with a crowd of grasping traders in St.
+    Malo or Dieppe. Always calm, always unselfish, always depending on
+    God, in whom he believed and trusted, and thinking of France, which he
+    loved, this single-hearted man resolutely followed the path of his
+    duty under all circumstances; never looking for ease or asking for
+    profit, loved by the wild people of the forest, respected by the
+    courtiers of the king, and trusted by the close-fisted merchants of
+    the maritime cities of France."
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="note-4-1"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-1"><u>1</u></a> Afterwards the Sieur de Champlain. The title of <i>Sieur</i>
+    (from the Latin <i>Senior</i>) is the origin of the English "sir", and is
+    about equivalent to an English baronetcy.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-2"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-2"><u>2</u></a> Correctly written this was François Gravé, Sieur du
+    Pont.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-3"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-3"><u>3</u></a> The full name was Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts.
+    Including de Champlain and de Poutrincourt, who will be described
+    later, we have here the four great heroes who founded French Canada.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-4"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-4"><u>4</u></a> The real name for this remarkable people, the Eskimo, is,
+    in Alaska and Arctic North America, <i>Innuit</i>, and in Labrador and
+    Greenland, <i>Karalit</i>. Eskimo (in French, <i>Esquimaux</i>) is said to be a
+    corruption of the Montagnais-Indian word, Eskimantsik, meaning "eaters
+    of raw flesh".
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-5"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-5"><u>5</u></a> The wild currants so often mentioned by the early
+    explorers of Canada are often referred to as red, green, and blue. The
+    blue currants are really the black currant, now so familiar to our
+    kitchen gardens (<i>Ribes nigrum</i>). This, together with the red currant
+    (<i>Ribes rubrum</i>), grows throughout North America, Siberia, and eastern
+    Europe. The unripe fruit may have been the green currants alluded to
+    by Champlain, or these may have been the white variety of our gardens.
+    The two species of wild strawberry which figure so frequently in the
+    stories of these early explorers are <i>Fragaria vesca</i> and <i>F.
+    virginiana</i>. From the last-named is derived the cultivated strawberry
+    of Europe. The wild strawberries of North America were larger than
+    those of Europe. Champlain does not himself allude to gooseberries
+    (unless they are his <i>groseilles vertes</i>), but later travellers do.
+    Three or more kinds of gooseberry grow wild in Canada, but they are
+    different from the European species. The blueberry so often Mentioned
+    by Champlain (bluëts or bluës) was <i>Vaccinium canadense</i>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-6"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-6"><u>6</u></a> Of the genera <i>Juglans</i> and <i>Carya</i>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-7"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-7"><u>7</u></a> The huge deer of the genus <i>Alces</i>. Elk is the old
+    Scandinavian name. <i>Moose</i>, derived from the Kri language, is the
+    Canadian term, "Elk" being misapplied to the wapiti (red) deer.
+    Champlain calls the elk <i>orignac</i>, its name in Algonkin.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-8"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-8"><u>8</u></a> Or lead mixed with silver. The local natives used this
+    ore, which was white when beaten, for their arrowheads.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-9"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-9"><u>9</u></a> The Gougou dwelt on the small island of Miscon, to the
+    east of the Bay of Chaleurs. It had the form of a woman but was about
+    a hundred feet high. Its habit was to catch and devour men and women,
+    whom it first placed in a pocket capacious enough to hold a small
+    ship. Its roarings and hissings could be heard at times coming from
+    the island of Miscon, where the Gougou lay concealed. Even a
+    Frenchman, the Sieur Prévert, had heard these noises. Probably this
+    islet had a whirlpool communicating with a cavern into which fishermen
+    were sucked by the current.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-10"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-10"><u>10</u></a> There are no real rabbits in America. This was probably
+    the Polar Hare (<i>Lepus timidus glacialis</i>), or the common small
+    varying hare (<i>L. americanus</i>).
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-11"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-11"><u>11</u></a> How awful was this "mal de terre" or scurvy amongst the
+    French settlers may be seen from this description of Champlain: "There
+    were produced in the mouths of those who had it great pieces of
+    superfluous and drivelling flesh, which got the upper hand to such an
+    extent that scarcely anything but liquid could be taken. Their teeth
+    became very loose and could be pulled out with the fingers without its
+    causing them pain.... Afterwards a violent pain seized their arms and
+    legs, which remained swollen and very hard, all spotted as if with
+    fleabites; and they could not walk on account of the contraction of
+    the muscles.... They suffered intolerable pains in the loins, stomach,
+    and bowels, and had a very bad cough and short breath.... Out of
+    seventy-nine who composed our party, thirty-five died and twenty were
+    on the point of death (when spring began in May)."<br><br>
+
+    Scurvy is said to be a disease of the blood caused by a damp, cold,
+    and impure atmosphere combined with absence of vegetable food and a
+    diet of salted or semi-putrid meat or fish, such as was so often the
+    winter food of Amerindians and of the early French pioneers in Canada.
+    We have already noted Cartier's discovery of the balsam remedy.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-12"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-12"><u>12</u></a> From Queen Anne.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-13"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-13"><u>13</u></a> The pigeons referred to by Champlain were probably the
+    Passenger pigeon (<i>Ectopistes</i>) which at one time was extraordinarily
+    abundant in parts of North America, though it has now been nearly
+    killed out by man. It would arrive in flocks of millions on its
+    migratory journeys in search of food.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-14"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-14"><u>14</u></a> It is interesting to learn from his accurate notes that
+    in Massachusetts (and from thence southwards) there were no more bark
+    canoes, but that the canoes were "dug-outs"&mdash;trunks of tall trees
+    burnt and chipped till they were hollowed into a narrow vessel of
+    considerable length.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-15"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-15"><u>15</u></a> This tuber, which is a well-known and very useful
+    vegetable in England, comes from the root of a species of sunflower
+    (<i>Helianthus tuberosus</i>). It has nothing to do with the real
+    artichoke, which is a huge and gorgeous thistle, and it has equally
+    nothing to do with Jerusalem. The English people have always taken a
+    special delight in mispronouncing and corrupting words in order to
+    produce as much confusion as possible in their names for things.
+    Jerusalem is a corruption of <i>Girasole</i>, which is the Italian name
+    given to this sunflower with the edible roots, because its flower is
+    supposed always to turn towards the sun. The Jerusalem artichoke was
+    originally a native of North America.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-16"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-16"><u>16</u></a> These walnut trees were afterwards known in modern
+    American speech as hickories, butter-nuts, and pig-nuts, all of which
+    are allied to, but distinct from, the European walnut.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-17"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-17"><u>17</u></a> <i>Limulus polyphemus</i>. This extraordinary crustacean is
+    one of the oldest of living animals in its history, as it is closely
+    related to the Xiphosura and even the Trilobites of the Primary Epoch,
+    which existed millions of years ago. In a rough way it is a kind of
+    connecting link between the Crustacea, or crabs and lobsters, and the
+    Scorpions and spiders.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-18"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-18"><u>18</u></a> Jean de Biencourt, the Sieur de Poutrincourt and Baron
+    de Saint-Just, were his full titles.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-19"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-19"><u>19</u></a> You will observe that neither the French nor the English
+    sovereigns of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries went to much
+    personal expense over the creation of colonies. They simply gave a
+    charter or a monopoly, which cost them nothing, but which made other
+    people pay.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-20"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-20"><u>20</u></a> <i>Branta canadensis</i>, a handsome black-and-brown goose
+    with white markings, which the French pioneers in Canada styled
+    "outarde" or "bustard", and whose eggs were considered very good
+    eating.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-21"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-21"><u>21</u></a> Huron was a French name given to the westernmost group
+    of the Iroquois family (see p. <a href="#p159">159</a>). The Huron group included the
+    Waiandots, the Eries or Erigas, the Arendáronons, and the Atiwándoronk
+    or "neutral" nation. The French sometimes called all these Huron
+    tribes "the good Iroquois". Iroquois was probably pronounced "Irokwá",
+    and seems to have been derived from a word like Irokosia, the name of
+    the Adirondack mountain country.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-22"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-22"><u>22</u></a> The confederacy was founded about 1450 by the great
+    Hiawatha (of Longfellow's Poem), himself an Onondaga from south of
+    Lake Ontario, but backed by the Mohawks only, in the beginning of his
+    work.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-23"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-23"><u>23</u></a> Unconsciously, no doubt, he brought away with him to the
+    King of France one of the most remarkable freshwater fish living on
+    the North-American continent, for the gar-pike belongs, together with
+    the sturgeon and its allies, to an ancient type of fish the
+    representatives of which are found in rock formations as ancient as
+    those of the Secondary and Early Tertiary periods. Champlain may be
+    said to have discovered this remarkable gar-pike (<i>Lepidosteus
+    osseus</i>), which is covered with bony scales "so strong that a poniard
+    could not pierce them". The colour he describes as silver-grey. The
+    head has a snout two feet and a half long, and the jaws possess double
+    rows of sharp and dangerous teeth. These teeth were used by the
+    natives as lancets with which to bleed themselves when they suffered
+    from inflammation or headache. Champlain declares that the gar-pike
+    often captures and eats water birds. It would swim in and among rushes
+    or reeds and then raise its snout out of the water and keep perfectly
+    still. Birds would mistake this snout for the stump of a tree and
+    would attempt to alight on it; whereupon the fish would seize them by
+    the legs and pull them down under the water.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-24"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-24"><u>24</u></a> Spelt by Champlain with a "ch" instead of <i>sh</i>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-25"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-25"><u>25</u></a> Then called the Rivière des Iroquois.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-26"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-26"><u>26</u></a> This was the first intimation probably that any European
+    sent home for publication regarding the existence of the bison in
+    North America, though the Spanish explorers nearly a hundred years
+    before Champlain must have met with it in travelling through
+    Louisiana, Texas, and northern Mexico. The bison is not known ever to
+    have existed near Hudson Bay, or in Canada proper (basin of the St.
+    Lawrence). South of Canada it penetrated to Pennsylvania and the
+    Susquehanna River, but not farther eastward.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-27"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-27"><u>27</u></a> The Amerindians of the Lake regions made much use of the
+    sunflowers of the region (<i>Helianthus multiflorus</i>). Besides this
+    species of sunflower already mentioned, which furnishes tubers from
+    its roots (the "Jerusalem" artichoke) others were valued for their
+    seeds, and some or all of these are probably the originals of the
+    cultivated sunflower in European gardens. The largest of these was
+    called <i>Soleille</i> by the French Canadians. It grew in the cultivated
+    fields of the Amerindians to seven or eight feet in height, with an
+    enormous flower. The seeds were carefully collected and boiled. Their
+    oil was collected then from the water and was used to grease the hair.
+    This same Huron country (the Simcoe country of modern times) was
+    remarkable for its wild fruits. There was the Canada plum (<i>Prunus
+    americana</i>), the wild black cherry (<i>Prunus serotina</i>), the red
+    cherries (<i>P. pennsylvanica</i>), the choke cherry (<i>P. virginiana</i>),
+    wild apples (<i>Pyrus coronaria</i>), wild pears (a small berry-like pear
+    called "poire" by the French: <i>Pyrus canadensis</i>), and the may-apple
+    (<i>Podophyllum peltatum</i>). Champlain describes this may-apple as of the
+    form and colour of a small lemon with a similar taste, but having an
+    interior which is very good and almost like that of figs. The
+    may-apples grow on a plant which is two and a half feet high, with not
+    more than three or four leaves like those of the fig tree, and only
+    two fruits on each plant.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-28"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-28"><u>28</u></a> The cranes of Canada&mdash;so often alluded to by the French
+    explorers as "Grues"&mdash;are of two species, <i>Grus canadensis</i>, with its
+    plumage of a purple-grey, and <i>Grus americanus</i>, which is pure white
+    (see p. <a href="#p139">139</a>).
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-29"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-29"><u>29</u></a> Lakes Ontario and Huron were probably first actually
+    reached by Father Le Caron, a Recollett missionary who came out with
+    Champlain in 1615 (see p. <a href="#p90">90</a>), and by Étienne Brulé, Champlain's
+    interpreter.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-30"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-30"><u>30</u></a> They were almost completely exterminated by the Iroquois
+    confederacy between thirty and forty years after Champlain's visit.
+</p>
+<p class="return">[<a href="#contents">TABLE OF CONTENTS</a>]
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="2HCH0005"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+<a name="p88"></a>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER V
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    After Champlain: from Montreal to the Mississippi
+</h3>
+<p>
+    A very remarkable series of further explorations were carried out as
+    the indirect result of Champlain's work. In 1610 he had allowed a
+    French boy of about eighteen years of age, named ÉTIENNE BRULÉ, to
+    volunteer to go away with the Algonkins, in order to learn their
+    language. Brulé was taken in hand by Iroquet,<a name="5-1"></a><a href="#note-5-1"><small>[1]</small></a> a chief of the
+    "Little Algonkins", whose people were then occupying the lands on
+    either side of the Ottawa River, including the site of the now great
+    city of Ottawa. After four years of roaming with the Indians, Brulé
+    was dispatched by Champlain with an escort of twelve Algonkins to the
+    headwaters of the Suskuehanna, far to the south of Lake Ontario, in
+    order to warn the Andastes<a name="5-2"></a><a href="#note-5-2"><small>[2]</small></a> tribe of military operations to be
+    undertaken by the allied French, Hurons, and Algonkins against the
+    Iroquois. This enabled Brulé to explore Lake Ontario and to descend
+    the River Suskuehanna as far south as Chesapeake Bay, a truly
+    extraordinary journey at the period. This region of northern Virginia
+    had just been surveyed by the English, and was soon to be the site of
+    the first English colony in North America.<a name="5-3"></a><a href="#note-5-3"><small>[3]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    In attempting to return to the valley of the St. Lawrence in 1616,
+    with his Andaste guides, Brulé lost his way, and to avoid starvation
+    surrendered himself to the Seneka Indians (the westernmost clan of the
+    Iroquois) against whom the recent warlike operations of the French
+    were being directed. Discovering his nationality, the Senekas decided
+    to torture him before burning him to death at the stake. As they tore
+    off his clothes they found that he was wearing an <i>Agnus Dei</i> medal
+    next his skin. Brulé told them to be careful, as it was a medicine of
+    great power which would certainly kill them. By a coincidence, at that
+    very moment a terrific thunderstorm burst from a sky which until
+    recently had been all sunshine. The Senekas were so scared by the
+    thunder and lightning that they believed Brulé to be a person of
+    supernatural powers. They therefore released him, strove to heal such
+    slight wounds as he had incurred, and carried him off to their
+    principal town, where he became a great favourite. After a while they
+    gave him guides to take him north into the country of the Hurons.
+</p>
+<p>
+    His further adventures led him to discover Lake Superior and the way
+    thither through the Sault Ste. Marie, and to reach a place probably
+    not far from the south coast of Hudson Bay, in which there was a
+    copper mine. Then he explored the Montagnais country north of Quebec,
+    and even at one time (in 1629) entered the service of the English, who
+    had captured Quebec and Tadoussac from the French. When the English
+    left this region Brulé travelled again to the west and joined the
+    Hurons once more.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <a name="p90"></a>His licentious conduct amongst his Indian friends seems to have
+    roused them to such a pitch of anger that in 1632 they murdered him,
+    then boiled and ate his body. But immediately afterwards misfortune
+    seemed to fall on the place. The Hurons were terrified at what they
+    had done, and thought they heard or saw in the sky the spirits of the
+    white relations of Brulé&mdash;some said the sister, some the
+    uncle&mdash;threatening their town (Toanche), which they soon afterwards
+    burnt and deserted.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In 1615 Champlain, returning from France, had brought out with him
+    friars of the Récollet order.<a name="5-4"></a><a href="#note-5-4"><small>[4]</small></a> These were the pioneer missionaries
+    of Canada, prominent amongst whom was FATHER LE CARON, and these
+    Récollets traversed the countries in the basin of the St. Lawrence
+    between Lake Huron and Cape Breton Island, preaching Christianity to
+    the Amerindians as well as ministering to the French colonists and fur
+    traders. One of these Récollet missionaries died of cold and hunger in
+    attempting to cross New Brunswick from the St. Lawrence to the Bay of
+    Fundy, and another&mdash;Nicholas Viel&mdash;was the first martyr in Canada in
+    the spread of Christianity, for when travelling down the Ottawa River
+    to Montreal he was thrown by the pagan Hurons (together with one of
+    his converts) into the waters of a rapid since christened Sault le
+    Récollet. Another Récollet, Father d'Aillon, prompted by Brulé,
+    explored the richly fertile, beautiful country known then as the
+    territory of the Neutral nation, that group of Huron-Iroquois
+    Amerindians who strove to keep aloof from the fierce struggles between
+    the Algonkins and Hurons on the one hand and the eastern Iroquois
+    clans on the other. This region, which lies between the Lakes
+    Ontario, Erie, and Huron, is the most attractive portion of western
+    Canada. Lying in the southernmost parts of the Dominion, and nearly
+    surrounded by sheets of open water, it has a far milder climate than
+    the rest of eastern Canada.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In 1626 the Jesuit order supplanted the Récollets, and commenced a
+    campaign both of Christian propaganda and of geographical exploration
+    which has scarcely finished in the Canada of to-day.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In 1627 the war between the Iroquois Confederacy and the Huron and
+    Algonkin tribes recommenced, and this, together with the British
+    capture of Quebec and other portions of Canada, put a stop for several
+    years to the work of exploration. This was not resumed on an advanced
+    scale till 1634, when Champlain, unable himself, from failing health,
+    to carry out his original commission of seeking a direct passage to
+    China and India across the North-American continent, dispatched a
+    Norman Frenchman named JEAN NICOLLET to find a way to the Western Sea.
+    Nicollet, as a very young man, had lived for years amongst the
+    Amerindian tribes, especially amongst the Nipissings near the lake of
+    that name. Being charged, amongst other things, with the task of
+    making peace between the Hurons and the tribes dwelling to the west of
+    the great lakes, Nicollet discovered Lake Michigan. He was so
+    convinced of the possibility of arriving at the Pacific Ocean, and
+    thence making his way to China, that in the luggage which he carried
+    in his birch-bark canoe was a dress of ceremony made of Chinese damask
+    silk embroidered richly with birds and flowers. He was on his way to
+    discover the Winnebago Indians, or "Men of the Sea", of whom Champlain
+    had heard from the Hurons, with whom they were at war. But the great
+    water from which they derived their name was not in this instance a
+    sea, but the Mississippi River. The Winnebago Indians were totally
+    distinct from the Algonkins or the Iroquois, and belonged to the
+    Dakota stock, from which the great Siou confederation<a name="5-5"></a><a href="#note-5-5"><small>[5]</small></a> was also
+    derived.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nicollet advanced to meet the Winnebagos clad in his Chinese robe and
+    with a pistol in each hand. As he drew near he discharged his pistols,
+    and the women and children fled in terror, for all believed him to be
+    a supernatural being, a spirit wielding thunder and lightning.
+    However, when they recovered from their terror the Winnebagos gave him
+    a hearty welcome, and got up such lavish feasts in his honour, that
+    one chief alone cooked 120 beavers at a single banquet.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nicollet certainly reached the water-parting between the systems
+    of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, and under that
+    name&mdash;Misi-sipi&mdash;"great water"&mdash;he heard through the Algonkin Indians
+    of a mighty river lying three days' journey westward from his last
+    camp. Winnebago (from which root is also derived the names of the
+    Lakes Winnipeg and Winnipegosis much farther to the north-west) meant
+    "salt" or "foul" water. Both terms might therefore be applied to the
+    sea, and also to the lakes and rivers which, in the minds of the
+    Amerindians, were equally vast in length or breadth.
+</p>
+<p>
+    From 1648 to 1653 the whole of the Canada known to the French settlers
+    and explorers was convulsed by the devastating warfare carried on by
+    the Iroquois, who during that period destroyed the greater part of the
+    Algonkin and Huron clans. The neutral nation of Lake Erie (the Erigas)
+    was scattered, and between the shores of Lakes Michigan and Huron and
+    Montreal the country was practically depopulated, except for the
+    handfuls of French settlers and traders who trembled behind their
+    fortifications. Then, to the relief and astonishment of the French,
+    one of the Iroquois clans&mdash;the Onondaga&mdash;proposed terms of peace,
+    probably because they had no more enemies to fight of their own
+    colour, and wished to trade with the French.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The fur trade of the Quebec province had attracted an increasing
+    number of French people (men bringing their wives) to such settlements
+    as Tadoussac and Three Rivers. Amongst these were the parents of
+    PIERRE ESPRIT RADISSON. This young man went hunting near Three Rivers
+    station and was captured in the woods by Mohawks (Iroquois) who
+    carried him off to one of their towns and intended to burn him alive.
+    Having bound him at a stake, they proceeded to tear out some of his
+    finger nails and shoot arrows at the less vital parts of his body. But
+    a Mohawk woman was looking on and was filled with pity at the
+    sufferings of this handsome boy. She announced her intention of
+    adopting him as a member of her family, and by sheer force of will she
+    compelled the men to release him. After staying for some time amongst
+    the Mohawks he escaped, but was again captured just as he was nearing
+    Three Rivers. Once more he was spared from torture at the intercession
+    of his adopted relations. He then made an even bolder bid for freedom,
+    and fled to the south, up the valley of the Richelieu and the Hudson,
+    and thus reached the most advanced inland post of Dutch America&mdash;then
+    called Orange, now Albany&mdash;on the Hudson River. From this point he was
+    conveyed to Holland, and from Holland he returned to Canada.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Soon after his return he joined two Jesuit fathers who were to visit a
+    mission station of the Jesuits amongst the Onondagas (Iroquois) on a
+    lakelet about thirty miles south-east of the present city of
+    Rochester. The Iroquois (whose language Radisson had learnt to speak)
+    received them with apparent friendliness, and there they passed the
+    winter. But in the spring Radisson found out that the Onondaga
+    Iroquois were intending to massacre the whole of the mission.
+    Instructed by him, the Jesuits pretended to have no suspicions of the
+    coming attack, but all the while they were secretly building canoes at
+    their fort. As soon as they were ready for flight, and the sun of
+    April had completely melted the ice in the River Oswego, the French
+    missionaries invited the Onondagas to a great feast, no doubt making
+    out that it was part of the Easter festivities sanctioned by the
+    Church. They pointed out to their guests that from religious motives
+    as well as those of politeness it was essential that the <i>whole</i> of
+    the food provided should be eaten, "nothing was to be left on the
+    plate". They set before their savage guests an enormous banquet of
+    maize puddings, roast pigs, roast ducks, game birds, and fish of many
+    kinds, even terrapins, or freshwater turtles. The Iroquois ate and ate
+    until even <i>their</i> appetites were satisfied. Then they began to cry
+    off; but the missionaries politely insisted, and even told them that
+    in failing to eat they were neglecting their religious duties. To help
+    them in this respect they played hymn and psalm tunes on musical
+    instruments. At last the Onondagas were gorged to repletion, and sank
+    into a stertorous slumber at sunset. Whilst they slept, the Jesuits,
+    their converts, and Radisson got into the already prepared canoes and
+    paddled quickly down the Oswego River far beyond pursuit.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Radisson next joined his brother-in-law, Medard Chouart, and after
+    narrowly escaping massacre by the Iroquois (once more on the warpath
+    along the Ottawa River) reached the northern part of Lake Huron, and
+    Green Bay on the north-west of Lake Michigan. From Green Bay they
+    travelled up the Fox River and across a portage to the Wisconsin,
+    which flows into the Mississippi. Down this river they sped, meeting
+    people of the great Siou confederation and Kri (Cree) Indians, these
+    last an Algonkin nation roaming in the summertime as far north as
+    Hudson's Bay, until at length they reached the actual waters of the
+    Mississippi, first of all white men. Returning then to Lake Michigan,
+    the shores of which seemed to them an earthly paradise with a climate
+    finer than Italy, they journeyed northwards into Lake Huron, and
+    thence north-westwards through the narrow passages of St. Mary's River
+    into Lake Superior. The southern coast of Lake Superior was followed
+    to its westernmost point, where they made a camp, and from which they
+    explored during the winter (in snowshoes) the Wisconsin country and
+    collected information regarding the Mississippi and its great western
+    affluent the Missouri. The Mississippi, they declared, led to Mexico,
+    while the other great forked river in the far west was a pathway,
+    perhaps, to the Southern Sea (Pacific).
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Jesuits, on the other hand, were convinced that Hudson's Bay (or
+    the "Bay of the North") was at no great distance from Lake Superior
+    (which was true) and that it must communicate to the north-west with
+    the Pacific Ocean or the sea that led to China.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In 1661, without the leave of the French Governor of Canada, who
+    wanted them to take two servants of his own with them and to give him
+    half the profits of the venture, Chouart and Radisson hurried away to
+    the west, picked up large bodies of natives who were returning to the
+    regions north of Lake Huron, with them fought their way through the
+    ambushed Iroquois, and once more navigated the waters of Lake
+    Superior. Once again they started for the Mississippi basin and
+    explored the country of Minnesota, coming thus into contact with
+    native tribes which lived on the flesh of the bison. In Minnesota they
+    met a second time the Kri or Kinistino Indians of north-central
+    Canada, and joined one of their camps in the spring of 1662, somewhere
+    to the west of Lake Superior. With Kri guides they started away to the
+    north and north-east, no doubt by way of the Lake of the Woods, the
+    English River, Lake St. Joseph, and the Albany River, thus reaching
+    the salt sea at James Bay, the southernmost extension of Hudson Bay.
+    Or they may have proceeded by an even shorter route, though with
+    longer portages for canoes, through Lake Nipigon to the Albany.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The summer of 1662 they passed on the islands and shores of James Bay
+    hunting "buffalo"<a name="5-6"></a><a href="#note-5-6"><small>[6]</small></a> with the Indians. Then, in 1663, travelling back
+    along the same route they had followed in the previous year, they
+    regained Lake Superior, and so passed by the north of Lake Huron to
+    the Ottawa River and the St. Lawrence. But on their return to Three
+    Rivers they were arrested by the French Governor, D'Avaugour, who
+    condemned them to imprisonment and severe fines. The courts of France
+    gave them no redress, and in their furious anger Chouart and Radisson
+    went over to the English, offered their services to England, and so
+    brought about the creation of the Hudson Bay Company.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Radisson's journey from England to Hudson Bay has been treated of in
+    an earlier chapter: it is preferable to follow out to its finish the
+    great, western impulse of the French, which led them to neglect for a
+    time the doings of the British on the east coast of North America and
+    in the sub-Arctic regions of Hudson Bay.
+</p>
+<p>
+    From 1660 onwards the Jesuit missionaries again took up vigorously
+    that work of Christianizing the Amerindians which had been so
+    completely checked by the frightful ravages of the Iroquois between
+    1648 and 1654.
+</p>
+<p>
+    By 1669 the Jesuits had three permanent stations in western Canada.
+    The first was the mission station at Sault Ste. Marie, the second was
+    the station of Ste. Esprit, on Lake Superior (not far from the modern
+    town of Ashland), and the third was the station of St. François Xavier
+    at the mouth of the Fox River, on Green Bay, Lake Michigan.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As regards some of the sufferings which these missionaries had to go
+    through when travelling across Canada in the winter, I quote the
+    following from <i>The Relations of the Jesuits</i> (p. 35):&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I [Father de Crépieul] set out on the 16th of January, 1674, from the
+    vicinity of Lake St. John, near the Saguenay River, with an Algonkin
+    captain and two Frenchmen. We started after Mass, and walked five long
+    leagues on snowshoes with much trouble, because the snow was soft and
+    made our snowshoes very heavy. At the end of five leagues, we found
+    ourselves on a lake four or five leagues long all frozen over, on
+    which the wind caused great quantities of snow to drift, obscuring the
+    air and preventing us from seeing where we are going. After walking
+    another league and a half with great difficulty our strength began to
+    fail. The wind, cold, and snow were so intolerable that they compelled
+    us to retrace our steps a little, to cut some branches of fir which
+    might in default of bark serve to build a cabin. After this we tried
+    to light a fire, but were unable to do so. We were thus reduced to a
+    most pitiful condition. The cold was beginning to seize us to an
+    extraordinary degree, the darkness was great, and the wind blew
+    fearfully. In order to keep ourselves from dying with cold, we resumed
+    our march on the lake in spite of our fatigue, without knowing whither
+    we were going, and all were greatly impeded with the wind and snow.
+    After walking a league and a half we had to succumb in spite of
+    ourselves and stop where we were. The danger we ran of dying from cold
+    caused me to remember the charitable Father de Noue, who in a similar
+    occasion was found dead in the snow, kneeling and with clasped
+    hands.... We therefore remained awake during the rest of the night....
+    On the following morning two Frenchmen arrived from Father Albanel's
+    cabin very opportunely, and kindled a great fire on the snow.... After
+    this we resumed our journey on the same lake, and at last reached the
+    spot where Father Albanel was.... A serious injury, caused by the fall
+    of a heavy load upon his loins, prevented him from moving, and still
+    more, from performing a missionary's duties."
+</p>
+<p>
+    One of the Jesuit fathers, Allouez, in founding the station of St.
+    François Xavier on Green Bay, Lake Michigan, had gained further
+    information about the wonderful Mississippi, which he called "Messi
+    Sipi". He also thoroughly explored Lake Nipigon, to the north of Lake
+    Superior. In 1669 two missionaries, named Dollier de Casson and
+    Galinée, started from the seminary of St. Sulpice (Montreal) to reach
+    the great tribes of the far west, supposed to be eager to learn of
+    Christianity and known to be much more tractable than the Iroquois.
+    These two missionaries, in their expedition of seven canoes and
+    twenty-one Amerindians, were accompanied by a remarkable young man
+    commonly known as La Salle, but whose real name was Robert
+    Cavalier.<a name="5-7"></a><a href="#note-5-7"><small>[7]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    Before leaving Lake Ontario, they actually passed the mouth of the
+    Niagara River and heard the falls, but had not sufficient curiosity to
+    leave their canoes and walk a short distance to see them. The
+    wonderful cascades of Niagara, where the St. Lawrence leaving Lake
+    Erie plunges 328 feet down into Lake Ontario (which is not much above
+    sea level), remained nearly undiscovered and undescribed until the
+    year 1678, when they were visited by Father Hennepin. Near the western
+    end of Lake Ontario the two Sulpician missionaries met another
+    Frenchman, Jolliet, who had come down to Lake Superior by way of the
+    Detroit passage, which is really the portion of the St. Lawrence
+    connecting Lake Huron with Lake Erie. Jolliet told the missionary de
+    Casson of a great tribe in the far west, the Pottawatomies, who had
+    asked for missionaries, and who were of Algonkin stock. La Salle, on
+    the other hand, was determined to make for the rumoured Ohio River,
+    which lay somewhere to the south-west of Lake Erie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The two Sulpicians wintered in "the earthly paradise" to the north of
+    Lake Erie, passing a delightful six months there in the amazing
+    abundance of game and fish. They then met with various disasters to
+    their canoes, and consequently gave up their western journey, passing
+    northwards through Detroit and Lake St. Clair into Lake Huron, and
+    thence to the Jesuit mission station of the Sault Ste. Marie. Here
+    they were received rather coldly, as being rivals in the mission field
+    and in exploration. They in their turn accused the Jesuits of thinking
+    mainly, if not entirely, of the foundation of French colonies, and
+    very little of evangelizing the natives.
+</p>
+<p>
+    JOLLIET, a Canadian by birth,<a name="5-8"></a><a href="#note-5-8"><small>[8]</small></a> was dispatched by the Viceroy of
+    Canada in 1672 to explore the far west. Two years&mdash;1670&mdash;previously
+    the French Government had for the first time adopted a really definite
+    policy about Canada, and had taken formal possession of the Lake
+    region and of all the territories lying between the lakes and the
+    Mississippi. A great assembly of Indians was held at Sault Ste. Marie,
+    near the east end of Lake Superior; and here a representative of the
+    French Government, accompanied by numerous missionaries and by
+    Jolliet, read a proclamation of the sovereignty of King Louis XIV of
+    France and Navarre. Below a tall cross was erected a great shield
+    bearing the arms of France. Father Allouez addressed the Indians in
+    the Algonkin language, and told them of the all-powerful Louis XIV,
+    who "had ten thousand commanders and captains, each as great as the
+    Governor of Quebec". He reminded them how the troops of this king had
+    beaten the unconquerable Iroquois, of how he possessed innumerable
+    soldiers and uncountable ships; that at times the ground of France
+    shook with the discharge of cannon, while the blaze of musketry was
+    like the lightning. He pictured the king covered with the blood of his
+    enemies and riding in the middle of his cavalry, and ordering so many
+    of his enemies to be slain that no account could be kept of the number
+    of their scalps, whilst their blood flowed in rivers. The Amerindians
+    being what they were, addicted to warfare, and only recognizing the
+    right of the strongest, it may be that this gospel of force was not
+    quite so shocking and unchristian as it reads to us nearly 250 years
+    afterwards, though it jars very much as coming from the lips of a
+    missionary of Christianity. However, it must be remembered that but
+    for the valour of the French soldiers in the awful period between 1648
+    and 1666 (when the Mohawks received a thorough and well-deserved
+    thrashing) many of the tribes addressed on this occasion by the Jesuit
+    missionaries would have been completely exterminated; the Iroquois
+    would have depopulated much of north-eastern America. It is obvious,
+    indeed, from our study of the conditions of life amongst the
+    Amerindians, that one reason why the New World was so poorly populated
+    at the time of its discovery by Europeans was the wars of
+    extermination between tribe and tribe; for America between the Arctic
+    regions and Tierra del Fuego is marvellously well supplied with
+    natural food products&mdash;game, fish, fruits, nuts, roots, and
+    grain&mdash;much more so than any area of similar extent in the Old World.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jolliet was to be accompanied on his westward expedition by Father
+    JACQUES MARQUETTE,<a name="5-9"></a><a href="#note-5-9"><small>[9]</small></a> a Jesuit missionary who had become well
+    acquainted with the tribes visiting Lake Superior, and had learnt the
+    Siou dialect of the Illinois people. On May 17, 1673, Jolliet and
+    Marquette started from the Straits of Michili-Makinak with only two
+    bark canoes and five Amerindians. They coasted along the north coast
+    of Lake Michigan, passed into Green Bay, and thence up the River Fox.
+    They were assisted by the Maskutins, or Fire Indians, and were given
+    Miami guides. Thence the natives assisted them to transport their
+    canoes and baggage over the very short distance that separates the
+    upper waters of the Fox River from the Wisconsin River, and down the
+    Wisconsin they glided till they reached the great Mississippi. The
+    Governor of Quebec, who had sent Jolliet on this mission, believed
+    that the Great River of the west would lead them to the Gulf of
+    California, which was then called the Vermilion Sea by the Spaniards,
+    because it resembled in shape and colour the Red Sea.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "On the 17th of June (1673)", writes Father Marquette, "we safely
+    entered the Mississippi with a joy that I cannot express. Its current
+    is slow and gentle, the width very unequal. On its banks there are
+    hardly any woods or mountains. The islands are most beautiful, and
+    they are covered with fine trees. We saw deer and cattle (bison),
+    geese, and swans. From time to time we came upon monstrous fish, one
+    of which struck our canoe with such violence that I thought it was a
+    great tree. On another occasion we saw on the water a monster with the
+    head of a tiger, a sharp nose like that of a wild cat, with whiskers
+    and straight erect ears. The head was grey, and the neck quite black
+    (possibly a lynx).... We found that turkeys had taken the place of
+    game, and the <i>pisikiou</i>, or wild cattle, that of the other animals."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Father Marquette, of course, by his wild cattle means the bison, of
+    which he proceeds to give an excellent description. He adds: "They are
+    very fierce, and not a year passes without their killing some savages.
+    When attacked, they catch a man on their horns if they can, toss him
+    in the air, throw him on the ground, then trample him under foot and
+    kill him. If a person fires at them from a distance with either a bow
+    or a gun, he must immediately after the shot throw himself down and
+    hide in the grass, for if they perceive him who has fired they run at
+    him and attack him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Soon after entering the Mississippi, Marquette noticed some rocks
+    which by their height and length inspired awe. "We saw upon one of
+    them two painted monsters which at first made us afraid, and upon
+    which the boldest savages dare not long rest their eyes. They are as
+    large as a calf; they have horns on their heads like those of deer, a
+    horrible look, red eyes, a beard like a tiger's, a face somewhat like
+    a man's, a body covered with scales, and so long a tail that it winds
+    all round the body and ends like that of a fish. Green, red, and black
+    are the three colours composing the picture. Moreover, these two
+    monsters are so well painted that we cannot believe that any savage is
+    their author, for good painters in France would find it difficult to
+    paint so well, and, besides, they are so high up on the rock that it
+    is difficult to reach that place conveniently to paint them."<a name="5-10"></a><a href="#note-5-10"><small>[10]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    As the Jolliet expedition paddled down the Mississippi&mdash;ever so easily
+    and swiftly&mdash;a marvellous panorama unfolded itself before the
+    Frenchmen's fascinated gaze. Immense herds of bison occasionally
+    appeared on the river banks, flocks of turkeys flew up from the glades
+    and roosted in the trees and on the river bank. Everywhere the natives
+    seemed friendly, and Father Marquette was usually able to communicate
+    with them through his knowledge of the Illinois Algonkin dialect,
+    which the Siou understood.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0005"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc05.jpg" width="450" height="284"
+alt="Indians Hunting Bison">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>INDIANS HUNTING BISON</h5>
+<p>
+    On their first meeting with the Mississippi Indians, the French
+    explorers were not only offered the natives' pipes to smoke in token
+    of peace, but an old man amongst the latter uttered these words to
+    Jolliet: "How beautiful the sun is, O Frenchman, when thou comest to
+    visit us. Our village awaits thee, and thou shalt enter all our cabins
+    in peace."... "There was a crowd of people," writes Marquette; "they
+    devoured us with their eyes, but nevertheless preserved profound
+    silence. We could, however, hear these words addressed to us from time
+    to time in a low voice: 'How good it is, my brothers, that you should
+    visit us'.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "... The council was followed by a great feast, consisting of four
+    dishes, which had to be partaken of in accordance with all their
+    fashions. The first course was a great wooden platter full of
+    sagamité, that is to say, meal of Indian corn boiled in water, and
+    seasoned with fat. The Master of the Ceremonies filled a spoon with
+    sagamité three or four times, and put it to my mouth as if I were a
+    little child. He did the same to Monsieur Jollyet. As a second course
+    he caused a second platter to be brought, on which were three fish. He
+    took some pieces of them, removed the bones therefrom, and, after
+    blowing upon them to cool them, he put them in our mouths as one would
+    give food to a bird. For the third course, they brought a large dog
+    that had just been killed, but, when they learned that we did not eat
+    this meat, they removed it from before us. Finally, the fourth course
+    was a piece of wild ox, the fattest morsels of which were placed in
+    our mouths.... We thus pushed forward and no longer saw so many
+    prairies, because both shores of the river are bordered with lofty
+    trees. The cotton wood, elm and bass wood are admirable for their
+    height and thickness. There are great numbers of wild cattle whom we
+    hear bellowing. We killed a little parroquet, with a red and yellow
+    head and green body.... We have got down to near the 33° of
+    latitude.... We heard from afar savages who were inciting one another
+    to attack us by their continual yelling. They were armed with bows and
+    arrows, hatchets, clubs, and shields.... Part of them embarked in
+    great wooden canoes, some to ascend, others to descend the river in
+    order to surround us on all sides.... Some young men threw themselves
+    into the water and seized my canoe, but the current compelled them to
+    return to land. One of them hurled his club, which passed over without
+    striking us. In vain I showed the calumet (pipe of peace), and made
+    them signs that we were not coming to war against them. The alarm
+    continued; they were already preparing to pierce us with arrows from
+    all sides when God suddenly touched the hearts of the old men who were
+    standing at the water's edge, who checked the ardour of their young
+    men.... Whereon we landed, not without fear on our part. First we had
+    to speak by signs, because none of them understood the six languages
+    which I spoke. At last we found an old man who could speak a little
+    Illinois. We informed them that we were going to the sea.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The next day was spent in feasting on Indian corn and dogs' flesh.
+    The people here had an abundance of Indian corn, which they sowed at
+    all seasons. They cook it in great earthen jars which are very well
+    made, and also have plates of baked earth. The men go naked and wear
+    their hair short; they pierce their noses, from which, as well as from
+    their ears, hang beads.... Their cabins are made of bark, and are long
+    and wide. They sleep at the two ends, which are raised two feet above
+    the ground. They know nothing of the beaver, and their wealth consists
+    in the skins of wild cattle. They never see snow in their country, and
+    recognize the winter only through the rains."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The expedition had passed the confluence of the Missouri and that of
+    the Ohio, and had finally reached the place where the Arkansas River
+    enters the Mississippi. Here the Frenchmen gathered from the natives
+    that the sea was only ten days distant, and this sea they knew (for
+    Jolliet was able to take astronomical observations and to make a rough
+    survey) could only be the Gulf of Mexico. Jolliet feared if he
+    prosecuted his journey any farther, he and his people would fall into
+    the hands of the Spaniards and be imprisoned, if not killed.
+    Therefore, at this point on the Lower Mississippi, the expedition
+    turned back. Its return journey was a weary business, for the current
+    was against the canoes as they were propelled northwards up the Great
+    River. But Jolliet learnt from the natives of a better homeward route,
+    that of following the Illinois River upstream until the expedition
+    came within a very short distance of Lake Michigan, near where Chicago
+    now stands. The canoes were carried over a low ridge of ground,
+    launched again in the Chicago River, and so passed into Lake Michigan.
+    (There is, in fact, at this point the remains of an ancient water
+    connection between Lake Michigan and the Illinois River, and a canal
+    now connects the two systems.) Jolliet, in describing this region,
+    realized that by cutting a canal through two miles of prairie it would
+    be possible to go "in a small ship" from Lake Erie or Lake Superior
+    "to Florida".
+</p>
+<p>
+    Father Marquette remained at his new mission on the Fox River (he died
+    two years afterwards on the shores of the Straits of Michili-makinak).
+    Jolliet, on returning by way of the Ottawa River to Quebec, was nearly
+    drowned in the La Chine Rapids (Montreal), and all his papers and maps
+    were lost. The natives with him also perished, but he struggled to
+    shore with difficulty, and went on his way to Quebec to report his
+    wonderful discoveries to the Governor, Frontenac. Fortunately Father
+    Marquette had also kept a journal and had made maps, and these
+    reaching the superior of his mission arrived in time to confirm
+    Jolliet's statements.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jolliet married at Quebec, and proceeded to explore and develop the
+    regions along the north coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, travelling
+    in this work as far as Hudson's Bay. He was given by the French
+    Government the Island of Anticosti as a reward for his achievements,
+    but the work and capital which he put into the development of this
+    long-neglected island came to nothing; for it was captured by the
+    English, and Jolliet died a poor man whilst attempting to explore the
+    coast of Labrador.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As to ROBERT CAVALIER DE LA SALLE, he had, after all, discovered the
+    Ohio, and had descended that river as far as the site of the present
+    town of Louisville. Then he interested the Governor (Frontenac) of
+    Canada in his enterprises. A fort, called Fort Frontenac, was built at
+    what is now Kingston, at the point where the St. Lawrence leaves Lake
+    Ontario. La Salle returned to France, and obtained the grant of the
+    lordship of this fort and the surrounding country on conditions of
+    maintaining the whole cost of the establishment, and making a
+    settlement of colonists. Another visit to France in 1677-8 secured him
+    further support and capital, and he returned from France with a
+    companion, Henry de Tonty.
+</p>
+<p>
+    La Salle, with de Tonty, started from Fort Frontenac in September,
+    1678, so intensely anxious to commence his discoveries that he
+    disregarded the difficulties of the winter season. On his way to
+    Niagara he paid a visit to the Iroquois to conciliate them, and
+    cleverly got from them permission to build a vessel on Lake Erie and
+    also to erect a blacksmith's forge, near where Niagara now stands. The
+    blacksmith's forge grew rapidly into a fort before the Indians were
+    aware of what was being done. By August, 1679, he had built and
+    launched (in spite of extraordinary calamities and misfortunes) on the
+    Upper Niagara River the first sailing boat which ever appeared on the
+    four great upper lakes of the St. Lawrence basin.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In this ship he sailed through Lake Erie and past Detroit into Lake
+    Huron, and thence to Green Bay (Lake Michigan), stopping at intervals
+    amongst the canoes of the amazed natives, who for the first time heard
+    the sound of cannon, for he had armed his vessel with guns. At Green
+    Bay he collected a large quantity of furs, which had been obtained in
+    trade by the men he had sent on in advance. He loaded up his sailing
+    boat, the <i>Griffon</i>, and sent her on a voyage back to the east to
+    transport this splendid load of furs to the merchants with whom he had
+    become deeply indebted. Unhappily the <i>Griffon</i> foundered in a storm
+    on Lake Michigan, and was never heard of again. Meantime La Salle,
+    with de Tonty and Father HENNEPIN, the discoverer of Niagara, had
+    travelled in canoes to the south-east end of Lake Michigan, had passed
+    up the Joseph River, and thence by portage into the Kankaki, which
+    flows into the Illinois. This river he descended till he stopped near
+    the site of the modern Peoria. Below this place he built a fort&mdash;for
+    it was winter time&mdash;and although the natives were not very friendly he
+    collected enough information from them to satisfy himself that he
+    could easily pass down the Illinois to the Mississippi.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He sent one of the Frenchmen, Michel Accault, together with Father
+    Hennepin, to explore the Illinois down to the Mississippi; de Tonty he
+    placed in charge of the fort with a small garrison; and then himself,
+    on the last day of February, 1680, started to walk overland from Lake
+    Michigan to Detroit. Eventually, by means of a canoe, which he
+    constructed himself, he regained Fort Frontenac and Montreal. When he
+    returned to Fort Crèvecoeur, on the Illinois River,<a name="5-11"></a><a href="#note-5-11"><small>[11]</small></a> it was to meet
+    with the signs of a horrible disaster. The Iroquois in his absence had
+    descended on the place with a great war party. They had massacred the
+    Illinois people dwelling in a big settlement near the fort, and the
+    remains of their mutilated bodies were scattered all over the place.
+    Their town had been burnt; the fort was empty and abandoned. There
+    were no traces of the Frenchmen, however, amongst the skulls and
+    skeletons lying around him; for the skulls retained sufficient hair to
+    show that they belonged to Amerindians. Nevertheless, he deposited his
+    new stock of goods and most of his men in the ruins of the Fort
+    Crèvecoeur, and descended the River Illinois to the Mississippi. But
+    he was obliged to turn back. On the west bank of the river were the
+    scared Illinois Indians, on the east the raging Iroquois. Whenever La
+    Salle could safely visit a deserted camp he would examine the remains
+    of the tortured men tied to stakes to see if amongst them there was a
+    Frenchman.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But de Tonty was not dead. After incredible adventures he had escaped
+    the raids of the Iroquois and had reached the Straits of
+    Michili-makinak, between Lakes Michigan and Huron, and there met La
+    Salle, who was once more on his way to Montreal.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Again de La Salle and de Tonty, in the winter of 1681, returned to the
+    south end of Lake Michigan, and made their way over the snow to the
+    Illinois River. On the 6th February, 1682, they left the junction of
+    the Illinois and the Mississippi to trace that great river to its
+    outlet in the sea. La Salle reached the delta on the 6th April, 1682,
+    having on the way taken possession of the country in the name of the
+    King of France. Accault and Father Hennepin had meantime paddled up
+    the Northern Mississippi as far as its junction with the Wisconsin. At
+    this place their party was surrounded and captured by a large band of
+    Siou warriors.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Frenchmen were at first in danger of being killed, as the Sious
+    refused to smoke with them the pipe of peace. But being much less
+    bloodthirsty than the Iroquois, they soon calmed down and treated
+    their captives with a certain rough friendliness. All their goods were
+    taken from them, even the vestments worn by Father Hennepin. But they
+    were well supplied with food such as the country produced&mdash;bison,
+    beef, fish, wild turkeys, and the grain of the wild rice, which made
+    such excellent flour. They were gradually conveyed by the Siou<a name="5-12"></a><a href="#note-5-12"><small>[12]</small></a> to
+    a large settlement of that tribe on the shore of Mille Lacs, a sheet
+    of water not far distant from the westernmost extremity of Lake
+    Superior. Whilst staying at this Siou town Hennepin conversed with
+    Indians from the far north and north-west, and from what they told him
+    came to the conclusion that there was no continuous waterway or
+    "Strait of Anian" across the North-American continent, but that
+    the land extended to the north-west till it finally joined the
+    north-eastern part of Asia&mdash;a guess that was not very far wrong. But
+    he also surmised that there were rivers in the far west which led to
+    an ocean&mdash;the Pacific&mdash;across which ships might go to Japan and China
+    without passing to the southward of the Equator.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Whilst moving up and down the northern Mississippi, bison-hunting with
+    the Indians, the Frenchmen were met near the site of St. Paul by one
+    of the great French pioneers of the seventeenth century, the Sieur
+    DANIEL DE GREYSOLON DU L'HUT. This remarkable man, who was an officer
+    of the French army, had already planted the French arms at the
+    Amerindian settlement of Mille Lacs in 1679, and had established
+    himself as a powerful authority at the west end of Lake Superior. He
+    had also summoned a great council of Amerindian tribes&mdash;the Siou from
+    the Upper Mississippi, the Assiniboins from the Lake of the Woods
+    (between Lake Superior and Lake Winnipeg), and the Kri Indians from
+    Lake Nipigon. He had further discovered, in 1679, the water route of
+    the St. Croix River from near Lake Superior to the Mississippi.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Du L'Hut soon persuaded the Siou to let his fellow countrymen return
+    with him to Lake Superior. Accault remained behind with the Siou,
+    delighted with their wild, roving life, and no doubt married an Indian
+    wife and became the father of some of those bold half-breeds who
+    played such a great part in the subsequent history of innermost
+    Canada. But Father Hennepin returned to Montreal, and made his way
+    eventually to France, where he fell into great disgrace and was
+    unfrocked. He had richly merited this treatment, for after he heard of
+    the death of La Salle he impudently claimed the discovery of the whole
+    course of the Mississippi River for himself, and for a long time was
+    believed. He will certainly go down in history as the man who
+    discovered and described Niagara Falls (in 1678), and he also assisted
+    greatly to clear up the geography of the time by the information he
+    collected from the Amerindians as to the vast extent of the
+    North-American continent; but he was a boastful, unscrupulous man.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Du L'Hut, who came to the rescue of Accault and Hennepin, was of noble
+    family, and a member of the king's bodyguard. He decided, however, to
+    seek his fortune in Canada, and obtained a commission as captain. It
+    was his cousin, Henri de Tonty, who had accompanied La Salle. After
+    returning to France to fight in the wars then going on, he came back
+    to Canada with a younger brother, Claude. He had in him the spirit of
+    great adventurers, and longed to visit the unknown countries of the
+    upper Mississippi. In the early part of these journeys he rescued his
+    fellow countrymen from the keeping of the Sious in the manner
+    described. After that he spent <i>thirty</i> years travelling and trading
+    about North America, from the northern Mississippi into what we
+    should now call Manitoba, and from the vicinity of Lake Winnipeg to
+    Hudson Bay. He brought the great Amerindian nation of the Dakotas into
+    direct relations with the French. He was absolutely fearless, and in
+    no period of Canadian history has France been more splendidly
+    represented in the personality of any of her officers than she was by
+    Daniel de Greysolon du L'Hut. His was a tiresome name for English
+    scribes and speakers. It was therefore written by them "Duluth" and
+    pronounced D&#259;l&#259;th (instead of "Dülüt"). It is the name given to
+    the township near the southernmost extremity of Lake Superior.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the journeys of du L'Hut came to an end&mdash;he died at Montreal in
+    1710&mdash;and after the era of great French explorations in North America
+    drew to a close, the French power was beginning to be eclipsed by that
+    of the British, who were building up the foundations of a colony on
+    the shores of Hudson's Bay, and were taking steps to acquire
+    Newfoundland and to colonize New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nevertheless, in 1720, the King of France, or rather the regent acting
+    for the king, decided that a serious attempt must be made to discover
+    the Western Sea, or Pacific Ocean, from the French posts which had
+    been established in what is now known as Manitoba. The French had
+    already discovered the Missouri, and had heard from several Indian
+    tribes that it was possible to cross the Rocky Mountains and descend
+    by other rivers to the waters of a great ocean, the coasts of which
+    were visited by Spaniards. Several expeditions were sent out, more or
+    less under the control of Jesuits, but did not accomplish much.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The really great discoveries which link the "Great North-West" for all
+    time in history with France and French names were initiated by PIERRE
+    GAULTIER DE LA VÉRENDRYE, who was born in 1685 at the town of Three
+    Rivers, in Lower Canada, where his father was Governor. He entered
+    the army at the age of twelve, and took part in the French campaigns
+    in Flanders, winning the rank of lieutenant at the battle of
+    Malplaquet, where he received nine wounds and was left for dead on the
+    field. He then returned to Canada, not having the necessary means with
+    which to support the position of a lieutenant; and then, as France
+    seemed to have entered upon a period of protracted peace, he
+    determined to become an explorer. In 1728, when he was commandant of
+    the trading post of Nipigon, to the north of Lake Superior, he heard
+    from an Indian that there was a great lake beyond Lake Superior, out
+    of which flowed a river towards the west, which ultimately led to a
+    great salt lake where the water ebbed and flowed. As a matter of fact,
+    these stories simply referred to Lake Winnipeg, but the importance of
+    them lay in the fact that they acted as a powerful incentive to La
+    Vérendrye to push his explorations westwards, and perhaps discover a
+    route to the Pacific Ocean.<a name="5-13"></a><a href="#note-5-13"><small>[13]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    La Vérendrye afterwards went to Quebec, where he discussed his plans
+    for Western exploration with the Governor of New France, the Marquis
+    de Beauharnais, who was a distant connection of the Beauharnais family
+    from which sprang the first husband of the Empress Joséphine, the
+    grandfather of Napoleon III.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This Governor entered into his scheme with enthusiasm, though he could
+    obtain little or no money from the ministers of Louis XVI. But a way
+    out of the difficulty was found by the Governor giving La Vérendrye
+    the monopoly of the fur trade in the far North-West.<a name="5-14"></a><a href="#note-5-14"><small>[14]</small></a> This
+    monopoly enabled La Vérendrye to obtain the funds for his expenditure
+    from the merchants of Montreal, and in the summer of 1731 he started
+    out on his explorations, accompanied by three of his sons, his nephew,
+    fifty soldiers and French Canadian canoe men, and a Jesuit missionary.
+    For a guide they had the Indian, Oshagash, who had first told La
+    Vérendrye of the western river and the salt water. After many delays,
+    necessitated by the need for trading in furs to satisfy the merchants
+    of Montreal, La Vérendrye and his expedition skated on snowshoes down
+    the ice of the Winnipeg River and reached the shores of Lake Winnipeg.
+    They were probably the first white men to arrive there. La Vérendrye
+    established forts and posts along his route from Lake Nipigon, but his
+    expedition had not been a commercial success. There was a deficit of
+    £1700 between the amount realized in furs and the cost of the
+    equipment and wages of the French and French Canadians. De Beauharnais
+    made a fresh appeal to the French Court; he urged that the expenditure
+    to convey La Vérendrye's expedition to the Pacific Ocean would not be
+    a large one&mdash;perhaps only £1500.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the French Court was obdurate; it would not furnish a penny. Thus
+    La Vérendrye, in all probability, was prevented from forestalling the
+    British explorers of sixty and seventy years later, besides the
+    expeditions of Captain Cook and Captain Vancouver, which secured for
+    Great Britain a foothold on the Pacific seaboard of British Columbia.
+</p>
+<p>
+    La Vérendrye in his fort on Lake Winnipeg was in a desperate position.
+    He made a hasty journey back to Montreal and even Quebec, to beat up
+    funds and to pacify the capitalists of his fur-trading monopoly. He
+    painted in glowing colours the prospects of cutting off the trade of
+    the Hudson's Bay Company and the building up of an immense commerce in
+    valuable furs, and these men agreed once again to furnish the funds
+    for the extension of the expedition. On his return he took back with
+    him his youngest son, Louis, a boy of eighteen. Whilst he had been
+    absent from Fort St. Charles (a post which he had built on the Lake of
+    the Woods, in communication by water with the Winnipeg River), on Lake
+    Winnipeg, that place was visited by a party of Siou Indians. They
+    found the fort occupied in the absence of the French by a number of
+    Kri or "Knistino" Indians in French service. These Kris were
+    frightened at the arrival of the Sious and fired guns at them. "Who
+    fired on us?" demanded these haughty Indians from Dakota, and the Kris
+    replied, "The French". Then the Sious withdrew, but vowed to be
+    completely revenged on the treacherous white man.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When La Vérendrye reached Fort St. Charles its little garrison was
+    almost at the point of starvation. He had travelled himself ahead of
+    his party, and the immense stock of supplies and provisions he was
+    bringing up country were a long way behind him when he reached the
+    fort. He therefore sent back his son Jean, together with the most
+    active of his Canadian voyageurs and the Jesuit missionary, in order
+    that they might meet the heavily laden canoes and hurry them up
+    country as fast as possible. But this party was met by the Sious on
+    Rainy River, who massacred them to a man. They were afterwards found
+    lying in a circle on the beach, decapitated and mutilated. The heads
+    of most of them were wrapped ironically in beaver skins, and La
+    Vérendrye's son, Jean, was horribly cut and slashed, and his
+    mutilated, naked body decorated with garters and bracelets of
+    porcupine quills.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Meantime, during his absence in Lower Canada, two of his sons in
+    charge of Fort Maurepas, on Lake Winnipeg, had been very active. They
+    had discovered the great size of this lake, and also the entrance of
+    the Red River on the south. They then proceeded to explore both the
+    Red River and its western tributary the Assiniboin. On the Assiniboin
+    was afterwards built the post of Fort La Reine, and from this place in
+    1738 La Vérendrye started with two of his sons, several other
+    Frenchmen, a few Canadian voyageurs, and twenty-five Assiniboin
+    Indians. Leaving the Assiniboin River, they crossed the North Dakota
+    prairies on foot. Owing to the timidity of his Indian guides, La
+    Vérendrye was not led direct to the Missouri River, the "Great River
+    of the West", but along a zigzag route which permitted his guides to
+    reinforce their numbers at Assiniboin villages, and every now and then
+    join in a bison hunt. All the party were on foot, horses not then
+    having reached the Assiniboin tribe. But on the 28th of November,
+    1738, they drew near to the Missouri and were met by a chief of the
+    great Mandan tribe, who was accompanied by thirty of his warriors, and
+    who presented La Vérendrye with young maize cobs and leaves of native
+    tobacco, these being regarded as emblems of peace and friendship.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Mandan tribe differed materially in its habits and customs from
+    the Indians to the north, who supported themselves mainly, if not
+    entirely, by hunting, who cared very little for agriculture, and moved
+    continually like nomads over great stretches of country, living
+    chiefly in tents or temporary villages. The Mandans, on the other
+    hand, were a people who practised agriculture, and had permanent and
+    well-constructed towns. In fact, their civilization and demeanour made
+    such an impression on the Assiniboin and other northern tribes that
+    they had been considered a sort of "white people", somewhat akin to
+    Europeans, and La Vérendrye was a little disappointed to find them
+    only Amerindians in race and colour.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The six hundred Assiniboins who had gathered about La Vérendrye's
+    expedition proved to be a great trouble to him, as they were
+    constantly picking quarrels with the Mandans, who were very dishonest.
+    Accordingly, La Vérendrye arranged with the Mandans to frighten them
+    away by pretending that the Siou Indians were on the warpath. The six
+    hundred Assiniboins bolted, but took with them La Vérendrye's
+    interpreter, so that he was henceforth obliged to communicate with the
+    Mandans by means of signs and gestures. This and other reasons decided
+    him to return&mdash;even though it was the depth of winter, to Fort La
+    Reine, but not before he had given the head chief of the Mandans a
+    flag and a leaden plate which (unknown to the Mandans) meant taking
+    possession of their country in the name of the French king.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The journey back to Fort La Reine, over the plains of the Assiniboin,
+    was a terrible experience. The party had to travel in the teeth of an
+    almost unceasing north-east wind which was freezingly cold. Night
+    after night they were obliged to dig deep holes in the snow for their
+    sleeping places. La Vérendrye nearly died of agonizing pain and
+    fatigue during this journey, and was a long time recovering from its
+    effects.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As they continued to receive friendly messages from the Mandans,
+    inviting them to make further discoveries, LA VÉRENDRYE'S sons, PIERRE
+    and FRANCOIS, set out in the spring of 1742, and, after some checks
+    and disappointments, managed with a single Mandan guide to reach Broad
+    Lands on the Little Missouri River, where they noticed the earths of
+    different colours, blue, green, red, black, white, and yellow, which
+    are so characteristic of this region. They reached the village of the
+    Crow Indians, passed through a portion of the friendly tribe, the
+    Cheyennes (the name was probably pronounced Shian) and got into the
+    country which was constantly being ravaged by the Snake Indians, or
+    Shoshones. Here, on the 1st of January, 1743, when the mists of
+    morning cleared away, they saw upon the horizon the outline of huge
+    mountains. As they travelled westwards or south-westwards, day after
+    day, the jagged blue wall resolved itself into towering snow-capped
+    peaks, glittering in the sun and provoking the appellation of "the
+    Mountains of Bright Stones", a name probably given to the Rocky
+    Mountains by the Amerindians, but used in all the earlier French and
+    English maps until the end of the eighteenth century.<a name="5-15"></a><a href="#note-5-15"><small>[15]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the 12th of January they reached the very foot of the mountains,
+    the slopes of which they saw were thickly covered with magnificent
+    forests of pine and fir&mdash;forests, that have since suffered to an
+    appalling extent from annual bush fires, which so far the United
+    States Government seems unable to check. Here they were to meet with a
+    bitter disappointment. They were travelling with a very large war
+    party of the Bow Indians for the purpose, if need be, of attacking and
+    routing the Shoshones; but a Shoshone camp at the base of the
+    mountains was found to be deserted, and the Bow Indians jumped to the
+    conclusion that the Shoshones had turned back through the forest
+    unseen, and were now making with all speed for the principal war camp
+    of the Bow Indians, where they would massacre the women and children.
+    They would listen to no remonstrances from the two Frenchmen, who
+    perforce had also to travel back, either alone or with the Bow
+    Indians, in the direction of their war camp, where the idea of a
+    Shoshone attack was found to be baseless. Eventually, the two La
+    Vérendrye brothers were obliged to make their way to the Missouri
+    River, and abandon any idea of finding a way to the Western Ocean
+    across the Rocky Mountains.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The French pioneers had already heard of the Spaniards in California,
+    and the possibility of getting into touch with them. They had now
+    discovered, first of all Europeans, the Rocky Mountains&mdash;that great
+    snowy range of North America which extends from Robson Peak on the
+    eastern borders of British Columbia to Baldy Peak in New Mexico.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Afterwards the La Vérendryes directed their attention more to the
+    opportunities of reaching the Far West through the streams that flowed
+    into the system of Lake Winnipeg, and in this way discovered, in or
+    about 1743, the great River Saskatchewan. This river La Vérendrye's
+    sons followed up till they reached the junction between the North and
+    the South Rivers, and then they probably learnt a good deal more of
+    the Southern Saskatchewan, on which they may have built one or two
+    posts. La Vérendrye himself thought that this would prove to be the
+    best route by which the French could reach the Western Sea.
+</p>
+<p>
+    By this time the French Government was becoming alive to the
+    importance of these discoveries, and it conferred a decoration on La
+    Vérendrye, and allowed him to hope that he might be furnished with
+    means for further exploration. But he died soon afterwards, at the
+    close of 1749, and after his death his sons were treated with gross
+    ingratitude and neglect. The self-seeking Governor of New France
+    endeavoured to secure the fur trade for his own friends, and sent an
+    officer with a terribly long name&mdash;Captain Jacques Répentigny Le
+    Gardeur de Saint Pierre&mdash;to continue the exploration towards the
+    Pacific. From 1750 to 1763 the French occupation of this region of the
+    two Saskatchewan Rivers was extended till in all probability the
+    French got within sight of the northern Rocky Mountains in the
+    vicinity of Calgary. Then came the English conquest of Canada to stop
+    all further enterprise in this direction, and the story was next to be
+    taken up by English, Scottish, and Canadian explorers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It will be men with English and Scottish names, mainly, who will
+    henceforth complete the work begun and established so magnificently by
+    Cartier, Brulé, Nicollet, Jolliet, La Salle, du L'Hut, and La
+    Vérendrye, though the French Canadians will also play a notable part,
+    together with "Americans", from New England.
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="note-5-1"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-1"><u>1</u></a> Mentioned on p. <a href="#p80">80</a>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-5-2"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-2"><u>2</u></a> The Andastes were akin to the Iroquois, but did not
+    belong to their confederacy; they lived in Pennsylvania.
+</p>
+<a name="note-5-3"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-3"><u>3</u></a> The inaccurate statement has frequently been written
+    about Newfoundland being "the first British American colony".
+    Newfoundland was reached by the ship in which John Cabot sailed on his
+    1497 voyage of discovery, and a few years afterwards its shores were
+    sought by the English in common with the French and the Portuguese,
+    and later on the Spaniards and Basques, for the cod fishery. But no
+    definite British settlement, such as subsequently grew into an actual
+    colony, was founded in Newfoundland until the year 1624; the island
+    was not recognized as definitely British till 1713, and no governor
+    was appointed till 1728. The first permanent English colonial
+    settlement in America was founded at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607; and
+    in the Bermudas and Barbados (West Indies) soon afterwards.
+</p>
+<a name="note-5-4"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-4"><u>4</u></a> The Récollet (properly Recollect) friars were a strict
+    branch of the Franciscan order that were sometimes called the
+    Observantines. They were also known as "Recollects" (pronounced in
+    French <i>récollet</i>) because they were required to be constantly keeping
+    guard over their thoughts. This development of the Franciscan order of
+    preaching missionary friars was originally a Spanish one, founded
+    early in the sixteenth century, and becoming well established in the
+    Spanish Netherlands. Many of them were Flemings or Walloons.
+</p>
+<a name="note-5-5"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-5"><u>5</u></a> See p. <a href="#p160">160</a>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-5-6"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-6"><u>6</u></a> More probably musk oxen.
+</p>
+<a name="note-5-7"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-7"><u>7</u></a> La Salle was the name of his property in France.
+</p>
+<a name="note-5-8"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-8"><u>8</u></a> Born at Quebec in 1645.
+</p>
+<a name="note-5-9"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-9"><u>9</u></a> Father Jacques Marquette was born in the province of
+    Champagne, eastern France. He came to Canada when he was twenty-nine
+    years old, having already been prepared by the Jesuits for priesthood
+    and missionary work since his seventeenth year. He spent nine years in
+    Canada, and died at the age of thirty-eight. He has left an enduring
+    memory for goodness, courage, and purity of life.
+</p>
+<a name="note-5-10"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-10"><u>10</u></a> These remarkable rock pictures were situated immediately
+    above the present city of Alton, Illinois. In 1812 they still remained
+    in a good state of preservation, but the thoughtless Americans had
+    gradually destroyed them by 1867 in quarrying the rock for building
+    stone.
+</p>
+<a name="note-5-11"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-11"><u>11</u></a> He had named this place "Heartbreak" because when
+    building it he had learnt of the loss of his sailing ship <i>Griffon</i>,
+    with the splendid supply of furs which was to have paid off his debts,
+    with all his reserve supplies and his men. This was not the limit of
+    his troubles; for, after the overland journey of appalling hardships
+    through a country of melting ice, flood, swamp, and hostile
+    Iroquois&mdash;the Iroquois being furious with La Salle for having
+    outwitted them in the building of this fort, and seeking him
+    everywhere to destroy him&mdash;when he got to Montreal it was only to
+    learn that a ship, coming from France with further supplies for his
+    great journey had been wrecked at the mouth of the St. Lawrence!
+</p>
+<a name="note-5-12"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-12"><u>12</u></a> The real name of the Siou, as far as we can arrive at it
+    through the records of the French pioneers, was Issati or Naduessiu.
+</p>
+<a name="note-5-13"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-13"><u>13</u></a> The water of Lake Winnipeg&mdash;whatever it may be now&mdash;was
+    frequently stated by Amerindians in earlier days to be "stinking
+    water", or salt, brackish water, disagreeable to drink, and this lake
+    exhibits a curious phenomenon of a regular rise and fall, reminding
+    the observer of a tide, a phenomenon by no means confined to Lake
+    Winnipeg, but occurring on sheets of water of much smaller extent.
+</p>
+<a name="note-5-14"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-14"><u>14</u></a> What we should call to-day a "concession".
+</p>
+<a name="note-5-15"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-15"><u>15</u></a> The term Rocky Mountains was probably first officially
+    applied by the American expedition, under Lewis and Clarke, sent out
+    by the United States Government in 1804 to take possession of the
+    coast of Oregon, but it was used twenty or thirty years earlier by
+    British explorers of Western Canada.
+</p>
+<p class="return">[<a href="#contents">TABLE OF CONTENTS</a>]
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="2HCH0006"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER VI
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    The Geographical Conditions of the Canadian Dominion
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Before we continue to follow the adventures of the pioneers of British
+    North America, I think&mdash;even if it seems wearisome and discursive&mdash;my
+    readers would better understand this story if I placed before them a
+    general description of what is now the Dominion of Canada, more
+    particularly as it was seen and discovered by the earliest European
+    explorers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The most prominent feature on the east, and that which was nearest to
+    Europe, was the large island of NEWFOUNDLAND, 42,000 square miles in
+    extent, that is to say, nearly as large as England without Wales. It
+    seems to bar the way of the direct sea access by the Gulf of St.
+    Lawrence to the very heart of North America; and, until the Straits of
+    Belle Isle and of Cabot were discovered, did certainly arrest the
+    voyages of the earliest pioneers. Newfoundland, as you can see on the
+    map, has been cut into and carved by the forces of nature until it has
+    a most fantastic outline. Long peninsulas of hills alternate with
+    deep, narrow gulfs, and about the south-east and east coasts there are
+    innumerable islets, most of which in the days of the early discoverers
+    were the haunt of millions of sea birds who resorted there for
+    breeding purposes. The heart of Newfoundland, so to speak, is an
+    elevated country with hills and mountains rising to a little over 2000
+    feet. A great deal of the country is, or was, dense forests, chiefly
+    consisting of fir trees. As numerous almost as the sea birds were the
+    seals and walruses which frequented the Newfoundland coasts. Inland
+    there were very large numbers of reindeer, generally styled nowadays
+    by the French-Canadian name of <i>Caribou</i><a name="6-1"></a><a href="#note-6-1"><small>[1]</small></a>. Besides reindeer there
+    were wolves, apparently of a smaller size than those of the mainland.
+    There were also lynxes and foxes, besides polar bears, martens,
+    squirrels, &amp;c. The human inhabitants of Newfoundland, whom I shall
+    describe in the next chapter, were known subsequently by the name of
+    Beothuk, or Beothik, a nickname of no particular meaning. They had
+    evidently been separated for many centuries from contact with the
+    Amerindians of the mainland, though they may have been visited
+    occasionally on the north by the Eskimo. They had in fact been so long
+    separated from the other Amerindians of North America that they were
+    strikingly different from them in their habits, customs, and language.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The climate of Newfoundland is not nearly so cold as that of the
+    mainland, nor so hot in summer, but it is spoilt at times by fogs and
+    sea mists which conceal the landscape for days together. In the
+    wintertime, and quite late in the spring, quantities of ice hang about
+    the shores of the islands, and when the warm weather comes, these
+    accumulations of ice slip away into the Atlantic in the form of
+    icebergs and are most dangerous to shipping.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To the south-east of Newfoundland the sea is very shallow for hundreds
+    of miles, the remains no doubt of a great extension of North America
+    in the direction of Europe which had sunk below the surface ages ago.
+    In this shallow water&mdash;the "Banks" of Newfoundland&mdash;fish, especially
+    codfish, swarmed in millions, and still continue to swarm with little,
+    if any, diminution from the constant toll of the fishing fleets.
+    Another creature found in great abundance on these coasts is the true
+    lobster,<a name="6-2"></a><a href="#note-6-2"><small>[2]</small></a> which filled as important a part in the diet of the
+    Beothuk natives, before the European occupation, as the salmon did in
+    the dietary of the British Columbian tribes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The next most striking feature in the geography of Eastern North
+    America is NOVA SCOTIA. AS you look at it on the map this province
+    seems to be a long peninsula connected with the mainland by the narrow
+    isthmus of Chignecto; but its northernmost portion&mdash;Cape
+    Breton&mdash;really consists of two big and two little islands, only
+    separated from Nova Scotia by a very narrow strait&mdash;the Gut of Canso.
+    On the north of Nova Scotia lies the large Prince Edward Island, and
+    north of this again the small group of the Magdalen Islands,
+    discovered by Cartier, the resort of herds of immense walruses at one
+    time. Due west of Nova Scotia the country, first flat (like Nova
+    Scotia itself) and at one time covered with magnificent forests, rises
+    into a very hilly region which culminates on the north in the Shikshok
+    Mountains of the Gaspé Peninsula (nearly 4000 feet in height) and the
+    White Mountains (over 6000 feet) and the Adirondak Mountains (over
+    5000 feet). The White, the Green, and the Adirondak Mountains lie just
+    within the limits of the United States.
+</p>
+<p>
+    North of the Gaspé Peninsula, in the great Gulf of St. Lawrence, is
+    Anticosti Island, which rises on the south in a series of terraces
+    until it reaches an altitude of about 2000 feet. This island, which is
+    well wooded, was said to have swarmed with reindeer at one time, and
+    perhaps other forms of deer also, and to have possessed grizzly bears
+    which fed on the deer, besides Polar bears visiting it in the winter.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0006"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<a href="images/map06-large.jpg"> <img src="images/map06-small.jpg" width="606" height="400" alt="Map of Canada"></a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="ar"> [<a href="images/map06-large.jpg"><small>LARGER MAP</small></a>]</p>
+
+<p>
+    Newfoundland is separated from the mainland of LABRADOR on the north
+    by the Strait of Belle Isle, and from Cape Breton Island on the south
+    by Cabot Strait. Labrador is an immense region on the continent, where
+    the coast (except for the deep inlet of Melville Lake) soon rises into
+    an elevated plateau 2000 feet in height, which is strewn with almost
+    uncountable lakes, out of which rivers flow north, south, east, and
+    west. On the north-east corner of Labrador there are mountains from
+    3000 to 4000 feet, overlooking the sea. The whole of this vast
+    Labrador or Ungava Peninsula, which is bounded on the south by the
+    River and Gulf of St. Lawrence, and on the north by Hudson's Bay and
+    Hudson's Straits, is an inhospitable land, at no time with much
+    population.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The winter of Labrador is long and severe; one would need to have
+    blood like brandy, a skin of brass, and an eye of glass not to suffer
+    from the rigours of a Labrador winter. In the summer the frequent fogs
+    render the air damp, and the constant breezes from the immense fields
+    of ice floating in the gulf keep the land very cool, and make any
+    alteration in the winter dress almost unnecessary" (James M'Kenzie).
+    Labrador and the lands farther north on the continent of North America
+    are separated from Greenland on the east by the broad straits&mdash;a great
+    branch of the Atlantic&mdash;named after Davis and Baffin, who first
+    explored them. Passing up Davis Strait, along the coast of Labrador to
+    beyond 60° N. lat., the voyager comes to Hudson's Straits, which, if
+    followed up first to the northwards and then to the south-west, would
+    lead him into the great expanse of Hudson's Bay, one of the most
+    important features in the geography of North America.
+</p>
+<p>
+    HUDSON'S BAY, which is a great inland sea with an area of about
+    315,000 square miles, has a southern loop or extension called James
+    Bay, the shores of which are not at a very great distance either from
+    Lake Superior to the south-west, or from the source of the River
+    Saguenay on the south. The Saguenay flows into the Lower St. Lawrence
+    River. It is therefore not surprising that as soon as the French began
+    to settle in Lower Canada they heard of a vast northern inland sea of
+    salt water&mdash;Hudson's Bay. But the people who discovered and surveyed
+    Hudson's Bay during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth
+    centuries were always on the search for a passage out of its waters
+    into the Arctic Sea, which would enable them to get right round
+    America into the Pacific Ocean.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In Arctic North America Nature really seems to have been preparing
+    during millions of years a grim joke with which to baffle exploring
+    humanity! It is easy enough to pass from Davis Straits into Hudson's
+    Bay, but to get out of Hudson's Bay in the direction of the Arctic
+    Ocean is like getting out of a very cleverly arranged maze. There are
+    innumerable false exits, which have disappointed one Arctic explorer
+    after another. When they had discovered that Hudson's Bay to the south
+    was only like a great bottle, and had no outlet, they explored its
+    northern waters; and when they found Chesterfield Inlet on the
+    north-west, which leads into Baker Lake, they thought perhaps here was
+    the passage through into the Arctic Sea. But no; that was no good. To
+    the north of Chesterfield Inlet was a broad channel called Roe's
+    Welcome, which led into Wager Bay and through frozen straits into
+    Fox's Channel, and this again into Ross Bay. Here only a very narrow
+    isthmus separates Hudson's Bay from the Arctic Sea; but still it is an
+    isthmus of solid land. Turning to the north-east and north there are
+    the broad waters of Fox's Channel leading into Fox's Basin; but the
+    north-west corner of this inland sea was so blocked with ice and
+    islands that it was not until the year 1822 that the <i>real</i> northern
+    outlet of Hudson's Bay was discovered by Captain EDWARD PARRY to be
+    the narrow Fury and Hecla Straits (the discovery was not completed
+    until 1839 <a name="p125"></a>by the Hudson's Bay Company's explorers T. SIMPSON and W.
+    DEASE).
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here you have found the way out into the Gulf of Boothia, which
+    communicates in the north with Barrow Strait and Baffin's Bay. But
+    across the supposed peninsula of Boothia there were discovered, in
+    1847, by Dr. JOHN RAE (also an officer of the Hudson's Bay Company)
+    the narrow Bellot Straits, which lead into Franklin Straits and so
+    into M'Clintock Channel and the Arctic Ocean. After this you might
+    theoretically (if the ice permitted it) sail or steam your ship
+    through Victoria Straits and Coronation Gulf till you got into
+    Beaufort Sea (part of the open Arctic Ocean), or, by turning round
+    Prince Albert Land, pass through the Prince of Wales' Straits or
+    M'Clure Straits into the same Beaufort Sea.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The North-West Passage across the Arctic extremity of North America,
+    therefore, <i>did</i> exist after all, and the directest route would be up
+    Davis Straits, through Hudson's Straits into Fox's Basin, then through
+    the Fury and Hecla Straits into the Gulf of Boothia, then through the
+    Bellot Straits and Franklin Straits (past Victorialand and Kemp
+    Peninsula) and out through the Dolphin and Union Straits into the
+    Arctic Ocean, and so on round the north coast of Alaska, past Bering's
+    Straits into Bering Sea and the Pacific. But of course the
+    accumulations of ice completely block continuous navigation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The huge jagged island of BAFFIN'S LAND differs from much of Arctic
+    America in that it has high land rising into mountains. This is so
+    completely covered with ice that it is of little interest under
+    present circumstances to the world of civilization, though the large
+    herds of musk oxen which it once supported were of much use to Arctic
+    explorers as a food supply in winter. The coasts are inhabited by a
+    few thousand Eskimo, and Davis Straits and Baffin's Bay possess a
+    certain amount of commercial importance owing to the whale fisheries
+    which are carried on there by the British, the Danes, the Americans,
+    and the Eskimo. In fact the importance of these whale fisheries have
+    of late made the Americans of the United States a little inclined to
+    challenge the British possession of these great Arctic islands. North
+    Devon, North Somerset, Prince of Wales' Land, Melville Island, Banks
+    Land, Prince Albert Land, &amp;c. &amp;c, are names of other great Arctic
+    islands completely within the grip of the ice. The nature of their
+    interior is almost unknown. They are at present of use to no form of
+    man unless it be to a few wandering Eskimo, who come to their coasts
+    in the summer to kill seals.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The great NORTH-WEST TERRITORIES of the Canadian Dominion extend from
+    the American frontier of Alaska (which is the 141° of W. long.) to the
+    Ungava Peninsula, which abuts on Labrador. Where this vast region
+    slopes to the Arctic Ocean and Hudson's Bay it is rather low and flat,
+    except between Alaska and the Mackenzie River, and between the
+    Mackenzie and the watershed of Hudson's Bay. The principal river
+    system in the far North-West is that of the great Mackenzie River,
+    which flows into the Arctic Ocean (Beaufort Sea) through an immense
+    delta, and is one of the longest rivers in the world. The southernmost
+    sources of the Mackenzie (such as the Peace River and the Athabaska
+    River) rise in the Rocky Mountains to the east of British Columbia.
+    These waters are stored for a time in Lake Athabaska, and then under
+    the name of Slave River flow northwards into the Great Slave Lake, and
+    out of this, under the name of Mackenzie River, into Beaufort Sea,
+    through an immense delta. The Great Bear Lake is also a feeder of the
+    Mackenzie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Two other Arctic rivers at one time thought to be of great importance
+    as means of communication with the Arctic Ocean, are the Great Fish
+    River, which flows into Elliot Bay, and the Coppermine River, which
+    enters Coronation Gulf. The other northward-flowing rivers (passing
+    through innumerable lakes and lakelets) enter Hudson's Bay.
+</p>
+<p>
+    West of the great Mackenzie River rises the northernmost extension of
+    the Rocky Mountains. All this easternmost part of Alaska, which is
+    under British control, is a region of great elevation, something like
+    parts of Central Asia. The streams which rise here unite in the great
+    Yukon River, and this has its outlet in Bering's Sea. Some points of
+    the great mountains within the limits of British territory in this
+    direction reach to nearly 20,000 feet (Mount Logan).
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the climate of the northern parts of the Canadian Dominion differs
+    very greatly in the west as compared to the east. For instance, the
+    northern parts of Labrador are cruelly Arctic, hopelessly frozen,
+    though they are in the same latitude as St. Petersburg (the capital of
+    European Russia) and as the splendidly forested northern parts of
+    British Columbia. Eastern Labrador is a region in which explorers have
+    frequently perished from cold and starvation. Although in the lofty
+    parts of the Yukon country (three hundred and fifty miles north of
+    treeless Labrador) the winter is intensely cold, and the ground is
+    frozen for a considerable depth downwards, all the year round, there
+    are still great forests; and a white and Amerindian population find it
+    possible to live there all the year round, while animal life is
+    extremely abundant. On the other hand, a good deal of the territory
+    between Mackenzie River and Hudson's Bay is almost uninhabitable,
+    except during the summertime, owing to the depth of the snow and the
+    bare rocky nature of the ground.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The treeless area north of Lake Athabaska (the "barren lands" of the
+    Canadian Dominion) seems to consist of nothing but slabs of rock and
+    loose stones. Yet this region is far from being without vegetation.
+    The rock is often covered with a thin or thick sod of lichen
+    <a name="p128"></a>("reindeer moss", in some districts three feet deep) intermixed with
+    the roots of the wishakapakka herb (<i>Ledum palustre</i>, from which
+    Labrador tea is made), of cranberries, gooseberries, heather (with
+    white bell flowers), and a dwarf birch. This last, in sheltered places
+    where a little vegetable soil has been formed, grows into a low
+    scrubby bush. As to the gooseberries&mdash;here and farther south&mdash;Hearne
+    describes them as "thriving best on the stony or rocky ground, open
+    and much exposed to the sun". They spread along the ground like vines.
+    The small red fruit is always most plentiful and fine on the under
+    side of the branches, probably owing to the reflected heat of the
+    stones. In the bleaker places a hard, black, crumply lichen&mdash;the
+    "Tripe de roche" of the French Canadians (<i>Gyrophoreus</i>) grows on the
+    rocks and stones, and is of great service to the Amerindians, as it
+    furnishes them with a temporary subsistence when no animal food can be
+    procured. This lichen, when boiled, turns to a gummy consistence
+    something like sago. Hearne describes it as being remarkably good when
+    used to thicken broth; but some other pioneers complained that it made
+    them and their Indians seriously ill. Another lichen, "reindeer moss"
+    (<i>Cladina</i>), is also eaten by men as well as deer. The <i>muskegs</i>, or
+    bogs and marshes, produce in the summertime a very rapid growth of
+    grass (as well as breeding swarms of mosquitoes!), and thus furnish
+    food for the geese and swans which throng them between June and
+    October.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the summertime all these northern territories of Canada&mdash;from the
+    basin of Lake Winnipeg, with its white pelicans, to the Arctic
+    circle&mdash;swarm with birds, wild swans, geese, ducks, plovers, grouse,
+    cranes, eagles, owls of several kinds&mdash;especially the great snowy
+    eagle-owl&mdash;red-breasted thrushes, black and white snow-buntings,
+    scarlet grosbeaks (the female green and grey), crested jays, and
+    ravens "of a beautiful glossy black, richly tinged with purple", but
+    smaller in size than those of Europe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This is also the country for bears. Some grizzlies still linger here.
+    Their range at one time extended to near the Arctic circle. In
+    Alaska (British as well as United States) there is an enormous
+    chocolate-coloured bear, the biggest in the world. The Polar bear,
+    usually creamy white along the seacoast, is stated to range inland
+    during the summer over the "barren grounds", and to develop either a
+    permanent local variety or a seasonal change of coat, which is
+    greyish-brown or blue-grey.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The black bear in northern Canada is said to give birth at times to
+    cubs which are cinnamon-brown in colour.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In the early summer the black bears swim up and down the northern
+    rivers with their mouths open, swallowing the immense number of water
+    insects which have come into being at that season." Hearne goes on to
+    state that bears which have subsisted on this food for some days, when
+    cut open emit a stench that is intolerable, and which taints their
+    flesh to a sickening degree. The insects on which they feed are mostly
+    of two kinds: one a sort of grasshopper with a hard black skin, and
+    the other a soft, brown, sluggish fly. "This last is the most
+    numerous. In some of the lakes such quantities are forced into the
+    bays when the wind blows hard, that they are pressed together in dead
+    multitudes and remain a great nuisance. I have several times, in my
+    inland voyages from York Fort (Hudson's Bay), found it scarcely
+    possible to land in some of those bays for the intolerable stench of
+    those insects, which in some places were lying in putrid masses to the
+    depth of two or three feet." It is more than probable that the bears
+    occasionally feed on these dead insects. After the middle of July,
+    when they take to a diet of berries, they are excellent eating, and
+    continue to be so to the end of the winter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Arctic foxes of this region when young are sooty black all over,
+    and gradually change to a light ash-grey in colour, with a dark,
+    almost blue, tint on the head, legs, and back. In winter they usually
+    become white all over, with or without a black tip to the tail; but it
+    is recorded by some travellers that not all the foxes of the <i>Canis
+    lagopus</i> species turn white; some keep their dark-grey colour all the
+    year round. The common fox (<i>C. vulpes fulvus</i>) in Northern Canada is
+    sometimes black, with white-tipped hairs. Wolves in these far northern
+    regions do not seem to have been so abundant as farther south.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The deer tribe are represented (north of the Athabaska region) by the
+    reindeer and the elk (called by the Canadians "Moose"). The wapiti or
+    red deer (for which the common Amerindian name in the north was
+    <i>Waskesiu</i>) seldom ranged farther north than the vicinity of Lake
+    Winnipeg. The reindeer of the "barren ground" sub-species extended to
+    the Arctic seacoast, and were at one time especially abundant in
+    Labrador. Here they were so tame, down to a hundred years ago, that
+    fishermen were often known to shoot many of them from the windows of
+    their huts near the seashore. This type (<i>Rangifer tarandus arcticus</i>)
+    might possibly be domesticated; not so the larger and much wilder
+    Caribou woodland reindeer of the more southern and western parts of
+    the Dominion, which dislikes the neighbourhood of man. The elk or
+    moose, east of the Rocky Mountains, was not found northward of about
+    50° to 55°; but west of that range extended over all British Columbia
+    and Alaska, in which latter country it grows to a giant size and
+    develops enormous antlers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hearne says of the elk in northern Canada: "In summer, when they
+    frequent the margins of rivers and lakes, they are often killed by the
+    Indians in the water while they are crossing rivers or swimming from
+    the mainland to islands, &amp;c. When pursued in this manner, they are
+    the most inoffensive of all animals, never making any resistance; and
+    the young ones are so simple that I remember to have seen an Indian
+    paddle his canoe up to one of them and take it by the poll without the
+    least opposition; the poor, harmless animal seeming at the same time
+    as contented alongside the canoe as if swimming by the side of its
+    dam, and looking up in our faces with the same fearless innocence that
+    a house lamb would; making use of its fore foot almost every instant
+    to clear its eyes of mosquitoes, which at that time were remarkably
+    numerous.... The moose are also the easiest to tame and domesticate of
+    any of the deer kind. I have repeatedly seen them at Churchill as tame
+    as sheep, and even more so; for they would follow their keeper any
+    distance from home, and at his call return with him without the least
+    trouble, or ever offering to deviate from the path."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The most northern range of the elk would seem to be the region round
+    Lake Athabaska.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The musk ox (<i>Ovibos</i>) is perhaps the most remarkable beast of Arctic
+    Canada.<a name="6-3"></a><a href="#note-6-3"><small>[3]</small></a> Samuel Hearne is my principal source for the following
+    notes as to its habits and appearance: The number of bulls is very few
+    in proportion to the cows, for it is rare to see more than two or
+    three full-grown bulls with the largest herd; and from the number of
+    the males that are found dead, the Indians are of opinion that they
+    kill each other in contending for the females. In the rutting season
+    they are so jealous of the cows that they run at either man or beast
+    who offers to approach them, and have been observed to run and bellow
+    even at ravens and other large birds which chanced to alight near
+    them. They delight in the most stony and mountainous parts of the
+    "barren ground", but are seldom found at any great distance from the
+    woods. Though they are a beast of great magnitude, and apparently of a
+    very unwieldy inactive structure, yet they climb the rocks with ease
+    and agility, and are nearly as surefooted as a goat. Like it, too,
+    they will feed on anything; and though they seem fondest of grass, yet
+    in winter, when grass cannot be had in sufficient quantity, they will
+    eat moss or any other herbage they can find, as also the tops of
+    willows and the tender branches of the pine tree.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The musk ox, when full grown, is as large as the generality of
+    English black cattle; but their legs, though thick, are not so long,
+    nor is their tail longer than that of a bear; and, like the tail of
+    that animal, it always bends downward and inward, so that it is
+    entirely hid by the long hair of the rump and hind quarters. The hunch
+    on their shoulders is not large, being little more in proportion than
+    that of a deer. Their hair is in some parts very long, particularly on
+    the belly, sides, and hind quarters; but the longest hair about them,
+    particularly the bulls, is under the throat, extending from the chin
+    to the lower part of the chest between the fore legs. It there hangs
+    down like a horse's mane inverted, and is fully as long, which gives
+    the animal a most formidable appearance. It is of the hair from this
+    part that the Eskimo make their mosquito wigs (face screens or masks).
+    In winter the musk oxen are provided with a thick fine wool or fur
+    that grows at the root of the long hair, and shields them from the
+    intense cold to which they are exposed during that season; but as the
+    summer advances this fur loosens from the skin, and by frequently
+    rolling themselves on the ground it works out to the end of the hair,
+    and in time drops off, leaving little for their summer clothing except
+    the long hair. This season is so short in these high latitudes, that
+    the new fleece begins to appear almost as soon as the old one drops
+    off, so that by the time the cold becomes severe they are again
+    provided with a winter dress."
+</p>
+<p>
+    According to Hearne, the flesh of the musk ox does not resemble that
+    of the bison, but is more like the meat of the moose or wapiti. The
+    fat is of a clear white, "slightly tinged with a light azure". The
+    calves and young heifers are good eating, but the flesh of the bulls
+    both smells and tastes so strongly of musk as to be very disagreeable;
+    "even the knife that cuts the flesh of an old bull will smell so
+    strongly of musk that nothing but scouring the blade quite bright can
+    remove it, and the handle will retain the scent for a long time".
+</p>
+<p>
+    Bisons of the "wood" variety are (or were) found far up the heights of
+    the Rocky Mountains and in the regions south-west of the Great Slave
+    Lake. These "wood buffaloes" delight in mountain valleys, and never
+    resort to the plains. And higher than anything, of course, range the
+    great white mountain goat-antelopes (<i>Oreamnus montanus</i>) from
+    northern Alaska to the Columbia River.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The north and the north-west were, of course, pre-eminently the great
+    fur-trading regions, though all parts of the vast Dominion have at one
+    time or another yielded furs for commerce with the white man. The
+    principal fur-bearing smaller mammals of the north and north-west were
+    wolves, foxes, lynxes, gluttons (wolverene), otters, martens (sables)
+    and black fishing martens, mink (a kind of polecat), ermine-stoats,
+    weasels, polar hares (<i>Lepus timidus</i>), beavers, musquash, lemming,
+    gopher or pouched ground-squirrels, and the common red squirrel of
+    North America. The grey squirrel and striped chipmunk are only found
+    in southern Canada.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The musquash (<i>Fiber zibethicus</i>) is such a characteristic animal of
+    northern Canada that it is worth while to give Hearne's description of
+    it (I would mention it is really a huge <i>vole</i>, and no relation of the
+    beaver):&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The musk rat or musquash builds a dwelling near the banks of ponds or
+    swamps to shelter it from the bitter cold of the winter, but never on
+    land, always on the ice, as soon as it is firm enough, taking care to
+    keep a hole open to admit it to dive for its food, which chiefly
+    consists of the roots of grass or arums. It sometimes happens in very
+    cold winters that the holes communicating with their dwellings under
+    the water are so blocked by ice that they cannot break through them.
+    When this is the case, and they have no provisions left in the house,
+    they begin to eat one another. At last there may be only one rat left
+    out of a whole lodge. They occasionally eat fish, but in general feed
+    very cleanly, and when fat are good eating. They are easily tamed and
+    soon grow fond of their owner. They are very cleanly and playful, and
+    'smell exceedingly pleasant of musk', but their resemblance to the rat
+    is so great that few are partial to them, though of course they are
+    much larger in size, and have webbed hind feet and a flat scaly tail.
+    In Canadian regions farther south the musquash no longer builds on the
+    ice, but in swamps, where it raises heaps of mud like islands in the
+    surrounding water. On the top of these mounds they build their nests,
+    and on the top of the musquash nest, or 'lodge', wild geese frequently
+    lay their eggs and bring forth their young brood without any fear of
+    being molested by foxes."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The YUKON territories of the Dominion, and above all the State of
+    BRITISH COLUMBIA, constitute a very distinct region from the rest of
+    British North America, not only in their tribes of Amerindians but in
+    their fauna, flora, and climate. British Columbia is one of the most
+    beautiful and richly endowed countries in the world. Here, in spite
+    of northern latitudes, the warm airs coming up from the Pacific Ocean
+    act somewhat in the same way as the Gulf Stream on north-west Europe,
+    and favour the growth of magnificent forests.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All this north-western part of British Columbia is very mountainous,
+    and the rocks are rich in minerals, especially gold in the Fraser and
+    Columbia Rivers, far north in the upper valley of the Yukon, and
+    copper and coal in Vancouver Island.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The rainfall in British Columbia is considerable, and the
+    flora&mdash;trees, plants, ferns&mdash;richer than anywhere else in North
+    America, with many resemblances to the trees and plants of Japan and
+    northern China. In British Columbia more than in any other part of the
+    world are found the noblest developments of the pines, firs, and
+    junipers (<i>Coniferæ</i>).
+</p>
+<p>
+    The coast rivers swarm with salmon, and perhaps because of the
+    abundance of sea fish close in shore there have been developed in the
+    course of ages those remarkable aquatic mammals, the sea lions or fur
+    seals (<i>Otaria</i>), whose relationship to the true seals is a very
+    distant one. On the Alaskan coasts and islands is <i>Otaria ursina</i>, the
+    creature which provides the sealskin fur of commerce. There is also
+    the much larger sea lion (<i>Otaria stelleri</i>), on the coasts of British
+    Columbia and Vancouver Island. Alexander Henry, jun., gives some
+    interesting facts about this remarkable beast.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The natives at Oak Point, during the time Mr. Keith was there, killed
+    five very large sea lions by spearing them at night. Two canoes being
+    lashed together, they approach very softly, and throw their spears,
+    which are fastened by a long, strong cord, with a barb so fixed in a
+    socket that, when it strikes the animal and pierces the flesh, it is
+    detached from the shaft of the spear, but remains fastened to the
+    cord. This is instantly made fast between the canoes; the animal
+    dives and swims down river, dragging the canoes with such velocity
+    that they may be in danger of filling, and require great skill in
+    steering. In this manner they are carried down some miles before the
+    animal becomes exhausted with loss of blood, makes for the shore, and
+    lies on the beach, where they dispatch it and cut it up. The price of
+    a sea lion among the natives is one slave and an assortment of other
+    articles. Mr. Keith bought the flesh of one of these animals, and we
+    had some roasted; it resembles bear's meat. The hair is like that of a
+    horse, in summer of a chestnut colour. The natives, and also the
+    Russians, are particularly fond of marine animals, such as whales,
+    &amp;c.; they drink the oil like milk."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Another notable water beast of the British Columbia coast was the sea
+    otter (<i>Enhydris</i>), described on p. <a href="#p305">305</a>. Such an immense value was set
+    on its fur that it is now nearly extinct within British limits.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The huge chocolate-coloured bear of the Yukon valley has already been
+    mentioned; also the very large, blackish-brown wild dog (<i>Canis
+    pambasileus</i>), which from one or two passages in the writings of
+    Canadian pioneers may also be found as far south as the British
+    Columbian Rocky Mountains. In the Yukon country the elk (which was
+    formerly very common in British Columbia) grows to gigantic
+    proportions with longer and larger antlers than elsewhere. In the
+    forested mountains of British Columbia (as well as farther north) are
+    the wood bison, the white mountain goat, grizzly bears, black bears,
+    two kinds of lynx, the wapiti red deer, and the large bighorn sheep.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These (<i>Ovis montana</i>) sheep are of a grey or leaden colour; the rump
+    and the inner side of the legs are white; the hoofs black, about one
+    inch long. "The hair is rather soft, and at the roots is mixed with
+    exceedingly fine white wool, which seems to grow only in certain
+    patches. The neck is relatively much thicker than that of other
+    animals of the same size; the legs and hoofs are also strongly built,
+    like the neck." The horns of the female are comparatively small,
+    flat, and have only a small bend backward; they are of a
+    dirty-yellowish white, marked with closely connected annulations to
+    the very tip. The legs are brown, as are also the ends of the hairs
+    about the neck; the hoofs are black. "A ewe will weigh about 100 lb.
+    when in full flesh, with only the entrails taken out. The head bears
+    every resemblance to that of our European sheep." The colour of the
+    males is nearly the same as that of the females, only rather browner;
+    they are much larger and more strongly built, with a pair of enormous
+    horns, which incline backward. As they grow they bend downward, and in
+    the course of time form a complete curve and project forward. At the
+    root the horns are nearly three inches square, the flat sides
+    opposite; they are marked with closely connected ridges and end in a
+    tapering flat point.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the horns grow to a great length, forming a complete curve, the
+    tips project on both sides of the head so as to prevent the ram from
+    feeding. This, with their great weight, causes the sheep to dwindle to
+    a mere skeleton and die. The bighorn sheep feed much in the caverns of
+    the Rocky Mountains, eating a kind of moss and grass growing on the
+    floors of these caves, and also a peculiar soft, sweet-tasting "clay",
+    of which the natives also are fond.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The southern part of British Columbia contains the mule deer of
+    western North America (<i>Mazama macrotis</i>), and a very strange rodent,
+    the sewellel or mountain beaver (<i>Haplodon</i>), a creature distantly
+    allied to squirrels, marmots, and beavers, but restricted in its
+    distribution to a few parts of California, Oregon, and British
+    Columbia. Amongst the birds noteworthy in the landscape are the
+    white-headed sea eagles and Californian condors (<i>Pseudogryphus
+    californianus</i>). Humming-birds range through British Columbia and
+    Vancouver Island between mid-April and October.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the regions about the upper Kootenay River (Eastern British
+    Columbia), before the railway was constructed, there were wild horses,
+    descended, no doubt, from those which had escaped from the Spaniards
+    in New Mexico and California. They went in large herds, and in the
+    winter when the snow was deep the natives would try to catch them by
+    running them down with relays of fresh horses, or driving them up the
+    mountains into the deepest snow or some narrow pass. A noose would
+    then be thrown about the exhausted animal, which would be instantly
+    mounted by an Indian and broken immediately to the saddle. Some of
+    these wild horses were exceedingly swift, well-proportioned, and
+    handsome in shape, but they seldom proved as docile as those born in
+    captivity. When in a wild condition they would snort so loudly through
+    the nostrils on descrying an enemy that they could be heard at a
+    distance of five hundred yards.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba&mdash;the MIDDLE
+    WEST&mdash;represent mainly the great prairie region of the Canadian
+    Dominion. Nearly all the streams here flow from the eastern side of
+    the Rocky Mountains and direct their course to the basin of Lake
+    Winnipeg and to Hudson's Bay. A few turn south-west to the Missouri
+    and Mississippi. The landscapes here remind one more of the middle
+    part of the United States. The climate is severe in winter but very
+    warm and dry in summer. In the extreme south, within the basin of the
+    upper Missouri, the "prickly pear" (<i>Opuntia</i>) cactus grows in
+    sheltered places, and suggests affinities with distant Colorado and
+    California.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These great plains and river courses of the middle West were, until
+    about fifty years ago, one of the world's great natural parks or
+    zoological gardens. Large numbers of wapiti deer, of the smaller
+    Virginian deer,<a name="6-4"></a><a href="#note-6-4"><small>[4]</small></a> and of the <a name="p139"></a>prongbuck "antelope"<a name="6-5"></a> <a href="#note-6-5"><small>[5]</small></a> thronged the
+    grassy flats, and elk browsed on the foliage of the thickets along the
+    river banks. Grizzly bears and black bears,<a name="6-6"></a><a href="#note-6-6"><small>[6]</small></a> large grey wolves, the
+    small coyote wolf, the pretty little kit fox and large red fox preyed
+    on these herbivores, as did also pumas and lynxes. Marmots and prairie
+    hares (<i>Lepus campestris</i>)&mdash;often called rabbits by the pioneers, who
+    also named the marmots "wood-chucks"&mdash;frolicked in the herbage, and
+    formed the principal prey of the numerous rattlesnakes. By the shores
+    of streams and lakes stood rows of stately cranes: the whooping crane,
+    of large size, pure white, with black quill feathers, the crown of the
+    head crimson scarlet and the long legs black; and the purple-brown
+    crane, somewhat smaller in size. On hot, calm days in the region of
+    Lake Winnipeg the cranes soar to an amazing height, flying in circles,
+    till by degrees they are almost out of sight. Yet their loud note
+    sounds so distinct and near that the spectator might fancy they were
+    close to him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The air at this season is full of great birds&mdash;eagles, buzzards,
+    hawks, and falcons&mdash;soaring in circles to look out for prey among the
+    flocks of wild swans, white geese, bernicle geese and brent geese,
+    duck and teal, which cover the backwaters and the marshes and shallow
+    lagoons. Turkey buzzards, coming up from the south, act as scavengers
+    during the summer months. Immense flocks of passenger pigeons,
+    buntings, grosbeaks, attack the ripening fruits and the wild rice of
+    the swamps. Grouse in uncountable numbers inhabit the drier tablelands
+    and open moors.<a name="6-7"></a><a href="#note-6-7"><small>[7]</small></a>
+</p>
+<a name="image-0007"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc07.jpg" width="281" height="450"
+alt="Indians Lying in Wait for Moose">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>INDIANS LYING IN WAIT FOR MOOSE</h5>
+<p>
+    But&mdash;a hundred years ago and more&mdash;the dominant features in the
+    fauna of the Middle West was the bison. Between the Athabaska and
+    Saskatchewan Rivers on the north, the Rocky Mountains on the west, and
+    Lake Superior on the east the bison passed backwards and forwards over
+    the great plains and prairies in millions, when white explorers first
+    penetrated these lands. They moved in herds which concealed the ground
+    from sight for miles. Here are some word pictures selected from the
+    writings of the pioneers between 1770 and 1810:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The buffaloes chiefly delight in wide open plains, which in those
+    parts produce very long coarse grass, or rather a kind of small flags
+    and rushes, upon which they feed; but when pursued they always take to
+    the woods. They are of such an amazing strength, that when they fly
+    through the woods from a pursuer, they frequently brush down trees as
+    thick as a man's arm; and be the snow ever so deep, such is their
+    strength and agility, that they are enabled to plunge through it
+    faster than the swiftest Indian can run in snowshoes. To this I have
+    been an eyewitness many times, and once had the vanity to think that I
+    could have kept pace with them; but though I was at that time
+    celebrated for being particularly fleet of foot in snowshoes, I soon
+    found that I was no match for the buffaloes, notwithstanding they were
+    then plunging through such deep snow, that their bellies made a
+    trench in it as large as if many sacks had been hauled through it. Of
+    all the large beasts in those parts the buffalo is easiest to kill,
+    and the moose are the most difficult; neither are the (red) deer very
+    easy to come at, except in windy weather: indeed it requires much
+    practice and a great deal of patience to slay any of them, as they
+    will by no means suffer a direct approach, unless the hunter be
+    entirely sheltered by woods or willows.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The flesh of the buffalo is exceedingly good eating, and so entirely
+    free from any disagreeable smell or taste, that it resembles beef as
+    nearly as possible."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The spots of wood along the Park River are ravaged by buffaloes
+    (bison); none but the large trees are standing, the bark of which is
+    rubbed perfectly smooth, and heaps of hair and wool lie at the bottom
+    of the trees ... and even the grass is not permitted to grow.... The
+    ground is trampled more by these cattle than about the gate of a
+    farmyard."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The Kris informed me they had seen a calf as white as snow in a herd
+    of buffalo. White buffalo are very scarce. They are of inestimable
+    value among the nations of the Missouri.... There were also some of a
+    dirty-grey colour, but these are very rare."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I brought home two buffalo calves alive; they no sooner lost sight of
+    the herd than they followed my horse like dogs, directly into the
+    fort. On chasing a herd at this season the calves follow it until they
+    are fatigued, when they throw themselves down in high grass and lie
+    still, hiding their heads if possible. But seeing only a man and his
+    horse they remain quiet and allow themselves to be taken. Having been
+    a little handled, they follow like dogs."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the spring, when the ice melted, innumerable buffaloes were killed
+    through attempting to cross the rivers on the melting ice. They would
+    drift by an observer (such as Alexander Henry, jun.) in entire herds
+    of drowned corpses. Vast numbers perished. They formed one continuous
+    line on the current for two days and two nights.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "By this time the river was crowded with them, swimming across,
+    bellowing and grunting terribly. The bulls really looked fierce; all
+    had their tails up, and each appeared eager to land first. The scene
+    would have struck terror to one unaccustomed to such innumerable
+    herds. From out in the plains, as far as the eye could reach, to the
+    middle of the river, they were rushing toward us, and soon began to
+    land about ten yards off. I shot one dead on the spot, my ball having
+    broken his neck; my hunter and guide only wounded theirs. This
+    discharge suddenly halted those on the south side, and turned those
+    that were still in the water."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the autumn:&mdash;"Plains burned in every direction and blind buffalo
+    seen every moment wandering about. The poor beasts have all the hair
+    singed off; even the skin in many places is shrivelled up and terribly
+    burned, and their eyes are swollen and closed fast. It was really
+    pitiful to see them staggering about, sometimes running afoul of a
+    large stone, at other times tumbling down hill and falling into creeks
+    not yet frozen over. In one spot we found a whole herd lying dead."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Throughout British North America, from the Yukon to Newfoundland, and
+    from Labrador to Vancouver's Island, the rivers and freshwater lakes
+    swarm with fish, and fish that in most cases is exceedingly good to
+    eat. Salmon are most strikingly abundant in the rivers of British
+    Columbia and Newfoundland, but they also ascend most of the rivers
+    flowing into the Atlantic and Hudson's Bay. In the great lakes of
+    Canada and of the middle west there are trout and white fish
+    (<i>Coregonus</i>), pike, bass, chub, barbel, and five species of sturgeon.
+    In the rivers and lakes of the far north-west is found the blackfish
+    (<i>Dallia</i>).
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hearne writes of Lake Athabasca that it swarms with fish, such as
+    pike, trout, perch, barbel, and other kinds not easily identified.
+    Apparently there is also a form of gar-pike found here (see p. <a href="#p74">74</a>);
+    this is described as having scales of a very large and stiff kind, and
+    being a beautiful bright silver in colour. The size of these gar-pike
+    range from two feet to four feet in length. Their flesh was delicately
+    white and soft, but so foul and rank in taste that even the Indians
+    would not eat it. The trout in Lake Athabaska seem to have been
+    enormous, weighing from 35 to 40 pounds, while pike were of about the
+    same weight.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Amerindian tribes and the early European explorers lived mainly on
+    fish, which was a palatable and easily obtained food. Yet it must be
+    admitted that they had a splendid array of large and small game from
+    which to take their toll.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nor was the whole Dominion, from west to east and up to the Arctic
+    zone, wanting in wild vegetable produce fit for man's consumption. The
+    sugar maple (<i>Acer saccharinum</i>) and its ally the <i>Negundo</i> maple
+    provided a delicious syrup; the bark of certain poplars and the bast
+    of the sugar pine were chewed for their well-flavoured sweetness; the
+    wild rice of the marshes will be further described in the next
+    chapter. The wild fruits included delicious strawberries, cherries,
+    gooseberries, currants, black currants, grapes (in the south only),
+    blackberries of many kinds, whortleberries, cranberries, pears of the
+    service tree (<i>Pyrus canadensis</i><a name="6-8"></a><a href="#note-6-8"><small>[8]</small></a>), and raspberries of various
+    types&mdash;red, yellow, and black. Southern Canada and Nova Scotia
+    contained various nut trees of the walnut order (hickories,
+    butter-nuts, &amp;c.), and hazel nuts were found everywhere except in the
+    north.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We have left undescribed what is still politically the most important
+    part of the whole of British North America&mdash;UPPER and LOWER CANADA.
+    These regions lie within the basin of the great St. Lawrence River,
+    beyond all doubt the most important waterway of North America, more
+    important even than the Mississippi. The main origin of the St.
+    Lawrence in the west is Lake Superior, the largest sea of fresh water
+    in the world, which is connected with Lake Nipigon on the north. The
+    waters of Lake Superior are carried over the Sault Ste. Marie rapids
+    into Lake Huron and find a huge backwater in Lake Michigan.<a name="6-9"></a><a href="#note-6-9"><small>[9]</small></a> Out of
+    Lake Huron again they flow past Detroit into Lake Erie. From Duluth,
+    at the westernmost extremity of Lake Superior, to Buffalo, on the
+    easternmost point of Lake Erie, including all Lake Michigan and Lake
+    Huron, with its bays and channels, a steamer can pass with just the
+    one difficulty (easily surmounted) of the rapids at Sault Ste. Marie
+    between Lake Superior and Lake Huron. But after you have left Lake
+    Erie on the east you find yourself in the Niagara River, which at the
+    Niagara Falls plunges several hundred feet downwards into Lake
+    Ontario. From Lake Ontario to the sea along the St. Lawrence there is
+    uninterrupted navigation, though there are rapids that require careful
+    steering both with steamers and boats. Quebec marks the place where
+    the St. Lawrence River suddenly broadens from a river into a tidal
+    gulf of brackish or salt water. Ocean steamers from all over the world
+    can come (except during the height of the winter, when the water
+    freezes) to Quebec. But for the ice in wintertime Quebec would be
+    <i>the</i> great sea-port of eastern Canada.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If pitiless rock is commonly understood by an 'iron-bound shore',
+    then the coasts of the River St. Lawrence along the northern side of
+    the Gulf may truly be so styled, as nothing scarcely is to be seen
+    for hundreds of leagues but bare rocky mountains, capes and cliffs in
+    various shapes and figures, some of which are dotted with a few spruce
+    firs, while others present their bald pates deprived of covering by
+    the unmerciful hand of time." (James M'Kenzie).
+</p>
+<p>
+    The winters of the Quebec province are extremely cold, but the summer
+    and autumn are warm and sunny. The best winter climate, possibly, in
+    all Canada (though not as good as that of Vancouver Island, British
+    Columbia) is to be found in the small peninsula region, on the shores
+    of Lakes Erie and Huron, between Toronto and Detroit. This is the
+    district which the Jesuit missionaries described as "an earthly
+    paradise" even during the winter-time.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The following extracts, mostly from the journals of Alex. Henry, jun.,
+    give a good idea of the difference in climate and temperature between
+    the western and the central parts of the Canadian Dominion.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The late spring of northern Canada (Lake Nipigon, 50° N. lat.):&mdash;About
+    May 15, the tops of the poplars begin to appear green, with fresh
+    buds; the hills are changing their hue from a dry straw colour to a
+    delightful verdure, and fragrant odours greet us.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Early in March, 1800, in the Assiniboin country (Manitoba, about 29°
+    N. lat.) the snow was entirely gone, for this winter had been an
+    abnormally mild one for central Canada. The birds soon realized the
+    openness of the season, for, on the 7th of March, turkey-buzzards
+    began to arrive from the south, and cormorants, ducks, swans, and
+    other spring birds; indeed, by the 24th of March not only had the snow
+    quite melted, but the meadows had grown so dry with the hot sun that
+    some accidents set them on fire. By April the 11th the weather had
+    become excessively hot, and immense flocks of the traveller-pigeon
+    (<i>Ectopistes</i>) flew northwards over the country."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In somewhat similar latitudes (50°) the spring bursts on the Pacific
+    coast region of British Columbia towards the end of February. "The
+    tall raspberry bushes were in blossom with a beautiful red flower,
+    which appeared more forward than the leaf (<i>Rubus spectabilis</i>). The
+    elder had sprouts an inch long, the alder was also beginning to
+    sprout, and willows were budding."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Although nowhere in Upper and Lower Canada (or in the maritime
+    provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia) are the forests so
+    splendid as in parts of British Columbia, yet nevertheless when this
+    region was first discovered the magnificence of its woodlands greatly
+    impressed even the explorers of the sixteenth and seventeenth
+    centuries, who were not as much given to praise of landscape beauty as
+    are we of later times. These Canadian forests include oaks, elms,
+    pines and firs, chestnuts and beeches, birch trees and sycamores,
+    maples and poplars, willows, alders, and hazelnuts (these last
+    sometimes growing into tall trees with thick trunks). The trees and
+    low-growing plants are partly like those of the north-eastern United
+    States, and partly resemble those of northern and central Europe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nowadays, owing to two centuries of incessant killing, the beasts and
+    birds of Upper and Lower Canada are not nearly so abundant as they
+    were a hundred years ago. When Canada proper was first discovered, the
+    wapiti red deer was still found in the basin of the St. Lawrence; it
+    has long since been extinct. There are, however, still lingering,
+    reindeer in the north, and elk in the forests of the east. There are
+    also Virginian deer (<i>Mazama</i>), but there is no bison (and, so far as
+    we know, never has been). There is no prongbuck, and many other
+    creatures characteristic of the United States and British Columbia are
+    not found in Upper and Lower Canada or in the maritime provinces. The
+    tree porcupine (<i>Erethizon dorsatus</i>), which the Canadians call
+    "Urson", or "Little Bear" is found still in the well-wooded regions
+    of eastern and southern Canada, as well as in British Columbia and
+    Alaska. In southern Canada there is the wood hare (<i>Lepus
+    sylvaticus</i>), and in the east and north the varying hare (<i>L.
+    americanus</i>) which turns white in winter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Perhaps the most characteristic animal of this region was and is still
+    the beaver, though the beaver is found all over British North America
+    as far north as the Saskatchewan province and westwards into British
+    Columbia.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is curious that the Indians of central Canada had a belief
+    (recorded by French and English pioneers) that occasionally in the
+    dusk, or at night, they have seen an enormously large beaver in the
+    water, so large that at first sight they have taken it for a moose.
+    Travellers who have related this have surmised that the Indian perhaps
+    saw a bear swimming, or a female moose, and in the dim light mistook
+    it for a giant beaver. But as we know that there were once giant
+    beavers (<i>Trogontherium</i>) as large as a bear, existing in England, it
+    is just possible there may have been a gigantic type of beaver
+    lingering in Canada before the opening up of the country by Europeans.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The beaver of North America is a very similar animal to the beaver
+    which used to exist wild in Wales, England, France, Germany, and
+    central Europe, and which still lingers in some parts of the Rhine
+    valley, Poland, Russia, and Siberia; but the American form is
+    classified as a separate species&mdash;<i>Castor canadensis</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Beavers were sometimes exterminated or diminished in numbers by an
+    epidemic disease, which, according to JAMES TANNER<a name="6-10"></a><a href="#note-6-10"><small>[10]</small></a>, destroyed vast
+    quantities of them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I found them dead or dying in the water, on the ice, and on the land;
+    sometimes I found one that, having cut a tree half down, had died at
+    its roots; sometimes one who had drawn a stick of timber halfway to
+    his lodge was lying dead by his burthen. Many of them which I opened
+    were red and bloody about the heart. Those in large rivers and running
+    water suffered less; almost all of those that lived in ponds and
+    stagnant water, died. Since that year the beaver have never been so
+    plentiful in the country of Red River and Hudson's Bay as they used
+    formerly to be."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The great attraction which Canada offered to France and England as a
+    field of adventure lay in its wonderful supply of furs. The beaver
+    skins were perhaps the commonest article of export, and were generally
+    regarded as a unit of value, such as a shilling might be. Other skins
+    were valued at "so many beavers," or the smaller ones at half or a
+    quarter of a beaver each. Besides beaver skins, which were used for
+    making hats, as well as capes and coats, the following furs and skins
+    were formerly, or are still, exported from Canada. "Buffalo"
+    robes&mdash;the carefully rubbed-down hides of the bison, rendered, by
+    shaving and rubbing, so thin and supple that they could be easily
+    folded; reindeer and musk-ox skins treated in the same way; marten or
+    sable skins; mink (a kind of polecat); ermine (the white winter dress
+    of the stoat); the fishing marten, or pekan; otter skins; black bear
+    and white polar bear skins; raccoon, muskwash, squirrel, suslik, and
+    marmot skins, and the soft white fur of the polar hare; the white
+    skins of the Arctic fox, the skins of the blue fox, black fox, and red
+    fox;<a name="6-11"></a><a href="#note-6-11"><small>[11]</small></a> wolf skins, and the furs of the wolverene or glutton, and of
+    the skunk&mdash;a handsome black-and-white creature of the weasel family,
+    which emits a most disgusting smell from a gland in its body. (The
+    skunk only comes from the south-central parts of the Canadian
+    Dominion). At one time a good many swans' skins were exported for the
+    sake of the down between the feathers, also the skins of grebes.
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<p>
+    A general fact that must not be forgotten in studying the adventures
+    of the pioneers of Canada was the means which Nature and savage man
+    had provided or invented for quickly traversing in all directions this
+    enormous area of nearly half North America. These means consisted (1)
+    of the distribution of salt and fresh water in such a way that by
+    means of ocean-sailing ships explorers coming from the east could
+    enter through straits and bays of the sea into the heart of Canada;
+    and (2) the facility, on quitting the seashore, of passing up
+    navigable rivers in boats or canoes into big lakes, and from these
+    lakes into other rivers leading to other lakes. Moreover, the
+    different river systems approached so closely to one another that even
+    the Amerindians and the Eskimo, long before the white man, had
+    realized that they had only to pick up their light canoes and carry
+    them a few miles, to launch them on fresh waters which might provide
+    hundreds or even thousands of miles of continuous travel. These are
+    the celebrated "portages" of Canadian history, from the French word
+    <i>porter</i>, to carry, transport. Sometimes the portages were made still
+    easier for loaded canoes by a road being cleared through the scrub and
+    over the rocks, and wooden rollers placed across it. Strong men could
+    then easily haul a loaded canoe over these wooden rollers until it
+    could be launched again in the water. Often these portages were made
+    to circumvent dangerous rapids or waterfalls. The Indians and the
+    French Canadians soon learnt how to steer canoes down rushes of
+    water&mdash;rapids&mdash;which we should think very dangerous on an English
+    river; but of course many of the rivers were obstructed <a name="p150"></a>at intervals
+    by descents of water which no canoe could traverse up or down, and in
+    these cases a path was cut from one smooth part of the river to
+    another, and the canoe carried or hauled overland.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In this way the great French and British explorers found it possible
+    to travel by water from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean across a
+    width of land of something like 2500 miles. The only serious walking
+    that had to be done was the crossing somewhere or other of the Rocky
+    Mountains, where the streams, of course, were far too precipitate in
+    descent to be navigable. In the hot, dusty plains of Assiniboia and
+    the upper Missouri region the Amerindians had introduced horses,
+    obtained indirectly from Spanish Mexico, and these were of great
+    service to the white pioneers, especially in their pursuit of the
+    bison.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So much for the summer season, when the rivers were full and
+    overflowing, and the ground consisted of bare rock, sand, or soil
+    covered with vegetation; the abundance of navigable streams and the
+    suitability of the country to horses rendered very little walking
+    necessary for those who wished to traverse the Canadian Dominion from
+    end to end.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the winter changed these conditions, the rivers became coated with
+    thick ice, and the ground was covered, except in steep places, with an
+    unvarying mantle of snow. Yet transport became just as easy as in the
+    summertime, though perhaps a trifle more fatiguing. Men and women put
+    on snowshoes shaped like tennis rackets, and flew over the hard snow
+    quicker than a canoe could travel, dragging after them small sledges
+    on which their luggage was packed; or, if they had not much luggage,
+    carrying it slung round the shoulders and scurrying away on their
+    snowshoes even swifter for the weight they carried; or they travelled
+    over the smooth ice of the rivers and lakes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Winter travellers, however, were sometimes troubled with a disorder
+    known as the snowshoe evil. This arose from the placing of an unusual
+    strain on the tendons of the leg, occasioned by the weight of the
+    snowshoe. It often resulted in severe inflammation of the lower leg.
+    The local remedy was a drastic one: it was to place a piece of lighted
+    touchwood on the most inflamed part, and to leave it there till the
+    flesh was burnt to the nerve!
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the north and the regions round Hudson's Bay, and also in the far
+    west&mdash;British Columbia and Alaska&mdash;there were dogs, more or less of
+    the Eskimo breed, trained by Eskimo or by Amerindians to drag the
+    sledges. In the months of December and January it is true that the
+    daylight in Arctic Canada (north of Lake Athapaska) became so short
+    that the sun at its greatest altitude only appeared for two or three
+    hours a short distance above the horizon. But there were
+    compensations. The brilliancy of the Aurora Borealis, even without the
+    assistance of the moon and the stars, made some amends for that
+    deficiency, for it was frequently so light all night that travellers
+    could see to read a very small print (Samuel Hearne). The importance
+    of these "Northern lights" must not be overlooked in forming an
+    opinion on the habitability of the far north in the "dark" winter
+    months. The display was frequent and brilliant.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Athapaskan Indians called this phenomenon <i>Edthin</i>, that is to
+    say, "reindeer". When the Aurora Borealis was particularly bright in
+    the sky they would say that deer were plentiful in that part of the
+    heavens. Their fancy in this respect was not quite so silly as one
+    might think. They had learnt from experience that the Aurora Borealis
+    was in some way connected with electricity, and experience had equally
+    shown them that the skin of the reindeer, if briskly stroked by the
+    hand on a dark night, would emit as many electric sparks as the back
+    of a cat. On the other hand, the Amerindians in the southern and more
+    temperate regions thought the Aurora Borealis was a vast concourse of
+    "spirits of the happy day" dancing in the clouds.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Thus there were no climatic reasons why, both in summer and in winter,
+    immense distances should not be quickly covered in Canada between the
+    Rocky Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean. This is how a mere hundred of
+    white pioneers opened up Canada to the knowledge of the civilized
+    world far quicker than the same area could have been discovered in
+    Africa or Asia. Sometimes, for about a month, between the melting of
+    the snow and ice and the steady flowing of the rivers in the late
+    spring, or between the uncertain autumn of November and the confirmed
+    winter of December, there might be an interval of a few weeks in which
+    journeys had to be made on foot under conditions of great hardship,
+    through mud, swamp, and over sharp stones or slippery rocks.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The plains are covered with water from the melting of the snow so
+    suddenly, and our men suffer much, as they are continually on the
+    march, looking after Indians in every creek and little river. The
+    water is commonly knee deep, in some places up to the middle, and in
+    the morning is usually covered with ice, which makes it tedious and
+    even dangerous travelling. Some of our men lose the use of their legs
+    while still in the prime of life", wrote one eighteenth-century
+    pioneer, in the Canadian spring.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Severe as were the winter conditions of climate, the explorers were
+    just as willing to travel through the winter as the summer, because in
+    the winter they were spared the awful plague of mosquitoes and midges
+    which still renders summer and early-autumn travel throughout the
+    whole of Canada, from the United States borders on the south to the
+    Arctic Ocean on the north, a severe trial, and even an unbearable
+    degree of physical suffering.
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="note-6-1"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#6-1"><u>1</u></a> The first Frenchmen visiting North America, and seeing
+    the caribou without their horns, thought they were a kind of wild ass.
+    The reindeer of Newfoundland is a sub-species peculiar to this
+    island.
+</p>
+<a name="note-6-2"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#6-2"><u>2</u></a> <i>Homarus americanus</i>. The lobster of Newfoundland and the
+    coasts of North-east America is closely related to the common lobster
+    of British waters. These true lobsters resemble the freshwater
+    crayfish in having their foremost pair of legs modified into large,
+    unequal-sized claws. The European rock-lobster of the Mediterranean
+    and French coasts (the <i>langouste</i> of the French) has no large claws.
+</p>
+<a name="note-6-3"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#6-3"><u>3</u></a> The musk ox, which is not an ox, but a creature about
+    midway in structure and affinities between cattle on the one hand and
+    sheep and goats on the other, is a large beast comparatively, being
+    the size of a small ox, but appearing very much larger than it is on
+    account of the extremely thick coat of hair and wool. Both sexes have
+    horns, and the horns, after meeting in the middle and making more or
+    less of a boss over the forehead, droop down at the sides of the
+    cheeks and then turn up with sharp points. The musk ox once ranged
+    right across the northern world, from England and Scandinavia, through
+    Germany, Russia, and Siberia, to Alaska and North America. Many
+    thousands of years ago, during one of the Glacial periods, it
+    inhabited southern England. At the present day it is extinct
+    everywhere, excepting in the eastern parts of Arctic America, not
+    going west of the Mackenzie River nor south of Labrador. It is also
+    found in Greenland.
+</p>
+<a name="note-6-4"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#6-4"><u>4</u></a> <i>Mazama americana</i>, similar to, but quite distinct from,
+    the larger mule deer of British Columbia.
+</p>
+<a name="note-6-5"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#6-5"><u>5</u></a> The prongbuck (<i>Antilocapra americana</i>) is not a true
+    antelope, though in outward appearance it resembles a large gazelle.
+    It was called "cabri" by the French Canadians.
+</p>
+<a name="note-6-6"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#6-6"><u>6</u></a> "Bears make prodigious ravages in the brush and willows;
+    the plum trees, and every tree that bears fruit share the same fate.
+    The tops of the oaks are also very roughly handled, broken, and torn
+    down, to get the acorns. The havoc they commit is astonishing...."
+    &mdash;Alex. Henry, jun.
+</p>
+<a name="note-6-7"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#6-7"><u>7</u></a> Nowhere in the world are there so many kinds of grouse as
+    in North America. In the more northern regions are several species of
+    ptarmigan or snow partridges (<i>Lagopus</i>), which turn white in winter,
+    and the spruce partridges (<i>Canachites</i>); in the more genial climate
+    of the great plains of eastern Canada and in the Far West the ruffled
+    grouse and hazel grouse (<i>Bonasa</i>), the sage cocks (<i>Centrocercus</i>),
+    the prairie hens (<i>Tympanuchus</i>), and the blue or pine grouse
+    (<i>Dendrapagus</i>).<br><br>
+
+    "To snare grouse requires no other process than making a few little
+    hedges across a creek, or a few short hedges projecting at right
+    angles from the side of an island of willows, which those birds are
+    found to frequent. Several openings must be left in each hedge, to
+    admit the birds to pass through, and in each of them a snare must be
+    set; so that when the grouse are hopping along the edge of the willows
+    to feed, which is their usual custom, some of them soon get into the
+    snares, where they are confined till they are taken out. I have caught
+    from three to ten grouse in a day by this simple contrivance, which
+    requires no further attendance than going round them night and
+    morning" (Hearne).
+</p>
+<a name="note-6-8"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#6-8"><u>8</u></a> Sometimes called <i>Amelanchier canadensis</i>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-6-9"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#6-9"><u>9</u></a> The south shore of Lake Superior, the whole of Lake
+    Michigan, the west shore of Lake Huron, and the south coasts of Lake
+    Erie and Lake Ontario are within the territories of the United
+    States.
+</p>
+<a name="note-6-10"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#6-10"><u>10</u></a>  A remarkable eighteenth-century pioneer who joined the
+    Indians when a boy and lived as one of them.
+</p>
+<a name="note-6-11"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#6-11"><u>11</u></a> The blue fox is the Arctic fox (<i>Canis lagopus</i>) in its
+    summer dress; the black fox is a beautiful variety or sub-species of
+    the common fox (<i>C. vulpes</i>); so also is the red or "cross" fox. There
+    is also common throughout the Canadian Dominion the pretty little kit
+    fox (<i>Canis velox</i>).
+</p>
+<p class="return">[<a href="#contents">TABLE OF CONTENTS</a>]
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="2HCH0007"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER VII
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    The Amerindians and Eskimo: the Aborigines of British North America
+</h3>
+<p>
+    I have already attempted to describe in the first chapter the ancient
+    peopling of America from north-eastern Asia, but it might be useful if
+    I gave here some description of the Eskimo and Amerindian tribes of
+    the Canadian Dominion at the time of its gradual discovery by
+    Europeans, especially during the great explorations of the eighteenth
+    and early nineteenth centuries.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is evident that the ESKIMO&mdash;who are quite distinct from the
+    Amerindians in physical type, language, customs, and industries&mdash;have
+    been for thousands of years the only inhabitants of Arctic America.
+    When the Norsemen came to the New World they seem to have met with
+    Eskimo as far south as New England, but in more recent times the
+    Eskimo have only been found inhabiting the extreme north and
+    north-east: in Greenland, on the Labrador coast, on Baffin's Land, and
+    along the Arctic coast of the North-American continent, between the
+    Coppermine River and the westernmost extremity of Alaska, as well as
+    on the opposite islands and promontories of Asia.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Their name for themselves as a people is usually "Innuit" (in
+    Greenland, "Karalit"). Eskimo is a corruption of <i>Eskimantsik</i>, a
+    northern Algonkin word meaning "eaters of raw flesh". Although their
+    geographical range extends over a distance of about three thousand
+    five hundred miles&mdash;from north-easternmost Asia to the east coast of
+    Greenland&mdash;the difference in their dialects is little more than that
+    between French and Italian; whereas the difference between the speech
+    of one Amerindian tribe and another&mdash;even where they belong to the
+    same language group&mdash;is very great&mdash;not less than that between German
+    and Latin, or English and French, or even between Russian and
+    Hindustani. This fact&mdash;of the widespread Eskimo language&mdash;makes some
+    authorities suppose that the presence of the Eskimo in Arctic America
+    cannot be such a very ancient event as, from other evidence, one might
+    believe. Perhaps the bold travelling habits of the Eskimo&mdash;which makes
+    them range over vast distances of ice and snow when hunting seals,
+    walruses, whales, musk ox, or reindeer&mdash;enables them to keep in touch
+    with their far-away relations.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The canoes or <i>kayaks</i> in which they travel (first described by the
+    Norsemen in the tenth century) are made out of the hide of the seal or
+    walrus. The leather is stretched over a framework constructed from
+    driftwood or whales' bones. There is a hole in the middle for the man
+    or woman to insert their legs. This hole they fill up with their
+    bodies. If the canoe capsizes, the Eskimo cannot fall out, but bobs up
+    immediately. He and the canoe are really "one-and-indivisible" when he
+    is navigating the seas and lakes, plying deftly a large paddle.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In regard to food they were certainly not particular or squeamish.
+    They loved best of all whales' blubber, or to drink the fishy-tasting
+    oil from bodies of whales, seals, or walruses. Besides the meat of
+    Polar bears and of any fur animals they could catch, or the musky beef
+    of the musk ox, they devoured eagerly sea birds' eggs, Iceland moss,
+    and even the parasitic insects of their own heads and bodies! Hearne
+    relates that they will eat with a relish whole handfuls of maggots
+    that have been produced in meat by the eggs of the bluebottle fly! On
+    the other hand, they held cannibalism in horror, whereas for two-two's
+    their Amerindian neighbours on the west and south would eat human
+    flesh without repugnance.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Eskimo, though occasionally tall, are as a rule stumpy and
+    thickset, with very small hands and feet, broad faces, and projecting
+    cheekbones, a narrow nose without the aquiline bridge of the
+    Amerindian, slanting narrow eyes, and long heads containing large
+    well-developed brains. In disposition the Eskimo are nearly always
+    merry, affectionate to one another, honest, and modest. Modern
+    travellers in the Arctic regions give them invariably a high
+    character; but Frobisher, Davis, and the explorers of the sixteenth
+    and seventeenth centuries accused them of treachery and an inclination
+    to steal. Iron in any shape or form they could hardly resist taking.
+    Moreover, if they are the same people as the Skraellings of the Norse
+    traditions they must have been of a fiercer disposition a thousand
+    years ago.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Amerindians who inhabited (more or less) the rest of the Canadian
+    Dominion, and the whole remainder of the New World, differed in
+    physical appearance from the Eskimo mainly in being taller and better
+    proportioned, with shorter and rounder heads, larger, fuller eyes, a
+    bigger nose, and a handsomer personal appearance. The skin colour, as
+    a rule, was darker and browner than the greyish- or pinkish-yellow of
+    the Eskimo.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The various human types that went to form the Amerindian race (beside
+    the Eskimo element in them) seem to have entered north-west America
+    from Asia, and first to have peopled the Pacific slopes of the Rocky
+    Mountains, after which they wandered farther and farther south till
+    they got into a warmer climate. Then they crossed the Rocky Mountains
+    and peopled the centre and east of what is now the United States. As
+    they pushed their way north up the valleys of the great rivers, they
+    no doubt killed, mingled with, or pushed back the Eskimo. At last
+    their northernmost extensions reached to the Mackenzie River, the
+    vicinity of Hudson's Bay, Labrador, and Newfoundland. But in all the
+    middle, west, and <a name="p156"></a>even east of Canada they seem to have been
+    <i>relatively recent arrivals</i>,<a name="7-1"></a><a href="#note-7-1"><small>[1]</small></a> not to have inhabited the country for
+    a great many centuries before the white man came, and all their
+    recorded and legendary movements in North America have been from the
+    south-west towards the north-east (after they had got across the Rocky
+    Mountains). The few cultivated plants they had, such as maize (Indian
+    corn), tobacco, and pumpkins, they brought with them or received from
+    the south.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The only domestic animal possessed by either Eskimo or Amerindian was
+    the dog. We are most of us by now familiar with the type of the Eskimo
+    dog&mdash;a large, wolf-like animal with prick ears and a bushy tail curled
+    over its back. In this carriage of the tail the Eskimo and most other
+    true dogs differ from wolves, with whom the tail droops between the
+    hind quarters. But there is a small wild American wolf&mdash;the
+    coyote&mdash;which carries its tail more upright, like that of the true
+    dog; and the coyote seems indeed an intermediate form between the wolf
+    and the original wild dog. Most of the domestic dogs of the
+    Amerindians<a name="7-2"></a><a href="#note-7-2"><small>[2]</small></a> (as distinguished from those of the Eskimo) seem to
+    have been derived from the coyote or small wolf of central North
+    America.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the Pacific coast there were other types of domestic dog,
+    resembling greatly breeds that are found in eastern Asia and the
+    Pacific islands. Some of these were naked, and others grew silky hair,
+    which was woven by the natives into cloth (see p. <a href="#p323">323</a>). The Eskimo dog
+    almost certainly has been derived from northern Asia, and is closely
+    related to the well-known Chinese breed&mdash;the chow dog&mdash;and the
+    domestic breeds of ancient Europe. Even the commonest type of house
+    dog in the Roman Empire was very much like an Eskimo or a chow in
+    appearance. There is a true wild dog, however, in the Yukon province
+    of the Canadian Dominion and in Alaska&mdash;<i>Canis pambasileus</i>&mdash;a dark,
+    blackish-brown in colour. This may have been a parent of the Eskimo
+    dog, but it is also doubtless closely allied to the original (extinct)
+    wild dog of northern Asia, from which the chow and many other breeds
+    are directly descended. The Eskimo never under ordinary circumstances
+    ate their dogs; on the other hand, the Amerindians were fond of dog's
+    flesh, and in some tribes simply bred dogs for the table.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Europeans first reached America all these Amerindian tribes, and
+    also the Eskimo, were still, for all practical purposes, in the Stone
+    Age. Those who lived in the north had discovered the use of copper and
+    had shaped for themselves knives and spear blades out of copper, but
+    not even this metal was in use to any great extent, and for the most
+    part they relied, down to the end of the eighteenth century, for their
+    implements and weapons, on polished and sharpened stones, on deer's
+    antlers, buffalo horns, sticks, sharp shells, beavers' incisor
+    teeth,<a name="7-3"></a><a href="#note-7-3"><small>[3]</small></a> the claws or spines of crustaceans, flints, and suchlike
+    substances&mdash;in short, they were leading the same life and using almost
+    exactly the same tools as the long-since-vanished hunter races of
+    Europe of five thousand to one hundred thousand years ago&mdash;the people
+    who pursued the mammoth, the bison, the Irish "elk", and the other
+    great beasts of prehistoric Europe. Indeed, North America represented
+    to some extent, as late as a hundred years ago, what Europe must have
+    looked like in the days of palæolithic Man.
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<p>
+    The AMERINDIANS of the Canadian Dominion (when the country first
+    became known to Europeans) belonged to the following groups and
+    tribes. The order of enumeration begins in the east and proceeds
+    westwards. I have already mentioned the peculiar <i>Beothiks</i> of
+    Newfoundland.<a name="7-4"></a><a href="#note-7-4"><small>[4]</small></a> In Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick,
+    and the Gaspé Peninsula there were the <i>Mikmak</i> Indians belonging to
+    the widespread ALGONKIN family or stock. West and south of the
+    Mikmaks, in New Brunswick and along the borders of New England, were
+    other tribes of the Algonkin group: the Etchemins, Abenakis,
+    Tarratines, Penobscots, <i>Mohikans</i>, and Adirondacks. North of these,
+    in the eastern part of the Quebec province, on either side of the Gulf
+    of St. Lawrence, were the <i>Montagnais</i>. This name, though it looks
+    like a French word meaning "mountaineers", was also spellt Montagnet,
+    and in various other ways, showing that it was originally a native
+    name, pronounced Montanyé. The Montagnais in various clans extended
+    northwards across Labrador until they touched the Eskimo, with whom
+    they constantly fought. The interior of Labrador was inhabited by
+    another Algonkin tribe, the <i>Naskwapi</i>, living in a state of rude
+    <a name="p159"></a>savagery. The <i>Algonkins</i> proper, whose tribe gave their name to the
+    whole stock because the French first became acquainted with them as a
+    type, dwelt in the vicinity of Montreal, Lake Ontario, and the valley
+    of the St. Lawrence. In upper Canada, about the great lakes and the
+    St. Lawrence valley, were the Chippeways, or <i>Ojibwés</i>, and the
+    Ottawas. West and north of Lake Michigan were the Miamis, the
+    Potawátomis, and the Fox Indians (the Saks or Sawkis). Between Lake
+    Winnipeg and Lake Superior were the <i>Cheyennes</i> (Shians); between
+    North and South Saskatchewan, the <i>Blackfeet</i> or Siksika Indians
+    (sections of which were also called Bloods, Paigans, Piegans, &amp;c).
+    North of Lake Winnipeg, as far as Lake Athabaska, and almost from the
+    Rocky Mountains to the shores of Hudson's Bay, were the widespread
+    tribe of the <i>Kris</i>, or <i>Knistino</i>.<a name="7-5"></a><a href="#note-7-5"><small>[5]</small></a> The Gros Ventres or Big
+    Bellies&mdash;properly called <i>Atsina</i>&mdash;inhabited the southern part of the
+    middle west, between the Saskatchewan and the Missouri basins; and the
+    Monsoni or Maskegon were found in eastern Rupert Land.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All the above-enumerated tribes, except the Beothik indigenes of
+    Newfoundland, belong to the great and widespread ALGONKIN group.
+    (Algonkin is a word derived from the "Algommequin" of Champlain.) In
+    the valley of the St. Lawrence the French first encountered those
+    Indians whom they called <i>Huron</i>. This was a French word meaning
+    "crested", because these people wore their hair in a great crest over
+    the top and back of the head, which reminded the French of the
+    appearance of a wild boar (<i>Hure</i>). The real name of the Hurons, who
+    dwelt at a later date between Lakes Huron, Erie, Ontario, and the
+    neighbourhood of Montreal, was <i>Waiandot</i> (Wyandot); but they went
+    under a variety of other names, according to the clans, such as the
+    Eries and the Atiwándoran or Neutral Nation. They were also called the
+    "Good" <a name="p160"></a>Iroquois, to distinguish them from the six other nations, the
+    IROQUOIS proper of the French Canadians, who signalized themselves by
+    fiendish and frightful warfare against the French and the various
+    tribes of Algonkin Indians. The Hurons and the rest of the six tribes
+    grouped under the name of IROQUOIS <a name="7-6"></a><a href="#note-7-6"><small>[6]</small></a> were of the same stock
+    originally, forming a separate group like that of the Algonkins,
+    though they are supposed to be related distantly to the Dakota or
+    Siou. Amongst the "Six Nations" or tribes banded together in warfare
+    and policy were the celebrated "Mohawks" who dwelt on the southern
+    borders of the St. Lawrence basin and near Lake Champlain. As the
+    others of the six nations (including the Senekas and Onondagas)
+    inhabited the eastern United States, well outside the limits of
+    Canada, they need not be referred to here.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Between the South Saskatchewan, the Rocky Mountains, and Lake
+    Superior, nearly outside the limits of the Canadian Dominion, was the
+    great DAKOTA, or Siou group,<a name="7-7"></a><a href="#note-7-7"><small>[7]</small></a> divided into the distinct tribe of
+    <i>Assiniboin</i> or "Stone" Indians (because they used hot stones in
+    cooking), the "Crows" or Absaroka, the Hidatsa or Minitari (also
+    called Big Bellies, like the quite distinct Atsina of the Algonkin
+    family), the Menómini (the most north-eastern amongst the Siouan
+    tribes, and the first met with by the British and French Canadians
+    south-west of Lake Superior), the Winnebagos on the southern borders
+    of Manitoba, the Yanktons or Yanktonnais, the "<i>Santi Siou</i>"
+    proper&mdash;generally calling themselves <i>Dakota</i> or Mdewakanton&mdash;and the
+    "Tétons" along the northern Dakota frontier and into the Rocky
+    Mountains&mdash;also known as <i>Blackfeet</i>, Sans Arcs ("without bows"),
+    "Two-kettles", "Brulés" or "Burnt" Indians, &amp;c.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Next must be mentioned the very important and widespread ATHAPASKAN or
+    Déné (Tinné) group, named after Lake Athapaska (or Athabaska), because
+    that sheet of water became a great rallying place for these northern
+    tribes. The Athapaskan group of Indians indeed represents the
+    "Northern Indians" of the Hudson's Bay Company's reports and
+    explorers. They drew a great distinction between the Northern Indians
+    (the Athapaskan tribes) and the Southern Indians, which included all
+    the other Amerindian groups dwelling to the south of the Athapaskan
+    domain. But although nowadays so much associated with the far north
+    and north-west of America, the Athabaskan group evidently came from a
+    region much farther south, and has been cut in half by other tribal
+    movements, wars, and migrations; for the Athapaskan family also
+    includes the Apaches and the Navaho of the south-western portions of
+    the United States and the adjoining territories of Mexico. The
+    northern and southern divisions of the Athapaskan group are separated
+    by something like twelve hundred miles. The following are the
+    principal tribes into which the Northern ATHAPASKAN group was divided
+    at the time of the first explorations of the north-west. There were
+    the <i>Chippewayan</i> Indians<a name="7-8"></a><a href="#note-7-8"><small>[8]</small></a> round about Lake Athapaska, and the
+    Caribou Eaters or Ethen-eldeli between Lake Athapaska and Reindeer
+    Lake. The "<i>Slaves</i>", or Slave Indians of the Great Slave Lake and the
+    upper Mackenzie River; the Beaver and Sarsi Indians (known also as the
+    Tsékehn), about the Peace River and the northern part of Alberta
+    province; and the <i>Yellow Knives</i>, or Totsan-ottine (so called from
+    their being found with light-coloured copper knives when first
+    discovered by Europeans), north-east of the Great Slave Lake and along
+    the Coppermine River: the <i>Dogribs</i> between the Great Slave Lake and
+    Great Bear Lake, perhaps (except in Alaska) the most northern
+    extension of the Amerindian type towards the Arctic regions. West of
+    the Dogribs dwelt&mdash;and still dwell&mdash;the interesting tribe of <i>Hare</i>
+    Indians, or Kawcho-Tinné. They extend northwards to the Anderson
+    River, on the verge of the Arctic Ocean. West of the lower Mackenzie
+    River, and stretching thence to the Porcupine or Yukon Rivers, are the
+    Squinting Indians ("Loucheux", or Kuchin), who in former times were
+    met with much farther to the south-east than at the present day.
+    Finally, there are the Nahani Indians, who have penetrated through the
+    Rocky Mountains to the Stikine River, reaching thus quite close to the
+    Pacific Ocean. This penetration northwards of groups of Athapaskan
+    Indians into districts inhabited for the most part by Amerindian
+    tribes differing widely in language and customs from all those <i>east</i>
+    of the Rocky Mountains, explains the way in which stories of the great
+    western sea&mdash;the Pacific&mdash;reached, by means of trading intercourse,
+    those Amerindian tribes of the middle-west and upper Canada, and so
+    stirred up the French and English explorers of the seventeenth and
+    eighteenth centuries to make the marvellous journeys which are
+    recounted in this book.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>West</i> of the Rocky Mountains, in British Columbia and Vancouver
+    Island (besides southern Alaska), the Amerindian tribes form the
+    N&#363;tka-Columbian group, which is markedly distinct from the
+    Amerindians <i>east</i> of the Rocky Mountains, from whom they differ
+    <i>widely</i> in language, type, and culture. They are divided into quite a
+    large number of small separate groups&mdash;the Wakashan or <i>N&#363;tkas</i> of
+    Vancouver Island and south-western British Columbia, the Shahaptian or
+    "Nez percés" Indians of the Columbia basin, and the Chin&#363;ks of
+    the lower Columbia River, the <i>Salishan</i> or "Flathead" group
+    (including the Atn&#257;s) of the Fraser and Thompson Rivers and central
+    British Columbia; and the <i>Haida</i> Indians of Queen Charlotte's Islands
+    and the north-west coast of British Columbia. It must be remembered
+    that these different groups are only based on the relationships of
+    their component tribes in language or dialect, and do not always imply
+    that the tribes belonging to them had the same customs and
+    dispositions; but they were generally able to communicate with one
+    another in speech, whereas if they met the Indians of another group
+    the language might be so totally different that they could only
+    communicate by means of signs.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0008"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc08.jpg" width="274" height="425"
+alt="An Amerindian Type of British Columbia">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>AN AMERINDIAN TYPE OF BRITISH COLUMBIA</h5>
+<p>
+    Sign and gesture language<a name="7-9"></a><a href="#note-7-9"><small>[9]</small></a> was extraordinarily developed amongst all
+    the Amerindian races from the Arctic Ocean to the Antarctic. Not only
+    that, but they were quick to understand the purpose of pictures. They
+    could draw maps in the sand to explain the geography of their country,
+    and Europeans could often make them understand what they required by
+    rough drawings. They themselves related many events by means of a
+    picture language&mdash;the beginning of hieroglyphics; and in the
+    south-eastern parts of Canada, as in the United States, these signs or
+    pictographs were recorded in bead-shell work&mdash;the celebrated "wampum".
+</p>
+<p>
+    All these tribes, of course, varied very much in personal appearance,
+    though not in disposition. The vanished <a name="p164"></a>Beothiks of Newfoundland are
+    described as having been a good-looking tall people, with large black
+    eyes and a skin so light, when washed free from dirt or paint, that
+    the Portuguese compared them to gipsies; and the writer of Fabian's
+    <i>Chronicle</i>, who saw two of them (brought back by Cabot) at Henry
+    VII's Court, in 1499, took them for Englishmen when they were dressed
+    in English clothes. It was these people&mdash;subsequently killed out by
+    the British settlers on Newfoundland&mdash;who originated the term "Red
+    Indians", or, in French, <i>Peaux Rouges</i>, because their skins, like
+    those of so many other Amerindians, were painted with red ochre.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Many of the British Columbian peoples made themselves artificially
+    ugly by flattening the sides of the head. To press the skull whilst it
+    was soft, they squeezed the heads of their children between boards;
+    others, such as the warlike tribes of the upper Missouri, had a
+    passion for submitting themselves to mutilation by the medicine man of
+    the clan, in order to please the sun god. Such would submit to large
+    strips being cut from the flesh of their shoulders, arms, or legs, or
+    having their cheeks slashed. The result, of course, was to leave their
+    limbs and features horribly scarred when they healed up. In some
+    tribes, however, a young man could not obtain&mdash;or retain&mdash;a wife
+    unless he had shown his bravery by submitting to this mutilation.
+    Women often cut off one or more joints of their fingers to show their
+    grief for the death of children.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In some tribes, especially of the far north-west and of the Rocky
+    Mountains, the personal habits of men and women, or of the women only,
+    were so filthy, and their dislike to bathing so pronounced, that they
+    became objects of loathing to white men; in other tribes personal
+    cleanliness was highly esteemed, especially on the seacoast of British
+    Columbia or along the banks of the great rivers. Usually the men were
+    better looking and better developed than the women&mdash;for one reason,
+    because they were better fed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here is a description by PETER GRANT&mdash;a pioneer of the North-West
+    Company&mdash;of the Ojibwé Indians dwelling near the east end of Lake
+    Superior at the beginning of the nineteenth century:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Their complexion is a whitish cast of copper colour, their hair
+    black, long, straight, and of a very strong texture. The young men
+    allow several locks of the hair to fall down over the face, ornamented
+    with ribbons, silver brooches, &amp;c. They gather up another lock from
+    behind the head into a small clump, and wrap it up with very thin
+    plates of silver, in which they fix the tail feathers of the eagle or
+    any other favourite bird with the wearing of which they have
+    distinguished themselves in war. They are very careful with their
+    hair, anointing it with bears' oil, which gives it a smooth and glossy
+    appearance. The teeth are of a beautiful ivory white, the cheeks
+    rather high and prominent, the eyes black and lively. Their
+    countenances are generally pleasant, and they might often be called
+    handsome. The ears are pierced in infancy, and the lobe is extended to
+    an unnatural size by suspending lead or any other heavy metal from the
+    outer rim, which in time brings them down near the shoulder. The nose
+    ornaments hang down half an inch, and nearly touch the upper lip.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The men are bold, manly, and graceful in their gait, always carrying
+    their bodies erect and easy. On the other hand, the women, by walking
+    with the toes of their feet turned inwards, have a disagreeable and
+    lame appearance. The men are specially fond of painting their faces
+    and bodies with vermilion, white and blue clay, charcoal or soot mixed
+    with a little grease or water. With this colour they daub the body,
+    legs, and thighs in bars and patches, and take the greatest pains
+    about painting the face, usually with red and black. Their skins are
+    generally tattooed <a name="p166"></a>with figures representing the sun, stars, eagles,
+    serpents, &amp;c, especially objects which have appeared to them in their
+    dreams. The women's faces are much less painted, usually a spot of red
+    on each cheek and a circle of red round the roots of the hair or
+    eyes."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here is a summary of what Alexander Henry, sen., wrote of the <i>Kri</i> or
+    <i>Knistino</i> Indians of Lake Athabaska about 1770:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The men in general tattoo their bodies and arms very much. The women
+    confine this ornamentation to the chin, having three perpendicular
+    lines from the middle of the chin to the lip, and one or more running
+    on each side, nearly parallel with the corner of the mouth. Their
+    dress consists of leather; that of the men is a pair of leggings,
+    reaching up to the hip and fastened to the girdle. Between the legs is
+    passed a strip of woollen stuff, but when this cannot be procured they
+    use a piece of dressed leather about nine inches broad and four feet
+    long, whose ends are drawn through the girdle and hang down before and
+    behind about a foot.... The shirt is of soft dressed leather, either
+    from the prong-buck or young red deer, close about the neck and
+    hanging to the middle of the thigh; the sleeves are of the same, loose
+    and open under the arms to the elbows, but thence to the wrist sewed
+    tight. The cap is commonly a piece of leather, or skin with the hair
+    on, shaped to fit the head, and tied under the chin; the top is
+    usually decorated with feathers or other ornament. Shoes are made of
+    buffalo (bison) hide, dressed in the hair, and mittens of the same.
+    Over the whole a buffalo robe is thrown, which serves as covering day
+    and night.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Such is their common dress, but on particular occasions they appear
+    to greater advantage, having their cap, shirt, leggings, and shoes
+    perfectly clean and white, trimmed with porcupine quills and other
+    ingenious work of their women, who are supposed to be the most skilful
+    hands in the country at decorations of this kind. The women's dress
+    consists of the same materials as the men's. Their leggings do not
+    reach above the knee, and are gathered below that joint; their shoes
+    always lack decoration. The shift or body garment reaches down to the
+    calf, where it is generally fringed and trimmed with quillwork; the
+    upper part is fastened over the shoulders by strips of leather; a flap
+    or cape hangs down about a foot before and behind, and is ornamented
+    with quillwork and fringe. This covering is quite loose, but tied
+    around the waist with a belt of stiff parchment fastened on the side,
+    where also some ornaments are suspended. The sleeves are detached from
+    the body garment; from the wrist to the elbow they are sewed, but
+    thence to the shoulder they are open underneath and drawn up to the
+    neck, where they are fastened across the breast and back.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Their ornaments are two or three coils of brass wire twisted around
+    the rim of each ear, in which incisions are made for that purpose;
+    blue beads, brass rings, quillwork, and fringe occasionally answer.
+    Vermilion (a red clay) is much used by the women to paint the face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Their hair is generally parted on the crown and fastened behind each
+    ear in large knots, from which are suspended bunches of blue beads or
+    other ingenious work of their own. The men adjust their hair in
+    various forms; some have it parted on top and tied in a tail on each
+    side, while others make one long <i>queue</i> which hangs down behind, and
+    around which is twisted a strip of otter skin or dressed buffalo
+    entrails. This tail is frequently increased in thickness and length by
+    adding false hair, but others allow it to flow loose naturally. Combs
+    are seldom used by the men, and they never smear the hair with grease,
+    but red earth is sometimes put upon it. White earth daubed over the
+    hair generally denotes mourning. The young men sometimes have a bunch
+    of hair on the crown, about the size of a small teacup, and nearly in
+    the shape of that vessel upside down, to which they fasten various
+    ornaments of feathers, quillwork, ermine tails, &amp;c. Red and white
+    earth and charcoal are much used in their toilets; with the former
+    they usually daub their robes and other garments, some red and others
+    white. The women comb their hair and use grease on it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Slave Indians (a tribe of the Athapaskan family) tattooed their
+    cheeks with charcoal inserted under the skin, also daubed their
+    bodies, robes, and garments profusely with red earth (generally
+    called, in the text of travellers, vermilion), but they had another
+    favourite pigment, procured from the regions on the west of the Rocky
+    Mountains, some kind of graphite, like the lead of lead pencils. With
+    this they marked their faces in black lead after red earth has been
+    applied, and thus gave themselves a ghastly and savage appearance.
+    Their dress consists of a leather shirt trimmed with human hair and
+    porcupine-quill work, and leggings of leather. Their shoes and caps
+    were made of bison leather, with the hair outside. Their necklaces
+    were strings of grizzly-bear claws, and a "buffalo" robe was thrown
+    over all occasionally. Some of them occasionally had quite light
+    skins&mdash;when free of dirt or paint&mdash;and grey eyes, and their hair,
+    instead of being black, was greyish-brown. These last features (grey
+    eyes and brown hair) characterized many individuals among the northern
+    British-Columbian tribes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Naskwapis of inland Labrador&mdash;allied in speech to the Kris and the
+    Montagnais, but in blood to the Eskimo&mdash;are described as above the
+    middle size in height, slender, and long-legged, their cheeks being
+    very prominent, eyes black, nose rather flat, mouth large, lips thick,
+    teeth white, hair rough and black, and the complexion a yellowish
+    "frog" colour. They were dressed in elaborate and warm garments made
+    of reindeer skin. The ordinary covering for the head of the men was
+    the skin of a bear's head. "Thus accoutred, with the addition of a
+    bow and quiver, a stone axe, and a bone knife, a Naskwapi man
+    possessed no small degree of pride and self-importance" (James
+    M'Kenzie).
+</p>
+<p>
+    The handsomest tribes of Amerindians encountered by the Canadian
+    pioneers seem to have been the Ojibwés of Lake Superior, the Iroquois
+    south of the St. Lawrence, and the Mandans of the upper Missouri.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Until well on in the nineteenth century none of the Canadian
+    Amerindians were particular about wearing clothes if the weather was
+    hot. The men, especially, were either quite oblivious of what was
+    seemly in clothing (except perhaps the Iroquois) or thought it
+    necessary to go naked into battle, or to remove all clothing before
+    taking part in religious ceremonies.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is commonly supposed that the Red Man was a rather glum person,
+    seldom seen to smile and averse to showing any emotion. That is not
+    the impression one derives from the many pen portraits of Amerindians
+    in the journals of the great pioneers. Here, on the contrary, you see
+    the natives laughing, smiling, kissing eagerly their wives and
+    children after an absence, displaying exuberant and cordial friendship
+    towards the white man who treated them well, having love quarrels and
+    fits of raging jealousy, moods of deep remorse after a fight, touching
+    devotion to their comrades or chiefs, and above all to their children.
+    They are most emotional, indeed, and, apart from this chapter you will
+    find frequent descriptions of how they wept at times over the
+    remembrance of their dead relations and friends.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hearne remarked, in 1772, that when two parties of Athapaska Indians
+    met, the ceremonies which passed between them were very formal. They
+    would advance within twenty or thirty yards of each other, make a full
+    halt, and then sit or lie down on the ground, not speaking for some
+    minutes. At length one of them, generally an elderly man, broke
+    silence by acquainting the other party with every misfortune that had
+    befallen him and his companions from the last time they had seen or
+    heard of each other, including all deaths and other calamities which
+    had happened to any other Indians during the same period. When he
+    finished, another orator, belonging to the other party, related in
+    like manner all the bad news that had come to <i>his</i> knowledge. If
+    these orations contained any news that in the least affected either
+    party, it would not be long before some of them began to sigh and sob,
+    and soon after to break out into a loud cry, which was generally
+    accompanied by most of the grown persons of both sexes; and sometimes
+    it was common to hear them all&mdash;men, women, and children&mdash;joining in
+    one universal howl. When the first transports of grief had subsided,
+    they advanced by degrees, and both parties mixed with each other, the
+    men with the men, the women with the women. They then passed round
+    tobacco pipes very freely, and the conversation became general. They
+    had now nothing but good news left to tell, and in less than half an
+    hour probably nothing but smiles and cheerfulness would be seen on
+    every face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One direction in which the Amerindians did not shine was in their
+    treatment of women. This perhaps was worse than in other uncivilized
+    races. Woman was very badly used, except perhaps for the first year of
+    courtship and marriage. Courtship began by the young man throwing
+    sticks at the girl<a name="7-10"></a><a href="#note-7-10"><small>[10]</small></a> who pleased his fancy, and if she responded he
+    asked her in marriage. But not long after she had become a mother she
+    sank into the position of a household drudge and beast of burden. For
+    example, amongst the Beaver Indians, an Athapaskan tribe of the <a name="p171"></a>far
+    north-west, it is related by Alexander Mackenzie that the women are
+    permanently crippled and injured in physique by the hardships they
+    have to undergo. "Having few dogs for transport in that country, the
+    women alone perform that labour which is allotted to beasts of burden
+    in other countries. It is not uncommon whilst the men carry nothing
+    but a gun, that their wives and daughters follow with such weighty
+    burdens that if they lay them down they cannot replace them; nor will
+    the men deign to perform the service of hoisting them on to their
+    backs. So that during their journeys they are frequently obliged to
+    lean against a tree for a small degree of temporary relief. When they
+    arrive at the place which their tyrants have chosen for their
+    encampment, they arrange the tent in a few minutes by forming a curve
+    of poles meeting at the top and expanding into a circle of twelve or
+    fifteen feet in diameter at the bottom, covered with dressed skins of
+    the moose sewn together. During these preparations the men sit down
+    quietly to the enjoyment of their pipes, if they happen to have any
+    tobacco."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Among the Ojibwé and Huron Indians of the Great Lakes the men
+    sometimes obliged their wives to bring up and nourish young bears
+    instead of their own children, so that the bears might eventually be
+    fattened for eating. If food was scarce, the women went without before
+    even the male slaves of the tribe were unprovided with food. Women
+    might never eat in the society of males, not even if these males were
+    slaves or prisoners of war. If food was very scarce, the husband as
+    likely as not killed and ate a wife; perhaps did this before slaying
+    and eating a valuable dog. (On the other hand, Mackenzie instances the
+    case of a woman among the Slave Indians who, in a winter of great
+    scarcity, managed to kill and devour her husband and several
+    relations.) So terrible was the ill-treatment of the women in some
+    tribes that these wretched beings sometimes committed suicide to end
+    their tortures. Even in this, however, they were not let off lightly,
+    for the Siou men invented as a tenet of their religion the saying that
+    "Women who hang themselves are the most miserable of all wretches in
+    the other world".
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the other hand, the kind treatment of children by fathers as well
+    as mothers is an "Indian" trait commented on by writer after writer.
+    Here is a typical description by Alexander Henry the Elder, concerning
+    the children of the Ojibwé tribe:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "As soon as the boys begin to run about, they are provided with bows
+    and arrows, and acquire, as it were 'by instinct', an astonishing
+    dexterity in shooting birds, squirrels, butterflies, &amp;c. Hunting in
+    miniature may be justly said to comprise the whole of their education
+    and childish diversion. Such as excel in this kind of exercise are
+    sure of being particularly distinguished by their parents, and seldom
+    punished for any misbehaviour, but, on the contrary, indulged in every
+    degree of excess and caprice. I have often seen grown-up boys of this
+    description, when punished for some serious fault, strike their father
+    and spit in his face, calling him 'bad dog', or 'old woman', and,
+    sometimes, carrying their insolence so far as to threaten to stab or
+    shoot him, and, what is rather singular, these too-indulgent parents
+    seem to encourage such unnatural liberties, and even glory in such
+    conduct from their favourite children. I heard them boast of having
+    sons who promised at an early age to inherit such bold and independent
+    sentiments.... Children of nine or ten years of age not only enjoy
+    the confidence of the men, but are generally considered as companions
+    and very deliberately join in their conversations."
+</p>
+<p>
+    When death overtook anybody the grief of the female relations was
+    carried to great excess. They not only cut their hair, cried and
+    howled, but they would sometimes, with the utmost deliberation,
+    employ some sharp instrument to separate the nail from the finger and
+    then force back the flesh beyond the first joint, which they
+    immediately amputated. "Many of the old women have so often repeated
+    this ceremony that they have not a complete finger remaining on either
+    hand" (Mackenzie).
+</p>
+<a name="image-0009"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc09.jpg" width="281" height="450"
+alt="Caribou Swimming a River">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>CARIBOU SWIMMING A RIVER</h5>
+<p>
+    The Amerindians of North America were religious and superstitious, and
+    had a firm faith in a world of spiritual agencies within or outside
+    the material world around us. Most of them believed in the existence
+    of "fairies",&mdash;woodland, earth, mountain, or water spirits&mdash;whom they
+    declared they could see from time to time in human semblance. Or such
+    spirit or demi-god might assume for a time or permanently the form of
+    an animal. To all such spirits of earth, air, and water, or to the
+    sacred animals they inhabited, sacrifices would be offered and prayers
+    made. Great importance was attributed to dreams and visions. They
+    accustomed themselves to make long fasts, so that they might become
+    light-headed and see visions, or hear spirit voices in a trance. To
+    prepare their minds for this state they would go four or five days
+    without food, and even abstain from drinking.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Undoubtedly their "medicine men" developed great mesmeric powers, and
+    this force, combined with rather clumsy juggling and ventriloquism,
+    enabled them to perform a semblance of "miracles". The Iroquois
+    offered much opposition to Christianity, thinking it would tame their
+    warriors too quickly and affect their national independence; but by
+    the greater part of the Amerindians the message of the Gospel brought
+    by the French priests was eagerly received, and the converts became
+    many and most sincere. Their reverence for the missionaries and belief
+    in them was increased when they saw how effectually they were able to
+    protect them from too-rapacious white adventurers, fierce soldiers,
+    and unscrupulous traders.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Miamis of Lake Michigan held the symbol of the cross in great
+    respect. A young Frenchman who was trading with them got into a
+    passion and drew his sword to avenge himself for a theft committed on
+    his goods. The Miama chieftain, to appease him, showed him the cross,
+    which was planted in the ground at the end of his lodge, and said to
+    him: "Behold the tree of the Black Gown; he teaches us to pray and not
+    to lose our temper,"&mdash;of course, referring to the missionary in the
+    black gown who had been amongst them. Before the cross was planted
+    here these Miamis kept in their houses one or more bogies, to which
+    they appealed in times of distress or sickness. One of these was the
+    skull of the bison with its horns. Another was the skin of the bear
+    raised on a pole in the middle of the hut and retaining the head,
+    which was usually painted green. The women sometimes died of terror
+    from the stories told them by the men about these idols, and the
+    Jesuits did a great deal of good by getting them abolished in many
+    places.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Supreme Being of the Eskimos was a goddess rather than a god: a
+    mother of all things who lived under the sea. On the other hand, most
+    of the Amerindian tribes believed in one great God of the Sky&mdash;Manito,
+    as He was called by the peoples of Algonkin stock, Nainubushan by the
+    Siou and their kindred. This Being was usually kindly disposed towards
+    man; but they also (in most cases) believed in a <i>bad</i> Manito, who was
+    responsible for most of the harm in the world. But sometimes the Great
+    Manito was capricious, or apparently made many mistakes which he had
+    afterwards to rectify. Thus the Siou tribes of Assiniboia believed
+    that the Supreme Being (whom they called Eth-tom-é) first created
+    mankind and all living things, and then, through some oversight or
+    mistake, caused a great flood to cover the earth's surface. So in a
+    hurry he was obliged to make a very large canoe of twigs and
+    branches, and into this he put a pair of every kind of bird and beast,
+    besides a family of human beings, who were thus saved from drowning,
+    and began the world afresh when the waters subsided. This legend was
+    something like the story of Noah's ark, but seems in some form or
+    another to have existed in the mind of all the North-American peoples
+    before the arrival of Christian missionaries. Much the same story was
+    told by the Ojibwés about the Great Hare-God, Nainiboju.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Siou and the Ojibwé (and other tribes also) believed that after
+    death the soul lay for a time in a trance, and then found itself
+    floating towards a River which must be crossed. Beyond the River lay
+    the Happy Hunting Grounds, the Elysian fields; but to oppose the weary
+    soul anxious to reach this paradise there ramped on the other side a
+    huge, flaming-red bison bull, if it had been ordained by the Great
+    Spirit that the soul's time was not yet come, this red bison pushed it
+    back, and the soul was obliged to re-enter the body, which then awoke
+    from its trance or swoon and resumed its worldly activities.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Suicide was regarded as the most heinous of crimes. Any man killing
+    himself deliberately, fell into the river of the ghost world and was
+    never heard of again, while women who hanged themselves "were regarded
+    as the most miserable of all wretches in the other world".
+</p>
+<p>
+    Their belief in spirits&mdash;even ancestral spirits&mdash;taking up an abode in
+    the bodies of beasts, birds, or reptiles, or even in plants or stones,
+    caused them to view with respect of a superstitious kind many natural
+    objects. Some one thing&mdash;a beast, bird, reptile, fish, plant, or
+    strange stone had been fixed on as the abode of his tutelary spirit by
+    some father of a family. The family grew into a clan, and the clan to
+    a tribe, and the object sacred in the eyes of its father and founder
+    became its "totem", crest, or symbol. As a rule, whatever thing was
+    the <i>totem</i> of the individual or the clan was held sacred in their
+    eyes, and, if it was an animal, was not killed, or, if killed, not
+    eaten. Many of the northern Indians would refrain from killing the
+    wolf or the glutton, or if they did so, or did it by accident, they
+    would refuse to skin the animal. The elder people amongst the
+    Athapaskan Indians, in Hearne's day, would reprove the young folk for
+    "speaking disrespectfully" of different beasts and birds.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Their ideas of medicine and surgery were much mixed up with a belief
+    in magic and in the mysterious powers of their "medicine men". This
+    person, who might be of either sex, certainly knew a few simple
+    medicines to be made from herbs or decoctions of bark, but for the
+    most part he attempted to cure the sick or injured by blowing lustily
+    on the part affected or, more wisely, by massage. A universal cure,
+    however, for all fevers and mild ailments was sweating. Sweating huts
+    were built in nearly every settlement. They were covered over in a way
+    to exclude air as much as possible. The inside was heated with red-hot
+    stones and glowing embers, on to which from time to time water was
+    poured to fill the place with steam. The Amerindians not only went
+    through these Turkish baths to cure small ailments but also with the
+    idea of clearing the intelligence and as a fitting preliminary to
+    negotiations&mdash;for peace, or alliance, or even for courtship. In many
+    tribes if a young "brave" arrived with proposals of marriage for a
+    man's daughter he was invited to enter the sweating house with her
+    father, and discuss the bargain calmly over perspiration and the
+    tobacco pipe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tobacco smoking indeed was almost a religious ceremony, as well as a
+    remedy for certain maladies or states of mind. The "pipe of peace" has
+    become proverbial. Nevertheless tobacco was still unknown in the
+    eighteenth century to many of the Pacific-coast and far-north-west
+    tribes, as to the primitive Eskimo. It was not a very old practice in
+    the Canadian Dominion when Europeans first arrived there, though it
+    appeared to be one of the most characteristic actions of these
+    red-skinned savages in the astonished eyes of the first pioneers. They
+    used pipes for smoking, however, long before tobacco came among them,
+    certain berries taking the place of tobacco.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Amerindians of the southern parts of Canada and British Columbia
+    were more or less settled peoples of towns or villages, of fixed homes
+    to which they returned at all seasons of the year, however far afield
+    they might range for warfare, trade, or hunting. But the more northern
+    tribes were nomads: people shifting their abode from place to place in
+    pursuit of game or trade. Unlike the people of the south and west
+    (though these only grew potatoes) they were not agriculturists: the
+    only vegetable element in their food was the wild rice of the marshes,
+    the sweet-tasting layer between the bark and the wood of certain
+    trees, and the fruits or fungi of the forest or the lichen growing on
+    the rocks. Though these people might in summertime build some hasty
+    wigwam of boughs and moss, their ordinary dwelling place was a tent.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Wood Indians, or Opimitish Ininiwak, of the Athapaskan group
+    (writes Alexander Henry, sen.) had no fixed villages; and their lodges
+    or huts were so rudely fashioned as to afford them very inadequate
+    protection against the weather. The greater part of their year was
+    spent in travelling from place to place in search of food. The animal
+    on which they chiefly depended was the <i>hare</i>&mdash;a most prominent animal
+    in Amerindian economy and tradition. This they took in springes. From
+    its skin they made coverings with much ingenuity, cutting it into
+    narrow strips and weaving this into the shape of a blanket, which was
+    of a very warm and agreeable quality.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Naskwapi Algonkins of inland Labrador were savages that led a
+    wandering life through the bare, flat parts of that country,
+    subsisting chiefly upon flesh, and clothing themselves with the skin
+    of the caribou, which they caught in pitfalls or shot with the bow
+    and arrow. "Very few sights, I believe, can be more distressing to the
+    feelings of humanity than a Labrador savage, surrounded by his wife
+    and five or six small children, half-famished with cold and hunger in
+    a hole dug out of the snow and screened from the inclemency of the
+    weather by the branches of the trees. Their whole furniture is a
+    kettle hung over the fire, not for the purpose of cooking victuals,
+    but for melting snow" (James M'Kenzie).
+</p>
+<p>
+    A description of the tents of the Kris or Knistino (Algonkins of the
+    Athabaska region), written by Alexander Henry, sen., applies with very
+    little difference to all the other tribes dwelling to the east of the
+    Rocky Mountains.<a name="7-11"></a><a href="#note-7-11"><small>[11]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    These tents were of dressed leather, erected with poles, generally
+    seventeen in number, of which two were tied together about three feet
+    from the top. The first two poles being erected and set apart at the
+    base, the others were placed against them in a slanting position,
+    meeting at the top, so that they all formed nearly a circle, which was
+    then covered with the leather. This consisted of ten to fifteen
+    dressed skins of the bison, moose, or red deer, well sewed together
+    and nicely cut to fit the conical figure of the poles, with an opening
+    above, to let out smoke and admit the light. From this opening down to
+    the door the two edges of the tent were brought close together and
+    well secured with wooden pegs about six inches long, leaving for the
+    door an oval aperture about two feet wide and three feet high, below
+    which the edges were secured with similar pegs. This small entrance
+    did well enough for the natives, who would be brought up to it from
+    infancy, but a European might be puzzled to get through, as a piece of
+    hide stretched upon a frame of the same shape as the door, but
+    somewhat larger, hung outside, and must be first raised by the hand of
+    the incomer.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Such tents were usually spacious, measuring twenty feet in diameter.
+    The fire was always made in the centre, around which the occupants
+    generally placed a range of stones to prevent the ashes from
+    scattering and to keep the fire compact. New tents were perfectly
+    white; some of them were painted with red and black figures. These
+    devices were generally derived from the dreams of the Amerindians,
+    being some mythical monster or other hideous animal, whose description
+    had been handed down from their ancestors. A large camp of such tents,
+    pitched regularly on a level plain, had a fine effect at a distance,
+    especially when numerous bands of horses were seen feeding in all
+    directions.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The "lodges" or long houses made of poles, fir branches, moss, &amp;c.,
+    wherein, among the Iroquois, Algonkin, and Siou peoples, several
+    families made a common habitation, are described here and there in the
+    course of the narrative. The houses of the coast tribes of British
+    Columbia were bigger, more elaborate, and permanent, and in this
+    region the natives had acquired some idea of carpentry, and had learnt
+    to make planks of wood by splitting with wedges or hewing with adzes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One of these British Columbian houses was measured, and found to be
+    seventy feet long by twenty-five feet wide; the entrance in the gable
+    end was cut through a plank five and a half feet wide, and nearly
+    oval. A board suspended on the outside answered for a door; on the
+    other side of the broad plank was rudely carved a large painted figure
+    of a man, between whose legs was the passage. But other houses on the
+    Pacific coast, visited by Cook or Vancouver, are said to have been
+    large enough to accommodate seven hundred people. These houses of the
+    Pacific coast region were exceedingly filthy, sturgeon and salmon
+    being strewn about in every direction. The men inhabiting them were
+    often disgusting in their behaviour, while the women are declared to
+    have been "devoid of shame or decency".
+</p>
+<p>
+    According to Mackenzie, such habitations swarmed with fleas, and even
+    the ground round about them "was alive with this vermin". The
+    Alexander Henrys, both uncle and nephew, complain of the flea plague
+    (partly due to the multitude of dogs) in every Indian village or
+    encampment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The domestic implements of the Amerindians were few. Pottery seems to
+    have been unknown amongst the northern tribes to the east and north of
+    the Mississippi valley, but earthen jars and vessels were made by the
+    Dakota-Siou group in the valley of the Mississippi. Amongst these
+    agricultural Indians the hoe was made of a buffalo's blade bone
+    fastened to a crooked wooden handle. The Ojibwés manufactured chisels
+    out of beavers' teeth. The Eskimo and some of the neighbouring
+    Amerindian tribes used oblong "kettles" of stone&mdash;simply great blocks
+    of stone chipped, rubbed, and hollowed out into receptacles, with
+    handles at both ends. (It is suggested that they borrowed the idea of
+    these stone vessels for cooking from the early Norse settlers of
+    Greenland; see p. <a href="#p18">18</a>.)
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Amerindians of the regions west of the Rocky Mountains made
+    kettles or cooking vessels out of blocks of "cedar" (<i>Juniper</i>) wood;
+    east of the Rocky Mountains the birch-bark kettle was universal. Of
+    course these vessels of wood or bark could not be placed on the fire
+    or embers to heat or boil the contents, as was possible with the
+    "kettles" of stone or the cooking pots of clay. So the people using
+    them heated the water in which the food or the soup was boiled by
+    making stones red-hot in the fire and then dropping them into the
+    birch-bark or cedar-wood tubs. Many of the northern Indians got into
+    the way of eating their food raw because of the difficulty of making a
+    fire away from home.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In regard to food, neither Amerindian nor Eskimo was squeamish. They
+    were almost omnivorous, and specially delighted in putrid or noisome
+    substances from which a European would turn in loathing, and from the
+    eating of which he might conceivably die.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was only in the extreme south of Canada or in British Columbia
+    (potatoes only) that any agriculture was carried on and that the
+    natives had maize, pumpkins, and pease to add to their dietary; but
+    (as compared to the temperate regions of Europe and Asia) Nature was
+    generous in providing wild fruits and grain without trouble of
+    husbandry. The fruits and nuts have been enumerated elsewhere, but a
+    description might be given here of the "wild oats" (<i>Avena fatua</i>) and
+    the "wild rice" of the regions of central Canada and the middle west.
+    The wild oats made a rough kind of porridge, but were not so important
+    and so nourishing as the wild rice which is so often mentioned in the
+    stories of the pioneers, who liked this wild grain as much as the
+    Indians did.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This wild rice (<i>Zizania aquatica</i>) grew naturally in small rivers and
+    swampy places. The stems were hollow, jointed at intervals, and the
+    grain appeared at the extremity of the stalk. By the month of June
+    they had grown two feet above the surface of the shallow water, and
+    were ripe for harvesting in September. At this period the Amerindians
+    passed in canoes through the water-fields of wild rice, shaking the
+    ears into the canoes as they swept by. The grain fell out easily when
+    ripe, but in order to clean it from the husk it was dried over a slow
+    fire on a wooden grating. After being winnowed it was pounded to flour
+    in a mortar, or else boiled like rice, and seasoned with fat. "It had
+    a most delicate taste", wrote Alexander Henry the Elder.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Fish was perhaps the staple of Amerindian diet, because in scarcely
+    any part of the Canadian Dominion is a lake, river, or brook far away.
+    In the region of the Great Lakes fish were caught in large quantities
+    in October, and exposed to the weather to be frozen at nighttime. They
+    were then stored away in this congealed state, and lasted good&mdash;more
+    or less&mdash;till the following April.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Pemmican&mdash;that early form of potted meat so familiar to the readers of
+    Red-Indian romances&mdash;was made of the lean meat of the bison. The
+    strips of meat were dried in the sun, and afterwards pounded in a
+    mortar and mixed with an equal quantity of bison fat. Fish "pemmican"
+    was sun-dried fish ground to powder.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A favourite dish among the northern Indians was blood mixed with the
+    half-digested food found in the stomach of a deer, boiled up with a
+    sufficient quantity of water to make it of the consistency of pease
+    porridge. Some scraps of fat or tender flesh were shredded small and
+    boiled with it. To render this dish more palatable they had a method
+    of mixing the blood with the contents of the stomach in the paunch
+    itself, and hanging it up in the heat and smoke of the fire for
+    several days&mdash;in other words, the Scotch haggis. The kidneys of both
+    moose and buffalo were usually eaten <i>raw</i> by the southern Indians,
+    for no sooner was one of those beasts killed than the hunter ripped up
+    its belly, snatched out the kidneys, and ate them warm, before the
+    animal was quite dead. They also at times put their mouths to the
+    wound the ball or the arrow had made, and sucked the blood; this, they
+    said, quenched thirst, and was very nourishing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The favourite drink of the Ojibwé Indians in the wintertime was hot
+    broth poured over a dishful of pure snow.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Amerindians of the Nipigon country (north of Lake Superior) and
+    the Ojibwés and Kris often relapsed into cannibalism when hard up for
+    food. Indeed some of them became so addicted to this practice that
+    they simply went about stalking their fellow Indians with as much
+    industry as if they were hunting animals. "These prowling ogres caused
+    such terror that to sight the track of one of them was sufficient to
+    make twenty families decamp in all the speed of their terror"
+    (Alexander Henry). It was deemed useless to attempt any resistance
+    when these monsters were coming to kill and eat. The people would even
+    make them presents of clothes and provisions to allow them and their
+    children to live. There were women cannibals as well as men (see p.
+    <a href="#p171">171</a>).
+</p>
+<p>
+    As the greater part of their food came from the chase, and their only
+    articles of commerce likewise, they devoted themselves more entirely
+    to hunting and fishing than to any other pursuit. The women did most
+    of the fishing (and all the skin-curing for the fur market and for
+    their own dress), while the men pursued with weapons the beasts of the
+    chase, trapped them in pitfalls or snares, or drove them into "pounds"
+    (excavated enclosures).
+</p>
+<p>
+    Illustrating the wonderful sagacity of the Amerindians as game
+    trackers, Alexander Henry the Elder tells the following story in the
+    autumn of 1799:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We had not gone far from the house before we fell upon the fresh
+    tracks of some red deer (wapiti), and soon after discovered the herd
+    in a thicket of willows and poplars; we both fired, and the deer
+    disappeared in different directions. We pursued them, but to no
+    purpose, as the country was unfavourable. We then returned to the spot
+    where we had fired, as the Indian suspected that we had wounded some
+    of them. We searched to see if we could find any blood; on my part, I
+    could find tracks, but no blood. The Indian soon called out, and I
+    went to him, but could see no blood, nor any sign that an animal had
+    been wounded. However, he pointed out the track of a large buck among
+    the many others, and told me that from the manner in which this buck
+    had started off he was certain the animal had been wounded. As the
+    ground was beaten in every direction by animals, it was only after a
+    tedious search that we found where the buck had struck off. But no
+    blood was seen until, passing through a thicket of willows, he
+    observed a drop upon a leaf, and next a little more. He then began to
+    examine more strictly, to find out in what part of the body the
+    animal had been wounded; and, judging by the height and other signs,
+    he told me the wound must have been somewhere between the shoulder and
+    neck. We advanced about a mile, but saw nothing of the deer, and no
+    more blood. I was for giving up the chase; but he assured me the wound
+    was mortal, and that if the animal should lie down he could not rise
+    again. We proceeded two miles farther, when, coming out upon a small
+    open space, he told me the animal was at no great distance, and very
+    probably in this meadow. We accordingly advanced a few yards, and
+    there we found the deer lying at the last gasp. The wound was exactly
+    as I had been told. The sagacity of the Saulteurs [Ojibwés] in tracing
+    big wood animals is astonishing. I have frequently witnessed
+    occurrences of this nature; the bend of a leaf or blade of grass is
+    enough to show the hunter the direction the game has taken. Their
+    ability is of equally great service to war parties, when they discover
+    the footsteps of their enemies."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Assiniboin Indians (a branch of the Sious) down to about fifty
+    years ago captured the bison of the plains in hundreds at a time by
+    driving them into large excavated areas below the level of the ground.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Alexander Henry, jun., gives the following description of this
+    procedure in 1810:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The pounds are of different dimensions, according to the number of
+    tents in one camp. The common size is from sixty to one hundred paces
+    or yards in circumference, and about five feet in height. Trees are
+    cut down, laid upon one another, and interwoven with branches and
+    green twigs; small openings are left to admit the dogs to feed upon
+    the carcasses of the (old) bulls, which are generally left as useless.
+    This enclosure is commonly made between two hummocks, on the declivity
+    or at the foot of rising ground. The entrance is about ten paces wide,
+    and always fronts the plains. On each side of this entrance commences
+    a thick range of fascines, the two ranges spreading asunder as they
+    extend to the distance of one hundred yards, beyond which openings are
+    left at intervals; but the fascines soon become more thinly planted,
+    and continue to spread apart to the right and left until each range
+    has been extended about three hundred yards from the pound. The labour
+    is then diminished by only placing at intervals three or four cross
+    sticks, in imitation of a dog or other animal (sometimes called 'dead
+    men'); these extend on the plain for about two miles, and double rows
+    of them are planted in several other directions to a still greater
+    distance. Young men are usually sent out to collect and bring in the
+    buffalo&mdash;a tedious task, which requires great patience, for the herd
+    must be started by slow degrees. This is done by setting fire to dung
+    or grass. Three young men will bring in a herd of several hundred from
+    a great distance. When the wind is aft it is most favourable, as they
+    can then direct the buffalo with great ease. Having come in sight of
+    the ranges, they generally drive the herd faster, until it begins to
+    enter the ranges, where a swift-footed person has been stationed with
+    a buffalo robe over his head, to imitate that animal; but sometimes a
+    horse performs this business. When he sees buffaloes approaching he
+    moves slowly toward the pound until they appear to follow him; then he
+    sets off at full speed, imitating a buffalo as well as he can, with
+    the herd after him. The young men in the rear now discover themselves,
+    and drive the herd on with all possible speed. There is always a
+    sentinel on some elevated spot to notify the camp when the buffalo
+    appear; and this intelligence is no sooner given than every man,
+    woman, and child runs to the ranges that lead to the pound to prevent
+    the buffalo from taking a wrong direction. Then they lie down between
+    the fascines and cross sticks, and, if the buffalo attempt to break
+    through, the people wave their robes, which causes the herd to keep
+    on, or turn to the opposite <a name="p186"></a>side, where other persons do the same.
+    When the buffalo have been thus directed to the entrance of the pound,
+    the Indian who leads them rushes into it and out at the other side,
+    either by jumping over the enclosure or creeping through an opening
+    left for that purpose. The buffalo tumble in pell-mell at his heels,
+    almost exhausted, but keep moving around the enclosure from east to
+    west, and never in a direction against the sun. What appeared
+    extraordinary to me on those occasions was that, when word was given
+    to the camp of the near approach of the buffalo, the dogs would skulk
+    away from the pound and not approach until the herd entered. Many
+    buffaloes break their legs and some their necks in jumping into the
+    pound, as the descent is generally six or eight feet, and stumps are
+    left standing there. The buffalo being caught, the men assembled at
+    the enclosure, armed with bows and arrows; every arrow has a
+    particular mark of the owner, and they are let fly until the whole
+    herd is killed. Then the men enter the pound, and each claims his own;
+    but commonly there is what they term the master of the pound, who
+    divides the animals and gives each tent an equal share, reserving
+    nothing for himself. But in the end he is always the best provided
+    for; everyone is obliged to send him a certain portion, as it is in
+    his tent that the numerous ceremonies relating to the pound are
+    observed. There the young men are always welcome to feast and smoke,
+    and no women are allowed to enter, as that tent is set apart for the
+    affairs of the pound. Horses are sometimes used to collect and bring
+    in buffalo, but this method is less effectual than the other; besides,
+    it frightens the herds and soon causes them to withdraw to a great
+    distance. When horses are used the buffalo are absolutely driven into
+    the pound, but when the other method is pursued they are in a manner
+    enticed to their destruction."
+</p>
+<p>
+    A somewhat similar method was adopted by the northern Kris and
+    Athapascans for the capture of reindeer.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As regards means of transport, the use of dogs as draught animals was
+    by no means confined to the Eskimo: they were used in wintertime to
+    draw sledges over the snow or ice by nearly all the northern Indian
+    tribes, and by the people of the Rocky Mountains and Pacific coast.
+    After the Amerindians of the prairies and plains received horses
+    (indirectly through the Spaniards of Mexico)<a name="7-12"></a><a href="#note-7-12"><small>[12]</small></a> they sometimes
+    employed the smaller and poorer kind of ponies as pack animals; but
+    for the most part throughout the summer season of the Canadian
+    Dominion&mdash;from May to October&mdash;transport and travel by canoe was the
+    favourite method.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There were four very well marked types of canoe or boat in British
+    North America. There was the already-described Eskimo <i>kayak</i>, made of
+    leather stretched over a framework of wood or bone; the Amerindians of
+    the Dominion, south of the Eskimo and east of the Rocky Mountains,
+    used the familiar "birch-bark" canoe;<a name="7-13"></a><a href="#note-7-13"><small>[13]</small></a> the peoples of the Pacific
+    coast belt possessed something more like a boat, made out of a
+    hollowed tree trunk and built up with planks; and the tribes of the
+    Upper Mississippi used round coracles. Here are descriptions of all
+    three kinds of Amerindian canoe from the pens of eighteenth-century
+    pioneers: The birch-bark canoe used on the Great Lakes was about
+    thirty-three feet long by four and a half feet broad, and formed of
+    the smooth rind or bark of the birch tree fastened outside a wooden
+    framework. It was lined with small splints of juniper cedar, and the
+    vessel was further strengthened with ribs of the same wood, of which
+    the two ends were fastened to the gunwales. Several bars rather than
+    seats were laid across the canoe from gunwale to gunwale, the small
+    roots of the spruce fir afforded the fibre with which the bark was
+    sewn or stitched, and the gum of the pine tree supplied the place of
+    tar and oakum. Bark, some spare fibre, and gum were always carried in
+    each canoe for repairs, which were constantly necessary (one
+    continually reads in the diaries of the pioneers of "stopping to gum
+    the canoe"). The canoes were propelled with paddles, and occasionally
+    a sail.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The aborigines of Newfoundland&mdash;the Beothiks&mdash;are said to have known
+    the birch-bark canoe, framework canoe, but to have employed
+    "dug-outs"&mdash;hollowed tree trunks. The canoes of the Mandans of the
+    upper Missouri basin were like coracles, of circular form, made of a
+    framework of bent willow branches over which was stretched a raw
+    bison-hide with the hair inside. This was sewn tightly round the
+    willow rim. In lieu of a paddle they use a pole about five feet long,
+    split at one end to admit a piece of board about two feet long and
+    half a foot broad, which was lashed to the pole and so formed a kind
+    of cross. There was but one for each canoe. The paddler of this
+    coracle made directly for the opposite shore; every stroke he gave
+    turned his "dish" almost entirely round; to recover his position and
+    go on his intended route, he must give a stroke on the other side,
+    which brought him up again; and so on till he got over, not without
+    drifting down sometimes nearly a mile.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Alexander Henry, jun., thus describes a canoe of the Clatsop people on
+    the Lower Columbia (Pacific coast, opposite Vancouver Island): "This
+    was a war canoe&mdash;the first of the kind I had seen. She was about
+    thirty-six feet long and wide in proportion, the stem rising upright
+    about six feet, on top of which was a figure of some imaginary monster
+    of uncouth sculpture, having the head of a carnivorous animal with
+    large erect ears but no body, clinging by arms and legs to the upper
+    end of the canoe, and grinning horribly. The ears were painted green,
+    the other parts red and black. The stern also rose about five feet in
+    height, but had no figure carved on it. On each side of both stem and
+    stern broad strips of wood rose about four feet, having holes cut in
+    them to shoot arrows through. She had a high sprit-sail made of
+    handkerchiefs and pieces of gunny-cloth or jute, forming irregular
+    stripes, I am told these Indians commonly have pieces of squared
+    timber, not unlike a three-inch plank, high and broad, perforated to
+    shoot arrows through; this is fixed on the bow of the war canoe to
+    serve as bulwarks in battle."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Canoe voyages were mainly embarked on for trading; but in all
+    probability before the coming of the European there was little trading
+    done between one tribe and another, except in the region <i>west</i> of the
+    Rocky Mountains, in which&mdash;especially to the north&mdash;the Amerindians
+    were so different in their habits and customs from those dwelling east
+    of the mountains as to suggest that they must very occasionally have
+    been in touch with some world outside America, such as Hawaii,
+    Kamschatka, or Japan. In these Pacific coastlands they used a white
+    seashell as a currency and a medium of exchange. So also did the
+    Iroquois people and the southern Algonkin tribes, in the form of
+    "wampum". The principal articles of barter were skins of fur animals,
+    porcupine quills, dogs, slaves, and women.
+</p>
+<p>
+    First Hunting (to supply food), then Trading in the products of the
+    chase, and lastly War were the main subjects which occupied the
+    Amerindian's thoughts before the middle of the nineteenth century.
+    They usually went to war to turn other tribes out of profitable
+    hunting grounds or productive fisheries; or because they wanted slaves
+    or more wives; or because a chief or a medicine man had a dream; or
+    because some other notability felt he had given way too much to tears
+    over some personal or public sorrow, and must show his manliness by
+    killing the people of another tribe. In their wars they knew no mercy
+    when their blood was up, and frequently perpetrated frightful
+    cruelties for the sheer pleasure of seeing human suffering. Yet these
+    devilish moods would alternate with fits of sentimentality. A man or a
+    woman would suddenly take a war prisoner, or a person who was wounded
+    or half-tortured to death, under their protection, and a short time
+    afterwards the whole war party would be greeting this rescued wretch
+    (usually a man&mdash;they were far more pitiless towards women) as brother,
+    son, or friend, and even become quite maudlin over a scratch or a
+    bruise; whereas an hour or so before they were on the point of
+    disembowelling, or of driving splinters up the nails and setting them
+    on fire. In warfare they often gave way to cannibalism.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Though extremely fond of singing&mdash;they sang when they were merry; when
+    they thought they were going to die; when they were victorious in
+    hunting, love, or war; when they were defeated; when they were
+    paddling a canoe or sewing a moccasin&mdash;they had but a poor range of
+    musical instruments. Most of the tribes used flutes made out of the
+    wing bones of cranes or out of reeds, and some had small trumpets of
+    wood, bark, or buffalo horn. The Pacific coast Indians made gongs or
+    "xylophones" out of blocks or slabs of resonant wood.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here is a specimen of Amerindian singing. It is the song which
+    accompanied the famous Calumet dance in celebration of the peacemaking
+    qualities of tobacco-smoking. It was taken down by the Jesuit
+    missionaries in the seventeenth century from the Ilinwa (Illinois)
+    Algonkin Indians of the middle west, and its notation reminds one of
+    Japanese music.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0010"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/music.jpg" width="450" height="685"
+alt="The Calumet Or Tobacco-pipe Dance">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="block">
+     Ninahani, &amp;c, ongo; ninahani, &amp;c, hoho; ninahani, &amp;c.,<br>
+     Kawa bannoge atchicha Koge ake aw&#257;;<br>
+     Banoge atchicha shagobe hé hé hé! Mintingo mitade<br>
+     Pini pini hé! Atchicha lé machi mi nam ba miktande,<br>
+     Miktande pini pini hé!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dancing was little else than posturing and jumping in masks&mdash;usually
+    made to look like the head of a wild beast. But the men were usually
+    very athletic. Wrestling competitions were almost universal,
+    especially as a means of winning a wife. The conqueror in a wrestling
+    match took the wife or wives of the defeated man. Their running powers
+    for endurance and speed became justly celebrated.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Their principal and most inveterate game is that of the hoop," writes
+    Alexander Henry, sen., "which proves as ruinous to them as the platter
+    does to the Saulteurs (Ojibwé)." This game was played in the following
+    manner. A hoop was made about two feet in diameter, nearly covered
+    with dressed leather, and trimmed with quillwork, feathers, bits of
+    metal, and other trinkets, on which were certain particular marks. Two
+    persons played at the same time, by rolling the hoop and accompanying
+    it, one on each side; when it was about to fall, each gently threw one
+    arrow in such a manner that the hoop might fall upon it, and according
+    to that mark on the hoop which rested on the arrows they reckoned the
+    game. They also played another game by holding some article in one
+    hand, or putting it into one of two shoes, the other hand or shoe
+    being empty. They had another game which required forty to fifty small
+    sticks, as thick as a goose quill and about a foot long; these were
+    all shuffled together and then divided into two bunches, and according
+    to the even or odd numbers of sticks in the bunch chosen, the players
+    lost or won.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A favourite game amongst the Ojibwé is described as "the hurdle",
+    which is another name for the Canadian national game of La Crosse.
+    When about to play, the men, of all ages, would strip themselves
+    almost naked, but dress their hair in great style, put ornaments on
+    their arms, and belts round their waists, and paint their faces and
+    bodies in the most elaborate style. Each man was provided with "a
+    hurdle", an instrument made of a small stick of wood about three feet
+    long, bent at the end to a small circle, in which a loose piece of
+    network is fixed, forming a cavity big enough to receive a leather
+    ball about the size of a man's fist. Everything being prepared, a
+    level plain about half a mile long was chosen, with proper barriers or
+    goals at each end. Having previously formed into two equal parts, they
+    assembled in the very middle of the field, and the game began by
+    throwing up the ball perpendicularly in the air, when instantly both
+    parties (writes an eyewitness) "formed a singular group of naked men,
+    painted in different colours and in the most comical attitudes
+    imaginable, holding their rackets elevated in the air to catch the
+    ball". Whoever was so fortunate as to catch it in his net ran with it
+    to the barrier with all his might, supported by his party; whilst the
+    opponents were pursuing and endeavouring to knock the ball out of the
+    net. He who succeeded in doing so ran in the same manner towards the
+    opposite barrier, and was, of course, pursued in his turn. If in
+    danger of being overtaken, he might throw it with his hurdle towards
+    any of his associates who happened to be nearer the barrier than
+    himself. They had a particular knack of throwing it a great distance
+    in this manner, so that the best runners had not always the advantage;
+    and, by a peculiar way of working their hands and arms while running,
+    the ball never dropped out of their "hurdle".
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The best of three heats wins the game, and, besides the honour
+    acquired on such occasions, a considerable prize is adjudged to the
+    victors. The vanquished, however, generally challenge their
+    adversaries to renew the game the next day, which is seldom refused.
+    The game then becomes more important, as the honour of the whole
+    village is at stake, and it is carried on with redoubled impetuosity,
+    every object which might impede them in their career is knocked down
+    and trodden under foot without mercy, and before the game is decided,
+    it is a common thing to see numbers sprawling on the ground with
+    wounded legs and broken heads, yet this never creates any disputes or
+    ill-will after the play is decided" (Alexander Henry, sen.).
+</p>
+<p>
+    It has been computed that in the middle of the eighteenth century the
+    Amerindian population of the vast territories now known as the
+    Dominion of Canada numbered about 300,000. It now stands at an
+    approximate 110,000. The chief diminution has taken place in
+    Newfoundland, Lower and Upper Canada, New Brunswick, Assiniboia, and
+    British Columbia. There may even have been an increase in the north
+    and north-west. The first great blow to the Amerindians of these
+    regions was the smallpox epidemic of 1780. The next was the effect of
+    the strong drink<a name="7-14"></a><a href="#note-7-14"><small>[14]</small></a> introduced by the agents of the Hudson's Bay and,
+    still more, the two North-west Companies. Phthisis or pulmonary
+    consumption also seems to have been introduced from Europe (though
+    Hearne thought that the Northern Indians had it before the white man
+    came). In fact, before the European invaded America neither Eskimo nor
+    Amerindian seem to have had many diseases. They suffered from ulcers,
+    scurvy, digestive troubles, rheumatism, headache, bronchitis, and
+    heart complaints, but from few, if any, "germ" diseases.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Some of the agents of the North-west Company apologize in their
+    writings for the amount of rum that was circulated among the
+    Amerindians at the orders of that company to stimulate trade, by
+    saying that it was seven parts water. Nevertheless it excited them to
+    madness, as the following extracts show. These are mostly taken from
+    the journals of Alexander Henry the Younger, but they are typical of
+    what was recorded by many other writers who describe the far interior
+    of British North America between 1775 and 1835.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "To see a house full of drunken Indians, consisting of men, women, and
+    children, is a most unpleasant sight; for, in that condition, they
+    often wrangle, pull each other by the hair, and fight. At times, ten
+    or twelve of both sexes may be seen fighting each other promiscuously,
+    until at last they all fall on the floor, one upon another, some
+    spilling rum out of a small kettle or dish which they hold in their
+    hands, while others are throwing up what they have just drunk. To
+    add to this uproar, a number of children, some on their mothers'
+    shoulders, and others running about and taking hold of their clothes,
+    are constantly bawling, the elder ones, through fear that their
+    parents may be stabbed, or that some other misfortune may befal them
+    in the fray. These shrieks of the children form a very unpleasant
+    chorus to the brutal noise kept up by their drunken parents."
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<p>
+    "In a drinking match at the Hills yesterday, Gros Bras (Thick Arms) in
+    a fit of jealousy stabbed Aupusoi to death with a hand-dague (dagger);
+    the first stroke opened his left side, the second his belly, and the
+    third his breast; he never stirred, although he had a knife in his
+    belt, and died instantly. Soon after this Aupusoi's brother, a boy
+    about ten years of age, took the deceased's gun, loaded it with two
+    balls, and approached Gros Bras's tent. Putting the muzzle of the gun
+    through the door the boy fired the two balls into his breast and
+    killed him dead, just as he was reproaching his wife for her affection
+    for Aupusoi, and boasting of the revenge he had taken. The little
+    fellow ran into the woods and hid. Little Shell (Petite Coquille)
+    found the old woman, Aupusoi's mother, in her tent; he instantly
+    stabbed her. Ondainoiache then came in, took the knife, and gave her a
+    second stab. Little Shell, in his turn taking the knife, gave a third
+    blow. In this manner did these two rascals continue to murder the old
+    woman, as long as there was any life in her. The boy escaped into
+    Langlois' house, and was kept hid until they were all sober. Next
+    morning a hole was dug in the ground, and all three were buried
+    together. This affair kept the Indians from hunting, as Gros Bras was
+    nearly related to the principal hunters."
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<p>
+    "Grand' Gueule stabbed Perdrix Blanche with a knife in six places.
+    Perdrix Blanche fighting with his wife, fell in the fire and almost
+    roasted, but had strength enough left notwithstanding his wounds to
+    bite her nose off."
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<p>
+    "In the first drinking match a murder was committed in an Assiniboine
+    tent, but fortunately it was done by an Ojibwé. L'Hiver stabbed
+    Mishewashence to the heart three times, and killed him instantly. The
+    wife and children cried out, and some of my people ran to the tent
+    just as L'Hiver came out with the bloody knife in his hand, expecting
+    we would lay hold of him. The first person he met was William Henry,
+    whom he attempted to stab in the breast; but Henry avoided the stroke,
+    and returned the compliment with a blow of his cudgel on the fellow's
+    head. This staggered him; but instantly recovering he made another
+    attempt to stab Henry. Foiled in this design, and observing several
+    coming out of the fort, he took to his heels and ran into the woods
+    like a deer. I chased him with some of my people, but he was too fleet
+    for us. We buried the murdered man, who left a widow and five
+    helpless orphans, having no relations on this river. The behaviour of
+    two of the youngest was really piteous while we were burying the body;
+    they called upon their deceased father not to leave them, but to
+    return to the tent, and tried to prevent the men from covering the
+    corpse with earth, screaming in a terrible manner; the mother was
+    obliged to take them away."
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<p>
+    "Men and women have been drinking a match for three days and nights,
+    during which it has been drink, fight&mdash;drink, fight&mdash;drink, and fight
+    again&mdash;guns, axes, and knives being their weapons&mdash;very disagreeable."
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<p>
+    "Mithanasconce was so troublesome (in drink) that we were obliged to
+    tie him with ropes to prevent his doing mischief. He was stabbed in
+    the back in three different places about a month ago. His wounds were
+    still open, and had an ugly appearance; in his struggling to get loose
+    they burst out afresh and bled a great deal. We had much trouble to
+    stop the blood, as the fellow was insensible to pain or danger; his
+    only aim was to bite us. We had some narrow escapes, until we secured
+    his mouth, and then he fell asleep."
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<p>
+    "Some Red Lake Indians having traded here for liquor which they took
+    to their camp, quarrelled amongst themselves. One jumped on another
+    and bit his nose off. It was some time before the piece could be
+    found; but, at last, by tumbling and tossing the straw about, it was
+    recovered, stuck on, and bandaged, as best the drunken people could,
+    in hopes it would grow again" (Alexander Henry, jun.).
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<p>
+    As regards drunkenness, several authors among the early explorers
+    declared that the French Canadian voyageurs were more disagreeable
+    when drunk even than the Amerindians, for their quarrels were noisier
+    and more deadly. "Indeed I had rather have fifty drunken Indians in
+    the fort than sixty-five drunken Canadians", writes Alexander Henry in
+    1810. And yet the extracts I have given from his journal show that it
+    would be hard to beat the Amerindians for disagreeable ferocity when
+    intoxicated.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Henry, summing up his experiences before leaving for the Pacific coast
+    in 1811, writes these remarks in his diary:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What a different set of people they would be, were there not a drop
+    of liquor in the country! If a murder is committed among the Saulteurs
+    (Ojibwés), it is always in a drinking match. We may truly say that
+    liquor is the root of all evil in the north-west. Great bawling and
+    lamentation went on, and I was troubled most of the night for liquor
+    to wash away grief."
+</p>
+<p>
+    As a rule, the treatment of the Amerindians by the British and French
+    settlers was good, except the thrusting of alcohol on them. But in
+    Newfoundland a great crime was perpetrated. Between the middle of the
+    seventeenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries the British
+    fishermen and settlers on the coasts of Newfoundland had <i>destroyed</i>
+    the native population of Beothik Indians.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Before the English arrived on the coasts of Newfoundland the Beothiks
+    lived an ideal life for savages. They were well clothed with beasts'
+    skins, and in the winter these were supplemented by heavy fur robes.
+    Countless herds of reindeer roamed through the interior, passing from
+    north to south in the autumn and returning in the spring. Vast flocks
+    of willow grouse (like ptarmigan) were everywhere to be met with; the
+    many lakes were covered with geese, swans, and ducks. The woods were
+    full of pigeons; the salmon swarmed up the rivers to <a name="p199"></a>breed; the sea
+    round the coasts was&mdash;except in the wintertime&mdash;the richest fishery in
+    the world. They caught lobsters in the rock pools, and speared or
+    clubbed seals and great walruses for their flesh and oil. An
+    occasional whale provided them with oil, blubber, and meat. The Great
+    Auk&mdash;which could not fly&mdash;swarmed in millions on the cliffs and
+    islets. So abundant was this bird, and so fat, that its body was
+    sometimes used as fuel, or as a lamp. In the summertime their fish and
+    flesh diet could be varied by the innumerable berries growing
+    wild&mdash;strawberries, raspberries, currants, cranberries, and
+    whortleberries. The <i>capillaire</i> plant yielded a lusciously sweet,
+    sugary substance.<a name="7-15"></a><a href="#note-7-15"><small>[15]</small></a>
+</p>
+<a name="image-0011"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc11.jpg" width="283" height="450"
+alt="Great Auks, Gannets, Puffins, and Guillemots">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>GREAT AUKS, GANNETS, PUFFINS, AND GUILLEMOTS</h5>
+<p>
+    The Beothiks were a tall, good-looking people, with large black eyes
+    and a light-coloured skin. The early French and Biscayan seamen, who
+    resorted to the coasts of Newfoundland for the whale fisheries,
+    reported these "Red Indians" to be "an ingenious and tractable people,
+    if well used, who were ready to help the white men with great labour
+    and patience in the killing, cutting-up, and boiling of whales, and
+    the making of train oil, without other expectation of reward than a
+    little bread or some such small hire".
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yet from the beginning of the seventeenth century the Beothiks&mdash;then
+    about four thousand in number&mdash;were ill-treated by the European
+    fishermen who frequented the Newfoundland coasts. They soon greatly
+    decreased in numbers, and became very shy of white men. The French,
+    when they occupied the south coast of Newfoundland, brought over
+    Mikmak Indians to chase and kill the Beothiks or "Red" Indians. The
+    Eskimo attacked them from Labrador. Finally, when Newfoundland became
+    British in the eighteenth century, the English fishermen settlers and
+    fur hunters attacked and slew the harmless Beothiks with a wanton
+    ferocity (described by horror-struck officers of the British navy)
+    which is as bad as anything attributed to the Spaniards in Cuba and
+    Hispaniola. By about 1830 they were all extinct. As late as 1823 the
+    following anecdote is recorded of two English settlers whose names are
+    hidden behind the initials C and A. "When near Badger Bay they fell in
+    with an Indian man and woman, who approached, apparently soliciting
+    food. The man was first killed, and the woman, who was afterwards
+    found to be his daughter, in despair remained calmly to be fired at,
+    when she was also shot through the chest and immediately expired. This
+    was told Mr. Cormack by the man who did the deed." Even English women
+    in the late eighteenth century were celebrated for their skill "in
+    shooting Red Indians and seals".
+</p>
+<p>
+    "For a period of nearly two hundred years this barbarity had
+    continued, and it was considered meritorious to shoot a Red Indian.
+    'To go to look for Indians' came to be as much a phrase as to look for
+    partridges (ptarmigan). They were harassed from post to post, from
+    island to island; their hunting and fishing stations were
+    unscrupulously seized by the invading English. They were shot down
+    without the least provocation, or captured to be exposed as
+    curiosities to the rabble at the fairs of the western towns of
+    Christian England at twopence a piece."<a name="7-16"></a><a href="#note-7-16"><small>[16]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    Too late&mdash;when the worry and anxiety of the Napoleonic wars were
+    over&mdash;the British Government sent a commission of naval officers to
+    enquire into the treatment of the Beothiks by the settlers. One woman
+    alone remained, as a frightened semi-captive, to be consoled and
+    soothed. There are Indians in the south of Newfoundland at the present
+    day, but they are Mikmaks who come over from the adjoining regions of
+    Cape Breton and Nova Scotia. So tender, indeed, is the modern
+    government of the island towards these (out of compunction for the
+    past) that they are allowed to kill the reindeer and other wild
+    animals without the licence which is exacted from white people, and so
+    are actually injuring Newfoundland's resources!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Since the great Dominion of Canada was brought into existence in 1871
+    as a unified, responsible government, the treatment of the remaining
+    Amerindian natives of British North America has been admirable; and
+    splendid work has been done in reclaiming them to a wholesome
+    civilization by the Moravian, Roman Catholic, and Church of England
+    missionaries.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note-7-1"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-1"><u>1</u></a> There may have been an earlier race inhabiting north-east
+    America which was killed out or driven away by the last Glacial
+    period.
+</p>
+<a name="note-7-2"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-2"><u>2</u></a> "The dogs of the Northern Indians are of various sizes
+    and colours, but all of them have a foxy or wolf-like appearance,
+    sharp noses, bushy tails, and sharp ears standing erect." (Samuel
+    Hearne).<br><br>
+
+    Hearne also remarks that the northern Indians had a superstitious
+    reverence and liking for the wolf. They would frequently go to the
+    mouth of the burrows where the female wolves lived with their young,
+    take out the puppies and play with them, and even paint the faces of
+    the young wolves with vermilion or red ochre.<br><br>
+
+    When first observed by Europeans the unhappy Beothiks (of
+    Newfoundland) had apparently no domestic dogs, only "tame wolves",
+    whom they distinguished from the wild wolves by marking their ears.
+    They were made more angry by the European seamen attacking and killing
+    the wolves than by anything else they did. Apparently some kind of
+    alliance had been struck up between the Beothiks&mdash;a nation of
+    hunters&mdash;and the wolf packs which followed in their tracks; and the
+    Newfoundland wolves were on the way to becoming domesticated "dogs".
+    Later on it was realized that the island <i>did</i> produce a special
+    breed&mdash;the celebrated Newfoundland dog&mdash;the original type of which was
+    much smaller than the modern type, nearly or entirely black in colour,
+    with a sharper muzzle and less pendulous ears. But its feet were as
+    strongly webbed and its habits as aquatic as those of the
+    "Newfoundland" of the modern breed. Some people have noticed the
+    resemblance between the farmers' dogs in Norway and the Newfoundland
+    type, and have thought that the latter may not be altogether of wolf
+    extraction, but be descended from the dogs brought from Norway and
+    Iceland by the Norse adventurers who visited Newfoundland in the tenth
+    and eleventh centuries.
+</p>
+
+
+<a name="note-7-3"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-3"><u>3</u></a> Of which they made very serviceable chisels.
+</p>
+<a name="note-7-4"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-4"><u>4</u></a> See also pp. <a href="#p156">156</a>, <a href="#p164">164</a>, <a href="#p186">186</a>, and <a href="#p199">199</a>. In this list I have
+    put in italics the names of the tribes more important in history, and
+    in capitals the principal group names.
+</p>
+<a name="note-7-5"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-5"><u>5</u></a> Kinistino, Kiristineaux, Kilistino; called "Crees" or
+    "Kris" for short.
+</p>
+<a name="note-7-6"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-6"><u>6</u></a> "Iroquois" was a name invented by Champlain (see p. <a href="#p69">69</a>).
+    Apparently this confederation called themselves <i>Hodenosauni</i>. The
+    termination "ois" in all French-American names is pronounced
+    "wa"&mdash;Irokwá.
+</p>
+<a name="note-7-7"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-7"><u>7</u></a> The far-famed term <i>Siou</i> is said to have been an
+    abbreviation of one of the original French names for this type of
+    Amerindian, <i>Nadouessiou</i>. In early books they are often called the
+    Nadouessies.
+</p>
+<a name="note-7-8"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-8"><u>8</u></a> These northern Indians are described by Hearne as having
+    very low foreheads, small eyes, high cheekbones, Roman noses, broad
+    cheeks, and long, broad chins. Their skins were soft, smooth and
+    polished, somewhat copper-coloured, and inclining towards a dingy
+    brown. The hair of the head was black, strong, and straight. They were
+    not in general above middle size, though well proportioned.
+</p>
+<a name="note-7-9"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-9"><u>9</u></a> "It is surprising how dexterous all these natives of the
+    plains are in communicating their ideas by signs. They hold
+    conferences for several hours, upon different subjects, during the
+    whole of which time not a single word is pronounced upon either side,
+    and still they appear to comprehend each other perfectly well. This
+    mode of communication is natural to them; their gestures are made with
+    the greatest ease, and they never seem to be at a loss for a sign to
+    express their meaning" (Alex. Henry the Younger, 1800). But it should
+    also be noted that during the last hundred years the peoples belonging
+    to the N&#363;tka-Columbian group have developed a trade language which
+    they use in common. This is a mixture of Chin&#363;k, English, French,
+    Chinese, and Hawaaian.
+</p>
+<a name="note-7-10"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-10"><u>10</u></a> The manner of courtship among the Ojibwés seemed to
+    Peter Grant not only singular, but rude. "The lover begins his first
+    addresses by gently pelting his mistress with bits of clay, snowballs,
+    small sticks, or anything he may happen to have in his hand. If she
+    returns the compliment, he is encouraged to continue the farce, and
+    repeat it for a considerable time, after which more direct proposals
+    of marriage are made by word of mouth."
+</p>
+<a name="note-7-11"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-11"><u>11</u></a> See also p. <a href="#p249">249</a>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-7-12"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-12"><u>12</u></a> See p. <a href="#p150">150</a>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-7-13"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-13"><u>13</u></a> In the far north-west, on the rivers of the Pacific
+    slope, the natives used spruce-fir bark instead of birch.
+</p>
+<a name="note-7-14"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-14"><u>14</u></a> Before the white man came to <i>North</i> America the natives
+    had no form of intoxicating drink.
+</p>
+<a name="note-7-15"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-15"><u>15</u></a> This was the Moxie plum or creeping snowberry
+    (<i>Chiogenes hispidula</i>).
+</p>
+<a name="note-7-16"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-16"><u>16</u></a> These are the remarks of an English chaplain in the
+    island, quoted by the Rev. George Patterson, who contributed a most
+    interesting article on the vanished Beothiks of Newfoundland to the
+    Royal Society of Canada in 1891.
+</p>
+<p class="return">[<a href="#contents">TABLE OF CONTENTS</a>]
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="2HCH0008"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER VIII
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    The Hudson Bay Explorers and the British Conquest of all Canada
+</h3>
+<p>
+    In a general way the discovery of the main features of the vast
+    Canadian Dominion may be thus apportioned amongst the different
+    European nations. First came the British, led by an Italian pilot.
+    They discovered Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland.
+    Then came the Portuguese, who discovered the north-east of
+    Newfoundland and the coast of Labrador, while a French expedition
+    under an Italian captain reached to Nova Scotia and southern
+    Newfoundland. A Spanish expedition under a Portuguese leader shortly
+    afterwards reached the coast of New Brunswick. After that the French
+    from Brittany, Normandy, and the west coast of France laid bare the
+    <i>west</i> coast of Newfoundland, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the River St.
+    Lawrence, and the Great Lakes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sir Francis Drake led the way in the exploration of the north-west
+    coast of North America. He reached, in 1579, as far north on that side
+    as the country of Oregon, which he christened New Albion. This action
+    stirred up the Spaniards, who explored the coast of California, and in
+    1591-2 sent an Ionian Island pilot, Apostolos Valeriano (commonly
+    called Juan de Fuca), in charge of an expedition to discover the
+    imagined Straits of Anian. He gave strength to this idea of a
+    continuous water route across temperate North America by entering (in
+    1592) the straits, since called Juan de Fuca, between Vancouver Island
+    and the modern State of Washington, and passing thence into the
+    Straits of Georgia, which bear a striking resemblance in their
+    features to the Straits of Magellan.
+</p>
+<p>
+    French explorers and adventurers, as we have seen, penetrated from the
+    basin of the St. Lawrence to the north and west until they touched the
+    southern extension of Hudson Bay (James's Bay), discovered Lake
+    Winnipeg and the Saskatchewan Rivers, the upper Missouri and the whole
+    course of the Mississippi, and finally recorded the existence of the
+    Rocky Mountains.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Parallel with these movements the British discovered the broad belt of
+    sea between Greenland and North America and the whole area of Hudson
+    Bay. After the French had ceased to reign in North America, the
+    British were to reveal the great rivers flowing into the Arctic Ocean,
+    the coasts and islands of the Arctic Ocean, the Yukon River, and the
+    coasts and islands of British Columbia and Alaska.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The first Europeans, however, to reach Alaska were Russians led by
+    Vitus Bering, a great Danish sea captain in the Russian service.
+    Bering was born in 1680 at Horsens, in the province of Aarhuus, E.
+    Denmark, and entered the service of Peter the Great, who was desirous
+    of knowing where Asia terminated and America began. Bering discovered
+    the straits which bear his name in 1728, and in 1741 was wrecked and
+    died on Bering's Island. Captain James Cook, the British discoverer of
+    Australia and of so many Pacific islands, completed the work of Bering
+    in 1788 in charting the north-west American coast right into the
+    Arctic Ocean.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It has already been related in Chapter III how the Hudson's Bay
+    Chartered Company came to be founded. Soon after their first pioneers
+    were established, in 1670, at Fort Nelson, on the west coast of Hudson
+    Bay, near where York Factory now stands, there was born&mdash;or brought
+    out from England as an infant&mdash;a little boy named Henry Kellsey, who
+    as a child took a great fancy to the Amerindians who came to trade at
+    Fort Nelson. As he played with them, and they returned his affection,
+    he learnt their language, and&mdash;for some inconceivable reason&mdash;this
+    gave great offence to the stupid governor of the fort (indeed, when
+    Kellsey as a grown man, some years afterwards, compiled a vocabulary
+    of the Kri language for the use of traders, the Hudson's Bay Company
+    ordered it to be suppressed). Stupid Governor Geyer not only objected
+    to Kellsey picking up the Kri language, but punished him most severely
+    for that and for his boyish tricks and jokes; so much so, that
+    Kellsey, when he was about ten years old, ran away with the returning
+    Indians, some of whom had grown very fond of him whilst they stayed at
+    Fort Nelson.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Six years afterwards an Indian brought to the governor of the fort a
+    letter written by Kellsey in charcoal on a piece of white birch bark.
+    In this he asked the governor's pardon for running away, and his
+    permission to return to the fort. As a kind reply was sent, Kellsey
+    appeared not long afterwards grown into a young man, accompanied by an
+    Indian wife and attended by a party of Indians. He was dressed exactly
+    like them, but differed from them in the respect which he showed to
+    his native wife. She attempted to accompany her husband into the
+    factory or place of business, and the governor stopped her; but
+    Kellsey at once told him in English that he would not enter himself if
+    his wife was not suffered to go with him, and so the governor
+    relented. After this Kellsey (who must then have been about seventeen)
+    seems to have regularly enrolled himself in 1688 in the service of the
+    Company, and he was employed as a kind of commercial traveller who
+    made long journeys to the north-west to beat up a fur trade for the
+    Company and induce tribes of Indians to make long journeys every
+    summer to the Company's factory with the skins they had secured
+    between the autumn and the spring. In this way Kellsey penetrated
+    into the country of the Assiniboines, and he finally reached a more
+    distant tribe or nation called by the long name of Néwátamipoet.<a name="8-1"></a><a href="#note-8-1"><small>[1]</small></a>
+    Kellsey first of all made for Split Lake, up the Nelson River, and
+    thence paddled westwards in his canoe for a distance of 71 miles. Here
+    he abandoned the canoe, and, for what he estimated as 316 miles, he
+    tramped through a wooded country, first covered with fir and pine
+    trees, and farther on with poplar and birch. Apparently he then
+    reached a river flowing into Reindeer Lake. In a general way his steps
+    must have taken him in the direction of Lake Athapaska.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the way he had much trouble with the Assiniboin Indians and Kris,
+    with whom he had caught up, and with whom he was to travel in the
+    direction of these mysterious Néwátamipoets. The last-named tribe, who
+    were probably of the Athapaskan group, had killed, a few months
+    previously, three of the Kri women, and the Kri Indians who belonged
+    to Kellsey's party were bent, above all things, on attacking the
+    Néwátamipoets and punishing them for this outrage. Kellsey only wished
+    to open up peaceful relations with them and create a great trade in
+    furs with the Hudson's Bay Company, so he kept pleading with the
+    Indians not to go to war with the Néwátamipoets. On this journey,
+    however, one of the Kri Indians fell ill and died. The next day the
+    body was burnt with much ceremony&mdash;first the flesh, and then the
+    bones&mdash;and after this funeral the companions of the dead man began to
+    reason as to the cause of his death, and suddenly blamed Kellsey.
+    Kellsey had obstructed them from their purpose of avenging their slain
+    women, therefore the gods of the tribe were angry and claimed this
+    victim in the man who had died. Kellsey was very near being sent to
+    the other world to complete the sacrifice; but he arranged for "a
+    feast of tobacco"&mdash;in other words, a calm deliberation and the smoking
+    of the pipe of peace. He explained to the angry Indians that his
+    Company had not supplied him with guns and ammunition with which to go
+    to war, but to induce them to embark on the fur trade and to kill wild
+    animals for their skins. If, instead of this, they went to war, or
+    injured him, they need never again go down to Fort Nelson for any
+    further trade or supplies. Four days afterwards, however, the
+    attention of the whole party was concentrated on bison.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Bison could now be seen in abundance. Kellsey was already acquainted
+    with the musk ox, which he had seen in the colder regions near to
+    Hudson Bay; but the bison seemed to him quite different, with horns
+    growing like those of an English ox, black and short. In the middle of
+    September he reached the country of the Néwátamipoets, and presented
+    to their chief, on behalf of the Hudson's Bay Company, a present of
+    clothes, knives, awls, tobacco, and a gun, gunpowder, and shot. On
+    this journey Kellsey encountered the grizzly bear, a more common
+    denizen of the western regions of North America. According to his own
+    account, he and one of the Indians with him were attacked by two
+    grizzly bears and obliged to climb into the branches of trees. The
+    bears followed them; but Kellsey fired and killed one, and later on
+    the other also. For this feat he was greatly reverenced by the
+    Indians, and received the name of Mistopashish, or "little giant".
+    Kellsey afterwards rose to be governor of York Fort, on the west coast
+    of Hudson Bay.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The next great explorer ranging westward from Hudson Bay was Anthony
+    Hendry.<a name="8-2"></a><a href="#note-8-2"><small>[2]</small></a> Anthony Hendry left York factory in 1754, with a company of
+    Kri Indians, to make a great journey of exploration to the west, and
+    with the deliberate intention of wintering with the natives and not
+    returning for that purpose to Hudson Bay. By means of canoe travel and
+    portages he reached Oxford Lake. From here he gained Moose Lake, and
+    soon afterwards "the broad waters of the Saskatchewan&mdash;the first
+    Englishman to see this great river of the western plains".<a name="8-3"></a><a href="#note-8-3"><small>[3]</small></a>
+    Twenty-two miles upstream from the point where it reached the
+    Saskatchewan he came to a French fort which had only been standing for
+    a year, and which represented probably the farthest advance northwards
+    of the French Canadians.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0012"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<a href="images/map12-large.jpg"> <img src="images/map12-small.jpg" width="610" height="400"
+alt="Map of Eastern Canada and Newfoundland"></a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="ar">  [<a href="images/map12-large.jpg"><small>LARGER MAP</small></a>]</p>
+
+<p>
+    The situation was a rather delicate one, for the Hudson's Bay Company
+    was a thorn in the side of French Canada. However, in this
+    year&mdash;1754&mdash;the two nations were not actually at war, and the two
+    Frenchmen in charge of the fort received him "in a very genteel
+    manner", and invited him into their home, where he readily accepted
+    their hospitality. At first they spoke of detaining him till the
+    commandant of the fort returned, but abandoned this idea after
+    reflection, and Hendry continued his journey up the Saskatchewan. He
+    then left the river and marched on foot over the plains which separate
+    the North and the South Saskatchewan Rivers. The South Saskatchewan
+    was found to be a high stream covered with birch, poplar, elder, and2
+    fir. He and his Indian guides were searching for the horse-riding
+    Blackfeet Indians.<a name="8-4"></a><a href="#note-8-4"><small>[4]</small></a> All the Amerindians known to the Hudson's Bay
+    Company hitherto travelled on foot, using snowshoes in the winter; but
+    vague rumours had reached the Company that in the far south-west there
+    were great nations of Indians which did all their hunting on
+    horseback.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hendry had now found them, and he also met a small tribe of
+    Assiniboins&mdash;the Mekesue or Eagle Indians&mdash;who differed from the
+    surrounding tribes by going about, at any rate in the summertime,
+    absolutely naked. Here, too, between the two Saskatchewans, they saw
+    herds of bison on the plains grazing like English cattle. But they
+    also found elk (moose), wapiti or red deer, hares, grouse, geese, and
+    ducks. He records in his journal: "I went with the young men
+    a-buffalo-hunting, all armed with bows and arrows; killed several;
+    fine sport. We beat them about, lodging twenty arrows in one beast. So
+    expert were the natives that they will take the arrows out of the
+    buffalo when they are foaming and raging with pain and tearing up the
+    ground with their feet and horns until they fall down." The
+    Amerindians killed far more of these splendid beasts than they could
+    eat, and from these carcasses they merely took the tongues and a few
+    choice pieces, leaving the remainder to the wolves and the grizzly
+    bears.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At last they arrived at the temporary village of the Blackfeet. Two
+    hundred tents or <i>tipis</i> were pitched in two parallel rows, and down
+    this avenue marched Anthony Hendry, gazed at silently by many
+    Blackfeet Indians until he reached the large house or lodge of their
+    great chief, at the end of the avenue of tents. This lodge was large
+    enough to contain fifty persons. The chief received him seated on the
+    sacred skin of a white buffalo. The pipe of peace was then produced
+    and passed round in silence, each person taking a ceremonial puff.
+    Boiled bison beef was then brought to the guests in baskets made of
+    willow branches. Hendry told the great chief of the Blackfeet that he
+    had been sent by the great leader of the white men at Hudson Bay to
+    invite the Blackfeet Indians to come to these eastern waters in the
+    summertime, and bring with them beaver and wolf skins, for which they
+    would get, in return, guns, ammunition, cloth, beads, and other trade
+    goods. But this chief, though he listened patiently, pointed out that
+    this fort on Hudson Bay was situated at a very great distance, that
+    his men only knew how to ride horses, and not how to paddle canoes.
+    Moreover, they could not live without bison beef, and disliked fish.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After leaving the headquarters of the Blackfeet, Hendry rambled over
+    the beautiful country of fir woods and pine woods until he must have
+    got within sight of the Rocky Mountains, though these are not
+    mentioned in his journal. Then, after passing the winter (which did
+    not begin as regards cold weather till the 2nd of December, and was
+    over at the end of March) he returned to the French fort on the
+    Saskatchewan, where he was received by the Commandant, de La Corne,
+    with great kindness and hospitality. These Frenchmen, he found, were
+    able to speak in great perfection several Indian languages; they were
+    well dressed, and courtly in manners, and led a civilized life in
+    these distant wilds. They had excellent trade goods and were sincerely
+    liked by the Indians, but for some reason or other they lacked
+    Brazilian tobacco, which seems to have been a commodity much in favour
+    amongst the Indians. With this the Hudson's Bay Company were kept well
+    supplied, and that alone enabled them in any degree to compete with
+    the French. But in ten years more this French fort would be abandoned
+    owing to the cession of Canada to Britain.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The British, in fact, all through the first half of the eighteenth
+    century, by their superiority in sea power, were steadily strangling
+    the French empire in North America. Acadia, or Nova Scotia, and New
+    Brunswick had been, as we have seen, recognized as British in 1713,
+    and Newfoundland, also, subject to certain conditions, giving France
+    the exclusive right to fish on the <i>western</i> and <i>northern</i> coasts of
+    Newfoundland. The result was that when "New France", or Canada and
+    Louisiana combined, was at its greatest extent of conquered and
+    administered territory, France held but a very limited seacoast from
+    which to approach it&mdash;just the mouth of the Mississippi, and a little
+    bit of Alabama on the south and Cape Breton Island on the east. Cape
+    Breton Island was commanded by the immensely strong fortress of
+    Louisburg, and the possession of this place gave the French some
+    security in entering the Gulf of St. Lawrence through Cabot Straits.
+    But Louisburg was captured by the British colonists of New England
+    (United States) in 1745; and although it was given back to France
+    again, it was reoccupied in 1758, and served as a basis for the
+    armaments which were directed against Quebec in 1759, and which
+    resulted at the close of that year in the surrender of that important
+    city. In 1763 all Canada was ceded to the British, and Louisiana
+    (which had become the western barrier of the about-to-be-born United
+    States) was ceded to Spain; the French flag flew no more on the
+    Continent of North America, save in the two little islands of St.
+    Pierre and Miquelon adjoining Newfoundland, wherein it still remains
+    as a reminder of the splendid achievements of Frenchmen in America.
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="note-8-1"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#8-1"><u>1</u></a> Spelt in the documents of the Hudson's Bay Company,
+    Naywatame-poet.
+</p>
+<a name="note-8-2"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#8-2"><u>2</u></a> The young or old reader of this and other books dealing
+    with the exploration of the Canadian Dominion will be indeed puzzled
+    between the various Hendrys and Henrys. The last-named was a prolific
+    stock, from which several notable explorers and servants of the
+    fur-trading companies were drawn. In this book a careful distinction
+    must be made between the <i>Anthony</i> Hendrey or Hendey, who commenced
+    his exploration of the west in 1754; the unrelated <i>Alexander</i> Henry
+    the Elder, who journeyed between 1761 and 1776; and the nephew of the
+    last-named, Alexander Henry the Younger, whose pioneering explorations
+    occurred between 1799 and 1814.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note-8-3"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#8-3"><u>3</u></a> <i>The Search for the Western Sea</i>, by Lawrence J. Burpee.
+</p>
+<a name="note-8-4"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#8-4"><u>4</u></a> See p. <a href="#p159">159</a>.
+</p>
+<p class="return">[<a href="#contents">TABLE OF CONTENTS</a>]
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="2HCH0009"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER IX
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    The Pioneers from Montreal: Alexander Henry the Elder
+</h3>
+<p>
+    After 1763, when the two provinces of Canada were definitely ceded to
+    Great Britain, the exploring energies of the Hudson's Bay Fur-trading
+    Company revived. But before this rather sluggish organization could
+    take full advantage of the cessation of French opposition, independent
+    British pioneers were on their way to explore the vast north-west and
+    west, soon carrying their marvellous journeys beyond the utmost limits
+    reached by La Vérendrye and his sons. Eventually these pioneers, who
+    had Montreal for their base and who wisely associated themselves in
+    business and exploration with French Canadians, founded in 1784 a
+    great trading association known as the North-west Trading Company. A
+    few years later certain Scottish pioneers brought a rival exploration
+    and trading corporation into existence and called it the "X.Y.
+    Company". In 1804 these rival Montreal fur-trading associations were
+    fused into a new North-west Trading Company. Between this and the old
+    Hudson's Bay Company an intensely bitter rivalry and enmity&mdash;almost at
+    times a state of war&mdash;arose, and continued until 1821, when the
+    North-west Company and that of Hudson's Bay amalgamated. It is
+    necessary that these dry details should be understood in order that
+    the reader may comprehend the motives and reasons which prompted the
+    journeys which are about to be described.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jonathan Carver, of Boston, U.S.A., was perhaps the pioneer of all
+    the British traders into the far west of Canada, beyond Lake Superior,
+    after Canada had been handed over to the British.<a name="9-1"></a><a href="#note-9-1"><small>[1]</small></a> In 1766-7 he
+    reached the Mississippi at its junction with the St. Peter or
+    Minnesota River, and journeyed up it to the land of the Dakota. Thomas
+    Currie, of Montreal, in 1770 travelled as far as Cedar Lake,<a name="9-2"></a><a href="#note-9-2"><small>[2]</small></a> where
+    there had been established the French post of Fort Bourbon. He was
+    succeeded the next year by James Finlay, who extended his explorations
+    to the Saskatchewan, whither he was followed by Alexander Henry the
+    Elder in 1775.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Alexander Henry (styled The Elder to distinguish him from his famous
+    nephew of the same name) was a native of New Jersey (U.S.A.), where he
+    was born in 1739. His parents were well-to-do people of the middle
+    class who are believed to have emigrated at the beginning of the
+    eighteenth century from the West of England, and to have been related
+    to Matthew Henry, the Bible commentator. Their son, Alexander,
+    received a good education, and after some commercial apprenticeship at
+    Albany (New York) came to Quebec when Canada was occupied by the
+    British in 1760; at which period he was about twenty-one years old. He
+    was in such a hurry to try a trading adventure in the country of the
+    great lakes that he ventured into central Canada before it was
+    sufficiently calmed down and reconciled to British rule. The
+    hostility, curiously enough, manifested itself much more among the
+    Amerindians than the settlers of French blood. These white men had not
+    been so well treated by the arrogant French officers and officials as
+    much to mind the change to the greater freedom of British government.
+    But the Indian chiefs and people loved the French, largely owing to
+    the goodness and solicitude of the missionaries.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The hostility of the Indians", wrote Henry in his journal, travelling
+    along the coast of Lake Huron, "was exclusively against the English.
+    Between them and my Canadian attendants, there appeared the most
+    cordial goodwill. This circumstance suggested one means of escape, of
+    which, by the advice of my friend, Campion, I resolved to attempt
+    availing myself; namely, that of putting on the dress usually worn by
+    such of the Canadians as pursue the trade into which I had entered,
+    and assimilating myself, as much as I was able, to their appearance
+    and manners. To this end I laid aside my English clothes and covered
+    myself only with a cloth passed about the middle; a shirt, hanging
+    loose; a 'molton', or blanket coat, and a large, red worsted cap. The
+    next thing was to smear my face and hands with dirt and grease; and,
+    this done, I took the place of one of my men, and, when the Indians
+    approached, used the paddle with as much skill as I possessed. I had
+    the satisfaction to find, that my disguise enabled me to pass several
+    canoes without attracting the smallest notice."
+</p>
+<p>
+    When he reached Fort Michili-makinak<a name="9-3"></a><a href="#note-9-3"><small>[3]</small></a> he wrote: "At two o'clock in
+    the afternoon, the Chipeways came to my house, about sixty in number,
+    and headed by Minaváváná, their chief. They walked in single file,
+    each with his tomahawk in one hand and scalping knife in the other.
+    Their bodies were naked from the waist upward, except in a few
+    examples, where blankets were thrown loosely over the shoulders. Their
+    faces were painted with charcoal, worked up with grease; their bodies,
+    with white clay, in patterns of various fancies. Some had feathers
+    thrust through their noses, and their heads decorated with the
+    same.... It is unnecessary to dwell on the sensations with which I
+    beheld the approach of this uncouth, if not frightful assemblage.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The chief entered first, and the rest followed without noise. On
+    receiving a sign from the former, the latter seated themselves on the
+    floor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Minaváváná appeared to be about fifty years of age. He was six feet
+    in height, and had, in his countenance, an indescribable mixture of
+    good and evil.... Looking steadfastly at me, where I sat in ceremony,
+    with an interpreter on either hand and several Canadians behind me, he
+    entered at the same time into conversation with Campion, enquiring how
+    long it was since I left Montreal, and observing that the English, as
+    it would seem, were brave men, and not afraid of death, since they
+    dared to come, as I had done, fearlessly among their enemies."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Indians now gravely smoked their pipes, whilst Henry inwardly
+    endured tortures of suspense. At length, the pipes being finished, a
+    long pause of silence followed. Then Minaváváná, taking a few strings
+    of wampum in his hand, began a long speech, of which it is only
+    necessary to give a few extracts:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Englishman, it is to you that I speak, and I demand your attention!
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Englishman, although you have conquered the French, you have not yet
+    conquered us! We are not your slaves. These lakes, these woods and
+    mountains, were left to us by our ancestors. They are our inheritance,
+    and we will part with them to none. Your nation supposes that we, like
+    the white people, cannot live without bread&mdash;and pork&mdash;and beef! But,
+    you ought to know, that He, the Great Spirit and Master of Life, has
+    provided food for us in these spacious lakes, and on these woody
+    mountains.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Englishman, our father, the King of France, employed our young men to
+    make war upon your nation. In this warfare many of them have been
+    killed, and it is our custom to retaliate, until such time as the
+    spirits of the slain are satisfied. But the spirits of the slain are
+    to be satisfied in either of two ways. The first is by the spilling of
+    the blood of the nation by which they fell; the other by covering the
+    bodies of the dead, and thus allaying the resentment of their
+    relations. This is done by making presents.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Englishman, your king has never sent us any presents, nor entered
+    into any treaty with us, wherefore he and we are still at war; and,
+    until he does these things, we must consider that we have no other
+    father, nor friend, among the white men, than the King of France; but,
+    for you, we have taken into consideration, that you have ventured your
+    life among us in the expectation that we should not molest you. You do
+    not come armed with an intention to make war; you come in peace, to
+    trade with us, and supply us with necessaries, of which we are in
+    want. We shall regard you, therefore, as a brother, and you may sleep
+    tranquilly, without fear of the Chipeways.... As a token of our
+    friendship, we present you with this pipe to smoke."
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Minaváváná had finished his harangue, an Indian presented Henry
+    with a pipe, the which, after he had drawn smoke through it three
+    times, was carried back to the chief, and after him to every person in
+    the room. This ceremony ended, the chief arose, and gave the
+    Englishman his hand, in which he was followed by all the rest.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the Sault Ste Marie, on the river connecting Lake Superior and
+    Huron, Henry spent part of the spring of 1763-4, and engaged with a
+    few French Canadians and Indians in making maple sugar, the season for
+    which&mdash;April&mdash;was now at hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A temporary house for eight persons was built in a convenient part of
+    the maple woods, distant about three miles from the fort. The men
+    then gathered the bark of white birch trees, and made out of it
+    vessels to hold the sap which was to flow from the incisions they cut
+    in the bark of the maple trees. Into these cuts they introduced wooden
+    spouts or ducts, and under them were placed the birch-bark vessels.
+    When these were filled, the sweet liquid was poured into larger
+    buckets, and the buckets were emptied into bags of elkskin containing
+    perhaps a hundred gallons. Boilers (probably of metal, introduced by
+    the French) were next set up in the camp over fires kept burning day
+    and night, and the maple sap thus boiled became, by concentration,
+    maple sugar.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The women attended to all the business of sugar manufacture, while the
+    men cut wood and went out hunting and fishing to secure food for the
+    community; though, as a matter of fact, sugar and syrup were their
+    main sustenance during all this absence from home. "I have known
+    Indians", wrote Henry, "to live for a time wholly on maple sugar and
+    syrup and become fat." The sap of the maple had certain medicinal
+    qualities which were exceedingly good for persons who had previously
+    been eating little else than meat and fish, so that the three weeks of
+    sugar-boiling in Canada was, no doubt, a splendid assistance to the
+    health of the natives. On this particular occasion described by Henry,
+    the party returned, after three weeks' absence, to the Sault Ste Marie
+    with 1600 lb. of maple sugar, and 36 gallons of syrup.<a name="9-4"></a><a href="#note-9-4"><small>[4]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    Henry returned in the summer of 1763 to Fort Michili-makinak. The
+    place was then held by a British garrison under Major Etherington.
+    Shortly after Henry's arrival, an Ojibwé chief named Wáwátam came
+    often to his lodgings, and, taking a great fancy to the Englishman,
+    asked leave to become his blood brother. He was about forty-five
+    years of age, and of an excellent character amongst his nation. He
+    warned Henry that he, Wáwátam, had had bad dreams during the winter,
+    in which he had been disturbed "by the noises of evil birds", and gave
+    him other roundabout warnings that the Indians of different tribes
+    were going to attack the British garrison at Michili-Makinak, and
+    endeavour to destroy all the English in Upper Canada. Henry did not
+    pay over much attention to this warning, because "the Indian manner of
+    speech is so extravagantly figurative".
+</p>
+<p>
+    The King's birthday was celebrated with, no doubt, somewhat tipsy
+    rejoicings in the summer of 1763. The Ojibwé Indians outside the fort
+    pretended they were going to have a great game of La Crosse with the
+    S&#257;ki or "Fox" Indians. This game was got up to find a pretext for
+    entering the fort and taking the British officers and garrison at a
+    disadvantage. Some of the officers and soldiers, suspecting nothing in
+    the way of danger, were outside the fort by the waterside. However,
+    the sport commenced, and suddenly the ball was struck over the pickets
+    of the fort. At once the Ojibwés, pretending great ardour in their
+    game, came leaping, struggling and shouting over the defences into the
+    fort as though "in the unrestrained pursuit of a rude, athletic
+    exercise". Once inside the fortifications, they attacked the
+    unsuspicious and unarmed soldiers and officers, of whom they killed
+    seventy out of ninety.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Henry had not gone with the others, but had stayed in his room writing
+    letters. Suddenly he heard the Indian warcry and a noise of general
+    confusion. Looking out of his window he saw a crowd of Indians inside
+    the fort furiously cutting down and scalping every Englishman they
+    could reach. Meantime, the French Canadian inhabitants of the fort
+    looked on calmly, neither intervening to stop the Indians, nor
+    suffering any injury from them. Realizing that all his fellow
+    countrymen were practically destroyed, Henry endeavoured to hide
+    himself. He entered the house of his next-door neighbour, a Frenchman,
+    and found the whole family at the windows gazing at the scene of blood
+    before them. He implored this Frenchman to put him into some place of
+    safety until the massacre was over. The latter merely shrugged his
+    shoulders and intimated that he could do nothing for him; but a Pani
+    Indian woman, a slave of this Frenchman, beckoned to Henry to follow
+    her, and hid him in a garret. Then the Indians burst into the house
+    and asked the Frenchman if he had got any Englishmen concealed, the
+    latter returned an evasive answer, telling them to search for
+    themselves. Henry hid himself under a heap of birch-bark vessels,
+    which were used in maple-sugar manufacture. The door was unlocked, the
+    four Indians dashed in, their bodies covered with blood, and armed
+    with tomahawks. The hidden man thought that the throbbing of his heart
+    must make a noise loud enough to betray him. The Indians searched the
+    garret, and one of them approached Henry so closely as almost to touch
+    him; yet he remained undiscovered, possibly owing to the dark colour
+    of his clothes and the dim light in the room. Then the Indians, after
+    describing to the Frenchman how many they had killed and scalped,
+    returned downstairs, and the door was locked behind them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the next day the Indians insisted on a further search, and,
+    regarding every attempt at concealment as vain, Henry, by a desperate
+    resolve, rose from his bed and presented himself in full view to the
+    Indians as they entered the room. They were all in a state of
+    intoxication and entirely naked. One of them, upwards of six feet in
+    height, had all his face and body covered with charcoal and grease,
+    but with a large white ring encircling each of his eyes. This man,
+    walking up to Henry, seized him with one hand by the collar of his
+    coat, and in the other held up a large carving knife, making a feint
+    as if to plunge it into his breast, his eyes meanwhile fixed
+    steadfastly on those of the Englishman. At length, after some seconds
+    of the most anxious suspense, he dropped Henry's arm, saying: "I won't
+    kill you," adding that he had often fought in war with the English and
+    brought away many scalps, but that on a certain occasion he had lost a
+    brother whose name was Musinigon, and that he would adopt Henry in his
+    place.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One would like the story to have stopped here at this happy turn of
+    events, but Wenniway (as this saviour of Henry was called) entertained
+    a very fickle regard for his adopted brother, and, though he once or
+    twice intervened, subsequently took no great pains to see that his
+    life was spared. However, for the time being he was reprieved, and
+    regarded Wenniway as his "master". Nevertheless, he was soon haled out
+    of the house by another Indian, apparently coming with Wenniway's
+    authority. This man ordered him to undress, and then took away all his
+    clothes, giving him such dirty rags or strips of leather as he
+    possessed himself. He frankly owned that his motive for stripping him
+    was that, as he wished afterwards to kill him, Henry's clothes might
+    not be stained with blood! With the intention of assassinating him, in
+    fact, he dragged Henry along to a region of bushes and sandhills, and
+    then produced a knife and attempted to execute his purpose. But with
+    the rage and strength of absolute despair Henry wrenched himself free,
+    pushed his would-be murderer on one side, and ran for his life towards
+    the fort.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here Wenniway rather indifferently helped him to take refuge in the
+    house of the Frenchman in which he had formerly hidden, but the same
+    night he was roused from sleep and ordered to come below, where to his
+    surprise he found himself in the presence of three of the British
+    officers who had formerly commanded in this fort, and who were now
+    prisoners of the Ojibwés. The Indian chiefs for the time being had
+    handed these men over to the surveillance of the French Canadians,
+    together with the seventeen surviving English soldiers and traders.
+    Henry, like the others, was almost without clothes. The French
+    Canadian in whose house he had taken refuge refused to give him as
+    much as a blanket, but another Canadian, less indifferent to the
+    sufferings of a fellow white man, did give him a blanket, but for
+    which he would certainly have perished from cold.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The next day he and the other English prisoners were embarked in
+    canoes and taken away to Lake Michigan. On reaching the mouth of that
+    lake, at the Beaver Islands, the Ojibwé canoes, on account of the fog,
+    were obliged to approach the lands of the Ottawa Indians. These last
+    suddenly seized the canoes as they entered shallow water, and
+    professed great indignation at the capture of Fort Michili-Makinak and
+    the slaughter of the Englishmen. They declared their intention of
+    saving the survivors, and charged the Ojibwés with being about to kill
+    and eat them. By the Ottawa Indians, therefore, the twenty Englishmen
+    were carried back again and deposited in Fort Michili-Makinak, which
+    was now taken possession of by the Ottawas. The English were still
+    held as prisoners. After hearing all the Ojibwés had to say, and
+    receiving from them large presents, the Ottawas finally decided to
+    restore their English prisoners to the Ojibwés, who consequently took
+    them away with ropes tied round their necks, and put them into an
+    Indian habitation. Here, as they were starving, they were offered
+    loaves of bread, but with the horrible accompaniment of seeing the
+    slices cut with knives still covered with the blood of the murdered
+    English. The Ojibwés moistened this blood on the knife blades with
+    their spittle, and rubbed it on the slices of bread, offering this
+    food then to their prisoners, so that they might force them to eat the
+    blood of their countrymen.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The next morning, however, there appeared before Ménéhewéhná, the
+    great war chief of the Ojibwés, Henry's friend and adopted brother,
+    Wáwátam. This man made an earnest speech to the council of Ojibwé
+    chiefs and braves, in which he pleaded hard for the Englishman's life,
+    at the same time tendering from out of his own goods a considerable
+    ransom. After much pipe-smoking and an embarrassing silence, the war
+    chief rose to his feet and accepted the ransom, giving Wáwátam
+    permission to take away into safety his adopted brother. "Wáwátam led
+    me to his lodge, which was at the distance of a few yards only from
+    the prison lodge. My entrance appeared to give joy to the whole
+    family; food was immediately prepared for me; and I now ate the first
+    hearty meal which I had made since my capture. I found myself one of
+    the family; and, but that I had still my fears as to the other
+    Indians, I felt as happy as the situation could allow."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The next day seven of the English prisoners were killed by the
+    Ojibwés, and Henry actually saw their dead bodies being dragged out
+    into the open. They had been killed in cold blood by an Indian chief
+    who had just arrived from a hunting expedition, and who, not having
+    been present at the attack on the fort, now desired to satisfy his
+    warlike instincts and his agreement with the policy of the Ojibwés by
+    going into the lodge where the English officers and men were tied up,
+    and slaughtering seven of them in cold blood.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Shortly afterwards two of the Ojibwés took the fattest amongst the
+    dead men, cut off his head, and divided his body into five parts, one
+    of which was put into each of five kettles hung over as many fires,
+    which were kindled for this purpose at the door of the house in which
+    the other prisoners were tied up. They then sent to insist on the
+    attendance at their cannibal feast of Wáwátam, the adopted brother and
+    protector of Henry. The invitation was delivered after the Amerindian
+    fashion. A small cutting of cedar wood about four inches in length
+    supplies the place of the written or printed invitation to dinner of
+    European civilization, and the man who bore the slip of cedar wood
+    gave particulars as to place and time by word of mouth. Guests on
+    these occasions were expected to bring their own dish and spoon.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In spite of repugnance, Wáwátam, to save his life and that of Henry,
+    was obliged to go. He returned after an absence of half an hour,
+    bringing back in his dish the portion given to him&mdash;a human hand and a
+    large piece of flesh. His objection to eat this gruesome food was
+    apparently not very deep or persistent. He excused the custom by
+    saying that amongst all Amerindian nations there existed this practice
+    of making a war feast from out of the bodies of the slain after a
+    successful battle.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Soon after this episode of horror the Ojibwés abandoned Fort
+    Michili-Makinak, for fear the English should come to attack it. Henry
+    was hidden by his adopted brother, Wáwátam, in a cave, where he found
+    himself by the light of the next morning sleeping on a bed of human
+    bones, which the night before he had taken to be twigs and boughs. The
+    whole of the cave was, in fact, filled with these human remains. No
+    one knew or remembered the reason. Henry thought that the cave had
+    been an ancient receptacle for the bones of persons who had been
+    sacrificed and devoured at war feasts; for, however contemptuous they
+    may be of the flesh, the Amerindians paid particular attention
+    to the bones of human beings&mdash;whether friends, relations, or
+    enemies&mdash;preserving them unbroken, and depositing them in some
+    place kept exclusively for that purpose.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The great chief of the Ojibwés, however, advised that Henry, who had
+    rejoined Wáwátam, should be dressed in disguise as an Indian to save
+    him from any further harm, for the natives all round about were
+    preparing for what they believed to be an inevitable war with the
+    English.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I could not but consent to the proposal, and the chief was so kind as
+    to assist my friend and his family in effecting that very day the
+    desired metamorphosis. My hair was cut off, and my head shaved, with
+    the exception of a spot on the crown, of about twice the diameter of a
+    crown piece. My face was painted with three or four different colours;
+    some parts of it red, and others black. A shirt was provided for me,
+    painted with vermilion, mixed with grease. A large collar of wampum<a name="9-5"></a><a href="#note-9-5"><small>[5]</small></a>
+    was put round my neck, and another suspended on my breast. Both my
+    arms were decorated with large bands of silver above the elbow,
+    besides several smaller ones on the wrists; and my legs were covered
+    with <i>mitasses</i>, a kind of hose, made, as is the favourite fashion, of
+    scarlet cloth. Over all I was to wear a scarlet blanket or mantle, and
+    on my head a large bunch of feathers. I parted, not without some
+    regret, with the long hair which was natural to it, and which I
+    fancied to be ornamental; but the ladies of the family, and of the
+    village in general, appeared to think my person improved, and now
+    condescended to call me handsome, even among Indians."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He then went away to live with his protectors, and with them passed a
+    by no means unhappy autumn, winter, and spring, hunting and fishing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here are some of his adventures at this period.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "To kill beaver, we used to go several miles up the rivers, before the
+    approach of night, and after the dusk came on, suffer the canoe to
+    drift gently down the current, without noise. The beavers, in this
+    part of the evening, come abroad to procure food, or materials for
+    repairing their habitations, and as they are not alarmed by the canoe,
+    they often pass it within gunshot.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "On entering the River Aux Sables, Wáwátam took a dog, tied its feet
+    together, and threw it into the stream, uttering, at the same time, a
+    long prayer, which he addressed to the Great Spirit, supplicating his
+    blessing on the chase, and his aid in the support of the family,
+    through the dangers of a long winter. Our 'lodge' was fifteen miles
+    above the mouth of the stream. The principal animals, which the
+    country afforded, were red deer (wapiti), the common American deer,
+    the bear, racoon, beaver, and marten.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The beaver feeds in preference on young wood of the birch, aspen, and
+    poplar tree<a name="9-6"></a><a href="#note-9-6"><small>[6]</small></a>; but, in defect of these, on any other tree, those of
+    the pine and fir kinds excepted. These latter it employs only for
+    building its dams and houses. In wide meadows, where no wood is to be
+    found, it resorts, for all its purposes, to the roots of the rush and
+    water lily. It consumes great quantities of food, whether of roots or
+    wood; and hence often reduces itself to the necessity of removing into
+    a new quarter. Its house has an arched dome-like roof, of an
+    elliptical figure, and rises from three to four feet above the surface
+    of the water. It is always entirely surrounded by water; but, in the
+    banks adjacent, the animal provides holes or <i>washes</i>, of which the
+    entrance is below the surface, and to which it retreats on the first
+    alarm.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The female beaver usually produces two young at a time, but not
+    unfrequently more. During the first year, the young remain with their
+    parents. In the second, they occupy an adjoining apartment, and assist
+    in building, and in procuring food. At two years old, they part, and
+    build houses of their own; but often rove about for a considerable
+    time before they fix upon a spot. There are beavers, called, by the
+    Indians, <i>old bachelors</i>, who live by themselves, build no houses, and
+    work at no dams, but shelter themselves in holes. The usual method of
+    taking these is by traps, formed of iron, or logs, and baited with
+    branches of poplar.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "According to the Indians, the beaver is much given to jealousy. If a
+    strange male approaches the cabin, a battle immediately ensues. Of
+    this the female remains an unconcerned spectator, careless as to which
+    party the law of conquest may assign her. The Indians add that the
+    male is as constant as he is jealous, never attaching himself to more
+    than one female.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The most common way of taking the beaver is that of breaking up its
+    house, which is done with trenching tools, during the winter, when the
+    ice is strong enough to allow of approaching them; and when, also, the
+    fur is in its most valuable state.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Breaking up the house, however, is only a preparatory step. During
+    this operation, the family make their escape to one or more of their
+    <i>washes</i>. These are to be discovered by striking the ice along the
+    bank, and where the holes are, a hollow sound is returned. After
+    discovering and searching many of these in vain, we often heard the
+    whole family together in the same wash. I was taught occasionally to
+    distinguish a full wash from an empty one, by the motion of the water
+    above its entrance, occasioned by the breathing of the animals
+    concealed in it. From the washes, they must be taken out with the
+    hands; and in doing this, the hunter sometimes receives severe wounds
+    from their teeth. Whilst I was a hunter with the Indians, I thought
+    beaver flesh was very good; but after that of the ox was again within
+    my reach, I could not relish it. The tail is accounted a luxurious
+    morsel.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "One evening, on my return from hunting, I found the fire put out, and
+    the opening in the top of the lodge covered over with skins&mdash;by this
+    means excluding, as much as possible, external light. I further
+    observed that the ashes were removed from the fireplace, and that dry
+    sand was spread where they had been. Soon after, a fire was made
+    withoutside the cabin, in the open air, and a kettle hung over it to
+    boil.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I now supposed that a feast was in preparation. I supposed so only,
+    for it would have been indecorous to enquire into the meaning of what
+    I saw. No person, among the Indians themselves, would use this
+    freedom. Good breeding requires that the spectator should patiently
+    wait the result.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "As soon as the darkness of night had arrived, the family, including
+    myself, were invited into the lodge. I was now requested not to speak,
+    as a feast was about to be given to the dead, whose spirits delight in
+    uninterrupted silence.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "As we entered, each was presented with his wooden dish and spoon,
+    after receiving which we seated ourselves. The door was next shut, and
+    we remained in perfect darkness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The master of the family was the master of the feast. Still in the
+    dark, he asked everyone, by turn, for his dish, and put into each two
+    boiled ears of maize. The whole being served, he began to speak. In
+    his discourse, which lasted half an hour, he called upon the manes of
+    his deceased relations and friends, beseeching them to be present, to
+    assist him in the chase, and to partake of the food which he had
+    prepared for them. When he had ended, we proceeded to eat our maize,
+    which we did without other noise than what was occasioned by our
+    teeth. The maize was not half boiled, and it took me an hour to
+    consume my share. I was requested not to break the spikes,<a name="9-7"></a><a href="#note-9-7"><small>[7]</small></a> as this
+    would be displeasing to the departed spirits of their friends.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When all was eaten, Wáwátam made another speech, with which the
+    ceremony ended. A new fire was kindled, with fresh sparks, from flint
+    and steel; and the pipes being smoked, the spikes were carefully
+    buried, in a hole made in the ground for that purpose, within the
+    lodge. This done, the whole family began a dance, Wáwátam singing, and
+    beating a drum. The dance continued the greater part of the night, to
+    the great pleasure of the lodge. The night of the feast was that of
+    the first day of November."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the month of January, Henry happened to observe that the trunk of a
+    very large pine tree was much torn by the claws of a bear, made both
+    in going up and down. On further examination he saw there was a large
+    opening, in the upper part, near which the smaller branches were
+    broken. From these marks, and from the additional circumstances that
+    there were no tracks on the snow, there was reason to believe that a
+    bear lay concealed in the tree.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He communicated his discovery to his Indian friends, and it was agreed
+    that all the family should go together in the morning to cut down the
+    tree, the girth of which was not less than eighteen feet! This task
+    occupied them for one and a half days with their poor little axes,
+    till about two o'clock in the second afternoon the tree fell to the
+    ground. For a few minutes everything remained quiet, and Henry feared
+    that all his expectations would be disappointed; but, as he advanced
+    to the opening, there came out a female bear of extraordinary size,
+    which he had shot and killed before she had proceeded many yards.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The bear being dead, all my assistants approached, and all, but more
+    particularly my old mother, (as I was won't to call her), took the
+    bear's head in their hands, stroking and kissing it several times;
+    begging a thousand pardons for taking away her life; calling her their
+    relation and grandmother; and requesting her not to lay the fault upon
+    them, since it was truly an Englishman that had put her to death.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This ceremony was not of long duration; and if it was I that killed
+    their grandmother, they were not themselves behindhand in what
+    remained to be performed. The skin being taken off, we found the fat
+    in several places six inches deep. This, being divided into two parts,
+    loaded two persons; and the flesh parts were as much as four persons
+    could carry. In all, the carcass must have exceeded five
+    hundredweight.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "As soon as we reached the lodge, the bear's head was adorned with all
+    the trinkets in the possession of the family, such as silver armbands
+    and wristbands, and belts of wampum; and then laid upon a scaffold,
+    set up for its reception, within the lodge. Near the nose was placed a
+    large quantity of tobacco.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The next morning no sooner appeared, than preparations were made for
+    a feast to the manes. The lodge was cleaned and swept; and the head of
+    the bear lifted up, and a new Stroud blanket, which had never been
+    used before, spread under it. The pipes were now lit; and Wáwátam blew
+    tobacco smoke into the nostrils of the bear, telling me to do the
+    same, and thus appease the anger of the bear, on account of my having
+    killed her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "At length, the feast being ready, Wáwátam commenced a speech,
+    resembling, in many things, his address to the manes of his relations
+    and departed companions; but, having this peculiarity, that he here
+    deplored the necessity under which men laboured, thus to destroy their
+    <i>friends</i>. He represented, however, that the misfortune was
+    unavoidable, since without doing so, they could by no means subsist.
+    The speech ended, we all ate heartily of the bear's flesh; and even
+    the head itself, after remaining three days on the scaffold, was put
+    into the kettle. The fat of our bear was melted down, and the oil
+    filled six porcupine-skin bags. A part of the meat was cut into
+    strips, and fire-dried, after which it was put into the vessels
+    containing the oil, where it remained in perfect preservation, until
+    the middle of summer."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the spring of 1762 Henry once more returned to Fort
+    Michili-Makinak, and went sugar-making with his Indian companions.
+    Whilst engaged in this agreeable task, a child belonging to one of the
+    party fell into a kettle of boiling syrup. It was instantly snatched
+    out, but with little hope of its recovery. So long, however, as it
+    lived, a continual feast was observed; and this was made "to the Great
+    Spirit and Master of Life", that he might be pleased to save and heal
+    the child. At this feast Henry was a constant guest; and often found
+    some difficulty in eating the large quantity of food which, on such
+    occasions as these, was put upon his dish.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Several sacrifices were also offered; among which were dogs, killed
+    and hung upon the tops of poles, with the addition of blankets and
+    other articles. These, also, were yielded to the Great Spirit, in the
+    humble hope that he would give efficacy to the medicines employed. But
+    the child died. To preserve the body from the wolves it was placed
+    upon a scaffold, and then later carried to the borders of a lake, on
+    the border of which was the burial ground of the family.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "On our arrival there, which happened in the beginning of April, I did
+    not fail to attend the funeral. The grave was made of a large size,
+    and the whole of the inside lined with birch bark. On the bark was
+    laid the body of the child, accompanied with an axe, a pair of
+    snowshoes, a small kettle, several pairs of common shoes, its own
+    strings of beads, and&mdash;because it was a girl&mdash;a carrying belt and a
+    paddle. The kettle was filled with meat. All this was again covered
+    with bark; and at about two feet nearer the surface logs were laid
+    across, and these again covered with bark, so that the earth might by
+    no means fall upon the corpse.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The last act before the burial, performed by the mother, crying over
+    the dead body of her child, was that of taking from it a lock of hair
+    for a memorial. While <a name="p230"></a>she did this, I endeavoured to console her by
+    offering the usual arguments: that the child was happy in being
+    released from the miseries of this present life, and that she should
+    forbear to grieve, because it would be restored to her in another
+    world, happy and everlasting. She answered that she knew it, and that
+    by the lock of hair she should discover her daughter; for she would
+    take it with her. In this she alluded to the day when some pious hand
+    would place in her own grave, along with the carrying belt and paddle,
+    this little relic, hallowed by maternal tears."
+</p>
+<p>
+    After many ups and downs of hope and despair, and many narrow escapes
+    of being killed and made into broth for warlike Ojibwés, Henry at
+    length obtained permission to travel with a party of Ojibwé Indians
+    who were invited to visited Sir William Johnson at Niagara. This
+    British Governor of Canada was attempting to enter into friendly
+    relations with the Amerindian tribes, and induce them to accept
+    quietly the transference of Canada from French to English control.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0013"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc13.jpg" width="450" height="286"
+alt="Scene on Canadian River: Wild Swans Flying up Disturbed
+By Bear">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>SCENE ON CANADIAN RIVER: WILD SWANS FLYING UP DISTURBED BY BEAR</h5>
+<p>
+    Before starting, however, to interview this great White Governor, the
+    Ojibwés decided to consult their oracle, the Great Turtle, after which
+    Fort Michili-Makinak was named.<a name="9-8"></a><a href="#note-9-8"><small>[8]</small></a> Behind Fort Michili-Makinak is an
+    extraordinary mound or hill of stone supposed to resemble this reptile
+    exactly, and in fact to be in some way the residence of a supernatural
+    giant turtle.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For invoking and consulting the Great Turtle, the first thing to be
+    done was to build a large house, within which was placed a kind of
+    tent, for the use of the priest and reception of the spirit. The tent
+    was formed of moose skins, hung over a framework of wood made out of
+    five pillars of five different species of timber, about ten feet in
+    height and eight inches in diameter, set up in a circle of four feet
+    in diameter, with their bases two feet deep in the soil. At the top
+    the pillars were bound together by a circular hoop of withies. Over
+    the whole of this edifice were spread the moose skins, covering it at
+    top and round the sides, and made fast with thongs of the same, except
+    that on one side a part was left unfastened, to admit of the entrance
+    of the priest.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The ceremonies did not commence till the approach of night. To give
+    light inside the house several fires were kindled round the tent.
+    Nearly the whole village assembled in the house, Alexander Henry among
+    the rest. It was not long before the priest appeared, almost in a
+    state of nakedness. As he approached the tent the skins were lifted
+    up, as much as was necessary to allow of his creeping under them on
+    his hands and knees. His head was scarcely within side when the
+    edifice, massive as it has been described, began to shake; and the
+    skins were no sooner let fall than the sounds of numerous voices were
+    heard beneath them&mdash;some yelling, some barking as dogs, some howling
+    like wolves; and in this horrible concert were mingled screams and
+    sobs of despair, anguish, and the sharpest pain. Articulate speech was
+    also uttered, as if from human lips, but in a tongue unknown to any of
+    the audience.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After some time these confused and frightful noises were succeeded by
+    a perfect silence; and now a voice, not heard before, seemed to
+    manifest the arrival of a new character in the tent. This was low and
+    feeble, resembling the cry of a young puppy. The sound was no sooner
+    distinguished than all the Indians clapped their hands for joy,
+    exclaiming that this was the Chief Spirit, the Turtle, the Spirit that
+    never lied! Other voices, which they had distinguished from time to
+    time, they had previously hissed, as recognizing them to belong to
+    evil and lying spirits, the deceivers of mankind.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then came from the tent a succession of songs, in which a diversity
+    of voices met the ear. From his first entrance, till these songs were
+    finished, we heard nothing in the proper voice of the priest. But now
+    he addressed the multitude, declaring the presence of the Great
+    Turtle, and the spirit's readiness to answer such questions as should
+    be proposed. The questions were to come from the chief of the village,
+    who was silent, however, till after he had put a large quantity of
+    tobacco into the tent, introducing it at the aperture. This was a
+    sacrifice offered to the spirit; for the spirits were supposed by the
+    Indians to be as fond of tobacco as themselves. This done, the chief
+    desired the priest to enquire: Whether or not the English were
+    preparing to make war upon the Indians? and whether or not there were
+    at Fort Niagara a large number of English troops?
+</p>
+<p>
+    The priest was heard to put the questions, and then the tent shook and
+    rocked so violently that Henry expected to see it levelled with the
+    ground. But apparently answers were given, after which a terrific cry
+    announced, with sufficient intelligibility, the departure of the
+    Turtle. Subsequently the priest interpreted the Great Turtle's
+    answers, which gave a great deal of information regarding the
+    disposition and numbers of the English soldiers, and the presents
+    which Sir William Johnson was preparing for the Ojibwés; and which
+    finally approved the wisdom of the embassy proceeding on its way.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Journeying along the shores of Lake Huron, they stopped to avoid a
+    gale of wind and to rest. Henry, gathering firewood, disturbed a
+    rattlesnake which manifested hostile intentions. He went back to the
+    canoe to fetch his gun; but upon telling the Ojibwés that he was about
+    to kill a rattlesnake they begged him to desist. They then seized
+    their pipes and tobacco pouches and returned with him to the place
+    where he had left the rattlesnake, which was still coiled up and
+    angry.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The Indians, on their part, surrounded it, all addressing it by
+    turns, and calling it their <i>grandfather</i>; but yet keeping at some
+    distance. During this part of the ceremony they filled their pipes;
+    and now each blew the smoke towards the snake, who, as it appeared to
+    me, really received it with pleasure. In a word, after remaining
+    coiled, and receiving incense for the space of half an hour, it
+    stretched itself along the ground, in visible good humour. Its length
+    was between four and five feet. Having remained outstretched for some
+    time, at last it moved slowly away, the Indians following it, and
+    still addressing it by the title of grandfather, beseeching it to take
+    care of their families during their absence, and to be pleased to open
+    the heart of Sir William Johnson, so that he might <i>show them
+    charity</i>, and fill their canoe with rum.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "One of the chiefs added a petition, that the snake would take no
+    notice of the insult which had been offered him by the Englishman, who
+    would even have put him to death, but for the interference of the
+    Indians, to whom it was hoped he would impute no part of the offence."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Early the next morning they proceeded on their way, with a serene sky
+    and very little wind, so that to shorten the journey they determined
+    to steer across the lake to an island which just appeared on the
+    horizon. But after hoisting a sail the wind increased, and the
+    Indians, beginning to be alarmed, frequently called on the rattlesnake
+    to come to their assistance. By degrees the waves grew high, and at
+    last it blew a hurricane, Henry and his companions expecting every
+    moment to be swallowed up. From prayers the Indians now proceeded to
+    sacrifices, both alike offered to the god-rattlesnake, or
+    <i>manito-kinibik</i>. One of the chiefs took a dog, and, after tying its
+    fore legs together, threw it overboard, at the same time calling on
+    the snake to preserve the party from being drowned, and desiring him
+    to satisfy his hunger with the carcass of the dog. The snake was
+    unpropitious, and the wind increased. Another chief sacrificed
+    another dog, with the addition of some tobacco. In the prayer which
+    accompanied these gifts he besought the snake, as before, not to
+    avenge upon the Indians the insult which he had received from the
+    Englishman. "He assured the snake that I was <i>absolutely</i> an
+    Englishman, and of kin neither to him nor to them."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "At the conclusion of this speech, an Indian, who sat near me,
+    observed, that if we were drowned it would be for my fault alone, and
+    that I ought myself to be sacrificed, to appease the angry manito; nor
+    was I without apprehensions, that in case of extremity this would be
+    my fate; but, happily for me, the storm at length abated, and we
+    reached the island safely."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The next day they arrived at the shore of Lake Ontario. Here they
+    remained two days to make canoes out of the bark of the elm tree, in
+    which they might travel to Niagara. For this purpose the Indians first
+    cut down a tree, then stripped off the bark in one entire sheet of
+    about eighteen feet in length, the incision being lengthwise. The
+    canoe was now complete as to its bottom and sides. Its ends were next
+    closed, by sewing the bark together; and a few ribs and bars being
+    introduced, the architecture was finished. In this manner they made
+    two canoes; of which one carried eight men, and the other nine.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A few days later Henry was handed over safe and sound to Sir William
+    Johnson at Niagara. He was then given the command of a corps of Indian
+    allies which was to accompany the expedition under General Bradstreet
+    to raise the siege of Detroit, which important place had been long
+    invested by a great Indian chief, Pontiac, who still carried on the
+    war on behalf of King Louis XV. This enterprise was successful, and
+    British control was extended to many places in central Canada. Henry
+    returned to Fort Michili-Makinak and regained much of the property
+    which he had lost in the Indian attacks. As some compensation for his
+    former sufferings he received from the British commandant of
+    Michili-Makinak the exclusive fur trade of Lake Superior.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The currency at that period, and long before, in Canadian history, was
+    in beaver skins, which were approximately valued at the price of two
+    shillings and sixpence a pound. Otter skins were valued at six
+    shillings each, and marten skins at one shilling and sixpence, and
+    others in proportion; but all these things were classed at being worth
+    so many beaver skins or proportion of beaver skins. Thus, for example,
+    the native canoemen and porters engaged by Henry for his winter hunts
+    were paid each at the rate of a hundred pounds weight of beaver
+    skins.<a name="9-9"></a><a href="#note-9-9"><small>[9]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    At various places on the River Ontonagan, which flows into Lake
+    Superior, Henry was shown the extraordinary deposits of copper, which
+    presented itself to the eye in masses of various weight. The natives
+    smelted the copper and beat it into spoons and bracelets. It was so
+    absolutely pure of any alloy that it required nothing but to be beaten
+    into shape. In one place Henry saw a mass of copper weighing not less
+    than five tons, pure and malleable, so that with an axe he was able to
+    cut off a portion weighing a hundred pounds. He conjectured that this
+    huge mass of copper had at some time been dislodged from the side of a
+    lofty hill and thence rolled into the position where he found it.
+    Farther to the north of Lake Superior he found pieces of virgin copper
+    remarkable for their form, some resembling leaves of vegetables, and
+    others the shapes of animals.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In these journeys he collected some of the native traditions, amongst
+    others that of the Great Hare, Naniboju, who was represented to him as
+    the founder or creator of the Amerindian peoples. An island in Lake
+    Superior was called Naniboju's burial place. Henry landed there, and
+    "found on the projecting rocks a quantity of tobacco, rotting in the
+    rain; together with kettles, broken guns, and a variety of other
+    articles. His spirit is supposed to make this its constant residence;
+    and here to preside over the lake, and over the Indians, in their
+    navigation and fishing."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the spring of the following year (1768), whilst the snow still lay
+    many feet thick on the ground, he and his men made sugar from the
+    maple trees on a mountain, and for nearly three weeks none of them ate
+    anything but maple sugar, consuming a pound a day, desiring no other
+    food, and waxing fat and strong on this diet. Then they returned to
+    the banks of the Ontonagan River, where the wild fowl appeared in such
+    abundance that one man, with a muzzle-loading gun, could kill in a day
+    sufficient birds for the sustenance of fifty men. As soon as the ice
+    and snow had melted, parties of Indians came in from their winter's
+    hunt, bringing to Henry furs to pay him for all the goods he had
+    advanced. In this way the whole of his outstanding credit was
+    satisfied, with the exception of thirty skins, which represented the
+    contribution due from one Indian who had died. In this case even, the
+    man's family had sent all the skins they could gather together, and
+    gradually acquitted themselves of the amount due, in order that the
+    spirit of the dead man might rest in peace, which it could not do if
+    his debts were not acquitted.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the following autumn he had an experience which showed him how near
+    famine was to great abundance, and how ready the Amerindians were in
+    cases of even slight privation to turn cannibal, kill and eat the
+    weaker members of the party. He was making an excursion to the Sault
+    de Sainte Marie, and took with him three half-breed Canadians and a
+    young Indian woman who was journeying in that direction to see her
+    relations. As the distance was short, and they expected to obtain much
+    fish by the way, they only took with them as provisions a quart of
+    maize for each person. On the first night of their journey they
+    encamped on the island of Naniboju and set their net to catch fish.
+    But there arose a violent storm, which continued for three days,
+    during which it was impossible for them to take up the net or to leave
+    the island. In consequence of this they ate up all their maize. On the
+    evening of the third day the storm abated, and they rushed to examine
+    the net. It was gone! It was impossible to return to the point of
+    their departure, where there would have been plenty of food, on
+    account of the strong wind against them. They therefore steered for
+    the Sault de Sainte Marie. But the wind veered round, and for nine
+    days blew a strong gale against their progress in this direction,
+    making the waves of the lake so high that they were obliged to take
+    refuge on the shore.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Henry went out perpetually to hunt, but all he got during those nine
+    days were two small snow-buntings. The Canadian half-breeds with him
+    then calmly proposed to kill and feed upon the young woman. One of
+    these men, indeed, admitted that he had had recourse to
+    this expedient for sustaining life when wintering in the north-west
+    and running out of food. But Henry indignantly repudiated the
+    suggestion. Though very weak, he searched everywhere desperately for
+    food, and at last found on a very high rock a thick lichen, called by
+    the French Canadians <i>tripe de roche</i>,<a name="9-10"></a><a href="#note-9-10"><small>[10]</small></a> looking, in fact, very much
+    like slices of tripe. Henry fetched the men and the Indian woman, and
+    they set to work gathering quantities of this lichen. The woman was
+    well acquainted with the mode of preparing it, which was done by
+    boiling it into a thick mucilage, looking rather like the white of an
+    egg. On this they made hearty meals, though it had a bitter and
+    disagreeable taste. After the ninth day of their sufferings the wind
+    fell, they continued their journey, and met with kindly Indians, who
+    supplied them with as many fish as they wanted. Nevertheless, they all
+    were so ill afterwards that they nearly died, from the effects of the
+    lichen diet.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Some time after this Henry resolved to search for the marvellous
+    island of Yellow Sands,<a name="9-11"></a><a href="#note-9-11"><small>[11]</small></a> an island of Lake Superior which, it is
+    true, the French had discovered, but about which they kept up a good
+    deal of mystery. The Indian legend was that the sands of this small
+    island consisted of gold dust, and the Ojibwé Indians, having
+    discovered this, and attempting to bring some away, they were
+    disturbed by a supernatural being of amazing size, sixty feet in
+    height, which strode into the water and commanded them to deliver back
+    what they had taken away. Terrified at his gigantic stature, they
+    complied with his request, since which time no Indian has ever dared
+    to approach the haunted coast. Henry, however, with his men, finally
+    discovered this Island of Yellow Sands in 1771, in the north-east part
+    of Lake Superior. It was much smaller than he had been led to expect,
+    and very low and studded with small lakes, probably made by the action
+    of beavers damming up the little streams. He found no supernatural
+    monster to dispute the island with him, but a number of large
+    reindeer, so unused to the sight of man that they scarcely got out of
+    his way, so that he was able to shoot as many as he wanted. The
+    ancestors of these reindeer may have reached the island either by
+    floating ice or by swimming. They seem, with the birds, to have been
+    the island's only inhabitants, and to have increased and multiplied to
+    a remarkable extent, small portions of the island's surface being
+    actually formed of immense accumulations of reindeer bones.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Amongst the birds of the island, besides geese and pigeons, were
+    hawks. No serpents whatever were seen by the party, but Henry remarks
+    that the hawks nearly made up for them in abundance and ferocity. They
+    appeared very angry at the intrusion of these strangers on the sacred
+    island, and hovered round perpetually, swooping at their faces and
+    even carrying off their caps.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In 1775 Henry, having been greatly disappointed over an attempt to
+    work the copper of Lake Superior, entered with vigour into a fur trade
+    with the north-west. He penetrated from Lake Superior to the Lake of
+    the Woods and reached the great Lake Winnipeg. Here he encountered the
+    Kristino,<a name="9-12"></a><a href="#note-9-12"><small>[12]</small></a> Knistino, or Kri Indians. He found these people very
+    different in appearance from the other Amerindian tribes farther
+    south. The men were almost entirely naked in spite of the much colder
+    climate. Their bodies were painted with an ochre or clay so red that
+    it was locally known by the French Canadians as vermilion. Every man
+    and boy had his bow strung and in his hand, with the arrow, ready to
+    attack in case of need. Their heads were shaved all over except for a
+    large spot on the crown. Here the hair grew very long, and was rolled
+    and gathered into a tuft; and this tuft, which was the object of the
+    greatest care, was covered with a piece of skin. The lobes of their
+    ears were pierced, and through the opening was inserted the bones of
+    fish or small beasts. The women wore their hair in great length all
+    over the head. It was divided by a parting, and on each side was
+    collected into a roll fastened above the ear and covered with a piece
+    of painted skin or ornamented with beads. The clothing of the women
+    was of leather, the dressed skins of buffalo or deer. This cloak was
+    fastened round the waist by a girdle, and the legs were covered with
+    leather gaiters. The Kristino men were eager that their women should
+    marry Europeans, because the half-breed children proved to be bolder
+    warriors and better hunters than themselves. Henry found that although
+    the Kris were much addicted to drunkenness they were peaceable when
+    inebriated, and, moreover, detached two of their number, who refused
+    ever to touch the liquor under such circumstances, in order that they
+    might guard the white men, and not allow any drunken Indian to
+    approach their camp.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Henry and his party, after crossing Lake Winnipeg, ascended the
+    Saskatchewan (in the autumn of 1775). On their way up this river they
+    came to a village of Paskwaya Indians, which consisted of thirty
+    families, who were lodged in tents of a circular form, composed of
+    dressed bison skins stretched upon poles twelve feet in length. On
+    their arrival the chief of this village, named Chatik, which name
+    meant Pelican,<a name="9-13"></a><a href="#note-9-13"><small>[13]</small></a> called the party rather imperiously into his lodge
+    or meeting house, and then told them very plainly that his armed men
+    exceeded theirs in number, and that he would put the whole of the
+    party to death unless they were very liberal in their presents. To
+    avoid misunderstanding, he added that he would inform them exactly
+    what it was that he required: Three casks of gunpowder, four bags of
+    shot and ball, two bales of tobacco, three kegs of rum, and three
+    guns, together with knives, flints, and other articles. He went on to
+    say that he had already seen white men, and knew that they promised
+    more than they performed. He, personally, was a peaceful man, who
+    contented himself with moderate views in order to avoid quarrels;
+    nevertheless, he desired that an immediate answer should be given
+    before the strangers quitted his lodge. A hurried consultation took
+    place, and Henry could do nothing but comply with the chief's demands,
+    for he was powerless to resist. Having, therefore, intimated his
+    acceptance of these demands, he was invited to smoke the pipe of
+    peace, and then obtained permission to depart. After this the goods
+    demanded were handed over, but Chatik managed to snatch more rum from
+    them before they got safely away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the winter of 1776 Henry, who, together with his party, had
+    received welcome hospitality from the Hudson's Bay Company's station
+    at Cumberland House, resolved to reach the western region known as the
+    Great Plains, or Prairies&mdash;that immense tract of country through which
+    flow the Athabaska, the Saskatchewan, the Red River, and the Missouri.
+    He and his party, of course, travelled on snowshoes, and their goods
+    were packed on sledges made of thin boards, and drawn after them by
+    the men. The cold was intense, so that, besides wearing very warm
+    woollen clothes, they were obliged to wrap themselves in blankets of
+    beaver skin and huge bison robes. On these plains there were
+    occasional knolls covered with trees, which were usually called
+    "islands". These provided the precious fuel which alone enabled the
+    travellers to support the intense cold of the nights.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After fifteen days of very difficult travel, during which it had been
+    impossible to kill any game, as the beasts were mostly hidden in the
+    dense woods on these rare hillocks, the situation of his party became
+    alarming. They were now on the borders of the plains, and the trees
+    were getting small and scanty. On the twentieth day of their journey
+    they had finished the last remains of their provisions. But Henry had
+    taken the precaution of concealing a large cake of chocolate<a name="9-14"></a><a href="#note-9-14"><small>[14]</small></a> as a
+    reserve in case of great need. His men had walked till they were
+    exhausted, and had lost both strength and hope, when Henry informed
+    them of the treasure which was still in store. They filled the big
+    kettle with snow. It held two gallons of water, and into this was put
+    one square of the chocolate. The quantity was scarcely sufficient to
+    give colour to the water, but each man drank off a gallon of this hot
+    liquor and felt much refreshed. The next day they marched vigorously
+    for six hours on another two gallons of chocolate and water. For five
+    days the chocolate kept them going, though more by faith than by any
+    actual nourishment that it imparted. They now began to be surrounded
+    by large herds of wolves, who seemed to be conscious of their dire
+    extremity and the probability that they would soon fall an easy prey,
+    yet were cunning enough to keep out of gunshot. At last, however, at
+    sunset on the fifth day, they discovered on the ice the remains of an
+    elk's carcass on which the wolves had left a little flesh. From these
+    elk bones a meal of strong and excellent soup was soon prepared, and
+    the men's bodies thrilled with new life.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Want had lost his dominion over us. At noon we saw the horns of a red
+    deer, standing in the snow, on the river. On examination we found that
+    the whole carcass was with them, the animal having broken through the
+    ice in the beginning of the winter, in attempting to cross the river,
+    too early in the season; while his horns, fastening themselves in the
+    ice, had prevented him from sinking. By cutting away the ice we were
+    enabled to lay bare a part of the back and shoulders, and thus procure
+    a stock of food amply sufficient for the rest of our journey. We
+    accordingly encamped, and employed our kettle to good purpose, forgot
+    all our misfortunes, and prepared to walk with cheerfulness the twenty
+    leagues which, as we reckoned, still lay between ourselves and Fort
+    des Prairies. Though the deer must have been in this situation ever
+    since the month of November, yet its flesh was perfectly good. Its
+    horns alone were five feet high or more, and it will therefore not
+    appear extraordinary that they should be seen above the snow."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The next day they reached the Fort des Prairies, established by the
+    Hudson's Bay people, on the verge of the Assiniboin country. The
+    journey was resumed in company with Messrs. Patterson and Holmes, and
+    accompanied by a band of natives. They had entered the bison country,
+    and were regaled by the Indians with bison tongue and beef.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Soon after sunrise we descried a herd of oxen (bison) extending a
+    mile and a half in length, and too numerous to be counted. They
+    travelled, not one after another, as, in the snow, other animals
+    usually do, but, in a broad phalanx, slowly, and sometimes stopping to
+    feed.... Their numbers were so great that we dreaded lest they should
+    fairly trample down the camp; nor could it have happened otherwise,
+    but for the dogs, almost as numerous as they, who were able to keep
+    them in check. The Indians killed several when close upon their tents,
+    but neither the fire of the Indians nor the noise of the dogs could
+    soon drive them away." The poor animals were more frightened of the
+    frightful snowstorm which was raging than of what man or dog might do
+    to them in the shelter of the woods.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At last the party reached the residence of the great chief of the
+    Assiniboins, whose name was "Great Road". These Amerindians received
+    Henry and his people with the greatest respect, giving them a
+    bodyguard, armed with bows and spears, who escorted them to the lodge
+    or tent prepared for their reception. This was of circular form,
+    covered with leather, and not less than twenty feet in diameter. On
+    the ground within, bison skins were spread for beds and seats.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "One-half of the tent was appropriated to our use. Several women
+    waited upon us, to make a fire and bring water, which latter they
+    fetched from a neighbouring tent. Shortly after our arrival these
+    women brought us water, unasked for, saying that it was for washing.
+    The refreshment was exceedingly acceptable, for on our march we had
+    become so dirty that our complexions were not very distinguishable
+    from those of the Indians themselves."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Invited to feast with the great chief, they proceeded to the tent of
+    "Great Road", which they found neither more ornamented nor better
+    furnished than the rest. At their entrance the chief arose from his
+    seat, saluted them in the Indian manner by shaking hands, and
+    addressed them in a few words, in which he offered his thanks for the
+    confidence which they had reposed in him in trusting themselves so far
+    from their own country. After all were seated, on bearskins spread on
+    the ground, the pipe, as usual, was introduced, and presented in
+    succession to each person present. Each took his whiff, and then let
+    it pass to his neighbour. The stem, which was four feet in length, was
+    held by an officer attendant on the chief. The bowl was of red marble
+    or pipe stone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the pipe had gone its round, the chief, without rising from his
+    seat, delivered a speech of some length, after which several of the
+    Indians began to weep, and they were soon joined by the whole party.
+    "Had I not previously been witness" (writes Henry) "to a weeping scene
+    of this description, I should certainly have been apprehensive of some
+    disastrous catastrophe; but, as it was, I listened to it with
+    tranquillity. It lasted for about ten minutes, after which all tears
+    were dried away, and the honours of the feast were performed by the
+    attending chiefs." This consisted in giving to every guest a dish
+    containing a boiled bison's tongue. Henry having enquired why these
+    people always wept at their feasts, and sometimes at their councils,
+    he was answered that their tears flowed to the memory of their
+    deceased relations, who were formerly present on these occasions, and
+    whom they remembered as soon as they saw the feast or the conference
+    being got ready.<a name="9-15"></a><a href="#note-9-15"><small>[15]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    The chief to whose kindly reception they were so much indebted was
+    about five feet ten inches high, and of a complexion rather darker
+    than that of the Indians in general. His appearance was greatly
+    injured by the condition of his head of hair, and this was the result
+    of an extraordinary superstition.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The Indians universally fix upon a particular object, as sacred to
+    themselves; as the giver of their prosperity, and as their preserver
+    from evil. The choice is determined either by a dream, or by some
+    strong predilection of fancy; and usually falls upon an animal, or
+    part of an animal, or something else which is to be met with, by land,
+    or by water; but 'Great Road' had made choice of his <i>hair</i>&mdash;placing,
+    like Samson, all his safety in this portion of his proper substance!
+    His hair was the fountain of all his happiness; it was his strength
+    and his weapon, his spear and his shield. It preserved him in battle,
+    directed him in the chase, watched over him on the march, and gave
+    length of days to his wife and children. Hair, of a quality like this,
+    was not to be profaned by the touch of human hands. I was assured that
+    it had never been cut nor combed from his childhood upward, and, that
+    when any part of it fell from his head, he treasured up that part with
+    care: meanwhile, it did not escape all care, even while growing on the
+    head; but was in the special charge of a spirit, who dressed it while
+    the owner slept. All this might be; but the spirit's style of
+    hairdressing was at least peculiar; the hair being suffered to remain
+    very much as if it received no dressing at all, and matted into ropes,
+    which spread themselves in all directions."
+</p>
+<p>
+    From this Assiniboin village Henry saw, for the first time, one of
+    those herds of horses which the Assiniboins possessed in numbers. The
+    herd was feeding on the skirts of the plain. The horses were provided
+    with no fodder, but were left to find food for themselves, which they
+    did in winter by removing the snow with their feet till they reach
+    the grass. This was everywhere on the ground in plenty.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Amongst these people they saw the paunch or stomach of a bison
+    employed as a kettle. This was hung in the smoke of a fire and filled
+    with snow. As the snow melted, more was added, till the paunch was
+    full of water. The lower orifice of the organ was used for drawing off
+    the water, and stopped with a plug and string.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Henry also noticed amongst the Assiniboins the celebrated lariat. This
+    is formed of a stone of about two pounds weight, which is sewed up in
+    leather and made fast to a wooden handle two feet long. In using it
+    the stone is whirled round the handle by a warrior sitting on
+    horseback and riding at full speed. Every stroke which takes effect
+    brings down a man, a horse, or a bison. To prevent the weapon from
+    slipping out of the hand, a string, which is tied to the handle, is
+    also passed round the wrist of the wearer.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Alexander Henry extended his travels in the north-west within four
+    hundred and fifty miles of Lake Athabaska. He met at this point some
+    Chipewayan slaves in the possession of the Assiniboins, and heard from
+    them (1) of the Peace River in the far west which led one through the
+    Rocky Mountains (he uses that name) to a region descending towards a
+    great sea (the Pacific Ocean); and (2) of the Slave River which, after
+    passing through several lakes, also reached a great sea on the north.
+    This, of course, was an allusion to the Mackenzie River. Here were
+    given and recorded the chief hints at possible lines of exploration
+    which afterwards sent Alexander Mackenzie and other explorers on the
+    journeys that carried British-Canadian enterprise and administration
+    to the shores of the Pacific and Arctic Oceans.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After 1776 Alexander Henry ceased his notable explorations of the far
+    west. In that year he paid a visit to England and France, returning to
+    Canada in 1777. Whilst in France he was received at the French Court
+    and had the privilege of relating to Queen Marie Antoinette some of
+    his wonderful adventures and experiences. After two more visits to
+    England he settled down at Montreal as a merchant (autumn of 1780),
+    and in 1784 he joined with other great pioneers in founding, at
+    Montreal, The North-west Trading Company. Eventually he handed over
+    his share in this enterprise to his nephew, Alexander Henry the
+    Younger, and established himself completely in a life of ease and
+    quiet. He died at Montreal in 1824, aged eighty-five years.
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="note-9-1"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-1"><u>1</u></a> Carver was not so remarkable for his actual journeys as
+    for his confident predictions of a feasible transcontinental route
+    being found to the Pacific coast.
+</p>
+<a name="note-9-2"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-2"><u>2</u></a> The white-barked conifer, which gives its name to this
+    lake, is <i>Thuja occidentalis</i>. There are no real "cedars" in America.
+</p>
+<a name="note-9-3"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-3"><u>3</u></a> The famous place of call (the name means "Turtle Island")
+    in the narrow strait between Lakes Huron and Michigan, and near Lake
+    Superior. (See p. <a href="#p230">230</a>.) But some authorities declare that
+    Michili-makinak means "Island of the great wounded person".
+</p>
+<a name="note-9-4"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-4"><u>4</u></a> There are at least two species of maple in Canada
+    yielding sugar from their sap; but the best is <i>Acer saccharinum</i>. The
+    maple leaf is the national emblem of Canada.
+</p>
+<a name="note-9-5"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-5"><u>5</u></a> Shell beads.
+</p>
+<a name="note-9-6"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-6"><u>6</u></a> <i>Populus nigra</i>, called by the French Canadians <i>liard</i>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-9-7"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-7"><u>7</u></a> The grains of maize (Indian corn) grow in compact cells,
+    round a pithy core.
+</p>
+<a name="note-9-8"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-8"><u>8</u></a> Michili, pronounced "Mishili", means "great", and
+    Makinak, "turtle", in the translation of some Canadian writers. The
+    turtle in question is, of course, not the turtle of sea waters, but
+    the Snapping Turtle (<i>Chelydra serpentina</i>) found in most Canadian
+    lakes and the big rivers of North America, east of the Rocky
+    Mountains.
+</p>
+<a name="note-9-9"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-9"><u>9</u></a> The smallest change, so to speak, was the skin of a
+    marten, worth one shilling and sixpence. If you went to a canteen for
+    a drink you paid your score with a marten skin, unless the value of
+    your refreshment exceeded the sum of eighteen pence.
+</p>
+<a name="note-9-10"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-10"><u>10</u></a> See p. <a href="#p128">128</a>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-9-11"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-11"><u>11</u></a> The Isle of Yellow Sands, famed in legend for its
+    terrible serpents and ogre sixty feet high, was subsequently
+    identified with the Ile de Pont Chartrain, which is distant sixty
+    miles from the north shore of Lake Superior.
+</p>
+<a name="note-9-12"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-12"><u>12</u></a> See p. <a href="#p166">166</a>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-9-13"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-13"><u>13</u></a> Elsewhere Henry observes the great numbers of pelicans
+    to be seen on Lake Winnipeg.
+</p>
+<a name="note-9-14"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-14"><u>14</u></a> Chocolate from St. Domingue (Haiti) was a favourite form
+    of portable nutriment among the French Canadians, who also provided a
+    means of subsistence for long journeys called <i>praline</i>. This was made
+    of roasted Indian corn on which sugar had been sprinkled. It was a
+    most nourishing food, as well as being an agreeable sweet-meat.
+</p>
+<a name="note-9-15"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-15"><u>15</u></a> The Assiniboins (whom Henry calls the Osinipoilles) are
+    the Issati of older travellers, and have sometimes been called the
+    Weeper Indians, from their tendency to tears.
+</p>
+<p class="return">[<a href="#contents">TABLE OF CONTENTS</a>]
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="2HCH0010"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER X
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    Samuel Hearne
+</h3>
+<p>
+    The first noteworthy explorer of the far north was SAMUEL HEARNE,
+<a name="10-1"></a><a href="#note-10-1"><small>[1]</small></a>
+    who had been mate of a vessel in the employ of the whale fishery of
+    Hudson Bay. He entered the service of the Hudson's Bay Company about
+    1765, and was selected four years afterwards by the Governor of Prince
+    of Wales's Fort (a certain Moses Norton, a half-breed) to lead an
+    expedition of discovery in search of a mighty river flowing
+    northwards, which was rumoured to exist by the Eskimo. This
+    "Coppermine" River was said to flow through a region rich in deposits
+    of copper. From this district the northern tribes of Indians derived
+    their copper ornaments and axeheads.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Samuel Hearne started on the 6th of November, 1769, from Prince of
+    Wales's Fort at the mouth of the Churchill River, on the north-west
+    coast of Hudson Bay. Presumably he and the two "common white men" who
+    were with him travelled on snowshoes and hauled small sledges after
+    them. Travelling westward they passed over bleak hills with very
+    little vegetation&mdash;"the barren grounds, where, in general, we thought
+    ourselves well off if we could scrape together as many shrubs as would
+    make a fire; but it was scarcely ever in our power to make any <a name="p249"></a>other
+    defence against the weather than by digging a hole in the snow down to
+    the moss, wrapping ourselves up in our clothing, and lying down in it,
+    with our sledges set up edgeways to windward". But the principal
+    Indian guide that he engaged was so obviously determined to make the
+    expedition a failure that Hearne returned to his base, Prince of
+    Wales's Fort, and made a second start on the 23rd of February, 1770,
+    this time taking care not to be accompanied by any other white men,
+    and insisting that the Indians who accompanied him should be more
+    carefully chosen.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It must be remembered that in all these early expeditions, French and
+    English, the explorers relied for their food almost entirely on what
+    could be obtained as they went along, in the way of venison, grouse,
+    geese, fish, and wild fruits. In the springtime they would probably
+    get goose eggs and some form of maple sugar through the Indians. From
+    the summer to the autumn there would be an abundance of wild fruits
+    and nuts, but for the rest of the year it would be a diet almost
+    entirely of flesh or fish. As a stand-by there was probably
+    <i>pemmican</i>, made in times of plenty from fish, from bison meat and
+    fat, or from the dried flesh of deer or musk oxen; but tea, coffee,
+    bread, biscuits, and such like accessories were absolutely unknown to
+    them, in fact they lived exactly as the Amerindians did. Their
+    habitations, of course, were the tents or houses of the natives, or
+    what they made for themselves.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In order to pitch an Indian tent in winter it was first necessary to
+    search for a level piece of dry ground, and this could only be
+    ascertained by thrusting a stick through the snow, down to the ground,
+    all over the proposed plot. When a suitable site had been found the
+    snow was then cleared away down to the very moss, in the shape of a
+    circle. When a prolonged stay was contemplated, even the moss was cut
+    up and removed, as it was very liable when dry to catch fire. A
+    quantity of poles were then procured, proportionate in number and
+    length to the size of the tent cloth and the number of persons the
+    tent was intended to contain. Two of the longest poles were tied
+    together at the top and raised to an angle of about 45 degrees from
+    the ground, so that the lower ends extended on either side as widely
+    as the proposed diameter of the tent. The other poles were then
+    arranged on either side of the first two, so that they formed a
+    complete circle round the bottom, and their points were tied together
+    at the top. The tent cloth was usually of thin moose leather, and in
+    shape resembled the vane of a fan, so that the large outer curve
+    enclosed the bottom of the poles, and the smaller one fitted round the
+    apex of the poles at the top, leaving an open space which let out the
+    smoke and let in air and light. The fire was made on the ground in the
+    centre of the floor, which floor was covered all over with small
+    branches of firs and pines serving as seats and beds. Pine foliage and
+    branches were laid round the bottom of the poles on the outside, and a
+    quantity of snow was packed all round the exterior of the tent, thus
+    excluding a great part of the external air, and contributing much to
+    the warmth within.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For a month or more Hearne camped in this fashion by the side of a
+    lake, waiting till the season was sufficiently open for him to
+    continue his journey by water. He and his party of Indians lived
+    mainly on fish, but when these became scarce they attempted to snare
+    grouse or kill deer. In the intervals of rare meals all the party
+    smoked or slept, unless they were obliged to go out to hunt and fish.
+    They would delight, after killing deer, in securing as much as
+    possible of the blood and turning it into broth by boiling it in a
+    kettle with fat and scraps of meat. This was reckoned a dainty dish.
+    Their spoons, dishes, and other necessary household furniture were cut
+    out of birch bark.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0014"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc14.jpg" width="425" height="268"
+alt="Lake Louise, the Rocky Mountains">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>LAKE LOUISE, THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS</h5>
+<p>
+    By the 19th of May, geese, swans, ducks, gulls, and other birds of
+    passage were so plentiful, flying from south to north, and halting to
+    rest at the lake, that Hearne felt the time had come to resume his
+    journey, provisions being now very plentiful and the worst of the thaw
+    over. The weather was remarkably fine and pleasant as the party
+    travelled northwards.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There must have been good patent medicines even in those days. Of
+    these Hearne possessed "Turlington's Drops" and "Yellow Basilicon",
+    and with these he not only healed the terrible wounds of a valuable
+    Indian who had cut his leg most severely (when making birch-bark
+    dishes, spoons, &amp;c), but also the hand of another Indian, which was
+    shattered with the bursting of a gun. These medicines soon restored
+    the use of his hand, so that in a short time he was out of danger,
+    while the carver of birch-bark spoons was able to walk. Nevertheless,
+    although they were to the south of the 60th degree of latitude, the
+    snow was not completely melted until the end of June.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All at once the weather became exceedingly hot, the sledges had to be
+    thrown away, and each man had to carry on his back a heavy load. For
+    instance, Hearne was obliged to carry his quadrant for taking
+    astronomical observations, and its stand; a trunk containing books and
+    papers, &amp;c.; a large compass; and a bag containing all his wearing
+    apparel; also a hatchet, a number of knives, files, &amp;c., and several
+    small articles intended for presents to the natives&mdash;in short, a
+    weight of <i>sixty pounds</i>. Moreover, the barren ground was quite
+    unsuited to the pitching of the southern type of tent, the poles of
+    which obviously could not be driven into the bare rock, so that Hearne
+    was obliged to sleep in the open air in all weathers. Very often he
+    was unable to make a fire, and was constantly reduced to eating his
+    meat quite raw. "Notwithstanding these accumulated and complicated
+    hardships, we continued in perfect health and good spirits." The
+    average day's walk was twenty miles, sometimes without any other
+    subsistence than a pipe of tobacco and a drink of water.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At last they saw three musk oxen grazing by the side of a small lake.
+    This seemed a splendid piece of fortune, but, to their mortification,
+    before they could get one of them skinned, a tremendous downpour of
+    rain ensued, so as to make it out of their power to have a fire, for
+    their only form of fuel was moss. And the flesh of the musk ox eaten
+    raw was disgusting; it was coarse and tough, and tasted so strongly of
+    musk that Hearne could hardly swallow it. "None of our natural wants,"
+    he writes, "except thirst, are so distressing or hard to endure as
+    hunger.... For want of action, the stomach so far loses its digestive
+    powers that, after long fasting, it resumes its office with pain and
+    reluctance." After these prolonged fasts, his stomach was scarcely
+    able to contain two or three ounces of food without producing the most
+    agonizing pain. "We fasted many times two whole days and nights, and
+    twice for three days; once for nearly seven days, during which we
+    tasted not a mouthful of anything, except a few cranberries, water,
+    scraps of old leather, and burnt bones."
+</p>
+<p>
+    At a place 63° north latitude he bought a canoe for a single knife
+    "the full value of which did not exceed one penny", having been told
+    that they would soon reach rivers through which they could not wade.
+    And, moreover, they found an Indian who was willing to carry it. In
+    July his guide persuaded him to join an encampment of natives&mdash;about
+    six hundred persons living in seventy tents&mdash;asserting that, as it was
+    no use proceeding much farther north in their search for the
+    Coppermine River that season, it would be well to winter to the west,
+    and resume their northern journey in the spring. The country, though
+    quite devoid of trees, and mostly barren rock, was covered with a herb
+    or shrub called by the Indian name of Wishakapakka, <a name="10-2"></a><a href="#note-10-2"><small>[2]</small></a> from which the
+    European servants of the Hudson's Bay Company had long been used to
+    prepare a kind of tea by steeping it in boiling water. Here there were
+    multitudes of reindeer feeding on the <i>Cladina</i> lichen and the Indians
+    with Hearne killed large numbers for the food of the party, and also
+    for their skins and the marrow in their bones.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Indian who had volunteered to carry the canoe proved unequal to
+    his task. But Hearne found another of his carriers who was willing to
+    take the burden. In order, therefore, to be readier with his gun to
+    shoot deer, he transferred a portion of his own load to the ex-canoe
+    carrier. This portion consisted of the invaluable quadrant and its
+    stand, and a bag of gunpowder. The gunpowder was of such importance to
+    Hearne and his party that one wonders he made this exchange; for if he
+    lost this powder he had no means of killing game, and was entirely
+    dependent for food on the troop of Indians with whom he was
+    travelling, and whom he knew to be most niggardly and inhospitable.
+    Judge, therefore, of his horror when, at the end of a day's march,
+    this weakly Indian porter was missing with his load. All night Hearne
+    was unable to sleep with anxiety, and the whole of the next day he
+    spent searching the rocky ground for miles to discover some sign of
+    the missing man. At that season of the year it was like looking for a
+    needle in a pottle of hay, for there was no snow, and equally no
+    herbage, on which a man's foot could leave traces. However, at last,
+    by some miracle, they discovered the load by the banks of a little
+    river where a party of Indians had crossed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Shortly afterwards, leaving his quadrant on its stand for a few
+    minutes, whilst he went to eat his dinner, a violent wind arose and
+    blew the whole thing on to the rocks, so that the quadrant was
+    smashed and rendered useless. On this account he determined once more
+    to return to Fort Prince of Wales. The Northern Indians<a name="10-3"></a><a href="#note-10-3"><small>[3]</small></a> with whom
+    Hearne travelled backwards towards the fort were most inhospitable,
+    not to say dangerous. They robbed him of most of his goods, and
+    refused to allow their women to assist his people to dress the
+    reindeer skins out of which it would be necessary shortly to make
+    coverings to protect them from the severe cold of the autumn. In fact
+    Hearne was in rather a desperate condition by September, 1770, when he
+    was joined by a party of Indians under a famous leader, whom he calls
+    Matonabi.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Matonabi, though of Athapaskan stock, had, when a boy, resided several
+    years at Prince of Wales's Fort, and learnt a little English, and,
+    above all, was a master of several Algonkin dialects or languages, so
+    that he could discourse with the Southern Indians. As soon as he heard
+    of Hearne's distress he furnished him with a good, warm suit of skins,
+    and had the reindeer skins dressed for the Indian carriers who
+    accompanied Hearne. In journeying together, Matonabi invited him to
+    return once more, with himself as guide, to discover the copper mines.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He attributed all our misfortunes to the misconduct of my guides, and
+    the very plan we pursued, by the desire of the Governor, in not taking
+    any women with us on this journey, was, he said, the principal thing
+    that occasioned all our wants. 'For,' said he, 'when all the men are
+    heavy laden, they can neither hunt nor travel to any considerable
+    distance; and in case they meet with success in hunting, who is to
+    carry the produce of their labour?' 'Women,' added he, 'were made for
+    labour; one of them can carry, or haul, as much as two men can do.
+    They also pitch our tents, make and mend our clothing, keep us warm at
+    night; and, in fact, there is no such thing as travelling any
+    considerable distance, or for any length of time, in this country,
+    without their assistance.' 'Women,' said he again, 'though they do
+    everything, are maintained at a trifling expense; for as they always
+    stand cook, the very licking of their fingers in scarce times is
+    sufficient for their subsistence.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This," added Hearne, "however odd it may appear, is but too true a
+    description of the situation of women in this country: it is at least
+    so in appearance; for the women always carry the provisions, though it
+    is more than probable they help themselves when the men are not
+    present."
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the 7th of December, 1770, Samuel Hearne started again
+    from Prince of Wales's Fort, Hudsons Bay, but under very much happier
+    circumstances, Matonabi being practically in charge of the expedition.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Unfortunately, on reaching the Egg River, where Matonabi's people had
+    made a <i>cache</i> or hiding place in which they had stored a quantity of
+    provisions and implements, they found that other Indians had
+    discovered this hiding place and robbed it of nearly every article.
+    This was a great disappointment to Matonabi's people; but Hearne
+    remarks the fortitude with which they bore this, nor did one of them
+    ever speak of revenge. But the expedition's scarcity of food obliged
+    them to push on from morning till night, day after day; yet the road
+    being very bad, and their sledges heavy, they were seldom able to do
+    more than eighteen miles a day. Hearne himself writes that he never
+    spent so dull a Christmas. For the last three days he had not tasted a
+    morsel of anything, except a pipe of tobacco and a drink of snow
+    water, yet he had to walk daily from morning till night heavily laden.
+    However, at the end of December they reached Island Lake, where they
+    entered a camp of Matonabi's people, and here they found a little
+    food in the way of fish and dried venison. From Island Lake they made
+    their way in a zigzag fashion, stopping often to drive reindeer into
+    pounds to secure large supplies of venison and of skins, till, in the
+    month of April, 1771, they reached a small lake with an almost
+    unpronounceable name, which meant "Little Fish Hill", from a high hill
+    which stood at the west end of this sheet of water.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On an island in this lake they pitched their tents, as deer were very
+    numerous. During this time also they were busily employed in preparing
+    staves of birch wood, about seven or eight feet long, to serve as tent
+    poles in the summer, and in the winter to be converted into snowshoe
+    frames. Here also Chief Matonabi purchased another wife. He had now
+    with him no less than seven, most of whom would for size have made
+    good grenadiers. He prided himself much on the height and strength of
+    his wives, and would frequently say few women could carry off heavier
+    loads. In fact in this country wives were very seldom selected for
+    their beauty, but rather for their strength.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ask a Northern Indian," wrote Hearne, "'What is beauty?' He will
+    answer: 'A broad, flat face, small eyes, high cheekbones, three or
+    four broad black lines across each cheek, a low forehead, a broad
+    chin, a clumsy hook nose, and a tawny hide.'"
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the model woman amongst these Indians was one who was capable of
+    dressing all kinds of skins and making them into clothing, and who was
+    strong enough to carry a load of about a hundred pounds in weight in
+    summer, and to haul perhaps double that weight on a sledge in winter.
+    "As to their temper, it is of little consequence; for the men have a
+    wonderful facility in making the most stubborn comply with as much
+    alacrity as could possibly be expected." When the men kill any large
+    beast the women are always sent to bring it to the tent. When it is
+    brought there, every operation it undergoes, such as splitting,
+    drying, pounding, is performed by the women. When anything is prepared
+    for eating it is the women who cook it; and when it is done, not even
+    the wives and daughters of the greatest chiefs in the country are
+    served until all the males&mdash;even the male slaves&mdash;have eaten what they
+    think proper. In times of scarcity it was frequently the lot of the
+    women to be left without a single mouthful; though, no doubt, they
+    took good care to help themselves in secret.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0015"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc15.jpg" width="273" height="425"
+alt="Samuel Hearne; Alexander Mackenzie">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>SAMUEL HEARNE and ALEXANDER MACKENZIE</h5>
+<p>
+    Hearne mentions that in this country among the Northern Indians the
+    names of the boys were various and generally derived from some place,
+    or season of the year, or animal; whilst the names of the girls were
+    chiefly taken from some part or property of a marten, <a name="10-4"></a><a href="#note-10-4"><small>[4]</small></a> such as the
+    white marten, the black marten, the summer marten, the marten's head,
+    foot, heart, or tail.
+</p>
+<p>
+    From the Lake of Little Fish Hill the party moved on to Lake Clowey,
+    and here the Northern Indians set to work to build their canoes in the
+    warm and dry weather, which was about to come in at the end of May.
+    These canoes were very slight and simple in construction and
+    wonderfully light, which was necessary, for some of the northern
+    portages might be a hundred to one hundred and fifty miles in length,
+    over which the canoes would have to be carried by the Indians. All the
+    tools employed in those days, in building such canoes and making
+    snowshoes and all the other furniture and utensils of Indian life,
+    consisted of a <i>hatchet</i>, a <i>knife</i>, a <i>file</i>, and an <i>awl</i> obtained
+    from the stores of the Hudson's Bay Company. In the use of these tools
+    they were so dexterous that everything they manufactured was done with
+    a neatness which could not be excelled by the most expert mechanic.
+    These northern canoes were flat-bottomed, with straight, upright
+    sides, and sharp prow and peak. The stern part of the canoe was wider
+    than the rest in order to receive the baggage. The average length of
+    the canoe would be from twelve to thirteen feet, and the breadth in
+    the widest part about two feet. Generally but a single paddle was
+    used, and that rather attenuated. When transporting the canoes from
+    one river to another, a strong band of bark or fibre would be fastened
+    round the thwarts of the canoe, and then slung over the breast and
+    shoulders of the Indian that was carrying it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    From Lake Clowey the northern progress was made on foot, steady and
+    fatiguing walking over the barren grounds. The wooded region had been
+    left behind to the south; but for a distance of about twenty miles
+    outside the living woods there was a belt of dry stumps more or less
+    ancient. According to Hearne, these vestiges of trees to the north of
+    the present forest limit were an indication that the climate had grown
+    colder during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, because,
+    according to the traditions of the Indians and the remembrances of
+    their old people, the forest had formerly extended much farther to the
+    north.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Whilst they were staying for the canoe building at Lake Clowey, Hearne
+    was a great deal bothered by the domestic troubles of his Indian
+    friend Matonabi. This man had been constantly trying to add to his
+    stock of wives as he passed up country, and at Clowey he had met the
+    former husband of one of these women whom he had carried off by force.
+    The man ventured to reproach him, whereupon Matonabi went into his
+    tent, opened one of his wives' bundles, and with the greatest
+    composure took out a new, long, box-handled knife; then proceeded to
+    the tent of the man who had complained, and without any parley
+    whatever took him by the collar and attempted to stab him to death.
+    The man had already received three bad knife wounds in the back before
+    other people, rushing in to his assistance, prevented Matonabi from
+    finishing him. After this, Matonabi returned to his tent as though
+    nothing had happened, called for water, washed the blood off his hands
+    and knife, and smoked his pipe as usual, asking Hearne if he did not
+    think he had done quite right!
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It has ever been the custom among those people for the men to wrestle
+    for any woman to whom they are attached; and of course the strongest
+    party always carries off the prize. A weak man, unless he be a good
+    hunter and well beloved, is seldom permitted to keep a wife that a
+    stronger man thinks worth his notice; for at any time when the wives
+    of those strong wrestlers are heavy laden either with furs or
+    provisions, they make no scruple of tearing any other man's wife from
+    his bosom and making her bear a part of his luggage. This custom
+    prevails throughout all their tribes, and causes a great spirit of
+    emulation among their youth, who are upon all occasions, from their
+    childhood, trying their strength and skill in wrestling. This enables
+    them to protect their property, and particularly their wives, from the
+    hands of those powerful ravishers, some of whom make almost a
+    livelihood by taking what they please from the weaker parties without
+    making them any return. Indeed it is represented as an act of great
+    generosity if they condescend to make an unequal exchange, as, in
+    general, abuse and insult are the only return for the loss which is
+    sustained.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The way in which they tear the women and other property from one
+    another, though it has the appearance of the greatest brutality, can
+    scarcely be called fighting. I never knew any of them receive the
+    least hurt in these <i>rencontres</i>; the whole business consists in
+    hauling each other about by the hair of the head; they are seldom
+    known either to strike or kick one another. It is not uncommon for one
+    of them to cut off his hair and to grease his ears immediately before
+    the contest begins. This, however, is done privately; and it is
+    sometimes truly laughable to see one of the parties strutting about
+    with an air of great importance, and calling out: 'Where is he? Why
+    does he not come out?' when the other will bolt out with a clean-shorn
+    head and greased ears, rush on his antagonist, seize him by the hair,
+    and, though perhaps a much weaker man, soon drag him to the ground,
+    while the stronger is not able to lay hold of him. It is very frequent
+    on those occasions for each party to have spies, to watch the other's
+    motions, which puts them more on a footing of equality. For want of
+    hair to pull, they seize each other about the waist, with legs wide
+    extended, and try their strength by endeavouring to vie who can first
+    throw the other down."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Early in the morning of the twenty-ninth 'Captain' Keelshies (an
+    Indian) joined us. He delivered to me a packet of letters and a
+    two-quart keg of French brandy, but assured me that the powder, shot,
+    tobacco, knives, &amp;c, which he received at the fort for me, were all
+    expended. He endeavoured to make some apology for this by saying that
+    some of his relations died in the winter, and that he had, according
+    to native custom, thrown all his own things away; after which he was
+    obliged to have recourse to my ammunition and other goods to support
+    himself and a numerous family. The very affecting manner in which he
+    related this story, often crying like a child, was a great proof of
+    his extreme sorrow, which he wished to persuade me arose from the
+    recollection of his having embezzled so much of my property; but I was
+    of a different opinion, and attributed his grief to arise from the
+    remembrance of his deceased relations. However, as a small recompense
+    for my loss, he presented me with four ready-dressed moose skins,
+    which was, he said, the only retribution he could then make. The moose
+    skins, though not the twentieth part of the value of the goods which
+    he had embezzled, were in reality more acceptable to me than the
+    ammunition and the other articles would have been, on account of their
+    great use as shoe leather, which at that time was a very scarce
+    article with us, whereas we had plenty of powder and shot."
+</p>
+<p>
+    During Hearne's stay at Lake Clowey a great number of Indians entered
+    into a combination with those of his party to travel together to the
+    Coppermine River, with no other intent than to murder the Eskimo who
+    frequented that river in considerable numbers. Before leaving Lake
+    Clowey all the Northern Indians who had assembled there prepared their
+    arms for the encounter, and did not forget to make shields before they
+    left the woods of Clowey. These shields were composed of thin boards
+    about three-quarters of an inch thick, two feet broad, and three feet
+    long, and were intended to ward off the arrows of the Eskimo.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the now large expedition reached a river with the fearful name of
+    Congecathawhachaga, they found a portion of the tribe known as Copper
+    Indians,<a name="10-5"></a><a href="#note-10-5"><small>[5]</small></a> and these had never before seen a white man. They gave a
+    very friendly reception to Hearne on account of Matonabi.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They expressed as much desire to examine me from top to toe as a
+    European naturalist would a nondescript animal. They, however, found
+    and pronounced me to be a perfect human being, except in the colour of
+    my hair and eyes; the former, they said, was like the stained hair of
+    a buffalo's tail, and the latter, being light, were like those of a
+    gull. The whiteness of my skin also was, in their opinion, no
+    ornament, as they said it resembled meat which had been sodden in
+    water till all the blood was extracted. On the whole I was viewed as
+    so great a curiosity in this part of the world that during my stay
+    there, whenever I combed my head, some or other of them never failed
+    to ask for the hairs that came off, which they carefully wrapped up,
+    saying: 'When I see you again, you shall again see your hair'."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Copper Indians sent a detachment of their men in the double
+    capacity of guides and warriors, and the whole party now turned
+    towards the north-west, and after some days' walking reached the Stony
+    Mountains. "Surely no part of the world better deserves that name",
+    wrote, Hearne. They appeared to be a confused heap of stones quite
+    inaccessible to the foot of man. Nevertheless, with the Copper Indians
+    as guides, they got over this range, though not without being obliged
+    frequently to crawl on hands and knees. This range, however, had been
+    so often crossed by Indians coming to and fro that there was a very
+    visible path the whole way, the rocks, even in the most difficult
+    places, being worn quite smooth. By the side of the path there were
+    several large, flat stones covered with thousands of small pebbles.
+    These marks had been gradually built up by passengers going to and fro
+    from the copper mines in the far north. The weather all this time,
+    although the month was July, was very bad&mdash;constant snow, sleet, and
+    rain. Hearne seldom had a dry garment of any kind, and in the caves
+    where they lodged at night the water was constantly dropping from the
+    roof. Their food all this time was raw venison. One snowstorm which
+    fell on them was heavier than was customary even in the winter, but at
+    last the weather cleared up and sunshine made the journey far more
+    tolerable.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As they descended the northern side of the Stony Mountains they
+    crossed a large lake, passing over its unmelted ice, and called it
+    Musk-ox Lake, from the number of these creatures which they found
+    grazing on the margin of it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This was not the first time that Hearne had seen the musk ox. These
+    animals were wont to come down as far south as the shores of Hudson
+    Bay.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the northern side of the Stony Mountains Hearne was taken by the
+    Indians to see a place which he called Grizzly-bear Hill, which took
+    its name from the numbers of those animals (presumably what we call
+    grizzly bears) which resorted here for the purpose of bringing forth
+    their young in a cave in this hill. On the east side of the adjoining
+    marsh Hearne was amazed at the sight of the many hills and dry ridges,
+    which were turned over like ploughed land by the long claws of these
+    bears in searching for the ground squirrels and mice which constitute
+    a favourite part of their food. It was surprising to see the enormous
+    stones rolled out of their beds by the bears on these occasions.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As they neared the Coppermine River the weather became very warm, and
+    the country had a good supply of firewood. Reindeer were abundant,
+    and, the Indians having killed some of these, Hearne sat down to the
+    most comfortable meal he had had for some months.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was a kind of haggis, called by the Amerindians "biati", made with
+    the blood of the reindeer, a good quantity of fat shredded small, some
+    of the tenderest of the flesh, together with the heart and lungs, cut,
+    or more commonly torn, into small slivers&mdash;all which would be put into
+    the stomach, and roasted by being suspended before the fire by a
+    string. Care had to be taken that it did not get too much heat at
+    first, as the bag would thereby be liable to be burnt and the contents
+    be let out. When it was sufficiently done it emitted steam, "which",
+    writes Hearne, "is as much as to say: 'Come, eat me now'; and if it be
+    taken in time, before the blood and other contents are too much done,
+    it is certainly a most delicious morsel, even without pepper, salt, or
+    any other seasoning."
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was now almost impossible to sleep at night for the mosquitoes,
+    which swarmed in myriads as soon as the warmth of the sun melted the
+    ice and snow. When Hearne actually reached the banks of the Coppermine
+    River he was a little disappointed at its appearance, as it seemed to
+    be only one hundred and eighty yards wide, shallow, and full of
+    shoals. The Chipewayan Amerindians with him now sent out their spies
+    to try and locate the Eskimo. Presently they found that there were
+    five tents of them on the west side of the river.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When the Indians received this intelligence no further attendance or
+    attention was paid to my survey, but their whole thoughts were
+    immediately engaged in planning the best method of attack, and how
+    they might steal on the poor Eskimo the ensuing night and kill them
+    all when asleep. To accomplish this bloody design more effectually the
+    Indians thought it necessary to cross the river as soon as possible;
+    and, by the account of the spies, it appeared that no part was more
+    convenient for the purpose than that where we had met them, it being
+    there very smooth, and at a considerable distance from any fall.
+    Accordingly, after the Indians had put all their guns, spears,
+    shields, &amp;c, in good order, we crossed the river....
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When we arrived on the west side of the river, each painted the front
+    of his shield; some with the figure of the sun, others with that of
+    the moon, several with different kinds of birds and beasts of prey,
+    and many with the images of imaginary beings, which, according to
+    their silly notions, are the inhabitants of the different elements,
+    Earth, Sea, Air, &amp;c. On enquiring the reason of their doing so, I
+    learned that each man painted his shield with the image of that being
+    on which he relied most for success in the intended engagement. Some
+    were content with a single representation; while others, doubtful, as
+    I suppose, of the quality and power of any single being, had their
+    shields covered to the very margin with a group of hieroglyphics quite
+    unintelligible to everyone except the painter. Indeed, from the hurry
+    in which this business was necessarily done, the want of every colour
+    but red and black, and the deficiency of skill in the artist, most of
+    those paintings had more the appearance of a number of accidental
+    blotches, than 'of anything that is on the earth, or in the water
+    under the earth'....
+</p>
+<p>
+    "After this piece of superstition was completed, we began to advance
+    towards the Eskimo tents; but were very careful to avoid crossing any
+    hills, or talking loud, for fear of being seen or overheard by the
+    inhabitants."
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the attacking party was within two hundred yards of the Eskimo
+    tents, they lay in ambush for some time, watching the motions of their
+    intended victims; and here the Indians wanted Hearne (for whom they
+    had a sincere affection) to stay till the fight was over; but to this
+    he would not consent, lest, when the Eskimo came to be surprised, they
+    should try every way to escape, and, finding him alone, kill him in
+    their desperation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    While they lay in ambush the Northern Indians performed the last
+    ceremonies which were thought necessary before the engagement. These
+    chiefly consisted in painting their faces: some all black, some all
+    red, and others with a mixture of the two; and to prevent their hair
+    from blowing into their eyes, it was either tied before or behind, and
+    on both sides, or else cut short all round. The next thing they
+    considered was to make themselves as light as possible for running,
+    which they did by pulling off their stockings, and either cutting off
+    the sleeves of their jackets, or rolling them up close to their
+    armpits; and though the mosquitoes at that time "were so numerous as
+    to surpass all credibility", yet some of the Indians actually pulled
+    off their jackets and entered the lists nearly or quite naked. Hearne,
+    fearing he might have occasion to run with the rest, thought it also
+    advisable to pull off his stockings and cap, and to tie his hair as
+    close up as possible.
+</p>
+<p>
+    By the time the Indians had made themselves thus "completely
+    frightful", it was nearly one in the morning. Then, finding all the
+    Eskimo quiet in their tents, they rushed forth from their ambuscade,
+    and fell on the poor, unsuspecting creatures, unperceived till they
+    were close to the very eaves of the tents. A horrible massacre
+    forthwith took place, while Hearne stood neutral in the rear.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The scene was shocking beyond description. The poor unhappy victims
+    were surprised in the midst of their sleep, and had neither time nor
+    power to make any resistance; men, women, and children, in all upward
+    of twenty, ran out of their tents stark naked, and endeavoured to make
+    their escape; but the Indians having possession of all the landside,
+    to no place could they fly for shelter. One alternative only remained,
+    that of jumping into the river; but, as none of them attempted it,
+    they all fell a sacrifice to Indian barbarity!
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The shrieks and groans of the poor expiring wretches were truly
+    dreadful; and my horror was much increased at seeing a young girl,
+    seemingly about eighteen years of age, killed so near me, that when
+    the first spear was stuck into her side she fell down at my feet, and
+    twisted round my legs, so that it was with difficulty that I could
+    disengage myself from her dying grasp. As two Indian men pursued this
+    unfortunate victim, I solicited very hard for her life; but the
+    murderers made no reply till they had stuck both their spears through
+    her body, and transfixed her to the ground. They then looked me
+    sternly in the face, and began to ridicule me by asking if I wanted an
+    Eskimo wife; and paid not the smallest regard to the shrieks and agony
+    of the poor wretch, who was twining round their spears like an eel!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    On his requesting that they would at least put the woman out of her
+    misery, one of the Indians hastily drew his spear from the place where
+    it was first lodged, and pierced it through her breast near the heart.
+    The love of life, however, even in this most miserable state, was so
+    predominant, that "though this might justly be called the most
+    merciful act that could be done for the poor creature, it seemed to be
+    unwelcome, for, though much exhausted by pain and loss of blood, she
+    made several efforts to ward off the friendly blow."... "My own
+    situation and the terror of my mind at beholding this butchery,
+    cannot easily be conceived, much less described; though I summed up
+    all the fortitude I was master of on the occasion, it was with
+    difficulty that I could refrain from tears; and I am confident that my
+    features must have feelingly expressed how sincerely I was affected at
+    the barbarous scene I then witnessed; even at this hour I cannot
+    reflect on the transactions of that horrid day without shedding
+    tears."
+</p>
+<p>
+    There were other Eskimo on the opposite shore of the river. Though
+    they took up their arms to defend themselves, they did not attempt to
+    abandon their tents, for they were utterly unacquainted with the
+    nature of firearms; so much so that when the bullets struck the
+    ground, they ran in crowds to see what was sent them, and seemed
+    anxious to examine all the pieces of lead which they found flattened
+    against the rocks. At length one of the Eskimo men was shot in the
+    calf of his leg, which put them in great confusion. They all
+    immediately embarked in their little canoes, and paddled to a shoal in
+    the middle of the river, which being somewhat more than a gunshot from
+    any part of the shore, put them out of the reach of our barbarians.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When the savages discovered that the surviving Eskimo had gained the
+    shore above-mentioned, the Northern Indians began to plunder the
+    tents of the deceased of all the copper utensils they could find; such
+    as hatchets, bayonets, knives, &amp;c, after which they assembled on the
+    top of an adjacent hill, and, standing all in a cluster, so as to form
+    a solid circle, with their spears erect in the air, gave many shouts
+    of victory, constantly clashing their spears against each other, and
+    frequently calling out <i>tima! tima!<a name="10-6"></a></i><a href="#note-10-6"><small>[6]</small></a> by way of derision to the poor
+    surviving Eskimo, who were standing on the shoal almost knee deep in
+    water."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It ought to have been mentioned in its proper place," writes Hearne,
+    after describing further atrocities, "that in making our retreat up
+    the river, after killing the Eskimo on the west side, we saw an old
+    woman sitting by the side of the water killing salmon, which lay at
+    the foot of the fall as thick as a shoal of herrings. Whether from the
+    noise of the fall, or a natural defect in the old woman's hearing, it
+    is hard to determine, but certain it is, she had no knowledge of the
+    tragical scene which had been so lately transacted at the tents,
+    though she was not more than two hundred yards from the place. When we
+    first perceived her she seemed perfectly at ease, and was entirely
+    surrounded with the produce of her labour. From her manner of
+    behaviour, and the appearance of her eyes, which were as red as blood,
+    it is more than probable that her sight was not very good; for she
+    scarcely discerned that the Indians were enemies, till they were
+    within twice the length of their spears of her. It was in vain that
+    she attempted to fly, for the wretches of my crew transfixed her to
+    the ground in a few seconds, and butchered her in the most savage
+    manner. There was scarcely a man among them who had not a thrust at
+    her with his spear; and many in doing this aimed at torture rather
+    than immediate death, as they not only poked out her eyes, but stabbed
+    her in many parts very remote from those which are vital.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It may appear strange that a person supposed to be almost blind
+    should be employed in the business of fishing, and particularly with
+    any degree of success; but when the multitude of the fish is taken
+    into the account, the wonder will cease. Indeed they were so numerous
+    at the foot of the fall, that when a light pole, armed with a few
+    spikes, which was the instrument the old woman used, was put under
+    water, and hauled up with a jerk, it was scarcely possible to miss
+    them. Some of my Indians tried the method, for curiosity, with the old
+    woman's staff, and seldom got less than two at a jerk, sometimes
+    three or four. Those fish, though very fine, and beautifully red, are
+    but small, seldom weighing more (as near as I could judge) than six or
+    seven pounds, and in general much less. Their numbers at this place
+    were almost incredible, perhaps equal to anything that is related of
+    the salmon in Kamschatka, or any other part of the world."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hearne seems to have been so intent on geographical discovery that he
+    did not allow his feelings to influence him very long against the
+    society of his Amerindian companions, who apparently sat down and ate
+    a dish of salmon with him an hour or so after they had killed this
+    last old woman! The Indians now told him that they were ready again to
+    assist him in making an end of his survey, and apparently on foot, for
+    the Coppermine River was not navigable here, even for a boat.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Thus, first of all white men coming overland, he reached the sea coast
+    of the Arctic Ocean. The tide was then out, and a good deal of the sea
+    surface was covered with ice, on which he observed many seals lying
+    about. Along the sea coast and river banks were many birds; gulls,
+    divers or loons, golden plovers, green plovers, curlews, geese, and
+    swans. The country a little way inland was obviously inhabited by
+    numbers of musk oxen, reindeer, bears, wolves, gluttons, foxes, polar
+    hares, snowy owls, ravens, ptarmigans, gopher ground-squirrels, stoats
+    (ermines), and mice. In this region also he saw a bird which the
+    Copper Indians called the Alarm Bird. He tells us that in size and
+    colour it resembles a "Cobadekoock"; but as none of us know what that
+    is, we can only go on to imagine that the Alarm Bird was a kind of
+    owl, as Hearne says it was "of the owl genus". When it perceived
+    people or beasts it directed its way towards them immediately, and,
+    after hovering over them for some time, flew over them in circles or
+    went away with them in the same direction as they walked. All this
+    time the bird made a loud screaming noise like the cry of a child.
+    These owls were sometimes accustomed to follow the Indians for a whole
+    day, and the Copper Indians believed that they would in some way
+    conduct them to herds of deer and musk oxen, which without the birds'
+    assistance might never be found. They also warned Indians of the
+    arrival of strangers. The Eskimo, according to Hearne, paid no heed to
+    these birds, and it was thus that they allowed themselves to be
+    surprised and massacred, for if they had looked out from the direction
+    in which the Chipewayans were lying in ambush, they would have seen a
+    large flock of these owls continually flying about and making
+    sufficient noise to awaken any man out of the soundest sleep.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The country on either side of the estuary of the Coppermine River was
+    not without vegetation. There were stunted pines and tufts of dwarf
+    willows, and the ground was covered with a lichen or herb, which the
+    English of the Hudson's Bay Company knew by the name of
+    Wishakapaka,<a name="10-7"></a><a href="#note-10-7"><small>[7]</small></a> and which they dried and used instead of tea. There
+    were also cranberry and heathberry bushes, but without fruit. The
+    scrub grew gradually thinner and smaller as one approached the sea,
+    and at the mouth of the river there was nothing but barren hills and
+    marsh.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The unfortunate Eskimo of this region, judging by the examples seen by
+    Hearne, were of low stature, with broad thickset bodies. Their
+    complexion was a dirty copper colour, but some of the women were
+    almost fair and ruddy. Their dress, their arms and fishing tackle were
+    precisely similar to those of the Greenland Eskimo. Their tents were
+    made of deerskins, and were pitched in a circular form. But these were
+    only their summer habitations, those for the winter being partly
+    underground, with a roof framework of poles, over which skins were
+    stretched; and of course Nature did the rest, covering the roof with
+    several feet of snow. Owing to being almost entirely surrounded by
+    snow, these winter houses were very warm. Their household furniture
+    consisted of stone kettles and wooden troughs of various sizes, also
+    dishes, scoops, and spoons made of musk-ox horns. The stone kettles
+    (which some people think they borrowed from the Norse discoverers of
+    America in the eleventh century) were as large as to be capable of
+    containing five or six gallons. They were, of course, carved out of
+    solid blocks of stone, every one of them being ornamented with neat
+    moulding round the rims, and some of the large ones with fluted work
+    at each corner. In shape they were oblong, wider at the top than the
+    bottom, and strong handles of solid stone were left at each end to
+    lift them up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Eskimo hatchets were made of a thick lump of copper about five or
+    six inches long, and one and a half to two inches broad. They were
+    bevelled away at one end like a chisel. This piece of copper was
+    lashed into the end of a piece of wood about twelve or fourteen inches
+    long. The men's daggers and the women's knives were also made of
+    copper. The former were in shape like the ace of spades, and the
+    handle was made of reindeer antler.
+</p>
+<p>
+    With the Eskimo was a fine breed of dogs, with erect ears, sharp
+    noses, bushy tails. They were all tethered to stones to prevent them
+    from eating the flesh that was spread all over the rocks to dry.
+    Apparently, these beautiful dogs were left behind still tethered by
+    the wicked Amerindians, after the massacre of their owners. Hearne,
+    however, noticed with these Coppermine River Eskimo that the men were
+    entirely bald, having all their head hair pulled out by the roots. The
+    women wore their hair at the usual length.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Before leaving this region to return southwards, Hearne was led by the
+    Indians to one of the copper mines about thirty miles south-east of
+    the river mouth. It was no more than a jumble of rocks and gravel,
+    which had been rent in many ways, apparently by an earthquake shock.
+    This mine was at the time of Hearne's visit very poor in copper, much
+    of the metal having already been removed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Copper Indians set a great value on this native metal even at the
+    present day, and prefer it to iron for almost every use except that of
+    a hatchet, a knife, and an awl. "For these three necessary
+    implements", writes Hearne, "copper makes but a very poor substitute."
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the return journey, in the course of which the Great Slave
+    Lake&mdash;which Hearne calls "Lake Athapuscow"&mdash;was discovered and crossed
+    on the ice, the party travelled so hard and stayed so seldom to rest
+    that Hearne suffered terribly with his legs and feet. "I had so little
+    power to direct my feet when walking, that I frequently knocked them
+    against the stones with such force, as not only to jar and disorder
+    them, but my legs also; and the nails of my toes were bruised to such
+    a degree, that several of them festered and dropped off. To add to
+    this mishap, the skin was entirely chafed off from the tops of both my
+    feet, and between every toe; so that the sand and gravel, which I
+    could by no means exclude, irritated the raw parts so much, that for a
+    whole day before we arrived at the women's tents, I left the print of
+    my feet in blood almost at every step I took. Several of the Indians
+    began to complain that their feet also were sore; but, on examination,
+    not one of them was the twentieth part in so bad a state as mine. This
+    being the first time I had been in such a situation, or seen anybody
+    foot-foundered, I was much alarmed, and under great apprehensions for
+    the consequences. Though I was but little fatigued in body, yet the
+    excruciating pain I suffered when walking had such an effect on my
+    spirits, that if the Indians had continued to travel two or three days
+    longer at that unmerciful rate, I must unavoidably have been left
+    behind; for my feet were in many places quite honeycombed by the dirt
+    and gravel eating into the raw flesh."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Among the various superstitious customs of those people, it is worth
+    remarking, and ought to have been mentioned in its proper place, that
+    immediately after my companions had killed the Eskimo at the Copper
+    River, they considered themselves in a state of uncleanness, which
+    induced them to practise some very curious unusual ceremonies. In the
+    first place, all who were absolutely concerned in the murder were
+    prohibited from cooking any kind of victuals, either for themselves or
+    others. As luckily there were two in company who had not shed blood,
+    they were employed always as cooks till we joined the women. This
+    circumstance was exceedingly favourable on my side; for had there been
+    no persons of the above description in company, that task, I was told,
+    would have fallen on me; which would have been no less fatiguing and
+    troublesome, than humiliating and vexatious.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When the victuals were cooked, all the murderers took a kind of red
+    earth, or ochre, and painted all the space between the nose and chin,
+    as well as the greater part of their cheeks, almost to the ears,
+    before they would taste a bit, and would not drink out of any other
+    dish, or smoke out of any other pipe, but their own; and none of the
+    others seemed willing to drink or smoke out of theirs."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He goes on to relate that they practised the custom of painting the
+    mouth and part of the cheeks before each meal, and drinking and
+    smoking out of their own utensils, till the winter began to set in,
+    and during the whole of that time they would never kiss any of their
+    wives or children. They refrained also from eating many parts of the
+    deer and other animals, particularly the head, entrails, and blood;
+    and during their "uncleanness" their food was never cooked in water,
+    but dried in the sun, eaten quite raw, or broiled. When the time
+    arrived that was to put an end to these ceremonies, the men, without a
+    female being present, made a fire at some distance from the tents,
+    into which they threw all their ornaments, pipe stems, and dishes,
+    which were soon consumed to ashes; after which a feast was prepared,
+    consisting of such articles as they had long been prohibited from
+    eating, and when all was over each man was at liberty to eat, drink,
+    and smoke as he pleased, "and also to kiss his wives and children at
+    discretion, which they seemed to do with more raptures than I had ever
+    known them to do it either before or since".
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the 11th of January, as some of Hearne's companions were hunting,
+    they saw the track of a strange snowshoe, which they followed, and at
+    a considerable distance came to a little hut, where they discovered a
+    young woman sitting alone. As they found that she understood their
+    language, they brought her with them to the tents. On examination she
+    proved to be one of the Western Dog-rib Indians, who had been taken
+    prisoner by the Athapaska Indians in the summer of 1770. From these,
+    in the following summer, she had escaped, with the intention of
+    returning to her own country, but the distance being so great, and the
+    way being unknown to her, she forgot the track, so she built the hut
+    in which they found her, to protect her from the weather during the
+    winter, and here she had resided from the first setting in of the cold
+    weather. For seven months she had seen no human face. During all this
+    time she had supported herself in comparative comfort by snaring
+    grouse, rabbits, and squirrels; she had also killed two or three
+    beaver, and some porcupines. That she did not seem to have been in
+    want was evident, as she had a small stock of provisions by her when
+    she was discovered, and was in good health and condition; and Hearne
+    thought her "one of the finest women", of the real Indian type, that
+    he had seen in any part of North America.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The methods practised by this poor creature to procure a livelihood
+    were truly admirable, and are great proofs that necessity is the real
+    mother of invention. When the few deer sinews that she had an
+    opportunity of taking with her were all expended in making snares and
+    sewing her clothing, she had nothing to supply their place but the
+    sinews of the rabbits' [he means hares'] legs and feet; these she
+    twisted together for that purpose with great dexterity and success.
+    The rabbits, &amp;c, which she caught in those snares, not only furnished
+    her with a comfortable subsistence, but of the skins she made a suit
+    of neat and warm clothing for the winter. It is scarcely possible to
+    conceive that a person in her forlorn situation could be so composed
+    as to be capable of contriving or executing anything that was not
+    absolutely necessary to her existence; but there were sufficient
+    proofs that she had extended her care much farther, as all her
+    clothing, beside being calculated for real service, showed great taste
+    and exhibited no little variety of ornament. The materials, though
+    rude, were very curiously wrought and so judiciously placed as to make
+    the whole of her garb have a very pleasing, though rather romantic,
+    appearance.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Her leisure hours from hunting had been employed in twisting the
+    inner rind or bark of willows into small lines, like net twine, of
+    which she had some hundred fathoms by her; with this she intended to
+    make a fishing net as soon as the spring advanced. It is of the inner
+    bark of willows, twisted in this manner, that the Dog-rib Indians make
+    their fishing nets, and they are much preferable to those made by the
+    Northern Indians.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Five or six inches of an iron hoop, made into a knife, and the shank
+    of an arrowhead of iron, which served her as an awl, were all the
+    metals this poor woman had with her when she eloped, and with these
+    implements she had made herself complete snowshoes, and several other
+    useful articles.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Her method of making a fire was equally singular and curious, having
+    no other materials for that purpose than two hard sulphurous stones.
+    These, by long friction and hard knocking, produced a few sparks,
+    which at length communicated to some touchwood (a species of fungus
+    which grew on decayed poplars); but as this method was attended with
+    great trouble, and not always with success, she did not suffer her
+    fire to go out all the winter...."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hearne regained Prince of Wales's Fort on Hudson Bay in June, 1772.
+    Subsequently he was dispatched, in the year 1774, to found the first
+    great inland trading station and fort of the Hudson's Bay Company
+    which was established at any considerable distance westward of Hudson
+    Bay&mdash;the first step, in fact, which led to this chartered company
+    becoming in time the ruler and colonizing agent of Alberta and British
+    Columbia. Hearne chose for his station of "Cumberland House" a site at
+    the entrance to Pine Island Lake on the lower Saskatchewan River.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In 1775 he became Governor of his old starting-point on Hudson
+    Bay&mdash;Fort Prince of Wales. During the American war with France, the
+    French admiral, La Pérouse, made a daring excursion into Hudson Bay
+    (1782), and summoned Hearne to surrender his fort. This he felt
+    obliged to do, not deeming his small garrison strong enough to resist
+    the French force.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Samuel Hearne returned to England in 1787, and died (probably in
+    London) in 1792.
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+
+<a name="note-10-1"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#10-1"><u>1</u></a> Hearne was born in London in 1745. He entered the Royal
+    Navy as a midshipman at the tender age of eleven, and remained in the
+    Navy till about 1765, when he went out to Hudson Bay with the rank of
+    quartermaster. He must have acquired a considerable education, even in
+    botany and zoology. He not only wrote well, and was a good surveyor
+    for rough map making, but he had a considerable talent as a
+    draughtsman.
+</p>
+<a name="note-10-2"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#10-2"><u>2</u></a> This word is said to be a corruption or altered form of
+    <i>Wishakagami&#363;</i>, a liquid or broth (Kri language). The drink made
+    from this shrub or herb (<i>Ledum palustre</i>) is now known as Labrador
+    tea. It is a bitter aromatic infusion.
+</p>
+<a name="note-10-3"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#10-3"><u>3</u></a> The Indians of the Athapaskan or Déné group were usually
+    called the <i>Northern Indians</i> by the Hudson Bay people, in comparison
+    to all the other tribes of the more temperate regions farther south,
+    who were known as the <i>Southern Indians</i> (Algonkins, &amp;c.).
+</p>
+<a name="note-10-4"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#10-4"><u>4</u></a> A fur-bearing animal (<i>Mustela americana</i>), very like the
+    British pine marten.
+</p>
+<a name="note-10-5"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#10-5"><u>5</u></a> Or "Tantsawh&#363;ts". Like the "Dog-rib" Indians,
+    mentioned farther on, they belonged to the "Northern", Tinné,
+    Athabaskan type.
+</p>
+<a name="note-10-6"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#10-6"><u>6</u></a> "<i>Tima</i> in the Eskimo language is a friendly word similar
+    to <i>what cheer</i>?"&mdash;Hearne.
+</p>
+<a name="note-10-7"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#10-7"><u>7</u></a> <i>Ledum palustre</i>.
+</p>
+<p class="return">[<a href="#contents">TABLE OF CONTENTS</a>]
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+
+<a name="2HCH0011"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XI
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    Alexander Mackenzie's Journeys
+</h3>
+<p>
+    It has been already mentioned that the conquest of Canada by the
+    British led to a great increase in travel for the development of the
+    fur trade. Previously, under the French, permission was only granted
+    to a few persons to penetrate into the interior to trade with the
+    natives, commerce being regarded as a special privilege or monopoly to
+    be sold or granted by the Crown. But after the British had completely
+    assumed control, nothing was done to bar access to the interior. So
+    long as the Catholic missionaries had been practically placed in
+    charge of the Amerindians, and had served as buffers between them and
+    unscrupulous traders, they&mdash;the Amerindians&mdash;had been saved from two
+    scourges, smallpox and strong drink.<a name="11-1"></a><a href="#note-11-1"><small>[1]</small></a> But now, unhappily, all
+    restrictions about trade in alcohol were removed. In their eagerness
+    to obtain ardent spirits and "high" wine, the Indians eagerly welcomed
+    British traders and French Canadians in their midst. The fur trade
+    developed fast. The Hudson's Bay Company had established its trading
+    stations only in the vicinity or on the coasts of that inland sea, far
+    away from the two Canadas, from the Middle West and the vast North
+    West. After a little reluctance and suspicion, most of the northern
+    Amerindian tribes were persuaded to deflect their caravans from the
+    routes leading to Hudson Bay, and to meet the British, the New
+    Englander ("Bostonian"), and the French Canadian traders at various
+    rendezvous on <a name="p278"></a>Lake Winnipeg and its tributary lakes and rivers. The
+    principal depot and starting-point for the north-west traders was
+    <i>Grand Portage</i>, on the north-west coast of Lake Superior, whence
+    canoes and goods were transferred by a nine-mile portage to the waters
+    flowing to Rainy Lake, and so onwards to the Winnipeg River and the
+    vast system of the Saskatchewan, the Red River, and the Assiniboine.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Amongst the pioneers in this new development of the fur trade, who
+    became also the great explorers of northernmost America, was Alexander
+    Henry (already described), THOMAS CURRIE, JAMES FINLAY, PETER POND,<a name="11-2"></a><a href="#note-11-2"><small>[2]</small></a>
+    JOSEPH and BENJAMIN FROBISHER, and SIMON M'TAVISH. These and some of
+    their supporting merchants in Montreal resolved to form a great
+    fur-trading association, the celebrated North-west Trading Company,
+    and did so in 1784.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Two of the Montreal merchant firms participating in this confederation
+    (Gregory and M'Leod) were inclined to play a somewhat independent
+    part, and called themselves the New North-west Trading Company. They
+    had the foresight to engage as their principal agents in the
+    north-west (Sir) ALEXANDER MACKENZIE and his cousin RODERICK
+    MACKENZIE. Both these young men were Highlanders, probably of Norse
+    origin. Alexander Mackenzie was born at Stornoway, in the Island of
+    Lewis (Hebrides), in 1763. He was only sixteen when he started for
+    Canada to take up a position as clerk in the partnership concern of
+    Gregory &amp; M'Leod at Montreal.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It may be said here briefly that this "New North-west Company" went at
+    first by the nickname of "The Little Company" or "The Potties", this
+    last being an Amerindian corruption of the French <i>Les Petits</i>. Later
+    it developed into the "X.Y. Company", or "Sir Alexander Mackenzie &amp;
+    Co.". Although much in rivalry with the original "Nor'-westers", the
+    rivalry never degenerated into the actual warfare, the indefensible
+    deeds of violence and treachery, which later on were perpetrated by
+    the Hudson's Bay Company on the agents of the North-west, and returned
+    with interest by the latter. Often the New North-west agents and the
+    original Nor'-westers would camp or build side by side, and share
+    equably in the fur trade with the natives; their canoemen and
+    French-Canadian <i>voyageurs</i> would sing their boating songs in chorus
+    as they paddled side by side across the lakes and down the rivers, or
+    marched with their heavy loads over the portages and along the trails.
+    Eventually, in 1804, the X.Y. Company and the North-west fused into
+    the North-west Trading Company, which until 1821 fought a hard fight
+    against the encroachments and jealousy of the Hudson's Bay Company.
+</p>
+<p>
+    During the period, however, from 1785 to 1812 the men of the
+    north-west, of Montreal, and Grand Portage (as contrasted with those
+    of Hudson Bay) effected a revolution in Canadian geography. They
+    played the rôle of imperial pioneers with a stubborn heroism, with
+    little thought of personal gain, and in most cases with full
+    foreknowledge and appreciation of what would accrue to the British
+    Empire through their success. It is impossible to relate the
+    adventures of all of them within the space of any one book, or even of
+    several volumes. Moreover, this has been done already, not only in
+    their own published journals and books, but in the admirable works of
+    Elliot Coues, Dr. George Bryce, Dr. S.J. Dawson, Alexander Ross, and
+    others. I must confine myself here to a description of the adventures
+    of Sir Alexander Mackenzie, with a glance at incidents recorded by
+    Simon Fraser and by Alexander Henry the Younger.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mackenzie, having been appointed at the age of twenty-two a partner in
+    the New North-west Company, proceeded to Grand Portage in 1785, and
+    by the year 1788 (after founding Fort Chipewayan on Lake Athabaska)
+    conceived the idea of following the mysterious Slave River to its
+    ultimate outlet into the Arctic or the Pacific Ocean. He left Fort
+    Chipewayan on June 3, 1789, accompanied by four French-Canadian
+    <i>voyageurs</i>, two French-Canadian women (wives of two <i>voyageurs</i>), a
+    young German named John Steinbruck, and an Amerindian guide known as
+    "English Chief". This last was a follower and pupil of the Matonabi
+    who had guided Hearne to the Coppermine River and the eastern end of
+    the Great Slave Lake. The party of eight whites packed themselves and
+    their goods into one birch-bark canoe. English Chief and his two
+    wives, together with an additional Amerindian guide and a hunter,
+    travelled in a second and smaller canoe. The expedition, moreover, was
+    accompanied as far as Slave River by LE ROUX, a celebrated
+    French-Canadian exploring trader who worked for the X.Y. Company. The
+    journey down the Slave River was rendered difficult and dangerous by
+    the rapids. Several times the canoes and their loads had to be lugged
+    past these falls by an overland portage. Mosquitoes tortured the whole
+    party almost past bearance. The leaders of the expedition and their
+    Indian hunter had to be busily engaged (the Indian women also) in
+    hunting and fishing in order to get food for the support of the party,
+    who seemed to have had little reserve provisions with them. Pemmican
+    was made of fish dried in the sun and rubbed to powder. Swans, geese,
+    cranes, and ducks fell to the guns; an occasional beaver was also
+    added to the pot. When they reached the Great Slave Lake they found
+    its islands&mdash;notwithstanding their barren appearance&mdash;covered with
+    bushes producing a great variety of palatable fruits&mdash;cranberries,
+    juniper berries, raspberries, partridge berries, gooseberries, and the
+    "pathogomenan", a fruit like a raspberry.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <a name="p281"></a>Slave Lake, however, was still, in mid-June, under the spell of
+    winter, its surface obstructed with drifting ice. In attempting to
+    cross the lake the frail birch-bark canoes ran a great risk of being
+    crushed between the ice floes. However, at length, after halting at
+    several islands and leaving Le Roux to go to the trading station he
+    had founded on the shores of Slave Lake, Mackenzie and his two canoes
+    found their way to the river outlet of Slave Lake, that river which
+    was henceforth to be called by his name. Great mountains approached
+    near to the west of their course. They appeared to be sprinkled with
+    white stones, called by the natives "spirit stones"&mdash;indeed over a
+    great part of North America the Rocky Mountains were called "the
+    Mountains of Bright Stones"&mdash;yet these brilliant patches were nothing
+    more wonderful than unmelted snow.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A few days later the party encountered Amerindians of the Slave and
+    Dog-rib tribes, who were so aloof from even "Indian" civilization that
+    they did not know the use of tobacco, and were still in the Stone Age
+    as regards their weapons and implements. These people, though they
+    furnished a guide, foretold disaster and famine to the expedition, and
+    greatly exaggerated the obstacles which would be met with&mdash;rapids near
+    the entrance of the tributary from Great Bear Lake&mdash;before the salt
+    water was reached.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The canoes of these Slave and Dog-rib tribes of the Athapaskan (Tinné)
+    group were covered, not with birch bark, but with the bark of the
+    spruce fir.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The lodges of the Slave Indians were of very simple structure: a few
+    poles supported by a fork and forming a semicircle at the bottom, with
+    some branches or a piece of bark as a covering. They built two of
+    these huts facing each other, and made a fire between them. The
+    furniture consisted of a few dishes of wood, bark, or horn. The
+    vessels in which they cooked their victuals were in the shape of a
+    gourd, narrow at the top and wide at the bottom, and made of <i>wátápé</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This was the name given to the divided roots of the spruce fir, which
+    the natives wove into a degree of compactness that rendered it capable
+    of containing a fluid. Wátápé fibre was also used to sew together
+    different parts of the bark canoes. They also made fibre or thread
+    from willow bark. Their cooking vessels made of this wátápé not only
+    contained water, but water which was made to boil by putting a
+    succession of hot stones into it. It would, of course, be impossible
+    to place these vessels of fibre on a fire, and apparently none of the
+    Amerindians of temperate North America knew anything about pottery.
+    Those that were in some degree in touch with the Eskimo used kettles
+    or cauldrons of stone. Elsewhere the vessels for boiling water and
+    cooking were made of bark or fibre, and the water therein was made to
+    boil by the dropping in of red-hot stones. The arrows of these Slave
+    Indians were two and a half feet long, and the barb was made of bone,
+    horn, flint, or copper. Iron had been quite lately introduced,
+    indirectly obtained from the Russians in Alaska. Their spears were
+    pointed with barbed bone, and their daggers were made of horn or bone.
+    Their great club, the <i>pógamagán</i>, was made of a reindeer's antler.
+    Axes were manufactured out of a piece of brown or grey stone, six to
+    eight inches long and two inches thick. They kindled fire by striking
+    together a piece of iron pyrites and touchwood, and never travelled
+    without a small bag containing such materials.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Amerindians along the lower Mackenzie had heard vague and terrible
+    legends about the Russians, far, far away on the coast of Alaska; they
+    were represented as beings of gigantic stature, and adorned with
+    wings; which, however, they never employed in flying (possibly the
+    sails of their ships). They fed on large birds, and killed them with
+    the greatest ease. They also possessed the extraordinary power of
+    killing with their eyes (no doubt putting up a gun to aim), and they
+    travelled in canoes of very large dimensions.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0016"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc16.jpg" width="285" height="450"
+alt="Big-horned Sheep of Rocky Mountains">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>BIG-HORNED SHEEP OF ROCKY MOUNTAINS</h5>
+<p>
+    "I engaged one of these Indians," writes Mackenzie, "by a bribe of
+    some beads, to describe the surrounding country upon the sand. This
+    singular map he immediately undertook to delineate, and accordingly
+    traced out a very long point of land between the rivers ... which he
+    represented as running into the great lake, at the extremity of which
+    he had been told by Indians of other nations there was a white man's
+    fort." The same people described plainly the Yukon River westward of
+    the mountains, and told Mackenzie it was a far greater stream than the
+    one he was exploring. This was the first "hint" of the existence of
+    the great Alaskan river which was ever recorded. They also spoke to
+    Mackenzie of "small white buffaloes" (?the mountain goat), which they
+    found in the mountains west of the Mackenzie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Whenever and wherever Mackenzie's party met these northernmost tribes
+    of Athapascan Indians they were always ready to dance in between short
+    spells of talking. This dancing and jumping was their only amusement,
+    and in it old and young, male and female, went to such exertions that
+    their strength was exhausted. As they jumped up and down they imitated
+    the various noises produced by the reindeer, the bear, and the wolf.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In descending the Mackenzie River, and again on the return journey
+    upstream, Mackenzie notices the abundance of berries on the banks of
+    the river, especially the kind which was called "pears" by the French
+    Canadians. These were of a purple hue, rather bigger than a pea, and
+    of a luscious taste. There were also gooseberries and a few
+    strawberries. Quantities of berries were collected and dried, but
+    while on the lower Mackenzie the expedition fed mainly on fat geese.
+    On the beach of the great river they found an abundance of a sweet
+    fragrant root which Mackenzie calls "liquorice".
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mackenzie seemed to think that along the lower Mackenzie River, near
+    the sea, there were not only reindeer, bears, wolverines, martens,
+    foxes, and hares, but a species of white buffalo or white musk ox,
+    which may have been the mountain goat above referred to. He noted, in
+    the cliffs or banks of the lower Mackenzie, pieces of "petroleum"
+    which bore a resemblance to yellow wax but was more friable. His
+    Indian guide informed him that rocks of a similar kind were scattered
+    about the country at the back of the Slave Lake, near where the
+    Chipewayans collected copper. If so, there may be a great oilfield yet
+    to be discovered in Arctic Canada.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the river coming out of the Bear Lake Mackenzie discovered coal;
+    the whole beach was strewn with it. He was attracted towards it by
+    seeing smoke and noticing a strong sulphurous smell. The whole bank of
+    the river was on fire for a considerable distance, and he thought this
+    was due to the natives having camped there and set fire to the coal in
+    the bank from their hearths. But subsequent travellers have also found
+    this lignite coal burning to waste, and imagine that, being full of
+    gas, it catches fire spontaneously if any landslip or other accident
+    exposes it to moist air. In 1906 it was still burning!
+</p>
+<p>
+    According to Mackenzie, the ground in the regions about the lower
+    reaches of the Mackenzie River is always frozen at least five inches
+    down from the surface, yet he found small spruce trees growing in
+    patches near the delta of this river, besides pale-yellow raspberries
+    of an agreeable flavour, and a great variety of other plants and
+    herbs.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As the expedition drew near to the estuary of the great Mackenzie
+    River a range of lofty snowy mountains rose into sight on the west.
+    These mountains were said by the natives to swarm with large
+    bears&mdash;probably of the huge chocolate-coloured Alaska type; and again
+    a mention was made of "small white buffaloes", which were in all
+    probability the large white mountain goat (<i>Oreamnus</i>). The
+    Amerindians along the river greatly magnified the dangers, predicting
+    impassable rapids between the confluence of the Great Bear River and
+    the sea. But these stories were greatly exaggerated. Every now and
+    then the river would narrow and flow between white precipitous
+    limestone walls of rock, but there was no obstacle to navigation,
+    though it was very deep and the current fast.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The travellers now began to get within touch of the Eskimo and to hear
+    of their occasional raids up the river from the sea. They were said to
+    use slings, from which they flung stones with such dexterity as to
+    prove formidable in their fights with the Amerindians, who regarded
+    them with great respect, the more so because of their intercourse with
+    the mysterious white people (Russians) from whom they obtained iron.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mackenzie just managed to reach within sight of the sea, beyond the
+    delta of the river, his most northern point being about 69° 14" north
+    latitude. Hence he gazed out northwards over a vast expanse of
+    piled-up ice in which several small islands were embedded. In the
+    spaces of open water whales were visible (the small white whale,
+    <i>Beluga</i>). The water in between the islands was affected by the tide.
+    The travellers had, in fact, reached the Arctic ocean. But, owing to
+    the fickleness of their guides, and the danger of being detained by
+    some obstacle in these northern latitudes without proper supplies for
+    the winter, Mackenzie was afraid to stay for further investigations,
+    and on July 16, 1789, turned his back on the sea and commenced his
+    return journey up the stream of the great river which was henceforth
+    to bear his name.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The strength of the current made the homeward travel much more
+    lengthy and tedious. The Indians of the party were troublesome, and
+    the principal guide, English Chief, was sulky and disobedient. This
+    man had insisted on being accompanied by two of his wives, of whom he
+    was so morbidly jealous that he could scarcely bring himself to leave
+    them for an hour in order to go hunting or to prospect the country;
+    consequently he did little or nothing in the killing of game, and this
+    kept the expedition on very small rations. Mackenzie got wroth with
+    him, and so gave him a sound rating. This irritated English Chief to a
+    high degree, and after a long and vehement harangue he burst into
+    tears and loud and bitter lamentations. Thereat his friends and wives
+    commenced crying and wailing vociferously, though they declared that
+    their tears were shed, not for any trouble between the white man and
+    English Chief, but because they suddenly recollected all the friends
+    and relations they had lost within the last few years! "I did not
+    interrupt their grief for two hours, but as I could not well do
+    without them, I was at length obliged to sooth it and induce the chief
+    to change his resolution (to leave me), which he did with great
+    apparent reluctance."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Later on English Chief told Mackenzie that he feared he might have to
+    go to war, because it was a custom amongst the Athapaskan chiefs to
+    make war after they had given way to the disgrace attached to such a
+    feminine weakness as shedding tears. Therefore he would undertake a
+    warlike expedition in the following spring, but in the meantime he
+    would continue with Mackenzie as long as he wanted him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mackenzie, rejoining Le Roux at the Slave Lake, safely reached his
+    station at Fort Chipewayan on September 12, 1789, just as the approach
+    of winter was making travel in these northern regions dangerous to
+    those who relied on unfrozen water as a means of transit.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mackenzie seems to have been a little disappointed with the results
+    of his northward journey; perhaps he had thought that the outlet of
+    Slave Lake and the Mackenzie River would be into the Pacific, the <i>Mer
+    de l'Ouest</i> of his Canadian <i>voyageurs</i>. Yet he must have realized
+    that he had discovered something very wonderful after all: the
+    beginning of Alaska, the approach to a region which, though lying
+    within the Arctic circle, has climatic conditions permitting the
+    existence of trees, abundant vegetation, and large, strange beasts,
+    and which, moreover, is highly mineralized. His work in this
+    direction, however (and that of Hearne), was to be completed in the
+    next century by SIR JOHN FRANKLIN, SIR GEORGE BACK, SIR JOHN
+    RICHARDSON, and SIR JOHN ROSS&mdash;all knighthoods earned by magnificent
+    services in geographical exploration&mdash;and by THOMAS SIMPSON, Dr. John
+    Rae,<a name="11-3"></a><a href="#note-11-3"><small>[3]</small></a> WARREN DEASE, JOHN M'LEOD, ROBERT CAMPBELL, and other servants
+    of the Hudson's Bay Company.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In October, 1792, Mackenzie had determined to make a great attempt to
+    reach the Pacific Ocean. By this time he and his colleagues had
+    explored the Peace River (the main tributary of Slave Lake), and had
+    realized that they could travel up it into the heart of the Rocky
+    Mountains. He wintered and traded at a place which he called "New
+    Establishment", on the banks of the Peace River, near the foothills of
+    the Rocky Mountains. He left this station on May 9, 1793, accompanied
+    by ALEXANDER MACKAY,<a name="11-4"></a><a href="#note-11-4"><small>[4]</small></a> six French Canadians, and two Indian guides.
+    They travelled up the Peace River in a twenty-five-foot canoe, and at
+    first passed through scenery the most beautiful Mackenzie had ever
+    beheld. He describes it as follows:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The ground rises at intervals to a considerable height, and
+    stretching inwards to a considerable distance: at every interval or
+    pause in the rise, there is a very gently ascending space or lawn,
+    which is alternate with abrupt precipices to the summit of the whole,
+    or at least as far as the eye could distinguish. This magnificent
+    theatre of nature has all the decorations which the trees and animals
+    of the country can afford it: groves of poplars in every shape vary
+    the scene; and their intervals are enlivened with vast herds of elks
+    and buffaloes: the former choosing the steeps and uplands and the
+    latter preferring the plains. At this time the buffaloes were attended
+    with their young ones, who were striking about them; and it appeared
+    that the elks would soon exhibit the same enlivening circumstance. The
+    whole country displayed an exuberant verdure; the trees that bear a
+    blossom were advancing fast to that delightful appearance, and the
+    velvet rind of their branches reflecting the oblique rays of a rising
+    or setting sun, added a splendid gaiety to the scene which no
+    expressions of mine are qualified to describe."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Of course, as they neared the Rocky Mountains the navigation of the
+    Peace River became more and more difficult. At last they left the
+    river to find their way across the mountains till they should reach
+    the headwaters of a stream flowing towards the Pacific Ocean.
+    Sometimes they only accomplished three miles a day, having to carry
+    all their goods and their canoe. The mountainous country was covered
+    with splendid forests of spruce, pine, cypress, poplar, birch, willow,
+    and many other kinds of trees, with an undergrowth of gooseberries,
+    currants, and briar roses. The travellers generally followed paths
+    made by the elk,<a name="11-5"></a><a href="#note-11-5"><small>[5]</small></a> just as in the dense forests of Africa the way
+    sometimes is cleared for human travellers by the elephant. Every now
+    and again they resumed their journey on the river between the falls
+    and cascades. The mountains seemed to be a solid mass of limestone, in
+    some places without any covering of foliage.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In no part of the north-west", writes Mackenzie, "did I see so much
+    beaver work" (along the eastern branch of the Peace River). In some
+    places the beavers had cut down acres of large poplars, and were
+    busily at work on their labours of dam-making during the night,
+    between the setting and the rising sun.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Gnats and mosquitoes came with the intense heat of June to make life
+    almost unbearable. As they got close to the Rocky Mountains they
+    encountered Amerindians who had never seen a white man before, and who
+    at first received them with demonstrations of great hostility and
+    fright. But owing to the diplomatic skill of Mackenzie they gradually
+    yielded to a more friendly attitude, and here he decided to camp until
+    the natives had become familiarized with him and his party, and could
+    give them information as to his route. But they could only tell that,
+    away to the west beyond the mountains, a month's travel, there was a
+    vast "lake of stinking water", to which came, for purposes of trade,
+    other white men with vessels as big as islands.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These Rocky Mountain Indians made their canoes from spruce bark<a name="11-6"></a><a href="#note-11-6"><small>[6]</small></a> in
+    the following manner: The bark is taken off the spruce fir to the
+    whole length of the intended canoe, only about eighteen feet, and is
+    sewed with <i>wátápé</i> at both ends. Two laths are then laid across the
+    end of the gunwale. In these are fixed the bars, and against them the
+    ribs or timbers, that are cut to the length to which the bark can be
+    stretched; and to give additional strength, strips of wood are laid
+    between them. To make the whole water-tight, gum is abundantly
+    employed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Obtaining a guide from these people, Mackenzie continued his journey
+    along the Parsnip, or southern branch of the upper Peace River,
+    partly by water, partly by land till he reached its source,<a name="11-7"></a><a href="#note-11-7"><small>[7]</small></a> a lake,
+    on the banks of which he saw innumerable swans, geese, and ducks. Wild
+    parsnips grew here in abundance, and were a grateful addition to the
+    diet of the travellers. As to birds, they not only saw blue jays and
+    yellow birds, but the first humming bird which Mackenzie had ever
+    beheld in the north-west.<a name="11-8"></a><a href="#note-11-8"><small>[8]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    From this tiny lake he made his way over lofty mountains to another
+    lake at no great distance, and from this a small stream called the Bad
+    River flowed southwards to join a still bigger stream, which Mackenzie
+    thought might prove to be one of the branches of the mighty Columbia
+    River that flows out into the Pacific through the State of Oregon. It
+    really was the Fraser River, and of the upper waters of the Fraser
+    Mackenzie was the discoverer.<a name="11-9"></a><a href="#note-11-9"><small>[9]</small></a>
+</p>
+<a name="image-0017"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc17.jpg" width="268" height="425"
+alt="The Upper Waters of the Fraser River">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>THE UPPER WATERS OF THE FRASER RIVER</h5>
+<p>
+    Their experiences down the little mountain stream which was to take
+    them into the Fraser nearly ended in complete disaster. "The violence
+    of the current being so great as to drive the canoe sideways down the
+    river, and break her by the first bar, I instantly jumped into the
+    water and the men followed my example; but before we could set her
+    straight, or stop her, we came to deeper water, so that we were
+    obliged to re-embark with the utmost precipitation.... We had hardly
+    regained our situations when we drove against a rock which shattered
+    the stern of the canoe in such a manner, that it held only by the
+    gunwales, so that the steersman could no longer keep his place. The
+    violence of this stroke drove us to the opposite side of the river,
+    which is but narrow, when the bow met with the same fate as the
+    stern.... In a few moments, we came across a cascade which broke
+    several large holes in the bottom of the canoe, and started all the
+    bars.... The wreck becoming flat on the water, we all jumped out ...
+    and held fast to the wreck; to which fortunate resolution we owed our
+    safety, as we should otherwise have been dashed against the rocks by
+    the force of the water, or driven over the cascades.... At length we
+    most fortunately arrived in shallow water, and at a small eddy, where
+    we were enabled to make a stand, from the weight of the canoe resting
+    on the stones, rather than from any exertions of our exhausted
+    strength.... The Indians, when they saw our deplorable situation,
+    instead of making the least effort to help us, sat down and gave vent
+    to their tears."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nobody, however, had been killed, though much of the luggage was lost,
+    and what remained had to be spread out to dry. Many of Mackenzie's
+    people, however, when they took stock of their misfortunes, were
+    rather pleased than otherwise, as they thought the disaster would stop
+    him from any further attempt to reach the Western Sea. He wisely
+    listened to their observations without replying, till their panic was
+    dispelled, and they had got themselves warm and comfortable with a
+    hearty meal and a glass of rum; though a little later only by their
+    indifferent carelessness they nearly exploded the whole of the
+    expedition's stock of gunpowder.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Fortunately the weather was fine. Mackenzie and his fellow
+    countryman, Mackay, allowed nothing to dismay them or damp their
+    spirits. Bark was obtained from the forest, the canoe was repaired,
+    and they heard from their guide that this violent little stream
+    would before long join a great and much smoother river. But they
+    were tormented with sandflies and mosquitoes, and a day or two
+    afterwards the guide bolted, while the expedition had to cross
+    morasses in which they were nearly engulfed, and the water journey
+    was constantly obstructed by driftwood. Nevertheless, at last they
+    had "the inexpressible satisfaction of finding themselves on the
+    bank of a navigable river on the western side of the first great
+    range of mountains". Here they re-embarked, and were cheerful in
+    spite of heavy rain.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As they paddled down this great stream, more than two hundred yards
+    wide, snow-capped mountains rose immediately above the river. The
+    current was strong, but perfectly safe. Flocks of ducks, entirely
+    white, except the bill and a part of the wing, rose before them. Smoke
+    ascending in columns from many parts of the woods showed that the
+    country was well inhabited, and the air was fragrant with the strong
+    odour of the gum of cypress and spruce fir.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then came a series of cascades and falls and a most arduous portage
+    of the heavy canoe. These labours were somewhat lightened by the
+    discovery of quantities of wild onions growing on the banks; but
+    these, when mixed with the pemmican, on which the party was
+    subsisting, stimulated their appetites to an inconvenient degree,
+    seeing that they were on short commons. Meeting with strange Indians
+    they found no one to interpret, and had to use signs. But on the banks
+    of the Fraser they were lucky enough to find the "real red deer", the
+    great wapiti stag, which is absent from the far north-west, beyond the
+    region of the Saskatchewan. The canoe was loaded with venison. The
+    banks of the Fraser River sank to a moderate height and were covered
+    with poplars and cypresses, birch trees, junipers, alders, and
+    willows. The deserted house or lodge of some Amerindian tribe was
+    visited on the banks. It was a finer structure than anything that
+    Mackenzie had seen since he left Fort Michili-Makinak in upper
+    Canada. It had been constructed for three families. There were three
+    fireplaces and three beds and a kind of larder for the purpose of
+    keeping fish. The whole "lodge" was twenty feet long by three wide,
+    and had three doors. The walls were formed of straight spruce timbers
+    with some skill of carpentry. The roof was covered with bark, and
+    large rods were fixed across the upper part of the building, where
+    fish might hang and dry.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As they continued to descend the Fraser River, with here and there a
+    rapid which nearly swamped the canoe, and lofty cliffs of red and
+    white clay like the ruins of ancient castles (stopping on their way to
+    bury supplies of pemmican against their return, and to light a fire on
+    the top of the burial place so as to mislead bears or other animals
+    that might dig it up), they were more or less compelled to seek
+    intercourse with the new tribes of Amerindians, whose presence on the
+    river banks was obvious. As usual, Mackenzie had to exercise great
+    bravery, tact, and guile to get into peaceful conversation with these
+    half-frightened, half-angry people. The peacemaking generally
+    concluded with the distribution of trinkets amongst the men and women,
+    and presents of sugar to the children. Talking with these folk,
+    however, through such interpreters as there were amongst the Indians
+    of his crew, he learnt that lower down on the Fraser River there was a
+    peculiarly fierce, malignant race, living in vast caves or
+    subterranean dwellings, who would certainly massacre the Europeans if
+    they attempted to pass through their country on their way to the sea.
+    He therefore stopped and set some of his men to work to make a new
+    canoe. He noticed, by the by, that these Amerindians of the Fraser had
+    small pointed canoes, "made after the fashion of the Eskimo".
+</p>
+<p>
+    Renewing their voyage, they reached a house the roof of which just
+    appeared above the ground. It was deserted by its inhabitants, who had
+    been alarmed at the approach of the white men, but in the
+    neighbourhood appeared gesticulating warriors with bows and arrows.
+    Yet these people of underground houses turned out to be friendly and
+    very ready to give information, partly because they were in
+    communication with the Amerindian tribes to the east of the Rocky
+    Mountains. From the elderly men of this tribe Mackenzie ascertained
+    that the Fraser River flowed south by east, was often obstructed by
+    rapids, and, though it would finally bring them to a salt lake or
+    inlet, and then to the sea, it would cause them to travel for a great
+    distance to the south. He noticed the complete difference in the
+    language of these Atna or Carrier Indians<a name="11-10"></a><a href="#note-11-10"><small>[10]</small></a> and that of the Nagailer
+    or Chin Indians of the Athapaskan group on the eastern side of the
+    Rocky Mountains.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He, however, learnt from these Atna Indians that although the Fraser
+    was out of the question as a quick route to the sea, if he retraced
+    his journey a little up this river he would find another stream
+    entering it from the west, and along this they could travel upstream.
+    And then the route to the water "which was unfit to drink", and the
+    region to which came people with large ships, would be of no great
+    length. Accordingly, after having had a tree engraved with Mackenzie's
+    name and the date, by the bank of the Fraser River, the expedition
+    returned to the subterranean house which they had seen the day before.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We were in our canoe by four this morning, and passed by the Indian
+    hut, which appeared in a state of perfect tranquillity. We soon came
+    in sight of the point where we first saw the natives, and at eight
+    were much surprised and disappointed at seeing Mr. Mackay and our two
+    Indians coming alone from the ruins of a house that had been partly
+    carried away by the ice and water, at a short distance below the place
+    where we had appointed to meet. Nor was our surprise and apprehension
+    diminished by the alarm which was painted in their countenances....
+    They informed me they had taken refuge in that place, with the
+    determination to sell their lives ... as dear as possible. In a very
+    short time after we had separated, they met a party of the Indians,
+    whom we had known at this place, and were probably those whom we had
+    seen landing from their canoe. These Indians appeared to be in a state
+    of extreme rage, and had their bows bent, with their arrows across
+    them. The guide stopped to ask them some questions, which our people
+    did not understand, and then set off with his utmost speed. Mr.
+    Mackay, however, followed, and did not leave him till they were both
+    exhausted with running.... The guide then said that some treacherous
+    design was meditated against them, ... and conducted them through very
+    bad ways as fast as they could run. When he was desired to slacken his
+    pace, he answered that they might follow him in any manner they
+    pleased, but that he was impatient to get to his family, in order to
+    prepare shoes and other necessaries for his journey. They did not,
+    however, think it prudent to quit him, and he would not stop till ten
+    at night. On passing a track that was but lately made, they began to
+    be seriously alarmed, and on enquiring of the guide where they were,
+    he pretended not to understand. Then they all laid down, exhausted
+    with fatigue, and without any kind of covering; they were cold, wet,
+    and hungry, but dared not light a fire, from the apprehension of an
+    enemy. This comfortless spot they left at the dawn of day, and, on
+    their arrival at the lodges, found them deserted; the property of the
+    Indians being scattered about, as if abandoned for ever. The guide
+    then made two or three trips into the woods, calling aloud, and
+    bellowing like a madman. At length he set off in the same direction as
+    they had come, and had not since appeared. To heighten their misery,
+    as they did not find us at the place appointed, they concluded that
+    we were all destroyed, and had already formed their plan to take to
+    the woods, and cross in as direct a line as they could proceed, to the
+    waters of the Peace River, a scheme which could only be suggested by
+    despair. They intended to have waited for us till noon, and if we did
+    not appear by that time, to have entered without further delay on
+    their desperate expedition."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Making preparations for warfare, if necessary, yet neglecting no
+    chance of re-entering into friendly relations with the natives,
+    Mackenzie set to work to repair the wretched canoe, which was
+    constantly having holes knocked through her. He dealt tactfully with
+    the almost open mutiny of his French Canadians and Indians. At last
+    everyone settled down to the making of a new canoe, on an island in
+    the river where there were plenty of spruce firs to provide the
+    necessary bark. Even here they were plagued with thunderstorms.
+    Nevertheless, the men set to work, and as they worked Mackenzie
+    addressed them with simple fervour, saying he knew of their plans to
+    desert him, but, come what might, <i>he</i> was resolved to travel on to
+    the westwards until he reached the waters of the Pacific.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This calmed down the mutineers, and, to the great relief of all
+    concerned, that very afternoon the runaway guide of the Atna people
+    returned and apologized for having deserted them. He then offered once
+    again to conduct them to the seacoast. Nevertheless, again he fled,
+    and Mackenzie was obliged to guide the expedition, according to the
+    information he had gathered from the natives, up the small western
+    affluent of the upper Fraser, which he called the West Road River (now
+    known as the Blackwater).
+</p>
+<p>
+    His perseverance was rewarded, for after proceeding up this river for
+    some distance he saw two canoes coming towards them containing the
+    runaway guide and six of his relations. The guide was dressed in a
+    painted beaver robe, and looked so splendid that they scarcely knew
+    him again. Once more he declared it really was his intention not to
+    disappoint them. Soon afterwards they landed, buried their property
+    and provisions, and placed their canoe on a stage, shaded by a
+    covering of small trees and branches from the sun. Each man carried on
+    his back four bags and a half of pemmican, of an average weight of
+    eighty-five pounds, or other loads (instruments, goods for presents,
+    ammunition, &amp;c.) of ninety pounds in weight. Moreover, each of the
+    Canadians carried a gun. The Amerindian servants of the expedition
+    were only asked to carry loads of forty-five pounds in weight.
+    Mackenzie's pack, and that of his companion, Mackay, amounted to about
+    seventy pounds. Loaded like this they had to scramble up the wooded
+    mountains, first soaked in perspiration from the heat and then
+    drenched with heavy rain. Nevertheless they walked for about thirteen
+    miles the first day. Now they began to meet natives who were closely
+    in touch with the seacoast, which lay to the west at a distance of
+    about six days' journey.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We had no sooner laid ourselves down to rest last night than the
+    natives began to sing, in a manner very different from what I had been
+    accustomed to hear among savages. It was not accompanied either with
+    dancing, drum, or rattle; but consisted of soft, plaintive tones, and
+    a modulation that was rather agreeable: it had somewhat the air of
+    church music." The country through which they travelled abounded in
+    beavers. It was the month of July, however, and they were harassed
+    with thunderstorms, some of which were followed by hailstones as big
+    as musket balls. After one such storm the ground was whitened for two
+    miles with these balls of ice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In order not to be deserted by all of their new guides, Mackenzie was
+    obliged to insist on one of them sharing his hut. This young
+    Amerindian was dressed in beaver garments which were a nest of
+    vermin. His hair was greased with fish oil, and his body smeared with
+    red earth, so that at first Mackenzie thought he would never be able
+    to sleep; but such was his fatigue that he passed a night of profound
+    repose, and found the guide still there in the morning. In this region
+    he notes that the balsam fir of Canada was abundant, the tree which
+    provided the gum that cured Cartier's expedition of scurvy. Some of
+    the natives with whom they now came into contact were remarkable for
+    their grey eyes, a feature often observed amongst the Amerindians of
+    the North Pacific coast.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "On observing some people before us, our guides hastened to meet them,
+    and, on their approach, one of them stepped forward with an axe in his
+    hand. This party consisted only of a man, two women, and the same
+    number of children. The eldest of the women, who probably was the
+    man's mother, was engaged, when we joined them, in clearing a circular
+    spot, of about five feet in diameter, of the weeds that infested it;
+    nor did our arrival interrupt her employment, which was sacred to the
+    memory of the dead. The spot to which her pious care was devoted
+    contained the grave of a husband and a son, and whenever she passed
+    this way she always stopped to pay this tribute of affection."
+</p>
+<p>
+    By this time, exposure to wind and sun, the attacks of mosquitoes and
+    flies, the difficulty of washing or of changing their clothes, had
+    made all the Europeans of the party as dark in skin colour as the
+    Amerindians, so that such natives as they met who had the courage to
+    examine them, did so with the intention of discovering whether they
+    had any white skin left. The natives whom they now encountered
+    (belonging to the maritime tribes) were comely in appearance, and far
+    more cleanly than the tribes of the north-west. As already mentioned,
+    they had grey eyes, sometimes tinged with hazel. Their stature was
+    noble, one man measuring at least six feet four inches. They were
+    clothed in leather, and their hair was nicely combed and dressed with
+    beads. One of a travelling band of these Indians, finding that
+    Mackenzie's party was on short rations and very hungry, offered to
+    boil them a kettle of fish roes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He took the roes out of a bag, and having bruised them between two
+    stones, put them in water to soak. His wife then took an handful of
+    dry grass in her hand, with which she squeezed them through her
+    fingers. In the meantime her husband was employed in gathering wood to
+    make a fire, for the purpose of heating stones. When she had finished
+    her operation, she filled a <i>wátápé</i> kettle nearly full of water, and
+    poured the roes into it. When the stones were sufficiently heated,
+    some of them were put into the kettle, and others were thrown in from
+    time to time, till the water was in a state of boiling. The woman also
+    continued stirring the contents of the kettle, till they were brought
+    to a thick consistency; the stones were then taken out, and the whole
+    was seasoned with about a pint of strong rancid oil. The smell of this
+    curious dish was sufficient to sicken me without tasting it, but the
+    hunger of my people surmounted the nauseous meal. When unadulterated
+    by the stinking oil these boiled roes are not unpalatable food."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Farther on their journey their hunger was alleviated by wild parsnips,
+    also roots which appeared, when pulled up, like a bunch of white peas,
+    with the colour and taste of a potato. On their way they were obliged
+    to cross snow mountains, where the snow was so compact that their feet
+    hardly made any perceptible impression. "Before us appeared a
+    stupendous mountain, whose snow-clad summit was lost in the clouds."
+    These mountains, according to the Indians, abounded in white
+    goats.<a name="11-11"></a><a href="#note-11-11"><small>[11]</small></a> Emerging from the mountains on to the lower ground, sloping
+    towards the sea, at nightfall they came upon a native village in the
+    thickness of the woods. Desperate with his fatigue, and risking any
+    danger to obtain rest, Mackenzie walked straight into one of the
+    houses, where people were busily employed in cooking fish, threw down
+    his burden, shook hands with the people, and sat down.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They received me without the least appearance of surprise, but soon
+    made signs for me to go up to the large house, which was erected, on
+    upright posts, at some distance from the ground. A broad piece of
+    timber with steps cut in it led to the scaffolding even with the
+    floor, and by this curious kind of ladder I entered the house at one
+    end; and having passed three fires, at equal distances in the middle
+    of the building, I was received by several people, sitting upon a very
+    wide board, at the upper end of it. I shook hands with them, and
+    seated myself beside a man, the dignity of whose countenance induced
+    me to give him that preference...."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Later on, this man, seeing Mackenzie's people arriving tired and
+    hungry, rose and fetched from behind a plank, four feet wide, a
+    quantity of roasted salmon. A whole salmon was offered to Mackenzie,
+    and another to Mackay; half a salmon was given to each of the French
+    Canadian <i>voyageurs</i>. Their host further invited them to sleep in the
+    house, but, Mackenzie thinking it preferable to camp outside, a fire
+    was lit to warm the weary travellers, and each was lent a thick board
+    on which to sleep, so that he might not lie on the bare ground.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We had not long been seated round the fire when we received a dish of
+    salmon roes, pounded fine and beat up with water so as to have the
+    appearance of a cream. Nor was it without some kind of seasoning that
+    gave it a bitter taste. Another dish soon followed, the principal
+    article of which was also salmon roes, with a large proportion of
+    gooseberries, and an herb that appeared to be sorrel. Its acidity
+    rendered it more agreeable to my taste than the former preparation.
+    Having been regaled with these delicacies, for such they were
+    considered by that hospitable spirit which provided them, we laid
+    ourselves down to rest with no other canopy than the sky. But I never
+    enjoyed a more sound and refreshing rest, though I had a board for my
+    bed and a billet for my pillow."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The gooseberries, wortleberries, and raspberries which Mackenzie ate
+    at this hospitable village were the finest he ever saw or tasted of
+    their respective kinds. They were generally eaten together with the
+    dry roes of salmon. Salmon was the staple food of the country, and
+    very abundant in the river which Mackenzie was following down to the
+    Pacific shore. The fish were usually caught in weirs, and also by
+    dipping nets. The natives were so superstitious about the salmon, that
+    they believed they would give offence to the spirits if they ate any
+    other animal food, especially meat. They would scarcely allow
+    Mackenzie to carry venison in his canoe, in case the salmon should
+    smell it and abandon the river.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After this welcome rest they embarked in two canoes on the stream
+    which Mackenzie calls the Salmon River. The stream was rapid, and they
+    proceeded at a great rate, stopping every now and then to get out and
+    walk round salmon weirs. Nevertheless, although other Indians ran
+    before them announcing their approach towards a village, the noise of
+    which was apparent in the distance, they were received at this place
+    in a very hostile way, the men rapidly arming themselves with bows and
+    arrows, spears, and axes. But Mackenzie walked on alone to greet them,
+    and shook hands with the nearest man. Thereupon an elderly man broke
+    from the crowd and took Mackenzie in his arms. Another then came and
+    paid him the same compliment. One man to whom he presented his hand
+    broke the string of a handsome robe of sea-otter skin and threw it
+    over Mackenzie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The chief made signs to the white men to follow him to his house,
+    which Mackenzie found to be of larger dimensions and better materials
+    than any he had yet seen. "Very clean mats" were spread in this house
+    for the chief, his counsellors, and the two white men. A small roasted
+    salmon was then placed before each person.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When we had satisfied ourselves with the fish, one of the people who
+    came with us from the last village approached, with a kind of ladle in
+    one hand, containing oil, and in the other something that resembled
+    the inner rind of the cocoanut, but of a lighter colour. This he
+    dipped in the oil, and, having eaten it, indicated by his gestures how
+    palatable he thought it. He then presented me with a small piece of
+    it, which I chose to taste in its dry state, though the oil was free
+    from any unpleasant smell. A square cake of this was next produced,
+    when a man took it to the water near the house, and having thoroughly
+    soaked it, he returned, and, after he had pulled it to pieces like
+    oakum, put it into a well-made trough, about three feet long, nine
+    inches wide, and five deep. He then plentifully sprinkled it with
+    salmon oil, and manifested by his own example that we were to eat of
+    it. I just tasted it, and found the oil perfectly sweet, without which
+    the other ingredient would have been very insipid. The chief partook
+    of it with great avidity after it had received an additional quantity
+    of oil. This dish is considered by these people as a great delicacy;
+    and on examination, I discovered it to consist of the inner rind of
+    the hemlock pine tree, taken off early in summer, and put into a
+    frame, which shapes it into cakes of fifteen inches long, ten broad,
+    and half an inch thick; and in this form I should suppose it may be
+    preserved for a great length of time. This discovery satisfied me
+    respecting the many hemlock trees which I had observed stripped of
+    their bark."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mackenzie found some of the older men here with long beards, and to
+    one of them he presented a pair of scissors for clipping his beard.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After describing some remarkable oblong "tables" (as they might be
+    called) of cedar wood&mdash;twenty feet long by eight feet broad&mdash;made of
+    thick cedar boards joined together with the utmost neatness, and
+    painted with hieroglyphics and the figures of animals; and his visit
+    to a kind of temple in the village, into the architecture of which
+    strangely carved and painted figures were interwoven; Mackenzie
+    goes on to relate an episode giving one a very vivid idea of the
+    helplessness of "native" medicine in many diseases.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He was taken to see a son of the chief, who was suffering from a
+    terrible ulcer in the small of his back, round which the flesh was
+    gangrened, one of his knees being afflicted in the same way. The poor
+    fellow was reduced to a skeleton, and apparently drawing very near to
+    death.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I found the native physicians busy in practising their skill and art
+    on the patient. They blew on him, and then whistled; at times they
+    pressed their extended fingers with all their strength on his stomach;
+    they also put their forefingers doubled into his mouth, and spouted
+    water from their own with great violence into his face. To support
+    these operations the wretched sufferer was held up in a sitting
+    posture, and when they were concluded he was laid down and covered
+    with a new robe made of the skin of a lynx. I had observed that his
+    belly and breast were covered with scars, and I understood that they
+    were caused by a custom prevalent among them of applying pieces of
+    lighted touchwood to their flesh, in order to relieve pain or
+    demonstrate their courage. He was now placed on a broad plank, and
+    carried by six men into the woods, where I was invited to accompany
+    them. I could not conjecture what would be the end of this ceremony,
+    particularly as I saw one man carry fire, another an axe, and a third
+    dry wood. I was, indeed, disposed to suspect that, as it was their
+    custom to burn the dead, they intended to relieve the poor man from
+    his pain, and perform the last sad duty of surviving affection. When
+    they had advanced a short distance into the wood, they laid him upon a
+    clear spot, and kindled a fire against his back, when the physician
+    began to scarify the ulcer with a very blunt instrument, the cruel
+    pain of which operation the patient bore with incredible resolution.
+    The scene afflicted me, and I left it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The chief of this village had probably met Captain Cook about ten
+    years before. He had been down in a large canoe<a name="11-12"></a><a href="#note-11-12"><small>[12]</small></a> with forty of his
+    people to the seacoast, where he saw two large vessels.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Farther down the river the natives, instead of regaling them with
+    fish, placed before them a long, clean, and well-made trough full of
+    berries, most of them resembling blackberries, though white in colour,
+    and others similar to huckleberries. In this region the women were
+    employed in beating and preparing the inner rind of the juniper bark,
+    to which they gave the appearance of flax, and others were spinning
+    with a distaff; again, others were weaving robes of this fibrous
+    thread, intermixed with strips of sea-otter skin. The men were fishing
+    on the river with drag nets between two canoes, thus intercepting the
+    salmon coming up the river.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At last, on Saturday, the 20th of July, 1793, they emerged from the
+    Salmon River into an arm of the sea (probably near King Island). The
+    tide was out, and had <a name="p305"></a>left a large space covered with seaweed. The
+    surrounding hills were involved in fog.... The bay appeared to be some
+    three miles in breadth, and on the coast the travellers saw a great
+    number of sea otters.<a name="11-13"></a><a href="#note-11-13"><small>[13]</small></a> At two in the afternoon the swell was so
+    high, and the wind, which was against them, so boisterous, that they
+    could not proceed along the seacoast in their leaky canoe. A young
+    chief who had come with them as one of their guides, and who had been
+    allowed to leave when the seacoast was reached, returned bearing a
+    large porcupine on his back. He first cut the animal open and threw
+    its entrails into the sea, then singed the skin and boiled it in
+    separate pieces; nor did he go to rest till, with the assistance of
+    two others who happened to be awake, every morsel of it had been
+    devoured. This was fortunate, because their stock of provisions was
+    reduced to twenty pounds' weight of pemmican, sixteen pounds of rice,
+    and six pounds of flour amongst ten men, "in a leaky vessel, and on a
+    barbarous coast".
+</p>
+<p>
+    The rise and fall of the tide here was noted at fifteen feet in
+    height. Mr. Mackay collected a quantity of small mussels, which were
+    boiled and eaten by the two Scotchmen, but not by the Canadians, who
+    were quite unacquainted with sea shellfish.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Near Point Menzies, which had already been reached and named by
+    Captain VANCOUVER in the spring of 1793 on his great voyage of
+    discovery up the North American coast,<a name="11-14"></a><a href="#note-11-14"><small>[14]</small></a> Alexander Mackenzie met a
+    party of Amerindians, amongst whom was a man of insolent aspect, who,
+    by means of signs and exclamations, made him understand that he and
+    his friends had been fired at by a white man named Makuba (Vancouver),
+    and that another white man, called "Bensins", had struck him on the
+    back with the flat of his sword. This man more or less compelled
+    Mackenzie to accompany him in the direction of his village, and on the
+    way explained that "Makuba" had come there with his "big boat".
+    Indeed, Mackenzie's party perceived the remains of sheds or buildings
+    on the shore where Europeans had probably made a camp, and here they
+    established themselves, taking up a position of defence, because the
+    attitude of the natives was rather threatening.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At this camp there was a rock, and on this Alexander Mackenzie, mixing
+    up some vermilion or red clay in melted grease, inscribed in large
+    characters the following words: "Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by
+    land, the twenty-second of July, one thousand seven hundred and
+    ninety-three". He then shifted his camp to a place three miles to the
+    north-east, below a precipice from which issued streams of fine water
+    as cold as ice. And here he took careful observations with his
+    astronomical and surveying instruments, in order to fix his position.
+    Fortunately the day was one of bright sunshine. Otherwise, had there
+    been a long persistence of cloud, he might have been obliged to leave
+    the Pacific coast without being able to fix precisely the place where
+    he had reached the sea.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then he yielded to the passionate desire of his people to withdraw
+    inland from the possibly dangerous inhabitants of the coast, and
+    returned with them to the encampment where the porcupine had been
+    eaten. Here the guide made off into the woods. Mackenzie followed him,
+    and thus reached a village from which two men issued armed with
+    daggers and intending to attack him. While stopping to defend himself,
+    many other people assembled, and amongst them he recognized the
+    irritating person who incessantly repeated the names "Makuba" and
+    "Benzins". However, this threatened danger was narrowly averted, and
+    eventually they left the village with a supply of food; but also in a
+    state of considerable irritation with&mdash;fleas! For some of the houses
+    of these Pacific coast villages swarmed with fleas to such an extent
+    that Mackenzie and his men were obliged to take to the water to rid
+    themselves of these vermin, which swarmed also on the ground that was
+    bare of grass.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The return journey up the Salmon River was a series of bewildering
+    vicissitudes. Sometimes Mackenzie and his party were received in the
+    most threatening way by persons who had been warm friends on their
+    downward journey, then seemingly inevitable war was transformed into
+    peace, but guides deserted, or the Amerindians from across the Rocky
+    Mountains attempted to mutiny. However, they struggled through all
+    their difficulties, till at last they reached the place known as the
+    Friendly Village, and were here fortunately received with great
+    kindness, being once more entertained "with the most respectful
+    hospitality". "In short, the chief behaved to us with so much
+    attention and kindness that I did not withhold anything in my power to
+    give which might afford him satisfaction.... I presented him with two
+    yards of blue cloth, an axe, knives, and various other articles. He
+    gave me in return a large shell which resembled the under shell of a
+    Guernsey oyster, but was somewhat larger. Where they procure them I
+    could not discover, but they cut and polish them for bracelets,
+    ear-rings, and other personal ornaments...."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The women of this place were employed in boiling sorrel and different
+    kinds of berries in large square kettles made of cedar wood. This
+    pottage, when it had attained a certain consistency, they took out
+    with ladles, and poured it into frames about twelve inches square.
+    These were then exposed to the sun, until their contents became so
+    many dried cakes. This was their principal article of food, and
+    probably of traffic. These people had also made portable chests of
+    cedar, in which they packed these cakes, as well as their salmon, both
+    dried and roasted. The only flesh they ate in addition to the salmon
+    was that of the sea otter and the seal; except that one instance
+    already mentioned of the young Indian who feasted on the flesh of the
+    porcupine.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Their faces are round, with high cheekbones, and their complexion
+    between olive and copper. They have small grey eyes with a tinge of
+    red,... their hair is of a dark-brown colour." The men wore their hair
+    long, and either kept it well combed and hanging loose over the
+    shoulders, or plaited it and bedaubed it with brown earth so as to
+    make it quite impervious to the comb. Those who adopted this fashion
+    had to carry a bone bodkin about with them to ease the frequent
+    irritation which arose from the excessive abundance of vermin in their
+    hair.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The women, on the other hand, usually wore their hair short. Mackenzie
+    noticed that the infants had their heads enclosed with boards covered
+    with leather, to press the skull into the shape of a wedge. The women
+    wore a fringed apron, and over that a long robe made of skins or
+    leather, either loose or tied round the middle with a girdle. Over
+    these in wet weather was worn a cap in the shape of an inverted bowl
+    or dish. The men also wore this cap, and in cold weather used the
+    robe, but in warm weather went about in no clothing at all, except
+    that their feet were protected with shoes made of dressed elks' skins.
+    In wet weather, over their robe they wore a circular mat with an
+    opening in the middle sufficiently large to admit the head. This,
+    spreading over the shoulders, threw off the wet. As compared with the
+    Indians of the Rocky Mountains and the great plains, the men and boys
+    were very cleanly, being constantly in the water. The women, however,
+    were dirty.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the end of July, 1793, Mackenzie left what he calls the Friendly
+    Village, and prepared to return to the east across the Rocky
+    Mountains, having distributed to each man about twenty pounds weight
+    of smoked salmon, flour, and pemmican. The fatigue of ascending the
+    precipices of the mountains was past description. When they arrived at
+    a spot where water could be obtained, and a camp made, they were in
+    such an extremity of weariness they could hardly crawl about to gather
+    wood for the purpose of making a fire; but two hours afterwards the
+    Amerindians of their party arrived and came to their assistance. Then
+    when they were sitting round a blazing fire, and some of their fatigue
+    had lessened, they could sit and talk of past dangers, and indulge in
+    the delightful reflection that they were thus far advanced on their
+    homeward journey. "Nor was it possible to be in this situation without
+    contemplating the wonders of it. Such was the depth of the precipices
+    below, and the height of the mountains above, with the rude and wild
+    magnificence of the scenery around, that I shall not attempt to
+    describe such an astonishing and awful combination of objects.... Even
+    at this place, which is only, as it were, the first step towards
+    gaining the summit of the mountains, the climate was very sensibly
+    changed. The air that fanned the village which we left at noon, was
+    mild and cheering; the grass was verdant, and the wild fruits ripe
+    around it. But here the snow was not yet dissolved, the ground was
+    still bound by the frost, the herbage had scarce begun to spring, and
+    the crowberry bushes were just beginning to blossom."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Eventually they found their canoe, and the property which they had
+    left behind, in perfect safety. At this camp, where the canoe had been
+    left behind, many natives arrived both from the upper and lower parts
+    of the river, all of them dressed in beaver robes, which they were
+    ready enough to sell for large knives. It struck Alexander Mackenzie
+    as being very extraordinary that these people, who had left absolutely
+    untouched the property stored at this place&mdash;when anyone passing by
+    could have stolen it and never have been detected&mdash;should now be so
+    ready to pilfer articles and utensils from the camp. So many small
+    things had been picked up and taken away by them, when coming to sell
+    their beaver robes, that he was obliged to take some action. So,
+    before all these beaver-clad Amerindians had departed on their
+    westward journey, he told the rearguard that he had noticed the
+    thefts, and scarcely thought their relations who were guilty of
+    stealing realized the awful mischief that would result from this
+    dishonesty; that they were on their way now to the sea to procure
+    large quantities of salmon from the rivers, but the salmon, which was
+    absolutely necessary to their existence, came from the sea which
+    belonged to the white men, and it only needed a message from the white
+    men to the powers of nature to prevent the fish coming up from the sea
+    into the rivers; and if this word were spoken they and their children
+    might starve. He consequently advised them to hurry after their
+    friends, and see that all the stolen articles were sent back. This
+    plan succeeded. The stolen articles were restored, and then Mackenzie
+    purchased from these people several large salmon, and his party
+    enjoyed a delicious meal.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mackenzie declared that there were no bison to be found on the west
+    side of the Rocky Mountains<a name="11-15"></a><a href="#note-11-15"><small>[15]</small></a> (British Columbia), and no wolves.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Resuming their journey up the Fraser River, they passed through the
+    narrow gut between mountainous rocks, which on the outward journey had
+    been a passage of some risk. But now the state of the water was such
+    that, they got up without difficulty, and had more time to examine
+    these extraordinary rocks, which were as perpendicular as a wall, and
+    gave the traveller the idea of a succession of enormous Gothic
+    cathedrals. With little difficulty they transported their canoe across
+    the water parting to the Peace River.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As they began to glide down this stream, homeward bound, they noticed
+    at the entrance of a small tributary an object which proved to be four
+    beaver skins hung up to attract their attention. These were the skins
+    which had been given to Mackenzie as a present by a native as he
+    travelled westwards. Not wishing to add to his loads, he had left the
+    skins behind, saying he would call for them on his return. Mackenzie
+    imagined, therefore, that, being under the necessity of leaving the
+    river, this Indian had hung up the skins in the hope that they would
+    attract the attention of the travellers on their return. "To reward
+    his honesty, I left three times the value of the skins in trade goods
+    in their place." As the Peace River carried them away from the great
+    mountains, and the plains extended before their sight, they stopped to
+    repair the canoe and to get in supplies of food from the herds of game
+    that were visible. They began with a hearty meal of bison beef. "Every
+    fear of future want was removed." Soon afterwards they killed an elk,
+    the carcass of which weighed over two hundred and fifty pounds. "As we
+    had taken a very hearty meal at one o'clock, it might naturally be
+    supposed that we should not be very voracious at supper; nevertheless,
+    a kettleful of elk flesh was boiled and eaten, and that vessel
+    replenished with more meat and put on the fire. All that remained of
+    the bones, &amp;c, were placed after the Indian fashion round the fire to
+    roast, and at ten the next morning the whole was consumed by ten
+    persons and a large dog, who was allowed his share of the banquet. Nor
+    did any inconvenience result from what may be considered as an
+    inordinate indulgence."
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the 24th of August, 1793, Mackenzie was back again at Fort
+    Chipewayan, after an absence of eleven months, having been the first
+    white man to cross the broad continent of North America from the
+    Atlantic to the Pacific, north of Mexico.
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="note-11-1"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-1"><u>1</u></a> See Sir Alexander Mackenzie's <i>Travels</i>, p. 5.
+</p>
+<a name="note-11-2"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-2"><u>2</u></a> Peter Pond was a native of Connecticut, and in the
+    opinion of his trading associates rather a ruffian. He was strongly
+    suspected of having murdered an amiable Swiss fur trader named Wadin,
+    and at a later date he actually did kill his trading partner, Ross.
+</p>
+<a name="note-11-3"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-3"><u>3</u></a> See p. <a href="#p125">125</a>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-11-4"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-4"><u>4</u></a> Alexander Mackay long afterwards left the service of the
+    North-west Company, and was killed by savages on the Alaska coast,
+    near Nutka Sound.
+</p>
+<a name="note-11-5"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-5"><u>5</u></a> For the word "elk" Mackenzie uses "moose deer". "Elk" in
+    the Canadian Dominion is misapplied to the great Wapiti red deer.
+</p>
+<a name="note-11-6"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-6"><u>6</u></a> See p. <a href="#p281">281</a>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-11-7"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-7"><u>7</u></a> Mr. Burpee points out that this was really the
+    southernmost source of the mighty congeries of streams which flowed
+    northwards to form the Mackenzie River system. Having traced the
+    Mackenzie to the sea, its discoverer now stood four years afterwards
+    at its most remote source, 2420 miles from its mouth at which he had
+    seen the ice floes and the whales.
+</p>
+<a name="note-11-8"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-8"><u>8</u></a> Humming birds arrive annually in British Columbia between
+    April and May, and stay there till the autumn. They winter in the
+    warmer parts of California.
+</p>
+<a name="note-11-9"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-9"><u>9</u></a> The great surveyor and map maker, David Thompson, was the
+    first white man to reach the upper waters of the <i>Columbia</i> River. The
+    Fraser River was afterwards followed to its outlet in the Straits of
+    Georgia (opposite Vancouver Island) by Simon Fraser.
+</p>
+<a name="note-11-10"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-10"><u>10</u></a> Apparently these were of the Sikanni tribe, and only
+    another branch of the great Tinné (Athapaskan) stock.
+</p>
+<a name="note-11-11"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-11"><u>11</u></a> <i>Oreamnus</i>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-11-12"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-12"><u>12</u></a> Mackenzie thus describes one of the large sea-going
+    canoes of the coast natives: "This canoe was built of cedar,
+    forty-five feet long, four feet broad, and three and a half in depth.
+    It was painted black and decorated with white figures of different
+    kinds. The gunwale fore and aft was inlaid with the teeth of the sea
+    otter." He adds that "these coast tribes (north of Vancouver Island
+    and of Queen Charlotte Sound) had been in indirect contact with the
+    Spaniards since the middle of the sixteenth century, and with the
+    Russians from the middle of the eighteenth century. Therefore, from
+    these two directions they had learnt the use of metal, and had
+    obtained copper, brass, and iron. They may possibly have had copper
+    earlier still from the Northern Indians on the other side of the Rocky
+    Mountains; but brass and iron they could, of course, only have
+    obtained from Europeans. They had already become very deft at dealing
+    with these metals, and twisted the iron into collars which weighed
+    upwards of twelve pounds, also beating it into plates for their
+    daggers and knives."
+</p>
+<a name="note-11-13"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-13"><u>13</u></a> These <i>may</i> have been small seals, but the sea otter
+    (<i>Enhydris lutris</i>), now nearly extinct, was at one time found in
+    numbers along the north-west American coast, from the Aleutian Islands
+    and Alaska to Oregon. Owing to persecution it now leads an almost
+    entirely aquatic life, resting at times on the masses of floating
+    seaweed.
+</p>
+<a name="note-11-14"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-14"><u>14</u></a> GEORGE VANCOUVER (born about 1758, and probably
+    descended from Dutch or Flemish ancestors) was one of the great
+    pioneers of the British Empire. His name is commemorated in
+    Vancouver's Island, an important portion of British Columbia.
+    Vancouver entered the navy when only thirteen, sailed with Captain
+    Cook, and eventually was appointed to command a naval expedition sent
+    out in 1791 to survey and take over from the Spaniards the north-west
+    American coast north of Oregon. It is remarkable that he should only
+    have missed Mackenzie's arrival at Point Menzies by about two months.
+    With what amazed rejoicing would these two heroic explorers have
+    greeted one another had they met on this remote point of the Pacific
+    coast, the one coming overland (so to speak) from Quebec and the
+    Atlantic, and the other all the way by sea from Falmouth via the Cape
+    of Good Hope, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, and Hawaii.
+</p>
+<a name="note-11-15"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-15"><u>15</u></a> He was not quite accurate: there were a few "wood" bison
+    in the north and east of British Columbia.
+</p>
+<p class="return">[<a href="#contents">TABLE OF CONTENTS</a>]
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="2HCH0012"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XII
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    Mackenzie's Successors
+</h3>
+<p>
+    The Spaniards of California had been aware in the middle of the
+    eighteenth century that there was a big river entering the sea to the
+    north of the savage country known as Oregon. The estuary of this river
+    was reached in May, 1792, by an American sea captain of a whaling
+    ship&mdash;ROBERT GRAY, of Boston. He crossed the bar, and named the great
+    stream after his own ship, the <i>Columbia</i>. Five months afterwards
+    (October, 1792) Lieutenant BROUGHTON, of the Vancouver expedition,
+    entered the Columbia from the sea, explored it upstream for a hundred
+    miles, and formally took possession of it for the King of Great
+    Britain. The news of this discovery reached Alexander Mackenzie (no
+    doubt after his return from his overland journey to the Pacific
+    coast), and he at once jumped to the conclusion that the powerful
+    stream he had discovered in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, and had
+    partially followed on its way to the Pacific, must be the Columbia. As
+    a matter of fact it was the river afterwards called Fraser.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If you look at the map of British North America, and then at the map
+    of Russian Asia&mdash;Siberia&mdash;you will notice a marked difference in the
+    arrangement of the waterways. Those of the Canadian Dominion, on the
+    whole, flow more eastwards and westwards, or at any rate radiate in
+    all directions, so as to constitute the most wonderful system of
+    natural canals possessed by any country or continent. On the contrary,
+    the rivers of Siberia flow usually in somewhat parallel lines from
+    south to north. Siberia also is far less well provided than British
+    North America with an abundance of navigable rivers, streams, and
+    great lakes. Therefore the traveller in pre-railway days wishing to
+    cross Siberia from west to east or east to west was obliged to have
+    recourse to wheeled traffic, to ride, or to walk. Consequently, until
+    the beginning of the twentieth century, the "exploitation" (or turning
+    to useful account) of Siberia was a far more difficult process than
+    the development of North America, once the question of British
+    <i>versus</i> French or Spanish was settled. Siberia at one time was almost
+    as rich in fur-bearing animals as British North America; yet so
+    difficult was transport (and so severe were the rigours of the
+    climate) that the Russians, once they reached the shores of the
+    Pacific at the beginning of the eighteenth century, began to stretch
+    out their influence to the opposite peninsula of Alaska mainly on
+    account of the fur trade. For it was easier and less expensive to
+    bring furs from Alaska round Cape Horn, or the Cape of Good Hope, to
+    Europe than to convey them overland from eastern Siberia. Then, also,
+    the Chinese market was becoming of importance to the fur trade.
+    Already Mackenzie, at the end of the eighteenth century, is found
+    considering whether a sea trade between China and a British port on
+    the North Pacific coast could not be arranged so as to develop a
+    profitable market among the mandarins and grandees of the Celestial
+    Empire for a good proportion of the North-west Company's skins.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0018"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<a href="images/map18-large.jpg"><img src="images/map18-small.jpg" width="400" height="600" alt="Map of Part Of the Coast Region Of British Columbia"></a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="ar"> [<a href="images/map18-large.jpg"><small>LARGER MAP</small></a>]
+<p>
+    Peter Pond, already referred to on p. <a href="#p278">278</a>, is said to have expressed
+    his intention (in 1788) of going to treat with the Empress Catherine
+    II for a Russian occupation of the Alaskan and Columbian coasts. For
+    this reason, or the mere desire to have a proportion of this
+    fur-producing country, the Emperor Paul, in 1799, created a Russian
+    Chartered Company to occupy the Alaska and north Columbian coasts.
+    Great Britain offered no objection&mdash;in spite of having acquired some
+    rights here by an agreement with Spain&mdash;and that is why, when you look
+    at the map of the vast Canadian Dominion, you find with surprise that
+    it has been robbed (one might almost say) of at least half of its
+    legitimate Pacific seaboard. The Russian Company was allowed to claim
+    the north Columbian coast between Alaska proper and Queen Charlotte
+    Islands.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In 1867 the Russian Government sold all Alaska and the north Columbian
+    coast to the United States, partly to annoy Great Britain, whom it had
+    not forgiven for the Crimean War.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You will have noticed that quite a number of United States citizens
+    (mostly born British subjects in New England) had taken part in the
+    north-west fur trade immediately after the British conquest of Canada
+    disposed of French monopolies. There were Jonathan Carver and Peter
+    Pond, for example; and a much more worthy person than the last
+    named&mdash;Daniel W. Harmon, a New Englander, who entered the service of
+    the North-west Company in 1800, and followed in Mackenzie's footsteps
+    to the upper Fraser River and the vicinity of the Skeena. Simon Fraser
+    also, whose tracing of the Fraser River from its upper waters to the
+    Pacific coast we shall presently deal with, was a native of Vermont,
+    though his father came from Scotland. The furs which began to
+    penetrate into the United States by way of Detroit and Niagara, the
+    rising scale of luxury in dress in the towns of the eastern seaboard
+    of the United States, the voyages of American whalers up the west
+    coast of North America (including the discovery of the Columbia River
+    in 1792 by Captain Robert Gray), the purchase of Louisiana from the
+    Emperor Napoleon in 1804&mdash;with the vague claim it gave to the coast
+    line of Oregon on the Pacific: all these circumstances inspired
+    far-sighted persons in the United States at the beginning of the
+    nineteenth century with a wish to secure for their Government and
+    commerce a share in the fur trade and in these wonderful new lands of
+    the Pacific watershed. American ships (whaling ships) had already
+    become accustomed to sail round Cape Horn and to visit the Oregon and
+    Alaskan coasts. The American Government therefore, immediately after
+    the Louisiana purchase, dispatched an American expedition under
+    Captains Meriwether Lewis and Jonathan Clarke to travel up the
+    Missouri River and so across the mountains to the coast of Oregon, a
+    wonderful expedition, which they carried out with great success in two
+    years (1804-6), reaching the lower Columbia River and following it
+    down to the sea.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Consequently, with all this in the air, it is not very surprising that
+    the far-sighted John Jacob Astor, a wealthy German merchant of New
+    York, should have conceived the idea of founding a great American
+    fur-trading company and of establishing it at the mouth of the
+    Columbia River.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the beginning of the nineteenth century he had entered into
+    arrangements with an Anglo-Canadian Company (the Mackinaw), which
+    worked the southernmost part of Canada, to fuse its enterprise with
+    his, and thus founded the <i>South-west Company</i>, the name of which (at
+    any rate in current speech) was afterwards changed into the Pacific
+    Fur-trading Company. After attempting in vain to come to a working
+    arrangement with the great North-west Company, he decided to act quite
+    independently and to establish the headquarters of his new concern at
+    the mouth of the Columbia River. Accordingly, the expedition was sent
+    out in duplicate to the mouth of the Columbia River, one-half going a
+    six-months' voyage round Cape Horn in a sailing ship, the <i>Tonquin</i>,
+    and the other marching overland or canoeing on lakes and rivers in
+    eighteen months from Montreal via the Mississippi and Missouri. These
+    two parties together founded "Astoria", at the mouth of the Columbia.
+    But most of Astor's employees were British subjects derived from men
+    of the North-west and Mackinaw Companies; and when, in 1812, war
+    broke out between the United States and Great Britain, a British war
+    vessel came up the Pacific coast to Astoria and promptly turned it
+    into "Fort George". Forthwith the North-west Company bought up the
+    derelict property of Mr. Astor's Company from his not very honest
+    British employees, and the few Americans in the concern retreated
+    inland, and, after almost incredible sufferings from the attacks of
+    unfriendly Indians, succeeded in reaching the Mississippi.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0019"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc19.jpg" width="425" height="271"
+alt="The Kootenay Or Head Stream of the Columbia River">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>THE KOOTENAY OR HEAD STREAM OF THE COLUMBIA RIVER</h5>
+<p>
+    This Columbia River had in reality been discovered at its sources, and
+    traced down to the sea, between 1807 and 1811 by DAVID THOMPSON (once
+    a Blue-coat boy in London; from 1784 to 1792 in the service of the
+    Hudson's Bay Company, and after that one of the most famous of the
+    Nor'-westers). The upper course of this river and its northern
+    affluents were annexed as British by David Thompson; the lower course
+    did not at once become the political property of the United States,
+    but was considered vaguely to be the joint property of both nations,
+    till the Oregon settlement of 1846. By the treaty of 1792, the
+    southern boundary of central Canada was agreed upon as being the 49th
+    degree of north latitude, but only between the Lake of the Woods and
+    the Rocky Mountains. The agreement of 1846 continued the 49th degree
+    boundary to the shore of the Pacific opposite Vancouver Island.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Prominent among the agents of the North-western Company who followed
+    Sir Alexander Mackenzie as a pioneer towards the Pacific shores was
+    ALEXANDER HENRY THE YOUNGER,<a name="12-1"></a><a href="#note-12-1"><small>[1]</small></a> regarding whose journeys some extracts
+    may be given.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The first entry in his diary of 1799 is not particularly romantic, but
+    shows some of the unexpected dangers attending the life of an
+    adventurer in the far north-west. He had been riding through the
+    Assiniboin country in the autumn of 1799, probably after one of the
+    very indigestible meals which he describes here and there in his
+    pages. Alone, and crossing an open plain swarming with wolves, he was
+    seized suddenly with a violent colic, the pain of which was so
+    terrible that he could not remain in the saddle. He dismounted,
+    hobbled his horse, and threw himself on the grass, where he lay in
+    agony for two hours, expecting every moment would be his last, till,
+    quite exhausted, he fell asleep. He was awakened, however, by the
+    howling of the wolves advancing to tear him to pieces; yet he was so
+    weak that he was scarcely able to mount his horse, and then could only
+    proceed at a slow walk, with the wolves snapping at his horse's heels.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Near the site of the present city of Winnipeg, in the late summer of
+    1800, he and his expedition were much troubled by swarms of water
+    snakes. They were harmless but not pleasant in their familiarity, for
+    they entered the tents and took refuge in the explorers' beds; and as
+    they apparently came from their breeding places in Amerindian graves
+    which covered the remains of people who had died of smallpox in a
+    recent epidemic, they were additionally loathsome.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Smallpox indeed played a very important part in the historical
+    development of western North America. Prior to 1780 the Amerindian
+    tribes between the upper Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, and
+    between the Saskatchewans and the Missouri, were numerous and warlike.
+    At first, about 1765, they received in very friendly fashion the
+    pioneer British traders and French Canadians who attempted to resume
+    the fur trade where it had been dropped by the French monopolists in
+    1760. But fifteen years afterwards, enraged at the violence and
+    wrongdoing of the British and Canadian traders, and maddened by strong
+    drink, they were planning a universal massacre of the whites, when
+    suddenly smallpox (introduced by the Spaniards into New Mexico) came
+    on them as a scourge, which destroyed whole tribes, and depopulated
+    much of western North America.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Alexander Henry had many adventures with the bison of the plains. Here
+    is one of them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just as I came up to him at full speed and prepared to fire, my horse
+    suddenly stopped. The bull had turned about to face my horse, which
+    was naturally afraid of buffaloes, and startled at such a frightful
+    object; he leaped to one side to avoid the bull. As I was not prepared
+    for this I was pitched over his head, and fell within a few yards of
+    the bull's nose; but fortunately for me he paid no more attention to
+    my horse than to me. The grass was long, and I lay quiet until a
+    favourable opportunity offered as he presented his placotte. I
+    discharged both barrels of my double gun at him; he turned and made
+    one plunge toward me, but had not time to repeat it before he fell,
+    with his nose not more than three paces off.... I had to return on
+    foot as my horse had bolted."
+</p>
+<p>
+    At this place&mdash;near the Red River (the season September)&mdash;the country
+    swarmed with big game such as North America will never see any more:
+    enormous numbers of bison, of wapiti or Canadian red deer, moose or
+    elk, prong-buck, and of grizzly bears and black bears who followed the
+    herds to attack them. The rivers swarmed with otters and beavers. The
+    ground along the banks of the river was worn into a smooth, hard
+    pavement by the hoofs of the thousands of buffaloes. Racoons, red
+    foxes, wolves, and pumas frequented the bush country and the chumps of
+    forest. A large white wolf, prowling rather imprudently, came within a
+    few yards of Henry, and was shot dead. "We observed on the opposite
+    beach no fewer than seven bears drinking all at the same time. Red
+    deer were whistling in every direction, but our minds were not
+    sufficiently at ease to enjoy our situation." Large flocks of swans
+    (<i>Cygnus columbianus</i>) rose out of the Red River apparently in a state
+    of alarm and confusion, possibly caused by the many herds of buffaloes
+    rushing down to the river to drink. At night everything was quiet
+    except the bellowing of buffaloes and the whistling of red deer. "I
+    climbed up a tall oak at the entrance of the plain, from the top of
+    which I had an extensive view of the country. Buffalo and red deer
+    were everywhere in sight passing to and fro."
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the prairie had its nuisances as well as its wonders of animal
+    life. From the end of April to the end of July the woods and grass
+    swarmed with ticks (<i>Ixodes</i>), which covered the clothes of the
+    Europeans and entered their ears and there caused serious
+    inflammations. They would in time get such a firm hold by the
+    insertion of their heads into the skin that they could not be removed
+    without pulling the body from the head, which caused a terrible
+    itching lasting for months. If left alone they adhered to the flesh
+    until they swelled to the size of a musket ball, when they fell off of
+    themselves. In the summertime gadflies were exasperating in their
+    attacks on men and cattle. Mosquitoes were a veritable plague, and
+    midges also, between June and the end of September.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Not the least of the terrors of life in the far north-west in those
+    days was the vermin that collected in the houses or huts built for a
+    winter sojourn. It is frequently mentioned, in the records of the
+    pioneers, how the lodges or tents of the Amerindians swarmed with
+    fleas and lice. Henry notes on the 19th of April, 1803: "The men began
+    to demolish our dwelling houses, which were built of bad wood, and to
+    build new ones of oak. The nests of mice we found, and the swarms of
+    fleas hopping in every direction, were astonishing."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Henry reached the Pacific coast in 1814, by way of the Kootenay,
+    Spokane, and Columbia River route, which had been discovered by David
+    Thompson. He describes well the forests of remarkable trees on this
+    portion of the Pacific coast, opposite the south end of Vancouver
+    Island: the crooked oaks loaded with mistletoe, the tall wild cherry
+    trees, the hazels with trunks thicker than a man's thigh, the
+    evergreen arbutus, the bracken fern, blackberries, and black
+    raspberries; and the game in these glades of trees and fern: small
+    Columbian <i>Mazama</i> deer, large lynxes, bears, gluttons, wolves, foxes,
+    racoons, and squirrels. Overhead soared huge Californian condors
+    (<i>Pseudogryphus</i>).
+</p>
+<p>
+    Henry was drowned in 1812 in the estuary of the Columbia River,
+    through the capsizing of a boat.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The question of the identity of the great river flowing to the Pacific
+    from near the headwaters of the Peace&mdash;the river which Mackenzie had
+    discovered and been forced to leave&mdash;was finally decided by SIMON
+    FRASER, one of the most celebrated among the North-west Company's
+    pioneers. Like Mackenzie, he believed this stream to be the upper
+    Columbia.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Accompanied by John Stuart and Jules Quesnel, he left the Fraser River
+    at its junction with the Nechaco on May 22, 1807, and, keeping as near
+    as he could to the course of the river, found himself in the country
+    of the Atna tribe, Amerindians of a diminutive size but active
+    appearance, from whom he obtained an invaluable guide and faithful
+    interpreter, Little Fellow, but for whose bravery, wise advice, and
+    clever diplomacy the journey must have ended in disaster or
+    disappointment&mdash;a remark which might be made about nearly all the
+    Amerindian guides of the pioneers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Atna Indians were dressed in skins with the hair outside, and were
+    armed with bows and arrows. They besmeared their bodies with fish oil
+    and red earth, and painted their faces in different colours. Bison
+    were quite unknown to them, being very seldom found in those latitudes
+    on the western side of the Rocky Mountains. The country of the Atna
+    Indians on the upper Fraser abounded in elk, wapiti, reindeer, bighorn
+    sheep, mountain goats,<a name="12-2"></a><a href="#note-12-2"><small>[2]</small></a> and beaver.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here is a description by Fraser of some of the rapids in the upper
+    part of the river named after him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The channel contracts to about forty yards, and is enclosed by two
+    precipices of immense height, which bending towards each other make it
+    narrower above than below. The water which rolls down this
+    extraordinary passage in tumultuous waves and with great velocity has
+    a frightful appearance. However, it being impossible to carry canoes
+    by land, all hands without hesitation embarked, as it were, <i>à corps
+    perdu</i> upon the mercy of this awful tide. Once engaged, the die was
+    cast. Our great difficulty consisted in keeping the canoes in the
+    middle of the stream, that is, clear of the precipice on the one side,
+    and of the gulfs formed by the waves on the other. Thus, skimming
+    along as fast as lightning, the crews, cool and determined, followed
+    each other in awful silence, and when we arrived at the end we stood
+    gazing at each other in silent gratification at our narrow escape from
+    total destruction.... I scarcely ever saw anything so dreary and
+    dangerous in any country (such precipices, mountains, and rapids), and
+    I still seem to see, whichever way I turn my eyes, mountains upon
+    mountains whose summits are covered with eternal snow."
+</p>
+<a name="image-0020"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc20.jpg" width="425" height="271"
+alt="A Hunter's 'shack' in British Columbia: After A
+Successful Shoot of Blue Grouse">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>A HUNTER'S 'SHACK' IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: AFTER A SUCCESSFUL SHOOT OF BLUE GROUSE</h5>
+<p>
+    They had to take to these same mountains, the river being unnavigable.
+    The Asketti Indians brought them different kinds of roots, especially
+    wild onions boiled into a syrup, excellent dried salmon, and some
+    berries. These Indians had visited the seacoast, and had seen ships of
+    war come there with white men, "very well dressed, and very proud,
+    for," continued the chief, getting up and clapping his two hands upon
+    his hips, and then striding <a name="p323"></a>about the place with an air of
+    importance, "this is the way they go". In this country of the Hakamaw
+    and Asketti Indians, dogs were much in use for carrying purposes, and
+    could draw from one hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds. They were
+    considered by the French Canadians very good eating, though only the
+    smaller kinds were eaten, the large dogs being of another race and
+    having a rank taste. They also shaved these dogs in the summer time,
+    and wove rugs from their hair. These rugs were striped in different
+    colours, crossing at right angles, and resembling at a distance a
+    Highland plaid.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The tombs of the Indian villages on this western side of the Rocky
+    Mountains were superior to anything that Fraser had ever seen amongst
+    savages. They were about fifteen feet long, and of the form of a chest
+    of drawers. Upon the boards and posts, beasts and birds were carved in
+    a curious but crude manner, and pretty well proportioned. Returning to
+    the river, when the worst of the rapids were passed, they descended it
+    rapidly, helped by a strong current, and at length entered a lake
+    where they saw seals, which showed that they had got near to the
+    Pacific Ocean. They also beheld a round mountain, the now celebrated
+    Mount Baker, which is visible from so much of the surrounding country
+    of British Columbia and Vancouver Island. The trees were splendid,
+    junipers thirty feet in circumference in their trunks and two or three
+    hundred feet high. Mosquitoes, however, were in clouds. Nearer to the
+    coast the Indians often appeared in the distance like white men, for
+    the very literal reason that they had covered their skins with white
+    paint. Their houses were built of cedar planks, and were six hundred
+    and forty feet long by sixty feet broad, all under one roof, but of
+    course separated into a great number of partitions for different
+    families. On the outside the boards (as Mackenzie had noticed) were
+    carved with figures of men, beasts, and birds as large as life. Simon
+    Fraser, however, when he reached sea water, near the site of New
+    Westminster, was greatly disappointed that any view of the main ocean
+    should be obstructed by distant lands. He had believed all along that
+    he was tracing the far-famed Columbia River to its entrance into the
+    Pacific Ocean; and now that, instead of this, he had discovered an
+    entirely new river, henceforth to be called after him but without so
+    long a course as the Columbia, his vanity was hurt.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Amerindians of the sea coast, opposite Vancouver Island, showed
+    hostility to Fraser's party, as they had done farther north to
+    Mackenzie. The Canadian <i>voyageurs</i> got alarmed, and told Fraser's
+    assistant, John Stuart, that they had made up their minds to return by
+    land across the Rocky Mountains. Fraser and the other officers of the
+    expedition joined in arguing with them and recalling them to their
+    senses. Finally each member of the party swore a solemn oath before
+    Almighty God that they would sooner perish than forsake in distress
+    any of the crew in the present voyage. After this ceremony was over
+    all hands dressed in their best apparel, and each took charge of his
+    own bundle. They therefore returned as much as possible by the Fraser
+    River, and only took to the mountains when obliged by the rapids. They
+    had to pass many difficult rocks, defiles, precipices, in which there
+    was a beaten path made by the natives, and made possible by means of
+    scaffolds, bridges, and ladders, so peculiarly constructed that it
+    required no small degree of necessity, dexterity, and courage in
+    strangers to undertake them. For instance, they had to ascend
+    precipices by means of ladders composed of two long poles placed
+    upright, with sticks tied crosswise with twigs; upon the end of these
+    others were placed, and so on to any height; add to this that the
+    ladders were often so slack that the smallest breeze put them in
+    motion, swinging them against the rocks, while the steps leading from
+    scaffold to scaffold were so narrow and irregular that they could
+    scarcely be traced by the feet without the greatest care and
+    circumspection; but the most perilous part was when another rock
+    projected over the one they were clearing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Hakamaw Indians certainly deserved Fraser's grateful remembrance
+    for their able assistance throughout these alarming situations. The
+    descents were, if possible, still more difficult; in these places the
+    white men were under the necessity of trusting their property to the
+    Indians, even the precious guns were handed from one Indian to
+    another; yet they thought nothing of it, they went up and down these
+    wild places with the same agility as sailors do on a ship. After
+    escaping innumerable perils in the course of the day, the party
+    encamped about sunset, being supplied by the natives with plenty of
+    dried fish.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Thus the main lines of the exploration of the great Canadian Dominion
+    were completed. Alexander Mackenzie went to England in 1799 and
+    received a knighthood for his remarkable achievements. On his return
+    he first definitely created the New North-west or "X.Y." Company, and
+    then brought about its fusion (after several years of bitter rivalry)
+    with the old North-west Company; and it was this united and
+    strengthened organization which, between 1804 and 1819, sent out so
+    many bold pioneers to fill in the details of the map between the
+    Columbia and Missouri on the south, and the Great Slave Lake and Liard
+    River on the north. But during these years the energies of the
+    Hudson's Bay Company were reviving under a strange personality&mdash;THOMAS
+    DOUGLAS, EARL OF SELKIRK. Lord Selkirk conceived the idea of putting
+    new life into the Hudson's Bay Company, reviving the monopolies of
+    trading granted in its old charter, and turning its vague rights to
+    land into the absolute ownership of the enormous area of North
+    America north and west of the Canadian provinces. No regard of course
+    was paid to any rights of the natives, who as a matter of fact were
+    dying out rapidly from the effects of bad alcohol and epidemic
+    diseases.
+</p>
+<p>
+    His motive was to establish large colonies of stalwart Highlanders as
+    the tenants of a Chartered Company. Alexander Mackenzie had already
+    called the north-west country "New Caledonia". Lord Selkirk wished to
+    make it so in its population.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Already he had been instrumental in establishing a Scottish colony on
+    Prince Edward's Island,<a name="12-3"></a><a href="#note-12-3"><small>[3]</small></a> which, after some difficulties at the
+    beginning, had soon begun to prosper. Two or three years later he came
+    to Montreal, and there collected all the information he could obtain
+    from the partners in the North-west Company regarding the prospects of
+    trade and colonization in the far west. In the year 1811 he had
+    managed to acquire the greater part of the shares in the Hudson's Bay
+    Company, and, placing himself at its head, he sent out his first
+    hundred Highlanders and Irish to form a feudatory colony in the Red
+    River district (the modern Manitoba). He also dispatched an official
+    to govern what might be called the Middle West on behalf of the
+    Hudson's Bay Company. This person, acting under instructions, claimed
+    the whole region beyond the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada as the
+    private property of the Hudson's Bay Company, on the strength of their
+    antiquated charter issued by Charles II. The agents of the North-west
+    Company were warned (as also the two or three thousand French
+    Canadians and half-breeds in their pay) that henceforth they must not
+    cut wood, fish or hunt, build or cultivate, save by the permission and
+    as the tenants of the Hudson's Bay Company.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is not surprising that such an outrageous demand, when it was
+    followed up by the use of armed force, soon provoked bloodshed and a
+    state of civil war throughout the North-west Territories. Lord Selkirk
+    himself took command on the Red River, with a small army of
+    disciplined soldiers. At length, in 1817, the British Government
+    intervened through the Governor-General of Canada, and in 1818 Lord
+    Selkirk left North America disgusted, and two years afterwards died at
+    Pau, in France, from an illness brought on by grief at the failure of
+    his projects.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sir Alexander Mackenzie also died suddenly in 1820, in Scotland. For
+    twelve years he had been member of parliament for Huntingdon, and
+    since 1812 had been the determined opponent in England of Lord
+    Selkirk's plans of forcible colonization. After his death, however, in
+    1821, a sudden movement for reconciliation took place between the two
+    Companies. Thenceforth the Hudson's Bay Company ruled over the vast
+    regions of British North America, beyond Newfoundland, New Brunswick,
+    Nova Scotia, and the two Canadian provinces. Under their government
+    the work of geographical exploration went on apace. In 1834 one of
+    their officers, J. M'Leod, discovered the Stikine River in northern
+    British Columbia, and by 1848 J. Bell and Robert Campbell had revealed
+    the Porcupine and Yukon Rivers. By the time Thomas Simpson, Warren
+    Dease, and Dr. John Rae, on behalf of the Hudson's Bay Company; and
+    Franklin, Back, Parry, Richardson, and M'Clintock, for the Imperial
+    Government, had completed the explorations mentioned in Chapter VI,
+    all the main features of Canadian geography were made known. The next
+    series of pioneers were to be those of the mining industry&mdash;it was the
+    discovery of gold in 1856 which created British Columbia; of
+    agriculture&mdash;the wheat-growers of the Red River region made the
+    province of Manitoba; of the steamboat; and above all the railway.
+    Developments of science scarcely yet dreamt of will demand in further
+    time their pioneers, and these will not come from abroad, but will
+    assuredly be found in this splendid Canadian people, the descendants
+    of the men or of the types of men I have attempted to describe.
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+
+<a name="note-12-1"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#12-1"><u>1</u></a> The nephew of the Alexander Henry already mentioned as an
+    explorer between 1761 and 1775.
+</p>
+<a name="note-12-2"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#12-2"><u>2</u></a> This remarkable beast (<i>Oreamnus</i>) they called "Aspai",
+    and wove from its white wool an excellent cloth for their clothing.
+</p>
+<a name="note-12-3"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#12-3"><u>3</u></a> Prince Edward's Island is off the north coast of New
+    Brunswick. It was named after Queen Victoria's father, the Duke of
+    Kent.
+</p>
+<br>
+<p class="return">[<a href="#top">TOP</a>]
+</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13003 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #13003 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13003)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Pioneers in Canada, by Sir Harry Johnston,
+Illustrated by E. Wallcousins
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Pioneers in Canada
+
+Author: Sir Harry Johnston
+
+Release Date: July 23, 2004  [eBook #13003]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PIONEERS IN CANADA***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Janet Kegg and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 13003-h.htm or 13003-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/0/0/13003/13003-h/13003-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/0/0/13003/13003-h.zip)
+
+      In this e-text "a" with a breve and "o", "u", and
+      "a" with a macron are represented by [)a] [¯o] [¯u] [¯a].
+
+
+
+
+
+PIONEERS IN CANADA
+
+By
+
+SIR HARRY JOHNSTON, G.C.M.G., K.C.B.
+
+With Eight Coloured Illustrations by E. Wallcousins
+
+1912
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: TYPE OF SHIP SAILED IN BY THE ENGLISH OR FRENCH
+PIONEERS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY]
+
+
+
+
+The Pioneer Library
+
+A standard series by Sir Harry Johnston. Tastefully bound.
+
+     Pioneers in Australasia.
+     Pioneers in Canada.
+     Pioneers in South Africa.
+     Pioneers in West Africa.
+     Pioneers in Tropical America.
+     Pioneers in India.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+I have been asked to write a series of works which should deal with
+"real adventures", in parts of the world either wild and uncontrolled
+by any civilized government, or at any rate regions full of dangers,
+of wonderful discoveries; in which the daring and heroism of white men
+(and sometimes of white women) stood out clearly against backgrounds
+of unfamiliar landscapes, peopled with strange nations, savage tribes,
+dangerous beasts, or wonderful birds. These books would again and
+again illustrate the first coming of the white race into regions
+inhabited by people of a different type, with brown, black, or yellow
+skins; how the European was received, and how he treated these races
+of the soil which gradually came under his rule owing to his superior
+knowledge, weapons, wealth, or powers of persuasion. The books were to
+tell the plain truth, even if here and there they showed the white man
+to have behaved badly, or if they revealed the fact that the American
+Indian, the Negro, the Malay, the black Australian was sometimes cruel
+and treacherous.
+
+A request thus framed was almost equivalent to asking me to write
+stories of those pioneers who founded the British Empire; in any case,
+the first volumes of this series do relate the adventures of those who
+created the greater part of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, by
+their perilous explorations of unknown lands and waters. In many
+instances the travellers were all unconscious of their destinies, of
+the results which would arise from their actions. In some cases they
+would have bitterly railed at Fate had they known that the result of
+their splendid efforts was to be the enlargement of an empire under
+the British flag. Perhaps if they could know by now that we are
+striving under that flag to be just and generous to all types of men,
+and not to use our empire solely for the benefit of English-speaking
+men and women, the French who founded the Canadian nation, the Germans
+and Dutch who helped to create British Africa, Malaysia, and
+Australia, the Spaniards who preceded us in the West Indies, and the
+Portuguese in West, Central, and East Africa, in Newfoundland and
+Ceylon, might--if they have any consciousness or care for things in
+this world--be not so sorry after all that we are reaping where they
+sowed.
+
+It is (as you will see) impossible to tell the tale of these early
+days in the British Dominions beyond the Seas, without describing here
+and there the adventures of men of enterprise and daring who were not
+of our own nationality. The majority, nevertheless, were of British
+stock; that is to say, they were English, Welsh, Scots, Irish, perhaps
+here and there a Channel Islander and a Manxman; or Nova Scotians,
+Canadians, and New Englanders. The bulk of them were good fellows, a
+few were saints, a few were ruffians with redeeming features.
+Sometimes they were common men who blundered into great discoveries
+which will for ever preserve their names from perishing; occasionally
+they were men of Fate, predestined, one might say, to change the
+history of the world by their revelations of new peoples, new lands,
+new rivers, new lakes, snow mountains, and gold mines. Here and there
+is a martyr like Marquette, or Livingstone, or Gordon, dying for the
+cause of a race not his own. And others again are mere boys, whose
+adventures come to them because they are adventurous, and whose feats
+of arms, escapes, perils, and successes are quite as wonderful as
+those attributed to the juvenile heroes of Marryat, Stevenson, and the
+author of _The Swiss Family Robinson_.
+
+I have tried, in describing these adventures, to give my readers some
+idea of the scenery, animals, and vegetation of the new lands through
+which these pioneers passed on their great and small purposes; as well
+as of the people, native to the soil, with whom they came in contact.
+And in treating of these subjects I have thought it best to give the
+scientific names of the plant or animal which was of importance in my
+story, so that any of my readers who were really interested in natural
+history could at once ascertain for themselves the exact type alluded
+to, and, if they wished, look it up in a museum, a garden, or a
+natural history book.
+
+I hope this attempt at scientific accuracy will not frighten away
+readers young and old; and, if you can have patience with the author,
+you will, by reading this series of books on the great pioneers of
+British West Africa, Canada, Malaysia, West Indies, South Africa, and
+Australasia, get a clear idea of how the British Colonial Empire came
+to be founded.
+
+You will find that I have often tried to tell the story in the words
+of the pioneers, but in these quotations I have adopted the modern
+spelling, not only in my transcript of the English original or
+translation, but also in the place and tribal names, so as not to
+puzzle or delay the reader. Otherwise, if you were to look out some of
+the geographical names of the old writers, you might not be able to
+recognize them on the modern atlas. The pronunciation of this modern
+geographical spelling is very simple and clear: the vowels are
+pronounced _a_ = ah, _e_ = eh, _i_ = ee, _o_ = o, _ô_ = oh,
+_[¯o]_ = aw, _ö_ = u in 'hurt', and _u_ = oo, as in German, Italian, or
+most other European languages; and the consonants as in English.
+
+H. H. JOHNSTON.
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS
+
+     I. THE WHITE MAN'S DISCOVERY OF NORTH AMERICA............... 15
+    II. JACQUES CARTIER.......................................... 29
+   III. ELIZABETHAN PIONEERS IN NORTH AMERICA.................... 45
+    IV. CHAMPLAIN AND THE FOUNDATION OF CANADA................... 53
+     V. AFTER CHAMPLAIN: FROM MONTREAL TO THE MISSISSIPPI........ 88
+    VI. THE GEOGRAPHICAL CONDITIONS OF THE CANADIAN DOMINION.....120
+   VII. THE AMERINDIANS AND ESKIMO: THE ABORIGINES OF BRITISH
+             NORTH AMERICA.......................................153
+  VIII. THE HUDSON BAY EXPLORERS AND THE BRITISH CONQUEST OF
+             ALL CANADA..........................................202
+    IX. THE PIONEERS FROM MONTREAL: ALEXANDER HENRY THE ELDER....211
+     X. SAMUEL HEARNE............................................248
+    XI. ALEXANDER MACKENZIE'S JOURNEYS...........................277
+   XII. MACKENZIE'S SUCCESSORS...................................313
+
+
+
+
+  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  COLOURED PLATES
+
+  Type of Ship sailed in by the English or French Pioneers in the
+    Sixteenth Century _Frontispiece_
+  Icebergs and Polar Bears
+  Indians hunting Bison
+  Indians lying in wait for Moose
+  Caribou swimming a River
+  Great Auks, Gannets, Puffins, and Guillemots
+  Scene on Canadian River: Wild Swans flying up, disturbed by Bear
+  Big-horned Sheep of Rocky Mountains
+
+
+  BLACK-AND-WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  Jacques Cartier
+  Samuel de Champlain and Alexander Henry the Elder
+  An Amerindian Type of British Columbia
+  Lake Louise, the Rocky Mountains
+  Samuel Hearne and Alexander Mackenzie
+  The Upper Waters of the Fraser River
+  The Kootenay or Head Stream of the Columbia River
+  A Hunter's "Shack" in British Columbia: After a successful Shoot of
+    Blue Grouse
+
+  Map of Canada
+  Map of Eastern Canada and Newfoundland
+  Map of Part of the Coast Region of British Columbia
+
+
+
+
+List of the Chief Authorities
+
+
+FROM WHOM THE PRINCIPAL FACTS AND INCIDENTS OF THIS BOOK HAVE BEEN
+DERIVED, IN ADDITION TO THE AUTHOR'S OWN RESEARCHES AND EXPERIENCES,
+AND INFORMATION SUPPLIED BY PROFESSOR R. RAMSAY WRIGHT, OF TORONTO
+UNIVERSITY
+
+_The Saint Lawrence Basin_. By Dr. S.E. DAWSON. London. 1905.
+Lawrence & Bullen.
+
+_Relation Originale du Voyage de Jacques Cartier au Canada en
+1534_; Documents inédits, &c. Publiés par H. MICHELANT et A. RAME.
+Paris. Librairie Tross. 1867.
+
+_Voyage de Jacques Cartier au Canada en 1534_, &c. Par H.
+MICHELANT. Paris. 1865.
+
+_Champlain's Voyages_: The Publications of the Prince Society.
+Boston. 1878. Three volumes.
+
+_Voyage of Verrazano_, &c. By HENRY C. MURPHY. New York. 1875.
+(Also the Essay on the Journeys of Verrazano, by Alessandro Bacchiani,
+in the Bollettino della Societá Geografica Italiana. Rome. November,
+1909.)
+
+_Volume IX of the Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of
+Canada_. (For the History of Cape Breton and of the Beothiks of
+Newfoundland.)
+
+_The Search for the Western Sea_. By Lawrence J. Burpee. London.
+Alston Rivers. 1908.
+
+_Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New
+France_, &c. Edited by REUBEN GOLD THWAITES. Vol. LIX. Cleveland,
+U.S.A. Burrows Bros. 1900.
+
+_Travels and Explorations in Canada and the Indian Territories between
+the years 1760 and 1776_. By ALEXANDER HENRY, Esq. New York. 1809.
+
+_Voyages from Montreal on the River St. Lawrence through the Continent
+of North America to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans, in the years 1789
+and 1793_, &c. &c. By ALEXANDER MACKENZIE, Esq. London. 1801.
+
+_A Journey from Prince of Wales's Fort in Hudson's Bay to the Northern
+Ocean_, &c. By SAMUEL HEARNE. London. 1795.
+
+_Les Bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest_. By L.R. MASSON.
+Quebec. 1890. Two volumes.
+
+_New Light on the Early History of the Greater North-West_: The
+Manuscript Journals of Alexander Henry, Jun., and of David Thompson.
+Edited by ELLIOTT COUES. Three Volumes. New York. Harper. 1897.
+
+_Sport and Travel in the Northland of Canada_. By DAVID T. HANBURY.
+London. Edward Arnold. 1904.
+
+_Henry Hudson the Navigator_, &c. By G.M. ASHER. London. Hakluyt
+Society, 1860.
+
+_The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher_. By Rear-Admiral RICHARD
+COLLINSON. London. Hakluyt Society. 1867.
+
+_The Voyages and Works of John Davis the Navigator_. By Admiral Sir
+ALBERT HASTINGS MARKHAM. London. Hakluyt Society. 1880.
+
+_The Voyages of William Baffin, 1612-1622_. By Sir CLEMENTS R.
+MARKHAM. London. 1881.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+The White Man's Discovery of North America
+
+
+So far as our knowledge goes, it is almost a matter of certainty that
+Man originated in the Old World--in Asia possibly. Long after this
+wonderful event in the Earth's history, when the human species was
+spread over a good deal of Asia, Europe, and Africa, migration to the
+American continents began in attempts to find new feeding grounds and
+unoccupied areas for hunting and fishing. How many thousands or
+hundreds of thousands of years ago it was since the first men entered
+America we do not yet know, any more than we can determine the route
+by which they travelled from Asia. Curiously enough, the oldest traces
+of man as yet discovered in the New World are not only in South
+America, but in the south-eastern parts of South America. Although the
+most obvious recent land connection between the Old and New Worlds is
+the Aleutian chain of islands connecting Kamschatka with Alaska, the
+ethnologist is occasionally led to think by certain evidence that
+there may, both earlier and later, have existed another way of
+reaching western America from south-eastern Asia through Pacific
+archipelagoes and islets now sunk below the sea. In any case it seems
+quite probable that men of Mongolian or Polynesian type reached
+America on its western coasts long before the European came from the
+north-east and east, and that they were helped on this long journey by
+touching at islands since submerged by earthquake shocks or tidal
+waves.
+
+The aboriginal natives of North and South America seem to be of
+entirely Asiatic origin; and such resemblances as there are between
+the North-American Indians and the peoples of northern Europe do not
+arise (we believe) from any ancient colonization of America from
+western or northern Europe, but mainly from the fact that the
+North-American Indians and the Eskimo (two distinct types of people)
+are descended from the same human stocks as the ancient populations of
+the northern part of Europe and Asia.
+
+It was--we think--from the far _north-west_ of Europe that America was
+first visited by the true White man, though there has been an ancient
+immigration of imperfect "White" men (Ainu) from Kamschatka. Three or
+four hundred years after the birth of Christ there were great race
+movements in northern and central Europe, due to an increase of
+population and insufficiency of food. Not only did these white
+barbarians (though they were not as barbarous as we were led to think
+by Greek and Roman literature) invade southern Europe, North Africa,
+and Asia Minor, but from the fourth century of the Christian era
+onwards they began to cross over to England and Scotland. At the same
+time they took more complete possession of Scandinavia, driving north
+before their advance the more primitive peoples like the Lapps and
+Finns, who were allied to the stock from which arose both the Eskimo
+and the Amerindian.[1] All this time the Goths and Scandinavians
+were either learning ideas of navigation from the Romans of the
+Mediterranean or the Greeks of the Black Sea, or they were inventing
+for themselves better ways of constructing ships; and although they
+propelled them mainly by oars, they used masts and sails as well.[2]
+Having got over the fear of the sea sufficiently to reach the coasts
+of England and Scotland, the Hebrides, Orkneys, and Shetlands, they
+became still more venturesome in their voyages from Norway, until they
+discovered the Faroe Archipelago (which tradition says they found
+inhabited by wild sheep), and then the large island of Iceland, which
+had, however, already been reached and settled by the northern Irish.
+
+[Footnote 1: This is a convenient name for the race formerly called
+"American Indian". They are not Indians (i.e. natives of India), and
+they are not the only Americans, since there are now about 110,000,000
+white Americans of European origin and 24,000,000 negroes and
+negroids. The total approximate "Amerindian" or aboriginal population
+of the New World at the present day is 16,000,000, of whom about
+111,000 live in the Canadian Dominion, and 300,000 in the United
+States, the remainder in Central and South America.]
+
+[Footnote 2: It is doubtful whether actual masts and sails were known
+in America till the coming of Europeans, though the ancient Peruvians
+are said to have used mat sails in their canoes. But the northern
+Amerindians had got as far as placing bushes or branches of fir trees
+upright in their canoes to catch the force of the wind.]
+
+Iceland, though it lies so far to the north that it is partly within
+the Arctic Circle, is, like Norway, Scotland, and Ireland, affected by
+the Gulf Stream, so that considerable portions of it are quite
+habitable. It is not almost entirely covered with ice, as Greenland
+is; in fact, Iceland should be called Greenland (from the large extent
+of its grassy pastures), and Greenland should be called Iceland.
+Instead of this, however, the early Norwegian explorers called these
+countries by the names they still bear.
+
+The Norse rovers from Norway and the Hebrides colonized Iceland from
+the year 850; and about a hundred and thirty-six years afterwards, in
+their venturesome journeys in search of new lands, they reached the
+south-east and south-west coasts of Greenland. Owing to the glacial
+conditions and elevated character of this vast continental island
+(more than 500,000 sq. miles in area)--for the whole interior of
+Greenland rises abruptly from the sea-coast to altitudes of from 5000
+to 11,000 ft.--this discovery was of small use to the early Norwegians
+or their Iceland colony. After it was governed by the kingdom of
+Norway in the thirteenth century, the Norse colonization of south-west
+Greenland faded away under the attacks of the Eskimo, until it ceased
+completely in the fifteenth century. When Denmark united herself with
+the kingdom of Norway in 1397, the Danish king became also the ruler
+of Iceland. In the eighteenth century the Norwegian and Danish
+settlements were re-established along the south-east and south-west
+coasts of Greenland, mainly on account of the value of the whale,
+seal, and cod fisheries in the seas around this enormous frozen
+island; and all Greenland is now regarded as a Danish possession.
+
+But the adventurous Norsemen who first reached Greenland from Iceland
+attempted to push their investigations farther to the south-west, in
+the hope of discovering more habitable lands; and in this way it was
+supposed that their voyages extended as far as Massachusetts and Rhode
+Island, but in all probability they reached no farther than
+Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. This portion of North America they
+called "Vinland", more from the abundance of cranberries (_vinbær_) on
+the open spaces than the few vines to be found in the woods of Nova
+Scotia.[3]
+
+[Footnote 3: The grapes and vines so often alluded to by the early
+explorers of North America ripened, according to the species, between
+August and October. They belong to the same genus--_Vitis_--as that of
+the grape vines of the Old World, but they were quite distinct in
+species. Nowadays they are known as the Fox Grapes (_Vitis vulpina_),
+the Frost Grape (_V. cordifolia_), the _V. aestivalis_, the _V.
+labruska_, &c. The fruit of the Fox Grape is dark purple, with a very
+dusky skin and a musky flavour. The Frost Grape has a very small
+berry, which is black or leaden-blue when covered with bloom. It is
+very acid to the taste, but from all these grapes it is easy to make a
+delicious, refreshing drink. Champlain, however, says that the wild
+grapes were often quite large in size, and his men found them
+delicious to eat.]
+
+This brings us down to the year 1008. The Icelandic Norsemen then
+ceased their investigations of the North-American Continent, and were
+too ignorant to realize the value of their discoveries. Their colonies
+on the coasts of Nova Scotia ("Vinland") and Newfoundland
+("Estotiland") were attacked probably by Eskimos, at any rate by a
+short, thick-set, yellow-skinned ugly people whom the Norsemen called
+"Skræling",[4] who overcame the unfortunate settlers, murdered some,
+and carried off others into the interior.
+
+[Footnote 4: Perhaps from the Eastern Eskimo national name _Karalit_.]
+
+But about this period, when Europe was going through that dismal era,
+the Dark Age which followed the downfall of the Roman Empire of the
+west, various impulses were already directing the attention of
+European adventurers to the Western Ocean, the Atlantic. One cause was
+the increased hold of Roman and Greek Christianity over the peoples of
+Europe. These Churches imposed fasts either for single days or for
+continuous periods. When people fasted it meant that they were chiefly
+denied any form of meat, and therefore must eat fish if they were not
+content with oil, bread, or vegetables. So that there was an enormous
+and increasing demand for fish, not only amongst those fortunate
+people who lived by the seashore, and could get it fresh whenever they
+liked, but among those who lived at a distance inland, and were still
+required to fast when the Church so directed. Of course in many parts
+of Europe they could get freshwater fish from the rivers or lakes. But
+the supply was not equal to the demand; and fish sent up from the
+seacoast soon went bad, so that the plan of salting and curing fish
+was adopted. The Norsemen found it a paying business to fish
+industriously in the seas round Iceland, Norway, Scotland, and
+Ireland, salt and cure the fish, and then carry it to more southern
+countries, where they exchanged it against wine, oil, clothing
+materials, and other goods. This led to the Venetians (who had
+absorbed so much of the carrying trade of the Mediterranean) sending
+their ships through the Straits of Gibraltar into the northern seas
+and trading with the Baltic for amber and salt fish. In the course of
+this trade some Venetians, such as Antonio Zeno, found their way to
+Norway and Iceland.[5] It is thought that by this means Venice became
+acquainted with the records of the Icelandic voyages to North
+America, and that her explorers thus grew to entertain the idea of a
+sea journey westward, or north-westward, of Britain, bringing mariners
+to a New World represented by the far-eastern extension of Asia.
+
+[Footnote 5: Antonio Zeno served as pilot to Earl Sinclair of the
+Faeroe Islands and of Roslyn, a Norman-Scottish nobleman who owed
+joint fealty to the kings of Norway and Scotland. Sinclair was so
+impressed with the stories of a "Newland" beyond Greenland that he
+sailed to find it about 1390, but only reached Greenland.]
+
+Christopher Columbus, the Genoese, conceived a similar idea, which
+also may have owed something to the tradition of the Norsemen's
+discovery of Vinland. But Columbus's theories were based on better
+evidence, such as the discovery on the coasts of the Azores
+archipelago, Madeira, and Portugal of strange seeds, tree trunks,
+objects of human workmanship, and even (it is said) the bodies of
+drowned savages--Amerindians--which had somehow drifted across, borne
+by the current of the Gulf Stream, and escaping the notice of the
+sharks.
+
+Whilst Columbus was bestirring himself to find Asia across the
+Atlantic, a sea pilot, JOHN CABOT (Zuan Cabota)--Genoese by birth, but
+a naturalized subject of Venice--came to England and offered himself
+to King Henry VII as a discoverer of new lands across the ocean. At
+first he was employed at Copenhagen to settle fishery quarrels about
+Iceland, and probably Cabota, or Cabot, visited Iceland in King
+Henry's service, and there heard of the Icelandic colonies on the
+other side of the Atlantic, only recently abandoned.
+
+In 1496 King Henry VII provided money to cover some of the expense of
+a voyage of discovery to search for the rumoured island across the
+ocean. The people of Bristol were ordered to assist John Cabot, and by
+them he was furnished with a small sailing ship, the _Matthew_, and a
+crew of fifteen mariners. Cabot, with his two sons, Luis and Sancio,
+sailed for Ireland and the unknown West in May, 1497, and, after a sea
+voyage quite as wonderful as that of Columbus, reached the coast of
+Cape Breton Island (or "the New Isle", as it was first named[6]) on
+June 24, 1497. They found "the land excellent, and the climate
+temperate". The sea was so full of fish along these coasts that the
+mariners opined (truly) that henceforth Bristol need not trouble about
+the Iceland trade. Here along this "new isle" were the predestined
+fisheries of Britain.[7]
+
+[Footnote 6: Cape Breton was not then, or for nearly two hundred years
+afterwards, known to be an island. It was thought to be part of the
+"island" (peninsula) of what we now call Nova Scotia, and the whole of
+this region which advances so prominently into the Atlantic was
+believed to be at first the great unknown "New Island" of Irish and
+English legends--legends based on the Norse discoveries of the
+eleventh century. Cape Breton was thus named by the Breton seaman who
+came thither soon after the Cabot expeditions to fish for cod. This
+large island is separated from Nova Scotia by the Gut of Canso, a
+strait no broader than a river.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Dr. S.E. DAWSON (_The St. Lawrence Basin_) says of this
+voyage: "When the forest wilderness of Cape Breton listened to the
+voices of Cabot's little company (of Bristol mariners) it was the
+first faint whisper of the mighty flood of English speech which was
+destined to overflow the continent to the shores of another
+ocean...."]
+
+They encountered no inhabitants, though they found numerous traces of
+their existence in the form of snares, notched trees, and bone netting
+needles. John Cabot hoisted the English flag of St. George and the
+Venetian standard of St. Mark; then--perhaps after coasting a little
+along Nova Scotia--fearful that a longer stay might cause them to run
+short of provisions, he turned the prow of the _Matthew_ eastward, and
+reached Bristol once more about August 6, and London on August 10,
+1497, with his report to King Henry VII, who rewarded him with a
+donation of £10. He was further granted a pension of £20 a year (which
+he only drew for two years, probably because he died after returning
+from a second voyage to the North-American coast), and he received a
+renewal of his patent of discovery in February, 1498. In this patent
+it is evidently inferred that King Henry VII assumed a sovereignty
+over these distant regions because of John Cabot's hoisting of the
+English flag on "the new Isle" (Cape Breton Island) in the preceding
+year.
+
+The new expedition of 1498 was a relatively important affair. The
+king assisted to finance the ventures of the Bristol captains, and
+five of his ships formed part of the little fleet. It is probable that
+John Cabot was in command, and almost certain that his young son
+Sebastian was a passenger, possibly an assistant pilot. The course
+followed lay much farther to the north, and brought the little sailing
+vessels amongst the icebergs, ice floes, polar bears, and stormy seas
+of Greenland and Labrador. Commercially the voyage was a failure,
+almost a disaster. The ships returned singly, and after a considerable
+interval of time. Nevertheless, some of the king's loans were repaid
+to him; and in 1501 a regular chartered company was formed (perhaps at
+Bristol), with three Bristolians and three Portuguese as directors.
+Henry VII not only gave a royal patent to this association, but lent
+more money to enable it to explore and colonize these new lands across
+the western sea.
+
+There can be little doubt that between 1498 and 1505 these Bristol
+ships, directed by Italian, English, and Portuguese pilots, first
+revealed to the civilized world of western Europe the coasts of
+Newfoundland, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Massachusetts, and
+Delaware. They must have got as far south as the State of Delaware
+(according to Sebastian Cabot, their southern limit was lat. 38°),
+because in 1505 they were able to bring back parrots ("popyngays"), as
+well as hawks and lynxes ("catts of the mountaigne"), for the
+delectation of King Henry; and parrots even at that period could not
+have been obtained from farther north than the latitude of New
+York.[8]
+
+[Footnote 8: Almost certainly this was _Conurus carolinensis_, a green
+and orange parrakeet still found in the south-eastern States of North
+America, but formerly met with as far north as New York and Boston.]
+
+But after 1505 English interest in "the Newe founde launde" and the
+"Newe Isle" languished; the exploration of North America was taken up
+and carried farther by Portuguese, Bretons and Normans of France,
+Italians, and Spaniards.[9] It revived again under Henry VIII, owing
+to the irresistible attraction of the Newfoundland fisheries and the
+knowledge that the ships from France were returning every autumn with
+great supplies of fish cured and salted; for an adequate supply of
+salt fish was becoming a matter of great importance to the markets of
+western Europe. In 1527 Henry VIII sent two ships under the command of
+John Rut to explore the North-American coast, and Captain Rut seems
+to have reached the Straits of Belle Isle between Newfoundland
+and Labrador (then blocked with ice so that he took them for
+a bay), and afterwards to have passed along the east coast of
+Newfoundland--already much frequented by the Bretons, Normans, and
+Portuguese--and to have stopped at the harbour of St. John's, thence
+sailing as far south as Massachusetts.
+
+[Footnote 9: The name _America_ probably appears for the first time in
+English print in the old play or masque the _Four Elements_, which was
+published about 1518. In a review of the geography of the Earth, as
+known at that period, a description is given of this vast New World
+across the Ocean: "But these new landys found lately, been called
+America, because only Americus did find them first". Americus was a
+Florentine bank clerk--Amerigo Vespucci--at Seville who gave up the
+counting-house for adventure, sailed with a Spanish captain to the
+West Indies and the mainland of Venezuela (off which he notes that he
+met an English sailing vessel, and this as early as 1499!), and then
+joined the first exploring voyage of the Portuguese to Brazil. He
+returned to Europe, and in a letter to a fellow countryman at Paris,
+written in the late autumn of 1502, he claimed to have discovered a
+New World across the Ocean. His clear statement about what was really
+the South American Continent aroused so much enthusiasm in civilized
+Europe that five years afterwards the New World was called after him
+by a German printer (Walzmüller) at the little Alsatian University of
+St. Dié. By 1518 the English writers and mariners were probably aware
+that the discoveries of Cabot, Columbus, and the Portuguese indicated
+the extension of "America" from the Arctic to the Antarctic, but not
+till about 1553 did the scholars and adventurers of England show
+themselves fully alive to the gigantic importance of this New World.
+Between 1530 and 1553 their attention was distracted from geography
+and over-sea adventure by the religious troubles of the Reformation.]
+
+The Portuguese monarchy had begun to take possession of the Azores
+archipelago from the year 1432. These islands were probably known to
+the Phoenicians, and even to the Arabs of the Middle Ages; between the
+fourteenth and fifteenth centuries they had been rediscovered by
+Catalans, Genoese, Flemings, and Portuguese; and after 1444 the Azores
+began to prove very useful to the sea adventurers of this wonderful
+fifteenth century, as they became a shelter and a place of call for
+fresh water and provisions almost in the middle of the Atlantic, 800
+to 1000 miles due west of Portugal. Portuguese vessels sailed
+northwards from the Azores in search of fishing grounds, and thus
+reached Iceland, which they called Terra do Bacalhao.[10] They may
+even before Cabot have visited in an unrecorded fashion the wonderful
+banks of Newfoundland--an immense area of shallow sea swarming with
+codfish.
+
+[Footnote 10: _Bacalhao_ in Portuguese (and a similar word in Spanish,
+old French, and Italian) means dried, salted fish. It comes from a
+Latin word meaning "a small stick", because the fish were split open
+and held up flat to dry by means of a cross or framework of small
+sticks, the Norse name "stokfiske" meant the same: stockfish or
+stickfish.]
+
+As soon as the news of the Cabot voyages reached the King of Portugal
+he arranged to send an expedition of discovery to the far north-west,
+perhaps to find a northern sea route to Eastern Asia. He gave the
+command to Gaspar Corte-Real, a Portuguese noble connected through
+family property with the Azores. Starting from the Azores in the
+summer of 1500, Corte-Real discovered Newfoundland, and called it
+"Terra Verde" from its dense woods of fir trees, which are now being
+churned into wood pulp to make paper for British books and newspapers.
+He then sailed along the coast of Labrador,[11] and thence crossed
+over to Greenland, the southern half of which he mapped with fair
+accuracy. His records of this voyage take particular note of the great
+icebergs off the coast of Greenland. His men were surprised to find
+that sea water frozen becomes perfectly fresh--all the salt is left
+out in the process. So that his two ships could supply themselves
+with fresh water of the purest, by hacking ice from the masses
+floating in these Greenland summer seas. The next year he started
+again, but on a more westerly course. His two ships reached the coasts
+of New Jersey and Massachusetts, and sailed north once more to
+Labrador. They captured a number of Amerindian aborigines, but only
+one of the two ships (with seven of these savages on board) reached
+Portugal; Gaspar Corte-Real was never heard of again. His brother
+Miguel went out in search of him, but he likewise disappeared without
+a trace.
+
+[Footnote 11: _Labrador_ (_Lavrador_ in Portuguese) means a labourer,
+a serf. The Portuguese are supposed to have brought some Red Indians
+from this coast to be sold as slaves.]
+
+Nevertheless these Portuguese expeditions to North America have left
+ineffaceable traces in the geography of the Newfoundland coast, of
+which (under the name of Terra Nova[12]) the governorship was made
+hereditary in the Corte-Real family. Cape Race for example--the most
+prominent point of the island--is really the Portuguese _Cabo
+Raso_--the bare or "shaved" cape--and this was by the Spaniards
+regarded as the westernmost limit of Portuguese sovereignty in that
+direction. For the Spaniards were by no means pleased at the intrusion
+of other nations into a New World which they desired to monopolize
+entirely for the Spanish Crown. They did not so much mind sharing it,
+along the line agreed upon in the Treaty of Tordesillas, with the
+Portuguese, but the ingress of the English and French infuriated them.
+The Basque people of the north-east corner of Spain were a hardy
+seafaring folk, especially bold in the pursuit of whales in the Bay of
+Biscay, and eager to take a share in the salt-fish trade. This desire
+took them in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to Ireland and
+Iceland. They began to fish off the Newfoundland coasts perhaps as
+early as 1525. About this time also the Emperor Charles V, King of
+Spain, having through one great Portuguese sea captain--Magalhães
+(Magellan)--discovered the passage from Atlantic to Pacific across
+the extremity of South America, thought by employing another
+Portuguese--Estevão Gomez--to find a similar sea route through North
+America, which would prove a short cut from Europe to China. This was
+the famous "North-west Passage" the search for which drew so many
+great and brave adventurers into the Arctic sea of America between
+1500 and 1853, to be revealed at last by our fellow countrymen, but to
+prove useless to navigation on account of the enormous accumulation of
+ice.
+
+[Footnote 12: Corte-Real's name of Terra Verde ("Greenland") was soon
+dropped in favour of the older English name "New Land" (Newfoundland,
+Terra Nova). This was at once adopted by the French seamen as "Terre
+Neuve".]
+
+Gomez left Corunna in the winter of 1524-5, and reached the
+North-American coast somewhere about Florida. He probably only began
+to investigate closely after he passed into the broad gulf of Maine,
+between Cape Cod and Nova Scotia. Here he sighted from the sea the
+lofty mountains of New Hampshire, and steered for the mouth of the
+Penobscot River (which he named the River of Deer), a title which
+sticks to the locality--in Deer Island--at the present day. But this
+being no opening of a broad strait, he passed on into the Bay of Fundy
+(from Portuguese word, _Fundo_, the bottom of a sack or passage),
+explored its two terminal gulfs, then returned along the coast of Nova
+Scotia,[13] past Cape Sable, and so to the "gut" or Canal of Canso.
+Gomez realized that Cape Breton was an island (we now know that it is
+two islands separated by a narrow watercourse), but thought that Cabot
+Strait was a great bay, and guessed nothing of the Gulf of St.
+Lawrence, and the chance of securing for Spain the possession of this
+mighty waterway into the heart of North America.
+
+[Footnote 13: The name Nova Scotia was not applied to this peninsula
+until 1621, by the British Government. It was at first included with
+New Brunswick under the Spanish name of Norumbega, and after 1603 was
+called by the French "Acadie".]
+
+From Cape North he crossed over to the south coast of Newfoundland,
+and followed this more or less till he came to Cape Race. Newfoundland
+was a "very cold and savage land", and Gomez decided it was no use
+prosecuting any farther his enquiry as to a water passage across North
+America, because, if it existed, it must lie in latitudes of frozen
+sea and be unnavigable.
+
+At different places along the east coast of North America he kidnapped
+natives, and eventually returned to Spain (via Florida and Cuba) with
+a cargo of Amerindian slaves.
+
+He had been preceded, by seven or eight months, in his explorations
+along the same coast by GIOVANNI DA VERRAZANO, a native of Florence,
+who as a navigator and explorer had visited the East, and had
+associated himself a good deal with the shipowners of Dieppe. Ever
+since the issue of Cabot's voyages was known--at any rate from
+1504--ships from Brittany and Normandy had made their way to Cape
+Breton Island and Newfoundland for the cod fisheries. In 1508 a Norman
+named Aubert was sent out by Jean Ango--a great merchant of Dieppe of
+that day--to found a colony in Newfoundland. Aubert failed to do this,
+but he captured and brought away at least seven of the natives, no
+doubt of the Beothik tribe, from Newfoundland to Rouen, with their
+canoe, clothing, and weapons. A good many ships also went out from La
+Rochelle on the west coast of France, and took part in the fishing off
+the coast of Newfoundland: together with the ships of Brittany and
+Dieppe there may have been a French fishing fleet of seventy to eighty
+ships plying every summer season between France, Newfoundland, and
+Cape Breton. So that when "John from Verrazano" offered his services
+to Francis I to make discoveries across the ocean, which should become
+possessions of the French Crown, he was quickly provided with the
+requisite funds and ships.
+
+Verrazano started on the 17th of January, 1524, for the coast of
+North America, but I shall say little about his expedition here,
+because it resulted chiefly in the discovery and mapping of what is
+now the east coast of the United States. He reached as far as the
+south coast of Newfoundland, it is true; he also gave the names of
+Nova Gallia and Francesca to the coast regions of eastern North
+America, and distinctly intended to take possession of these on behalf
+of the French Crown. But his work in this direction did not lead
+directly to the creation of the French colony of Canada, because, when
+he returned from America, Francis I was at war with Spain, and could
+pay no attention to Verrazano's projects. His voyage is worth
+recording in the present volume only for these two reasons: he
+certainly put it into the minds of French people that they might found
+an empire in North America; and he inspired geographers for another
+hundred years with the false idea that the great North American
+Continent had a very narrow waist, like the Isthmus of Panama, and
+that the Pacific Ocean covered the greater part of what is now called
+the United States. This mistake arose from his looking across the
+narrow belts or peninsulas of sand in North Carolina and Virginia, and
+seeing vast stretches of open water to the west. These were found, a
+hundred years afterwards, to be merely large shallow lagoons of sea
+water, but Verrazano thought they were an extension of the Pacific
+Ocean.
+
+Nevertheless, Verrazano's voyage developed into the French
+colonization of Canada, just as Cabot drew the British to
+Newfoundland, Columbus the Spaniards to Central and South America, and
+Amerigo Vespucci showed the Portuguese the way to Brazil. The modern
+nations of western Europe owe the inception of their great colonies in
+America to four Italians.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Jacques Cartier
+
+
+Verrazano and Gomez, and probably the English captain, John Rut, had
+all sought for the opening of a strait of salt water--like Magellan's
+Straits in the far south--which should lead them through the great
+North-American continent to the regions of China and Japan. Yet in
+some incomprehensible way they overlooked the two broad passages to
+the north and south of Newfoundland--the Straits of Belle Isle and of
+Cabot--which would at any rate lead them into the vast Gulf of St.
+Lawrence, and thence to the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes; a
+natural system of waterways connected each with the other and all with
+the Mississippi and Missouri, the Arctic Ocean, and Hudson's Bay; nay,
+more, with the North Pacific also; so that with a few "portages", or
+carryings of canoes from one watershed to another, a traveller of any
+enterprise, accompanied by a sturdy crew, can cross the broad
+continent of North America at its broadest from sea to sea without
+much walking.
+
+Estevão Gomez noticed Cabot Straits between Cape Breton and
+Newfoundland, but thought them only a very deep bay. John Rut and
+others discerned the Straits of Belle Isle as a wide recess in the
+coast rather than the mouth of a channel leading far inland. And yet,
+after thirty years of Breton, English, and Portuguese fishing
+operations in these waters, there must have been glimmerings of the
+existence of the great Gulf of St. Lawrence behind Newfoundland: and
+JACQUES CARTIER (or Quartier), who had probably made already one
+voyage to Newfoundland (besides a visit to Brazil), suspected that
+between Newfoundland and Labrador there lay the opening of the great
+sea passage "leading to China". He proposed himself to Philippe de
+Chabot, the Admiral of France, as the leader of a new French adventure
+to find the North-west Passage, was accepted by King Francis, and at
+the age of forty-three years set out, with two ships, from St. Malo in
+Brittany, on April 20, 1534, ten years after Verrazano's voyage, and
+reached the coast of Newfoundland after a voyage of only twenty days.
+As he sailed northwards, past the deeply indented fiords and bays of
+eastern Newfoundland (the shores of which were still hugged by the
+winter ice), he and his men were much impressed with the incredible
+numbers of the sea fowl settled for nesting purposes on the rocky
+islands, especially on Funk Island.[1] These birds were guillemots,
+puffins, great auks,[2] gannets (called by Cartier _margaulx_), and
+probably gulls and eider duck. To his sailors--always hungry and
+partly fed on salted provisions, as seamen were down to a few years
+ago--this inexhaustible supply of fresh food was a source of great
+enjoyment. They were indifferent, no doubt, to the fishy flavour of
+the auks and the guillemots, and only noticed that they were
+splendidly fat. Moreover, the birds attracted Polar bears "as large as
+cows and as white as swans". The bears would swim off from the shore
+to the islands (unless they could reach them by crossing the ice), and
+the sailors occasionally killed the bears and ate their flesh, which
+they compared in excellence and taste to veal.
+
+[Footnote 1: Funk Island--called by Cartier "the Island of Birds"--is
+only about 3 miles round, and 46 feet above the sea level. It is 3
+miles distant from the coast.]
+
+[Footnote 2: The Great Auk (_Alca impennis_), extinct since about 1844
+in Europe and 1870 in Labrador, once had in ancient times a
+geographical range from Massachusetts and Newfoundland to Iceland,
+Ireland, Scotland, N.E. England, and Denmark. Perhaps nowhere was it
+found so abundantly as on the coasts of Eastern Newfoundland and on
+Funk Island hard by. The Great Auk was in such numbers on the
+north-east coast of Newfoundland that the Amerindians of that country
+and of southern Labrador used it as fuel in the winter time, its body
+being very full of oil and burning with a splendid flame. The French
+seamen called it _pingouin_ ("penguin") from its fatness, and this
+name was much later transferred to the real penguins of the southern
+seas which are quite unrelated to the auks.]
+
+Passing through the Straits of Belle Isle, Cartier's ships entered
+the Gulf of St. Lawrence. They had previously visited the adjoining
+coast of Labrador, and there had encountered their first "natives",
+members of some Algonkin tribe from Canada, who had come north for
+seal fishing (Cartier is clever enough to notice and describe their
+birch-bark canoes). After examining the west coast of Newfoundland,
+Cartier's ships sailed on past the Magdalen Islands (stopping every
+now and then off some islet to collect supplies of sea birds, for the
+rocky ground was covered with them as thickly as a meadow with
+grass).[3] He reached the north coast of Prince Edward Island, and
+this lovely country received from him an enthusiastic description. The
+pine trees, the junipers, yews, elms, poplars, ash, and willows, the
+beeches and the maples, made the forest not only full of delicious and
+stimulating odours, but lovely in its varied tints of green. In the
+natural meadows and forest clearings there were red and white
+currants, gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries, a vetch which
+produced edible peas, and a grass with a grain like rye. The forest
+abounded in pigeons, and the climate was pleasant and warm.
+
+[Footnote 3: On the shores of these islands they noticed "several
+great beasts like oxen, which have two tusks in the mouth similar to
+those of the elephant". These were walruses.]
+
+Later on he coasted New Brunswick, and paused for a time over Chaleur
+Bay, hoping it might be the opening to the strait across the continent
+of which he was in search; but finding it was not, he continued
+northwards till he had almost rounded the Gaspé Peninsula, a course
+which would have led him straight away into the wonderful discovery of
+the St. Lawrence River, but that, being forced by bad weather into
+Gaspé Bay, and perhaps hindered by fog, instead of entering the St.
+Lawrence he sailed right across to Anticosti Island. After that,
+being baffled by bad weather and doubtful as to his resources lasting
+out, he decided to return to France through the Strait of Belle Isle.
+
+So far he had failed to realize two of the most important things in
+the geography of this region: the broad southern entrance into the
+Gulf of St. Lawrence (subsequently called Cabot Strait), which
+separates Newfoundland on the north from Cape Breton Island on the
+south, and the broad entrance into the River St. Lawrence between
+Anticosti Island and the Gaspé Peninsula.
+
+Yet, whilst staying in Gaspé Bay, he had a very important meeting with
+Amerindian natives of the Huron-Iroquois stock, who had come down the
+River St. Lawrence from the neighbourhood of Quebec, fishing for
+mackerel. These bold, friendly people welcomed the French heartily,
+greeting them with songs and dances. But when they saw Cartier erect a
+great cross on the land at the entrance to Gaspé Bay (a cross bearing
+a shield with the arms of France and the letters "Vive le Roi de
+France"), they were ill at ease. It is certain that not one word could
+be understood in language between the two parties, for there were as
+yet no interpreters; but the Amerindians were probably shrewd enough
+to perceive that Cartier was making some claim on the land, and they
+explained by signs that they considered all this country belonged to
+themselves. Nevertheless, Cartier persuaded two youths, the sons of
+one of the chiefs, to go back with him to France on his ship, to learn
+the French language, to see what France looked like, and to return
+afterwards as interpreters. The boys, though they were practically
+kidnapped at first, were soon reconciled to going, especially when
+they were dressed in French clothes!
+
+[Illustration: JACQUES CARTIER]
+
+When Cartier was on his way home he sailed in a north-easterly
+direction in such a way as to overlook the broad channel between the
+Gaspé Peninsula and Anticosti Island, but having rounded the
+easternmost extremity of that large island, he coasted along its
+northern shores until he caught sight of the opening of the Canadian
+channel to the west. He believed then that he had discovered the
+long-looked-for opening of the trans-continental passage, and sailed
+for France with his wonderful news.
+
+On the 19th of May, 1535, Cartier started again from St. Malo with
+three ships, the biggest of which was only 120 tons, while the others
+were respectively 60 and 40 tons capacity. The crew consisted of about
+112 persons, and in addition there were the two Indian youths who had
+been kidnapped on the previous voyage, and were now returning as
+interpreters. Instead, however, of reaching Newfoundland in twenty
+days, he spent five weeks crossing the Atlantic before he reached his
+rendezvous with the other ships at Blanc Sablon, on the south coast of
+Labrador; for the easy access to the Gulf of St. Lawrence through
+Cabot Strait (between Newfoundland and Cape Breton) was not yet
+realized. Once past Anticosti Island, the two Huron interpreters began
+to recognize the scenery.[4] They now explained to Cartier that he had
+entered the estuary of a vast river. This they said he had only to
+pursue in ships and boats and he would reach "Canada" (which was the
+name they gave to the district round about Quebec), and that beyond
+"Canada" no man had ever been known to reach the end of this great
+water; but, they added, it was fresh water, not salt, and this last
+piece of information much disheartened Cartier, who feared that he had
+not, after all, discovered the water route across North America to the
+Pacific Ocean. He therefore turned about and once more searched the
+opposite coast of Labrador most minutely, displaying, as he did so, a
+seamanship which was little else than marvellous, for it is a very
+dangerous coast, the seas are very stormy, and the look-out often
+hampered by a sudden rising of dense fog; there are islands and rocks
+(some of them almost hidden by the water) and sandbanks; but Cartier
+made this survey of southern Labrador without an accident.
+
+[Footnote 4: Anticosti Island received from Cartier the name of "the
+Island of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin", in consequence of his
+having discovered it to be an island on the feast day of that name. It
+did not receive its present title until the late seventeenth century.]
+
+At this period, some three hundred and seventy-five years ago, the
+northern coasts of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and of Anticosti Island
+swarmed with huge walruses, which were described by Cartier as sea
+horses that spent the night on land and the day in the water. They
+have long since been exterminated by the English and French seamen and
+settlers.
+
+At last Cartier set sail for the south-west, intending to explore this
+wonderful river and to reach the kingdom of Canada. According to his
+understanding of the Amerindian interpreters, the waters of the St.
+Lawrence flowed through three great states: _Saguenay_, which was the
+mountainous Gaspé Peninsula and the opposite coast; _Canada_, Quebec
+and its neighbourhood; and _Hochelaga_, the region between Montreal
+and Lake Ontario. At the mouth of the Saguenay River, where Tadoussac
+is now situated, he encountered large numbers of white whales--the
+Beluga. These are really huge porpoises, allied to the narwhals, but
+without the narwhal's exaggerated tusk. When he reached the vicinity
+of the modern Quebec,[5] and his Amerindian interpreters found
+themselves at their actual home (for they were far away from home on a
+fishing expedition when he caught them in Gaspé Bay) there was great
+rejoicing; for they were able to tell their relations of the wonderful
+country to which they had been across the ocean. Cartier was delighted
+with the surroundings of "Canada" (Quebec), near which at that time
+was a large settlement (Stadacona) of Huron Indians under a chief
+named Donnacona. He decided to lay up his ships here for the winter,
+and to pursue the rest of his western explorations in his boats.
+
+[Footnote 5: Then called "Canada". The word Quebec (pronounced
+_Kebek_) means the narrow part of a river.]
+
+But the Amerindians for some reason were not willing that he should go
+any farther, and attempted to scare him from his projects by arranging
+for three of their number to come down river in a canoe, dressed in
+dogs' skins, with their faces blackened, and with bisons' horns
+fastened to their heads. These devils pretended to take no notice of
+the French, but to die suddenly as they reached the shore, while the
+rest of the natives gave vent to howlings of despair and
+consternation. The three devils were pretending to have brought a
+message from a god to these Hurons of "Canada" that the country up
+river (Hochelaga) was so full of ice and snow that it would be death
+for anyone to go there.
+
+However, this made little or no impression on Cartier; but he consented
+to leave a proportion of his party behind with the chief Donnacona as
+hostages, and then started up country in his boats with about seventy
+picked officers and men. On the 2nd of October, 1535, they reached the
+vicinity of the modern Montreal, the chief settlement of Hochelaga.
+The Huron town at the foot of the hills was circular in outline,
+surrounded by a stockade of three rows of upright tree trunks, which
+rose to its highest point in the middle, where the timbers of the
+inner and outward sides sloped to meet one another, the height of the
+central row being about 8 feet above the ground. All round the inside
+there was a platform or rampart on which were stored heavy stones to
+be hurled at any enemy who should attempt to scale the fence. The town
+was entered by only one doorway, and contained about fifty houses
+surrounding an open space whereon the towns-people made their
+bonfires. Each house was about 50 feet long by 12 to 15 feet wide.
+They were roofed with bark, and usually had attics which were
+storerooms for food. In the centre of each of these long houses there
+was a fireplace where the cooking for the whole of the house
+inhabitants was done. Each family had its own room, but each house
+probably contained five families. Almost the only furniture, except
+cooking pots, was mats on which the people sat and slept. The food of
+the people consisted, besides fish and the flesh of beavers and deer,
+of maize and beans. Cartier at once recognized the maize or Indian
+corn as the same grain ("a large millet") as that which he had seen in
+Brazil.
+
+He gives a description of how they made the maize into bread (or
+rather "dampers", "ashcakes"); but as this is not altogether clear, it
+is better to combine it with Champlain's description, written a good
+many years later, but still at a time when the Hurons were unaffected
+by the white man's civilization. According to both Cartier and
+Champlain, the women pounded the corn to meal in a wooden mortar, and
+removed the bran by means of fans made of the bark of trees. From this
+meal they made bread, sometimes mixing with the meal the beans
+(_Phaseolus vulgaris_), which had been boiled and mashed. Or they
+would boil both Indian corn and beans into a thick soup, adding to the
+soup blueberries,[6] dried raspberries, or pieces of deer's fat. The
+meal derived from the corn and beans they would make into bread,
+baking it in the ashes.
+
+[Footnote 6: The Canada Blueberry (_Vaccinium canadense_), called by
+the French _bluës_ or _bluëts_. These bluës were collected and dried
+by the Amerindians, and made a sweet nutriment for eating in the
+winter.]
+
+Or they would take the pounded Indian corn without removing the bran,
+and put two or three handfuls of it into an earthen pot full of water,
+stirring it from time to time, when it boiled, so that it might not
+adhere to the pot. To this was added a small quantity of fish, fresh
+or dry, according to the season, to give a flavour to the _migane_ or
+porridge. When the dried fish was used the porridge smelt very badly
+in the nostrils of Europeans, but worst of all when the porridge was
+mixed with dried venison, which was sometimes nearly putrid! If fish
+was put into this porridge it was boiled whole in the mealy water,
+then taken out without any attempt to remove the fins, scales, or
+entrails, and the whole of the boiled fish was pounded up and put back
+into the porridge. Sometimes a great birch-bark "kettle" would be
+filled with water, fish, and meat, and red-hot stones be dropped in
+till it boiled. Then with a spoon they would collect from the surface
+the fat and oil arising from the fish or meat. This they afterwards
+mixed with the meal of roasted Indian corn, stirring it with this fat
+till they had made a thick soup. Sometimes, however, they were content
+to eat the young corn-cobs freshly roasted, which as a matter of fact
+(with a little salt) is one of the most delicious things in the world.
+Or they would take ears of Indian corn and bury them in wet mud,
+leaving them thus for two or three months; then the cobs would be
+removed and the rotted grain eaten with meat and fish, though it was
+all muddy and smelt horribly. Cartier also noticed that these Huron
+Indians had melons and pumpkins, and described their wampum or shell
+money.[7]
+
+[Footnote 7: Cartier, in Hakluyt's translation, is made to say (I
+modernize the spelling): "They dig their grounds with certain pieces
+of wood as big as half a sword, on which ground groweth their corn,
+which they call 'offici'; it is as big as our small peason.... They
+have also great store of musk melons, pompions, gourds, cucumbers,
+peas, and beans of every colour, yet differing from ours."
+
+Wampum, or shell money (which recalls the shell money of the Pacific
+Islands), consisted either of beads made from the interior parts of
+sea shells or land shells, or of strings of perforated sea shells. The
+most elaborate kind of wampum was that of the Amerindians of Canada
+and the eastern United States, the shell beads of which were generally
+white. The commoner wampum beads were black and violet. Wampum belts
+were made which illustrated events, dates, treaties of peace, &c, by a
+rude symbolism (figures of men and animals, upright lines, &c), and
+these were worked neatly on string by employing different-coloured
+beads.]
+
+From the eminence on which the Huron city stood, Cartier obtained a
+splendid view of rivers and mountains and magnificent forests, and
+called the place then and there, in his Norman French, Mont Real, or
+Royal Eminence, a name which it will probably bear for all time,
+though the actual city of Montreal lies a few miles below.
+
+Montreal was the limit of Cartier's explorations on this journey. He
+returned thence to "Canada" or Stadacona, where his men built a fort
+armed with artillery, and where his ships were anchored. Here he had
+to stay from the middle of November, 1535, to the middle of April,
+1536, his ships being shut in by the ice. The experiences of the
+French during these five months were mostly unhappy. At first Cartier
+gave himself up to the collecting of information. He noticed for the
+first time the smoking of tobacco,[8] and collected information about
+the products and features of "Canada". The Indians told him of great
+lakes in the far west, one of which was so vast that no man had seen
+the end of it. They told him that anyone travelling up the Richelieu
+River (as it was called sixty years later) would eventually reach a
+land in the south where in the winter there was no ice or snow, and
+where fruit and nut trees grew in abundance. Cartier thought that they
+were talking to him of Florida, but their geographical information can
+scarcely have stretched so far; they probably referred to the milder
+regions of New Jersey and Virginia, which would be reached by
+following southwards the valley of the Hudson and keeping to the
+lowlands of the eastern United States.
+
+[Footnote 8: "There groweth also a certain kind of herb whereof in
+summer they make a great provision for all the year, making great
+account of it, and only men use it; and first they cause it to be
+dried in the sun, then wear it about their necks wrapped in a little
+beast's skin made like a bag, together with a hollow piece of stone or
+wood like a pipe. Then when they please they make powder of it and put
+it in one of the ends of the said cornet or pipe, and laying a coal of
+fire upon it at the other end, suck so long that they fill their
+bodies full of smoke, till that it cometh out of their mouth and
+nostrils, even as out of the tunnel of a chimney. They say that this
+doth keep them warm and in health: they never go without some of it
+about them. We ourselves have tried the same smoke, and having put it
+in our mouths, it seemed almost as hot as pepper." The foregoing is
+one of the earliest descriptions of tobacco smoking in any European
+language, the original words being in Cartier's Norman French.]
+
+As the winter set in with its customary Canadian severity the real
+trouble of the French began. They did not suffer from the cold, but
+they were dying of scurvy. This disease, from which the natives also
+suffered to some extent, was due to their eating nothing but salt or
+smoked provisions--forms of meat or fish. They lived, of course, shut
+up in the fort, and Cartier's fixed idea was to keep the Hurons from
+the knowledge of his misfortune, fearing lest, if they realized how
+the garrison was reduced, they might treacherously attack and massacre
+the rest; for in spite of the extravagant joy with which their arrival
+had been greeted, the Amerindians--notably the two interpreters who
+had been to France and returned--showed at intervals signs of disquiet
+and a longing to be rid of these mysterious white men, whose coming
+might involve the country in unknown misfortunes. In January and
+February, also, Donnacona and these two interpreters and many of the
+Huron men had been absent hunting in the forests, so that there was no
+one among the Amerindians to whom the French could turn for
+information regarding this strange disease. At last 25 out of the 112
+who had left France were dead, and of the remainder only 10 men,
+including Cartier, were not grievously ill. Those who were living
+found it sometimes beyond their strength to bury the dead in the
+frozen ground, and simply placed their bodies in deep snow. Once or
+twice, when Cartier left the fort to go out to the ships, he met
+Domagaya, one of the two interpreters, and found that he also was
+suffering from this mysterious disease, though not nearly so badly as
+the French people. On the body of one young man who died of scurvy
+Cartier and his officers, shuddering, made investigations, opening the
+corpse and examining the organs to try and find the cause of death.
+This was on the afternoon of a day on which they had held a solemn
+service before a statue erected to the Virgin Mary on the shore
+opposite to the ships. All who were fit to walk went in procession
+from the fort to the statue, singing penitential psalms and the Litany
+and celebrating Mass.
+
+Some days after this religious service Cartier met the interpreter,
+Domagaya, and to his surprise found him perfectly well and strong. He
+asked him for an explanation, and was told that the medicine which
+cured this disease was made from the leaves and bark of a tree called
+ameda.[9] Cartier then ventured to say that one of his servants was
+sick of this unknown disease, and Domagaya sent for two women, who
+taught the French people how to make an extract from the balsam fir
+for drinking, and how to apply the same liquid to the inflamed skin.
+The effect on the crews was miraculous. In six days all the sick were
+well and strong.
+
+[Footnote 9: This tree was the balsam fir, _Abies balsamea_.]
+
+Then came the sudden spring. Between April 15th and May 1st the ice on
+the river was all melted, and on the 6th May, 1536, Cartier started
+from the vicinity of Quebec to return to France. But before leaving he
+had managed to kidnap Donnacona, the chief of the Huron settlement,
+and six or seven other Amerindians, amongst them Tainyoanyi, one of
+the two interpreters who had already been to France. He seized these
+men, it appears, partly because he wanted hostages and had good reason
+to fear that the Indians meditated a treacherous attack on his ships
+before they could get away. He also wished for native witnesses at
+Court, when he reached France, to testify to the truth of his
+discoveries, and even more to convince the King of France that there
+was great profit to be obtained from giving effect to Cartier's
+explorations. The chief, Donnacona, was full of wonderful stories of
+the Saguenay region, and of the great lakes to the northwards of
+Quebec. Probably he was only alluding to the wealth of copper now
+known to exist in northern Canada, but to Cartier and the other
+Frenchmen it seemed as though he spoke of gold and silver, rubies, and
+other precious stones.
+
+Donnacona's people howled and wept when their chief was seized; but
+Cartier obliged the chief to reassure them, and to say that the French
+had promised to bring him back after he had paid a visit to their
+great king, who would return him to his country with great presents.
+As a matter of fact, not one of these Indians rapt away by Cartier
+ever saw Canada again. But this was not the fault of Cartier, but of
+the distractions of the times which turned away the thoughts of King
+Francis I from American adventures. The Indians were well and kindly
+treated in France, but all of them died there before Cartier left St.
+Malo to return to Canada in 1541.
+
+One advantage he derived from sailing away with these hostages was (no
+doubt) that they could give him geographical information of importance
+which materially shortened the return journey. For the first time he
+made use of the broad strait between Anticosti Island and Gaspé
+Peninsula, and, better still, entered the Atlantic, not by the
+dangerous northern route through the straits of Belle Isle, but by
+means of Cabot Strait, between Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island. Of
+these discoveries he availed himself on his third and last voyage in
+1541.
+
+When in that year he once more anchored his ships near Quebec he found
+the attitude of the Hurons changed. They enquired about their friends
+and relations who had been carried off five years before, and although
+they pretended to be reconciled to their fate when they heard (not
+altogether truly) that one or two were dead, and the others had become
+great lords in France and had married French women, they really felt a
+disappointment so bitter and a hostility so great that Cartier guessed
+their expressions of welcome to be false. However, he sent back to
+France two of the ships under his command and beached the other three,
+landed his stores, built two forts at Cap Rouge, above and below, and
+then started off with a few of his men and two boats to revisit the
+country of Hochelaga. Here he intended to examine the three rapids or
+"saults"--interruptions to the navigation of the St. Lawrence--which
+he had observed on his previous journey, and which were later named
+the La Chine Rapids (in the belief that they were obstacles on the
+river route to China). But these falls proved insuperable obstacles to
+his boats, and he gave up any further idea of westward exploration,
+returned to his forts and ships near Quebec, and there laid the
+foundations of a fortified town, which he called Charlesbourg Royal.
+Here he spent a very difficult winter, the Hurons in the neighbourhood
+becoming increasingly hostile, and at last, when the spring came, as
+he had received no relief from France, he took to his three ships,
+abandoned Charlesbourg Royal (having probably to do some fighting
+before he could get safely away) and thence sailed for France. Off the
+Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland he met the other ships of the
+expedition which was to have occupied Canada for France. These were
+under the command of the Sieur de Roberval, a French nobleman, who had
+really been made head of the whole enterprise, with Cartier as a
+subordinate officer, but who, the year before, had allowed Cartier to
+go off to Canada and prepare the way, promising to follow immediately.
+The interview between Cartier and Roberval, near where the capital of
+Newfoundland (St. John's) now stands, was a stormy one. Roberval
+ordered Cartier to return at once to Charlesbourg and await his
+arrival. However, in the middle of the night which followed this
+interview, Cartier took advantage of a favourable wind and set sail
+for France, arriving soon afterwards at St. Malo.
+
+But Roberval arrived at Charlesbourg (going the roundabout way through
+the straits of Belle Isle, for Cartier had told him nothing of the
+convenient passage through Cabot Strait), and there spent the winter
+of 1542-3, sending his ships back to France. This winter was one of
+horrors. Roberval was a headstrong, passionate man, perfectly reckless
+of human life. He maintained discipline by ferocious sentences,
+putting many of his men in irons, whipping others cruelly, women as
+well as men, and shooting those who seemed the most rebellious. Even
+the Indians were moved to pity, and wept at the sight of the woes of
+these unhappy French men and women under the control of a bloodthirsty
+tyrant, and many of them dying of scurvy, or miserably weak from that
+disease.[10]
+
+[Footnote 10: A story was subsequently told of Roberval's stern
+treatment which had a germ of truth in it, though it has since been
+the foundation of many a romance. On the journey out from France it is
+said that Roberval took with him his niece Marguerite, a high-born
+lady, who was accompanied by an old companion or nurse. Marguerite was
+travelling with her uncle because, unknown to him, she had a lover who
+had sailed with him on this expedition and whom she hoped to marry. As
+they crossed the Atlantic these facts leaked out, and Roberval
+resolved to bide his time and punish his niece for her deception. As
+they passed the coast of Southern Labrador Marguerite and her old
+nurse were seized and put into a boat, Roberval ordering his sailors
+to row them ashore to an island, and leave them to their fate. They
+were given four guns with ammunition and a small supply of provisions.
+But, as the boat was leaving the ship, Marguerite's lover threw
+himself into the sea and swam to the island. Here, according to the
+story which Marguerite is supposed to have told afterwards, they
+endeavoured to live by killing the wild animals and eating their
+flesh; but her lover-husband died, so also did her child soon after it
+was born, and then the old nurse, and the unhappy Marguerite was left
+alone with the wild beasts, especially the white Polar bears, who
+thronged round her hut. Nevertheless she kept them at bay with her
+arquebus, and managed somehow to support an existence, until after
+nineteen months' isolation the ascending smoke of her fire was seen by
+people on one of the many fishing vessels which, by this time,
+frequented the coasts of Newfoundland. She was taken off the island
+and restored to her home in France. The island to which this tradition
+more especially relates is now called Grand Meccatina.]
+
+However, when the weather was warm again, in June, 1543, Roberval
+started up the St. Lawrence River in boats to reach the wonderful
+country of Saguenay. Apparently he met with little success, and, being
+relieved by French ships in the late summer of 1543, he returned to
+France.
+
+Thus the splendid work achieved by Cartier seemed to have come to
+nothing, for neither he nor Roberval revisited America. The French
+settlement near Quebec was abandoned, so far as the officers of the
+French king were concerned, and between 1545 and about 1583, if any
+other Frenchman or European visited Canada it was some private
+adventurer who traded with the natives in furs, or Basques from France
+and Spain who frequented the waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence on
+account of the abundance of whales, walruses, and seals. In fact, at
+the close of the sixteenth century, the Spanish Basques had
+established themselves on shore at Tadoussac and other places, and
+seemed likely to colonize the country.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Elizabethan Pioneers in North America
+
+
+Except that the ships of Bristol still no doubt continued to resort to
+the banks of Newfoundland for fishing, and that even the captains of
+these ships were occasionally elected admirals of the French, Basque,
+Portuguese, and English fishing fleets during the summer, the English,
+as a nation, took no part in claiming political dominion over North
+America after the voyage of Captain John Rut in 1527. This was the
+fault of Sebastian Cabot, the son of the man who founded British
+America, and who had returned to England long afterwards as the Grand
+Pilot appointed by Edward VI to further the discovery of a northern
+sea passage to China. Through him the attention of adventurers for a
+time was diverted from America to the "discovery" of Russia (as it has
+been called). The efforts of Sebastion Cabot were directed towards the
+revelation of a north-east passage by way of Arctic Russia to the
+Pacific, rather than past Newfoundland and Labrador and across Arctic
+America.
+
+But as soon as Elizabeth came to the throne the sea adventurers of
+Britain, freed from any subservience to Spanish wishes, developed
+maritime intercourse between England, Morocco, and West Africa on the
+one hand, and Tropical and North America on the other. Once more the
+discovery of the North-west Passage across America to China came into
+favour. MARTIN FROBISHER[1] offered himself as a discoverer, and the
+Earl of Warwick found the means which provided him with two small
+sailing vessels of 25 and 20 tons each, besides a pinnace of 10
+tons.[2] Queen Elizabeth confined herself, in the way of
+encouragement, to waving her lily hand from her palace of Greenwich as
+these three little boats dropped down the Thames on the 8th of June,
+1576. She also sent them "an honourable message", which no doubt
+reached them at Tilbury.
+
+[Footnote 1: The name was also spelt Furbusher, and in other ways. He
+became Sir Martin Frobisher over the wars of the Armada, and died Lord
+High Admiral of England in 1592.]
+
+[Footnote 2: It may be of interest to set forth the kind of rations
+shipped in those Elizabethan times for the food of the sailors.
+According to Frobisher's accounts these consisted of salted beef, salt
+pork, salt fish, biscuit, meal for making bread, dried peas, oatmeal,
+rice, cheese, butter, beer, and wine, with brandy for emergencies. As
+regards beer, the men were to have a ration of 1 gallon a day each.
+Altogether it may be said that these rations were superior in
+variety--and no doubt in quality--to the food given to seamen in the
+British merchant marine in the nineteenth century.]
+
+But the pinnace was soon swallowed up in the high seas; the seamen in
+the vessel of 20 tons lost heart and turned their ship homewards.
+Frobisher alone, in his 25-ton bark, sailed on and on across the
+stormy Atlantic, past the south end of Greenland, and over the great
+gulf that separates Greenland from Labrador. He missed the entrance to
+Hudson's Bay, but reached a great "island" which he named Meta
+Incognita[3]. Here he gathered up stones and, as he believed,
+minerals, besides capturing at least one Eskimo, and then returned.
+
+[Footnote 3: We now know Meta Incognita to be the southernmost
+peninsula of the vast Baffin Island.]
+
+One of his stones was declared by the refiners of London to contain
+gold. There was at once--as we should say in modern slang--a boom for
+these Arctic regions. Queen Elizabeth took part in it, and on the 27th
+of May, 1577, a considerable fleet, under the command of Frobisher,
+sailed past the Orkneys for the south end of Greenland. It did not
+reach as far as Meta Incognita, but it brought back large heaps of
+earth and pieces of rock, probably from northern Labrador, which
+almost certainly contained mica schist, and were therefore believed
+to be full of gold. The following year 1578, Frobisher started on his
+third American voyage with a fleet of fifteen vessels, mainly financed
+by Queen Elizabeth, and manned to a great extent by the sons of the
+aristocracy, besides a hundred persons who were going out as
+colonists. For this region of ice and snow which was believed to be a
+mass of gold-bearing rocks! But the result was one of bitter
+disappointment. The captains were bewildered by the immense icebergs,
+"so vast that, as they melted, torrents poured from them in sparkling
+waterfalls". One iceberg toppled over on to a ship and crushed it,
+though most of the sailors were picked up in the sea and saved. In the
+thick mists the greater part of the fleet blundered into Hudson's
+Straits, yet did not realize that they had found a passage into the
+heart of Canada. At last, disgusted with this land of bare rocks, ice,
+and snow, they filled up the ships with cargoes of stones supposed to
+contain gold, and straggled back to England. No gold was extracted,
+however, from these cargoes, and much discouragement ensued.
+
+SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT, one of the brilliant figures of Elizabeth's
+reign--scholar, poet, courageous adventurer, and man of
+chivalry--stimulated by the discoveries of Frobisher, obtained a
+patent or charter in 1578, and, after several unsuccessful attempts,
+led an expedition of small sailing ships to Newfoundland, where he
+entered St. John's Bay, and in the presence of the Basque, Portuguese,
+and Breton fishermen took formal possession of the country for Queen
+Elizabeth, raising a pillar on which the arms of England were engraved
+as a token. He then proceeded to grant lands to the fishermen to
+reassure them, and loaded his ships with rocks brought from the
+interior mountains and supposed to contain minerals. But in his
+further explorations of the southern coast of Newfoundland one of the
+ships was lost and nearly a hundred men intended as colonists were
+drowned.
+
+Gilbert then determined to return to England in his small frigate of
+10 tons named the _Squirrel_. He was accompanied by a larger vessel,
+the _Golden Hinde_, but refused to leave the men on the _Squirrel_ to
+their fate. Consequently, between the Azores and the north coast of
+Spain, when the _Squirrel_ was overwhelmed by the heavy seas, Sir
+Humphrey Gilbert perished together with all on board.
+
+In spite, however, of the disappointing results of Gilbert's attempt
+to found a colony in Newfoundland, the importance of the cod fishery
+and the ivory tusks and oil of the walruses drew ever more and more
+ships from Bristol and Devonshire to the coasts of that great island
+and to the Gulf of St. Lawrence beyond. In 1592 the English
+adventurers got as far west as Anticosti Island (in a ship from
+Bristol), and in 1597 there is the first record of English ships (from
+London--the _Hopewell_ and the _Chancewell_) sailing up the St.
+Lawrence River, perhaps as far west as Quebec.
+
+In 1602, stimulated by Sir Walter Raleigh,[4] Bartholomew Gosnold
+sailed direct to the coast of North America south of the Newfoundland
+latitudes, and anchored his bark off the coast of Massachusetts on the
+26th of March, 1602. Failing to find a good harbour here, he stood out
+for the south and definitely discovered and named Cape Cod, not far
+from the modern city of Boston. From Cape Cod he made his way to the
+Elizabeth Islands in Buzzard's Bay, and here he built a storehouse and
+fort, and may be said to have laid the foundations of the future
+colony of New England. He brought back with him a cargo of sassafras
+root, which was then much esteemed as a valuable medicine and a remedy
+for almost all diseases.
+
+[Footnote 4: In 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh, the half-brother of Sir
+Humphrey Gilbert, financed an expedition to sail to the coast of North
+America in a more southerly direction. In this way was founded the
+(afterwards abandoned) colony of Roanoke, in North Carolina. It was to
+this region that Queen Elizabeth applied the title of Virginia, which
+some years afterwards was transferred to the first English colony on
+the James River.]
+
+Subsequent expeditions of English ships explored and mapped the coast
+of Maine, and took on board Amerindians for exhibition in England.
+Their adventures, together with those of the colonists farther south,
+led to the creation of chartered companies, and to the great British
+colonies of New England, New York, Virginia, the Carolinas, and
+Georgia, which were to become in time the United States of America--a
+vast field of adventure which we cannot follow farther in this book.
+
+As regards Newfoundland, James I, in 1610, granted a patent to a
+Bristol merchant for the foundation there of a colony, and although
+this attempt, and another under Sir George Calvert (Lord Baltimore) in
+1616, came almost to nothing through the attacks of the French and the
+dislike of the crews of the fishing vessels to permanent settlers who
+might interfere with the fishing industry, the English colonization of
+Newfoundland to some extent caught hold, so that in 1650 there were
+about two thousand colonists of English descent along the east and
+south-east coasts of the island. But settlement was prohibited within
+six miles of the shore, to please the fishermen, and this regulation
+checked for more than two hundred years the colonization of
+Newfoundland.
+
+Nova Scotia as a British colony also came into being as another result
+of these adventurous British expeditions to North America in the reign
+of James I. Under the name of Acadie this region had been declared to
+be a portion of New France by De Monts and Champlain in 1604-14. But
+the English colonists in 1614 drove the French out of the peninsula of
+Nova Scotia on the plea that it was a part of the discoveries made by
+the Cabots on behalf of the British Crown. In 1621 James I gave a
+grant of all this territory to Sir William Alexander under the name of
+Nova Scotia, and both Charles I and Cromwell encouraged settlement in
+this beautiful region. When Charles II ceded it to France in 1667 the
+English and Scottish colonists who were residing there, and the
+English settlers of New England, refused to recognize the effects of
+the Treaty of Bréda, and so harassed the French in the years which
+followed that in 1713 Nova Scotia was, together with Newfoundland,
+recognized as belonging to Great Britain. The French colonists were
+allowed to remain, but during the course of the eighteenth century
+they combined with the Amerindians (who liked the French and disliked
+the British) and made the position of the British colonists so
+precarious that they were finally expelled and obliged to transfer
+themselves to Louisiana and Canada. This was the departure of the
+Acadians so touchingly described by Longfellow.
+
+The British had become tenacious of their rights over the east coast
+of Newfoundland, because from the middle of the seventeenth century
+onwards they were becoming increasingly interested in the whale
+fisheries and the fur trade of the lands bordering on Hudson's Bay,
+and would not tolerate any blocking of the sea route thither by the
+French.
+
+In the explorations of Arctic America, Frobisher's expeditions had
+been succeeded by those of JOHN DAVIS, who in the course of three
+voyages, beginning in June, 1585, passed the entrance of Hudson's
+Straits and reached a point as far north as 72° 41', a lofty granite
+island, which he named Sanderson's Hope. He saw beyond him a great
+sea, free, large, very salt, and blue, unobstructed by ice and of an
+unsearchable depth, and believed that he had completely discovered the
+eastern entrance of the North-West Passage.
+
+[Illustration: ICEBERGS AND POLAR BEARS]
+
+HENRY HUDSON, the great English navigator, who had made two voyages
+(1607-8) for the English-Moscovy Company to discover a north-east
+passage to India, past Siberia, commanded a third experiment in 1609
+at the expense of the Dutch East India Company. He was to discover the
+North-West Passage. For this purpose he entered the river now named
+the Hudson, but soon found it was only a river; though he returned to
+Holland with such an encouraging account of the surrounding country
+that the Dutch a little later on, founded on the banks of the Hudson
+River their colony of New Amsterdam (afterwards the State of New
+York). In 1610 Hudson accepted a British commission to sail beyond
+where Davis and Frobisher had passed, and once more seek for the
+north-west passage to China. Instead he found the way into Hudson's
+Bay. Here his men, alarmed at the idea of being lost in these regions
+of ice and snow, mutinied against him, placed him and those who were
+faithful to him in a boat, and cast them off, themselves returning to
+England with the news of his discovery. Hudson was never heard of
+again, and, strange to say, the mutineers apparently received no
+punishment.
+
+Between 1602 and 1668, English adventurers from London and Bristol,
+notable amongst whom were WILLIAM BAFFIN, LUKE FOX, and CAPTAIN JAMES,
+mapped the coasts of Hudson's Bay and Baffin's Bay and brought to the
+notice of merchants in England the abundance of whales in these Arctic
+waters, and of fur-bearing beasts and fur-trading Indians in the
+region of Hudson's Bay.
+
+This last point was most forcibly presented to Charles II and his
+Government by a disappointed French Canadian, Pierre Esprit Radisson,
+whose adventures will later on be described. Radisson, conceiving
+himself to be badly treated by the French Governor of Canada, crossed
+over to England with his brother-in-law, Chouart, and the two were
+warmly taken up by Prince Rupert of Bavaria, the cousin of Charles II.
+They were sent out by Prince Rupert in command of an expedition
+financed by him and a number of London merchants, and in 1669 the New
+England captain, Gillam, returned to England with Chouart and the
+first cargo of furs from Hudson's Bay. This cargo so completely met
+the expectations of those who had promoted the venture that it led in
+1670 to the foundation of the Governor and Company of Adventurers of
+England trading into Hudson's Bay, a company chartered by Charles II
+and presided over by Prince Rupert, and an association which proved to
+be the germ of British North America, of the vast three-quarters of
+the present Dominion of Canada.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Champlain and the Foundation of Canada
+
+
+From the first voyage of Cartier onwards, Canada was called
+intermittently New France, and its possibilities were not lost sight
+of by a few intelligent Frenchmen on account of the fur trade. Amongst
+these was Amyard de Chastes, at one time Governor of Dieppe, who got
+into correspondence with the adventurers who had settled as fur
+traders at Tadoussac, prominent amongst whom was Du Pont-Gravé. De
+Chastes dispatched with Pont-Gravé a young man whose acquaintance he
+had just made, SAMUEL CHAMPLAIN.[1] This was the man who, more than
+any other, created French Canada.
+
+[Footnote 1: Afterwards the Sieur de Champlain. The title of _Sieur_
+(from the Latin _Senior_) is the origin of the English "sir", and is
+about equivalent to an English baronetcy.]
+
+Champlain had had already a most adventurous life. He was born about
+1567, at Brouage, in the Saintonge, opposite to the Island of Héron,
+on the coast of western France. From his earliest years he had a
+passion for the sea, but he also served as a soldier for six years.
+His father had been a sea captain, and his uncle as an experienced
+navigator was commissioned by the King of Spain to transport by sea to
+that country the remainder of the Spanish soldiers who had been
+serving in Brittany. The uncle took his nephew with him. Young
+Champlain when in Spain managed to ingratiate himself so much with the
+Spanish authorities that he was actually commissioned as a captain to
+take a king's ship out to the West Indies. No sooner did he reach
+Spanish America than he availed himself of the first chance to
+explore it. For two years he travelled over Cuba, and above all
+Mexico. He visited the narrowest part of Central America and conceived
+the possibility of making a trans-oceanic canal across the Panama
+isthmus.
+
+When he got back to France he placed before Henry IV a report on
+Spanish Central America, together with a project for making a canal at
+Panama. Henry IV was so pleased with his work and enterprise that he
+gave him a pension and the title of Geographer to the King. Shortly
+afterwards he met Governor de Chastes at Dieppe, and was by him sent
+out to Canada. The ship which carried Champlain, PONT-GRAVÉ,[2] the
+SIEUR DE MONTS,[3] and other French adventurers (together with two
+Amerindian interpreters whom Pont-Gravé had brought from Canada to
+learn French) arrived at Tadoussac on May 24, 1603.
+
+[Footnote 2: Correctly written this was François Gravé, Sieur du
+Pont.]
+
+[Footnote 3: The full name was Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts.
+Including de Champlain and de Poutrincourt, who will be described
+later, we have here the four great heroes who founded French Canada.]
+
+Champlain lost no time in commencing his explorations. Tadoussac was
+at the mouth of an important river, called by the French the Saguenay,
+a name which they also applied to the mysterious and wonderful country
+through which it flowed in the far north; a country rich in copper and
+possibly other precious metals. Champlain ascended the Saguenay River
+for sixty miles as far as the rapids of Chicoutima. The Amerindians
+whom he met here told him of Lake St. John, lying at a short distance
+to the west, and that beyond this lake and the many streams which
+entered it there lay a region of uplands strewn with other lakes and
+pools; and farther away still began the sloping of the land to the
+north till the traveller sighted a great arm of the salt sea, and
+found himself amongst tribes (probably the Eskimo) who ate raw flesh,
+and to the Indians appeared absolute savages.[4] This was probably
+the first allusion, recorded by a European, to the existence of
+Hudson's Bay, that huge inlet of the sea, which is one of the leading
+features in the geography of British North America.
+
+[Footnote 4: The real name for this remarkable people, the Eskimo, is,
+in Alaska and Arctic North America, _Innuit_, and in Labrador and
+Greenland, _Karalit_. Eskimo (in French, _Esquimaux_) is said to be a
+corruption of the Montagnais-Indian word, Eskimantsik, meaning "eaters
+of raw flesh".]
+
+The Montagnais Indians round about Tadoussac received Champlain with
+great protestations of friendship, and at the headquarters of their
+principal chief or "Sagamore" celebrated this new friendship and
+alliance with a feast in a very large hut. The banquet, as usual, was
+preceded by a long address from the Sagamore in answer to the
+description of France, given by one of the Indian interpreters. The
+address was accompanied by the solemn smoking of tobacco, and at every
+pause in this grave oration the natives present shouted with one
+voice: "Ho! ho! ho!" The repast consisted of elk's meat (which struck
+the Frenchmen as being like beef), also the flesh of bear, seal,
+beaver, and wild fowl. There were eight or ten stone boilers or
+cauldrons full of meats in the middle of the great hut, separated each
+six feet from each other, and each one having its own fire. Every
+native used a porringer or vessel made of birch bark. When the meat
+was cooked a man in authority distributed it to each person. But
+Champlain thought the Indians ate in a very filthy manner. When their
+hands were covered with fat or grease they would rub them on their own
+heads or on the hair of their dogs. Before the meat was cooked each
+guest arose, took a dog, and hopped round the boilers from one end of
+the great hut to the other. Arriving in front of the chief, the
+Montagnais Indian feaster would throw his dog violently to the ground,
+exclaiming: "Ho! ho! ho!" after which he returned to his place.
+
+At the close of the banquet every one danced, with the skulls of
+their Iroquois enemies slung over their backs. As they danced they
+slapped their knees with their hands, and shouted: "Ho! ho! ho!" till
+they were out of breath.
+
+The huts of these Indians were low and made like tents, being covered
+with the bark of the birch tree. An opening about a foot of the top
+was left uncovered to admit light and to allow the smoke to escape.
+Though low, the huts were sometimes quite large, and would accommodate
+ten families. These slept higgledy-piggledy on skins, with their dogs
+amongst them. The dogs in appearance were something like what we know
+as Eskimo dogs, and also rather resembled the Chinese chow, with broad
+heads and rather short muzzles, prick ears, and a tail inclined to
+curl over the back. "All these people have a very cheerful
+disposition, laughing often, yet at the same time they are somewhat
+phlegmatic. They talk very deliberately, as if desiring to make
+themselves well understood, and, stopping suddenly, they reflect for a
+long time, when they resume their discourse."
+
+They were agile, well-proportioned people, who in the summertime went
+about nearly naked, but in the winter were covered with good furs of
+elk, otter, beaver, bear, seal, and deer. The colour of their skin was
+usually a pale olive, but the women for some reason made themselves
+much darker-skinned than the men by rubbing their bodies with pigments
+which turned them to a dark brown. At times they suffered very much
+from lack of food, being obliged then to frequent the shore of the
+river or gulf to obtain shellfish. When pressed very hard by famine
+they would eat their dogs (their only domestic animal) and even the
+leather of the skins with which they clothed themselves. In the autumn
+they were much given to fishing for eels, and they dried a good deal
+of eel flesh, to last them through the winter. During the height of
+the winter they hunted the beaver, and later on the elk. Though they
+ate wild roots and fruits whenever they could obtain them, they do
+not seem to have cultivated any grain or vegetables. In the early
+spring they were sometimes dying of hunger, and looked so thin and
+haggard that they were mere walking skeletons. They were then ready to
+eat carrion that was putrid, so that it is little wonder that they
+suffered much from scurvy.
+
+Yet the rivers and the gulf abounded in fish, and as soon as the
+waters were unlocked by the melting of the ice in April, the surviving
+Indians rapidly grew fat and well, and of course the late summer and
+the autumn brought them nuts (hickory and other kinds of walnut, and
+hazel nuts), wild cherries, wild plums, raspberries, strawberries,
+gooseberries, blackberries, currants,[5] cranberries, and grapes.
+
+[Footnote 5: The wild currants so often mentioned by the early
+explorers of Canada are often referred to as red, green, and blue. The
+blue currants are really the black currant, now so familiar to our
+kitchen gardens (_Ribes nigrum_). This, together with the red currant
+(_Ribes rubrum_), grows throughout North America, Siberia, and eastern
+Europe. The unripe fruit may have been the green currants alluded to
+by Champlain, or these may have been the white variety of our gardens.
+The two species of wild strawberry which figure so frequently in the
+stories of these early explorers are _Fragaria vesca_ and _F.
+virginiana_. From the last-named is derived the cultivated strawberry
+of Europe. The wild strawberries of North America were larger than
+those of Europe. Champlain does not himself allude to gooseberries
+(unless they are his _groseilles vertes_), but later travellers do.
+Three or more kinds of gooseberry grow wild in Canada, but they are
+different from the European species. The blueberry so often Mentioned
+by Champlain (bluëts or bluës) was _Vaccinium canadense_.]
+
+Champlain observed amongst them for the first time the far-famed
+Amerindian snowshoes, which he compares very aptly for shape to a
+racquet used in tennis.
+
+Champlain next visited the site of Stadacona, but there was no longer
+any settlement of Europeans at that place, nor were the native
+Amerindians the descendants of the Hurons that had received Jacques
+Cartier. For the first time the name Quebec (pronounced Kebek) is
+applied to this point where the great River St. Lawrence narrows
+before dividing to encircle the Isle of Orleans. In fact, Quebec meant
+in the Algonkin speech a place where a river narrows; for a tribe of
+the great Algonkin family, _the_ Algonkins, allied to the tribes of
+Maine and New Brunswick, had replaced the Hurons as the native
+inhabitants of this region.
+
+On the shore of Quebec he noticed "diamonds" in some slate rocks--no
+doubt quartz crystals. Proceeding on up the River St. Lawrence he
+observed the extensive woods of fir and cypress (some kind of _Thuja_
+or _Juniper_), the undergrowth of vines, "wild pears", hazel nuts,
+cherries, red currants and green currants, and "certain little
+radishes of the size of a small nut, resembling truffles in taste,
+which are very good when roasted or boiled". As they advanced towards
+the interior the country became increasingly mountainous on the south
+(the green mountains of New Hampshire), and was more and more
+beautiful--"the pleasantest land yet seen". Landing on the south bank
+of the St. Lawrence, west of the entrance of the river of the Iroquois
+(the Richelieu), he found magnificent forests, which, besides the
+trees already mentioned, included oaks, chestnuts, maples, pines,
+walnut-like nut trees,[6] aspens, poplars, and beeches; with climbing
+hops and vines, strawberries trailing over the ground, and raspberry
+canes and currant bushes "growing in the thick grass". These splendid
+woods on the islands and banks of the broad river were full of game:
+elks,[7] wapiti deer, Virginian deer, bears, porcupines, hares, foxes,
+beavers, otters, and musk rats, besides many animals he could not
+recognize.
+
+[Footnote 6: Of the genera _Juglans_ and _Carya_.]
+
+[Footnote 7: The huge deer of the genus _Alces_. Elk is the old
+Scandinavian name. _Moose_, derived from the Kri language, is the
+Canadian term, "Elk" being misapplied to the wapiti (red) deer.
+Champlain calls the elk _orignac_, its name in Algonkin.]
+
+At last his little expedition in "a skiff and canoe" had to draw into
+the bank, warned by the noise that they were approaching a great fall
+of water--the La Chine or St. Louis Rapids. Champlain wrote: "I saw,
+to my astonishment, a torrent of water descending with an impetuosity
+such as I have never before witnessed.... It descends as if in steps,
+and at each descent there is a remarkable boiling, owing to the force
+and swiftness with which the water traverses the fall, which is about
+a league in length.... The territory on the side of the fall where we
+went overland consists, so far as we saw it, of very open wood, where
+one can go with his armour without much difficulty."
+
+From the Algonkin Indians in the neighbourhood of these St. Louis
+Rapids, and also from those living near Quebec, Champlain obtained a
+good deal of geographical information to add to his own observations.
+He was given an idea, more or less correct, of Lake Ontario, the Falls
+of Niagara, Lake Erie and Lake Huron, and perhaps also of Lake
+Superior, a sea so vast, said the Amerindians, that the sun set on its
+horizon. This sheet of water, Champlain calculated, must be 1200 miles
+distant to the west, and therefore identical with the "Mer du sud"
+(Pacific Ocean), which all North-American explorers for three
+centuries wished to reach.
+
+After collecting much information about possible copper mines in the
+regions north and south of the Lower St. Lawrence, and of silver[8] in
+New Brunswick or Nova Scotia, and a terrible story which he more than
+half believed about a monster of prodigious size, the _Gougou_,[9]
+Champlain set sail for France at the end of August, 1603.
+
+[Footnote 8: Or lead mixed with silver. The local natives used this
+ore, which was white when beaten, for their arrowheads.]
+
+[Footnote 9: The Gougou dwelt on the small island of Miscon, to the
+east of the Bay of Chaleurs. It had the form of a woman but was about
+a hundred feet high. Its habit was to catch and devour men and women,
+whom it first placed in a pocket capacious enough to hold a small
+ship. Its roarings and hissings could be heard at times coming from
+the island of Miscon, where the Gougou lay concealed. Even a
+Frenchman, the Sieur Prévert, had heard these noises. Probably this
+islet had a whirlpool communicating with a cavern into which fishermen
+were sucked by the current.]
+
+In April, 1604, Champlain accompanied the Sieur de Monts (who had
+succeeded the dead Amyard de Chastes as head of a chartered
+fur-trading association) in a fresh expedition to North America,
+together with a hundred and twenty artisans and several noblemen.
+They were to occupy the lands of "Cadie" (Acadia, Nova Scotia),
+Canada, and other places in New France. De Monts thought Tadoussac and
+Quebec too cold in wintertime, and preferred the sunnier east coast
+regions. He aimed indeed at colonizing what is now New England.
+
+On the way to Nova Scotia, the expedition was nearly wrecked on Sable
+Island, about one hundred and twenty miles south of Cape Breton
+Island, and noticed there the large red cattle run wild from the bulls
+and cows landed on Sable Island by the Portuguese some sixty years
+earlier. (The Portuguese of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
+deserved well of humanity for the generous way in which they left
+cattle, goats, pigs, and rabbits to run wild on desert islands and
+serve as provender for shipwrecked mariners like Robinson Crusoe.)
+Champlain also speaks of the "fine large black foxes" which he and
+other voyagers noticed on Sable Island. How they came there is a
+mystery, unless the island had once been part of the mainland.
+
+This same Sable Island had been the scene of an extraordinary
+experiment at the end of the previous century. In 1598 the Marquis de
+la Roche, given a commission to colonize New France, sailed in a small
+ship for North America with sixty convicts from French prisons as
+colonists. He landed them on Sable Island, and went away to look for
+some good site for his colony. But then a storm arose, and his little
+ship was literally blown back to France. The convicts, abandoned thus,
+built themselves shelters out of the driftwood of wrecks; killed and
+ate the cattle and caught fish. They made themselves warm clothes out
+of the skins of the seals which frequented the island coast in
+thousands. But these convicts quarrelled and fought among themselves
+so fiercely that when at last a ship from Normandy came to take them
+away, there were only twelve left--twelve shaggy men with long tangled
+hair and beards; and, a legend says, in addition a Franciscan monk
+who had been landed on the island with them as a kind of missionary or
+chaplain, and who had been so heartbroken at their bloody quarrels and
+horrible deeds that when the Norman ship arrived to take the castaways
+back to France, the Franciscan refused to go with them, believing
+himself to be dying and wishing to end his life undisturbed. So he was
+left behind. But after the ship had sailed away he slowly mended, grew
+well and strong, and cultivated eagerly his little garden. For food he
+ate the whelks, mussels, and oysters that were so abundant on the
+shore. Occasionally ships (then as now) were wrecked on Sable Island
+in stormy weather, and the good monk ministered to the mariners who
+reached the shore. Also he was visited, ever and again, by the Breton
+fishing boats, which brought him supplies of necessaries and the bread
+and wine for celebrating Mass. Long after his death his spirit was
+thought to haunt the desolate island.
+
+Champlain and his companions passed on from Sable Island to the
+south-east coast of Nova Scotia, noticing as they landed here and
+there the abundance of rabbits[10] and sea birds, especially the Great
+Auk, of which they killed numbers with sticks, cormorants (whose fishy
+eggs they ate with enjoyment), puffins, guillemots, gulls, terns,
+scissorbills, divers, ospreys, buzzards, and falcons; and no doubt the
+typical American white-tailed sea eagles, ravens, ducks, geese,
+curlews, herons, and cranes. Here and there they found the shore
+"completely covered with sea wolves"--seals, of course, probably the
+common seal and the grey seal. Of these they captured as many as they
+wanted, for the seals, like most of the birds, were quite unafraid of
+man.
+
+[Footnote 10: There are no real rabbits in America. This was probably
+the Polar Hare (_Lepus timidus glacialis_), or the common small
+varying hare (_L. americanus_).]
+
+They then explored the Bay of Fundy, and, after zig-zagging about,
+decided to fix on the harbour of St. John's (New Brunswick) as the
+site for their colony. The future capital of New France, therefore,
+was begun on La Sainte Croix (Dochet) Island, near the mouth of the
+wonderful tidal estuary of the Uigudi (Ouygoudy) River.
+
+Here they passed the winter, but suffered so badly from scurvy[11]
+that, when in the spring of 1605 Du Pont Gravé arrived from Brittany
+with supplies, the remnant of the colony was removed to the opposite
+coast of Nova Scotia to Port Royal (afterwards named by the English
+Annapolis[12]). The French seem to have fallen in love with this place
+from the very first. Nevertheless here they suffered from scurvy
+during the winter as elsewhere. Before moving over here, however,
+Champlain, together with De Monts, had explored the west of New
+England south of New Brunswick as far as Plymouth, just south of
+Boston.
+
+[Footnote 11: How awful was this "mal de terre" or scurvy amongst the
+French settlers may be seen from this description of Champlain: "There
+were produced in the mouths of those who had it great pieces of
+superfluous and drivelling flesh, which got the upper hand to such an
+extent that scarcely anything but liquid could be taken. Their teeth
+became very loose and could be pulled out with the fingers without its
+causing them pain.... Afterwards a violent pain seized their arms and
+legs, which remained swollen and very hard, all spotted as if with
+fleabites; and they could not walk on account of the contraction of
+the muscles.... They suffered intolerable pains in the loins, stomach,
+and bowels, and had a very bad cough and short breath.... Out of
+seventy-nine who composed our party, thirty-five died and twenty were
+on the point of death (when spring began in May)."
+
+Scurvy is said to be a disease of the blood caused by a damp, cold,
+and impure atmosphere combined with absence of vegetable food and a
+diet of salted or semi-putrid meat or fish, such as was so often the
+winter food of Amerindians and of the early French pioneers in Canada.
+We have already noted Cartier's discovery of the balsam remedy.]
+
+[Footnote 12: From Queen Anne.]
+
+Off the coast of Maine (Richmond's Island) they encountered
+agricultural Amerindians of a new tribe, the Penobskot probably, who
+cultivated a form of rank narcotic tobacco (_Nicotiana rustica_),
+which they called _Petun_. (A variety of this has produced the
+handsome garden flower _Petunia_, whose Latin name is derived from
+this native word Petun.) They also grew maize or Indian corn, planting
+very carefully three or four seeds in little mounds three feet apart
+one from the other, the soil in between being kept clear of weeds. The
+American farmers of to-day cannot adopt any better method.
+
+The islands round about Portland (Maine) were matted all over with
+wild red currants, so that the eye could scarcely discern anything
+else. Attracted by this fruit, clouds of wild pigeons had
+assembled[13]. They manifested hardly any fear of the French, who
+captured large numbers of them in snares, or killed them with guns.
+The natives of southern Maine fled with dismay on sighting the French
+ships, for they had never before seen sailing vessels, but later on
+they timidly approached the French ships in a canoe, then landed and
+went through a wild dance on the shore to typify friendliness.
+Champlain took with him some drawing paper and a pencil or crayon,
+together with a quantity of knives and ship's biscuit. Landing alone,
+he attracted the natives towards him by offering them biscuits, and
+having gathered them round him (being of course as much unable to
+understand their speech as they were French), he proceeded to ask
+questions by means of certain drawings, chiefly the outlines of the
+coast. The savages at once seized his idea, and taking up his pencil
+drew on the paper an accurate outline of Massachusetts Bay, adding
+also rivers and islands unknown to the French. They went on by further
+intelligent signs to supply information. For instance, they placed six
+pebbles at equal distances to intimate that Massachusetts Bay was
+occupied by six tribes and governed by as many chiefs. By drawings of
+growing maize and other plants they intimated that all these people
+lived by agriculture.
+
+[Footnote 13: The pigeons referred to by Champlain were probably the
+Passenger pigeon (_Ectopistes_) which at one time was extraordinarily
+abundant in parts of North America, though it has now been nearly
+killed out by man. It would arrive in flocks of millions on its
+migratory journeys in search of food.]
+
+Champlain thought Massachusetts (in his first voyage) a most
+attractive region in the summer, what with the blue water of the
+enclosed arms of the sea, the lofty forest trees, and the fields of
+Indian corn and other crops.
+
+When these French explorers reached the harbour of Boston, the islands
+and mainland were swarming with the native population. The Amerindians
+were intensely interested in the arrival of the first sailing vessel
+they had ever seen. Although it was only a small barque, its size was
+greater than any canoe known to them. As it seemed to spread huge
+white wings and to glide silently through the water without the use of
+paddles or oars, it filled them with surprise and admiration. They
+manned all their canoes[14] and came out in a flotilla to express
+their honour and reverence for the wonderful white men. But when the
+French took their leave, it was equally obvious that the natives
+experienced a sense of relief, for they were disquieted as well as
+filled with admiration at the arrival of these wonderful beings from
+an unknown world.
+
+[Footnote 14: It is interesting to learn from his accurate notes that
+in Massachusetts (and from thence southwards) there were no more bark
+canoes, but that the canoes were "dug-outs"--trunks of tall trees
+burnt and chipped till they were hollowed into a narrow vessel of
+considerable length.]
+
+Champlain describes the wigwams or native huts as being cone-shaped,
+heavily thatched with reeds, with an opening at the top of the roof
+for the smoke to escape. Inside the huts was a low bed raised a foot
+from the ground and made of short posts driven into the ground, with a
+surface made of boards split from trees. On these boards were laid
+either the dressed skins of deer or bear, or thick mattresses made of
+reeds or rushes. The beds were large enough for several people to lie
+on. Champlain describes the huts as being full of fleas, and likewise
+the persons of the nearly naked Indians, who carried these fleas out
+with them into the fields when they were working, so that the
+Frenchmen by stopping to talk to the natives became covered with
+fleas to such an extent that they were obliged to change their
+clothes.
+
+In the fields were cultivated not only maize, but beans similar to the
+beans grown by the natives of Brazil, vegetable marrows or pumpkins,
+Jerusalem artichokes[15], radishes, and tobacco. The woods were filled
+with oaks, walnut trees[16], and the red "cedar" of North America,
+really a very large juniper, the foliage of which in the summertime
+often assumes a reddish colour, together with the trunk. This
+Virginian juniper or "red cedar" is now quite a common tree in
+England. In warm weather it exhales a delicious aromatic scent.
+
+[Footnote 15: This tuber, which is a well-known and very useful
+vegetable in England, comes from the root of a species of sunflower
+(_Helianthus tuberosus_). It has nothing to do with the real
+artichoke, which is a huge and gorgeous thistle, and it has equally
+nothing to do with Jerusalem. The English people have always taken a
+special delight in mispronouncing and corrupting words in order to
+produce as much confusion as possible in their names for things.
+Jerusalem is a corruption of _Girasole_, which is the Italian name
+given to this sunflower with the edible roots, because its flower is
+supposed always to turn towards the sun. The Jerusalem artichoke was
+originally a native of North America.]
+
+[Footnote 16: These walnut trees were afterwards known in modern
+American speech as hickories, butter-nuts, and pig-nuts, all of which
+are allied to, but distinct from, the European walnut.]
+
+All these natives of the Massachusetts coast were described by
+Champlain as being almost naked in the summertime, wearing at most a
+small piece of leather round the waist, and a short robe of spun hemp
+which hung down over the shoulders. Their faces were painted red,
+black and yellow. The men pulled out any hairs which might come on the
+chin, and thus were beardless. They were armed with pikes, clubs,
+bows, and arrows. The pikes were probably made of wood with the ends
+hardened by being burnt to a point in the fire, and the arrow tips
+were made of the sharp termination of the tail of the great
+king-crab[17].
+
+[Footnote 17: _Limulus polyphemus_. This extraordinary crustacean is
+one of the oldest of living animals in its history, as it is closely
+related to the Xiphosura and even the Trilobites of the Primary Epoch,
+which existed millions of years ago. In a rough way it is a kind of
+connecting link between the Crustacea, or crabs and lobsters, and the
+Scorpions and spiders.]
+
+These Massachusetts "Indians" described to Champlain a wonderful bird
+which at some seasons of the year they caught in snares and ate. This
+Champlain at once guessed was the wild turkey, now, of course, quite
+extinct in that region. This wild turkey of the eastern half of North
+America (including southern Canada) was quite a distinct form from the
+Mexican bird, which last is the origin of our domestic turkey.
+
+In July, 1606, as De Monts had not returned from France, and the
+little colony at Port Royal was without supplies, they decided to
+leave two Frenchmen in charge of the local chief of the Mikmak
+Indians, and find their way along the coast to Cape Breton, where they
+might get a fishing vessel to take them back to France. But after
+travelling in an open boat--a chaloupe--round the coast of Nova Scotia
+they met another small boat off Cape Sable, under the charge of the
+secretary of De Monts, and learnt that Lieutenant-General DE
+POUTRINCOURT[18] (one of the great names amongst the pioneers of
+Canada, and the man who had really chosen Port Royal for the French
+headquarters at Nova Scotia) had already returned from France with
+fresh supplies. Consequently, Champlain and his companions returned to
+Port Royal, and all set to work with eagerness to develop the
+settlement. Champlain relates in his book how he created vegetable
+gardens, trout streams and ponds, and a reservoir of salt water for
+sea fish; but he was soon off again on a fresh journey of exploration,
+because De Monts was not satisfied with Nova Scotia on account of the
+cold in winter. Accordingly Champlain examined the whole coast round
+the Bay of Fundy, and down to Cape Cod, and the islands of Martha's
+Vineyard and Nantucket. But in this region, already visited in past
+times by French, Spanish, and English ships, they found the natives
+treacherous and hostile. An unprovoked attack was made on the French
+after they landed, and several of the seamen were killed with arrows.
+
+[Footnote 18: Jean de Biencourt, the Sieur de Poutrincourt and Baron
+de Saint-Just, were his full titles.]
+
+On the 24th of May, 1607, a small barque of six or seven tons burden
+(fancy crossing the wide Atlantic from Brittany to Nova Scotia in a
+ship of that size at the present day!) arrived outside Port Royal from
+France, with an abrupt notification that De Monts' ten years' monopoly
+and charter were _cancelled_ by Henry IV, and that all the colony was
+to be withdrawn and brought back to France. Henry IV took this action
+simply because De Monts attempted to make his monopoly a real one,[19]
+and stop the ships of fur traders who were trading with the
+Amerindians of Cape Breton without his licence. These fur traders of
+Normandy then complained bitterly that because De Monts was a
+Protestant he was allowed not only to have this monopoly, but to
+endanger the spiritual welfare of the savages by spreading his false
+doctrines! So King Henry IV, volatile and capricious, like most of the
+French kings, cancelled a charter which had led to such heroic and
+remarkable results.
+
+[Footnote 19: You will observe that neither the French nor the English
+sovereigns of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries went to much
+personal expense over the creation of colonies. They simply gave a
+charter or a monopoly, which cost them nothing, but which made other
+people pay.]
+
+The greater part of the little colony had to leave Port Royal and make
+its way in small boats along the Nova Scotia coasts till they reached
+Cape Breton Island. Here fishing vessels conveyed them back to
+Brittany. It was in this boat journeying along the coast of Nova
+Scotia that Champlain discovered Halifax Harbour, then called by the
+Indian name of Shebuktu. As they passed along this coast with its many
+islands, they feasted on ripe raspberries, which grew everywhere "in
+the greatest possible quantity".
+
+Poutrincourt, however, had succeeded in taking back with him samples
+of the corn, wheat, rye, barley, and oats which had been so
+successfully grown on the island of Sainte Croix and at Port Royal,
+and also presented to that monarch five brent-geese[20] which he had
+reared up from eggs hatched under a hen. The king was so delighted at
+these presents that he once more veered about and gave to De Monts the
+monopoly of the fur trade for one more year, in order to enable him to
+renew his colonies in New France.
+
+[Footnote 20: _Branta canadensis_, a handsome black-and-brown goose
+with white markings, which the French pioneers in Canada styled
+"outarde" or "bustard", and whose eggs were considered very good
+eating.]
+
+
+The Sieur de Monts was again appointed by Henry IV Lieutenant-General
+in New France. The latter engaged Champlain as his lieutenant, and
+also sent out Du Pont Gravé in command of the second vessel, as head
+of the trading operations. This time, on the advice of Champlain, the
+expedition made its way directly to the St. Lawrence River, stopping
+first at Tadoussac, where Du Pont Gravé proceeded to take very strong
+measures with the Basque seamen, who were infringing his monopoly by
+trading with the natives in furs. Apparently they were still allowed
+to continue their whale fishery.
+
+Once more Champlain heard from the Montagnais Indians of the great
+Salt Sea to the north of Saguenay, in other words, the southern
+extension of Hudson's Bay; and in his book he notes that the English
+in these latter years "had gone thither to find their way to China".
+However, he kept his intent fixed on the establishment of a French
+colony along the St. Lawrence, and may be said to have founded the
+city of Quebec (the site of which was then covered with nut trees) on
+the 4th of July, 1608. Then his enterprise was near being wrecked by a
+base conspiracy got up between a surgeon and a number of French
+artisans, who believed that by seizing and killing Champlain, and then
+handing over the infant settlement to the Spanish Basques, they might
+enable these traders and fishermen with their good strong ships to
+overcome Du Pont Gravé, and seize the whole country. Naturally (they
+believed) the Basques would reward the conspirators, who would thus at
+a stroke become rich men. They none of them wished to go to France,
+but would live here independent of outside interference. A
+conspirator, however, revealed the plot to Champlain as he was
+planting one of the little gardens which he started as soon as he had
+been in a place a few days. He went about his business very
+discreetly, arrested all the leading conspirators, gave them a fair
+trial, had the ringleader executed by Pont Gravé, and sent three
+others back to France. After this he settled down at Quebec for the
+winter, taking care, however, in the month of October, to plant seeds
+and vines for coming up in the spring.
+
+In the summer of 1609 Champlain, apparently with the idea of thus
+exploring the country south of the St. Lawrence, decided to accompany
+a party of Algonkins and Hurons from Georgian Bay and the
+neighbourhood of Montreal, who were bent on attacking the Iroquois
+confederacy in the Mohawk country at the headwaters of the Hudson
+River. He was accompanied by two French soldiers--Des Marais and La
+Routte--and by a few Montagnais Indians from Tadoussac.
+
+The Hurons[21] were really of the same group (as regards language and
+descent) as the Iroquois (Irokwá), but in those days held aloof from
+the five other tribes who had formed a confederacy[22] and alliance
+under the name of _Ongwehonwe_--"Superior Men". The Iroquois
+(Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Kayugas, and Senekas) dominated much of
+what is now New York State, and from the mountain country of the
+Adirondaks and Catskills descended on the St. Lawrence valley and the
+shores of Lakes Ontario and Huron to rob and massacre.
+
+[Footnote 21: Huron was a French name given to the westernmost group
+of the Iroquois family (see p. 159). The Huron group included the
+Waiandots, the Eries or Erigas, the Arendáronons, and the Atiwándoronk
+or "neutral" nation. The French sometimes called all these Huron
+tribes "the good Iroquois". Iroquois was probably pronounced "Irokwá",
+and seems to have been derived from a word like Irokosia, the name of
+the Adirondack mountain country.]
+
+[Footnote 22: The confederacy was founded about 1450 by the great
+Hiawatha (of Longfellow's Poem), himself an Onondaga from south of
+Lake Ontario, but backed by the Mohawks only, in the beginning of his
+work.]
+
+
+The route into the enemy's country lay along the Richelieu River and
+across Lake Champlain to its southern end, in sight of the majestic
+snow-crowned Adirondak Mountains. On the way the allies stopped at an
+island, held a kind of review, and explained their tactics to
+Champlain. They set no sentries and kept no strict watch at night,
+being too tired; but during the daytime the army advanced as follows:
+The main body marched in the centre along the warpath; a portion of
+the troops diverged on either side to hunt up food for the expedition;
+and a third section was told off for "intelligence" work, namely, they
+ran on ahead and roundabout to locate the enemy, looking out
+especially along the rivers for marks or signals showing whether
+friends or enemies had passed that way. These marks were devised by
+the chiefs of the different tribes, and were duly communicated to the
+war leaders of tribes in friendship or alliance, like our cipher
+codes; and equally they were changed from time to time to baffle the
+enemy. Neither hunters nor main body ever got in front of the advance
+guard, lest they should give an alarm. Thus they travelled until they
+got within two days or so of the enemies' headquarters; thenceforward
+they only marched by night, and hid in the woods by day, making no
+fires or noise, and subsisting only on cooked maize meal.
+
+At intervals the soothsayers accompanying the army were consulted for
+signs and omens; and when the war-chiefs decided on their plan of
+campaign they summoned all the fighting men to a smooth place in a
+wood, cut sticks a foot long (as many as there were warriors), and
+each leader of a division "put the sticks in such order as seemed to
+him best, indicating to his followers the rank and order they were to
+observe in battle. The warriors watched carefully this proceeding,
+observing attentively the outline which their chief had made with the
+sticks. Then they would go away and set to placing themselves in such
+order as the sticks were in. This manoeuvre they repeated several
+times, and at all their encampments, without needing a sergeant to
+maintain them in the proper order they were able to keep accurately
+the positions assigned to them" (Champlain).
+
+The Hurons who were accompanying Champlain frequently questioned him
+as to his dreams, they themselves having a great belief in the value
+of dreams as omens and indications of future events. One day, when
+they were approaching the country of the Iroquois, Champlain actually
+did have a dream. In this he imagined that he saw the Iroquois enemies
+drowning in a lake near a mountain. Moved to pity in his dream he
+wished to help them, but his savage allies insisted that they must be
+allowed to die. When he awoke he told the Amerindians of his dream,
+and they were greatly impressed, as they regarded it as a good omen.
+
+Near the modern town of Ticonderoga the Hurons and Algonkins of
+Georgian Bay and Ottawa met a party of Iroquois, probably of the
+Mohawk tribe. The Iroquois had built rapidly a stockade in which to
+retreat if things should go badly with them, but the battle at first
+began in the old heroic style with as much ceremony as a French duel.
+First the allies from the St. Lawrence asked the Iroquois what time it
+would suit them to begin fighting the next day; then the latter
+replied: "When the sun is well up, if you don't mind? We can see
+better then to kill you all." Accordingly in the bright morning the
+Hurons and Algonkins advanced against the circular stockade of the
+Iroquois, and the Iroquois marched out to fight in great pomp, their
+leaders wearing plumed headdresses. With this exception both parties
+fought quite naked, and armed only with bows and arrows.
+
+"I marched twenty paces in advance of the rest" (wrote Champlain)
+"till I was within about thirty paces of the Iroquois.... I rested my
+musket against my cheek, and aimed directly at one of the three
+chiefs. With the same shot two fell to the ground, and one of their
+men was so wounded that he died some time afterwards. I had loaded my
+musket with four balls. When they saw I had shot so favourably for
+them, they (the Algonkins and Hurons) raised such loud cries that one
+could not have heard it thunder.
+
+"Meantime the arrows flew on both sides. The Iroquois were greatly
+astonished that two men had been so quickly killed, though they were
+equipped with armour woven from copper thread and with wood, which was
+proof against their arrows."
+
+Whilst Champlain was loading to fire again one of his two companions
+fired a shot from the woods, whereupon the Iroquois took to flight,
+abandoning their camp and fort. As they fled they threw off their
+armour of wooden boards and cotton cloth.
+
+As to the way in which the Hurons tortured their Iroquois prisoners,
+Champlain writes of one instance.
+
+"They commanded him (the prisoner) to sing, if he had courage, which
+he did, but it was a very sad song." The Hurons kindled a fire, and
+when it was well alight they each took a brand from the blaze, the end
+of which was red-hot, and with this burnt the bodies of their
+prisoners tied to stakes. Every now and then they stopped and threw
+water over them to restore them from fainting. Then they tore out
+their finger nails and applied fire to the extremities of the fingers.
+After that they tore the scalps off their heads, and poured over the
+raw and bleeding flesh a kind of hot gum. Then they pierced the arms
+of the prisoners near the wrists, and drew up their sinews with sticks
+inserted underneath, trying to tear them out by force, and, if
+failing, cutting them. One poor wretch "uttered such terrible cries
+that it excited my pity to see him treated in this manner, yet at
+other times he showed such firmness that one would have said he
+suffered scarcely any pain at all".
+
+In this case Champlain, seeing that the man could not recover from his
+injuries, drew apart and shot him dead, "thus putting an end to all
+the tortures he would have suffered".
+
+But the savage Hurons were not yet satisfied. They opened the corpse
+and threw its entrails into the lake. Then they cut off head, arms,
+and legs, and cut out the heart; this they minced up, and endeavoured
+to force the other prisoners to eat it.
+
+With those of his allies who were Montagnais Indians from Tadoussac,
+Champlain returned to that place. As they neared the shore the
+Montagnais women undressed themselves, jumped into the river, and swam
+to the prows of the canoes, from which they took the heads of the
+slain Iroquois. These they hung about their necks as if they had been
+some costly chain, singing and dancing meanwhile.
+
+However, in spite of these and other horrors, Champlain had "separated
+from his Upper Canadian allies with loud protestations of mutual
+friendship", promising to go again into their country and assist them
+with continued "fraternal" relations.
+
+From this expedition Champlain learned much regarding the geography of
+eastern North America, and he brought back with him to France, to
+present to King Henry IV, two scarlet tanagers--one of the commonest
+and most beautiful birds of the eastern United States--a girdle of
+porcupine quills made from the Canadian porcupine, and the head of a
+gar-pike caught in Lake Champlain.[23]
+
+[Footnote 23: Unconsciously, no doubt, he brought away with him to the
+King of France one of the most remarkable freshwater fish living on
+the North-American continent, for the gar-pike belongs, together with
+the sturgeon and its allies, to an ancient type of fish the
+representatives of which are found in rock formations as ancient as
+those of the Secondary and Early Tertiary periods. Champlain may be
+said to have discovered this remarkable gar-pike (_Lepidosteus
+osseus_), which is covered with bony scales "so strong that a poniard
+could not pierce them". The colour he describes as silver-grey. The
+head has a snout two feet and a half long, and the jaws possess double
+rows of sharp and dangerous teeth. These teeth were used by the
+natives as lancets with which to bleed themselves when they suffered
+from inflammation or headache. Champlain declares that the gar-pike
+often captures and eats water birds. It would swim in and among rushes
+or reeds and then raise its snout out of the water and keep perfectly
+still. Birds would mistake this snout for the stump of a tree and
+would attempt to alight on it; whereupon the fish would seize them by
+the legs and pull them down under the water.]
+
+On Champlain's return from France in 1610 (he and other Frenchmen and
+Englishmen of the time made surprisingly little fuss about crossing
+the North Atlantic in small sailing vessels, in spite of the storms of
+spring and autumn) he found the Iroquois question still agitating the
+minds of the Algonkins, Montagnais, and Hurons. Representatives of
+these tribes were ready to meet this great captain of the _Mistigosh_
+or _Matigosh_[24] (as they called the French), and implored him to
+keep his promise to take part in another attack on the dreaded enemy
+of the Adirondak heights. Apparently the Iroquois (Mohawks) this time
+had advanced to meet the attack, and were ensconced in a round
+fortress of logs built near the Richelieu River.[25] The Algonkins and
+their allies on this expedition were armed with clubs, swords, and
+shields, as well as bows and arrows. The swords of copper(?) were
+really knife blades attached to long sticks like billhooks. Before the
+barricade, as usual, both parties commenced the fight by hurling
+insults at each other till they were out of breath, and shouting "till
+one could not have heard it thunder". The circular log barricade,
+however, would never have been taken by the Algonkins and their
+allies but for the assistance of Champlain and three or four
+Frenchmen, who with their musketry fire at short range paralysed the
+Iroquois. Champlain and one other Frenchman were wounded with arrows
+in the neck and arm, but not seriously. The victory of the allies was
+followed by the usual torture of prisoners, which Champlain made a
+slight--only slight--attempt to prevent.
+
+[Footnote 24: Spelt by Champlain with a "ch" instead of _sh_.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Then called the Rivière des Iroquois.]
+
+But results far more serious arose from these two skirmishes with the
+Iroquois in 1609 and 1610. The Confederacy of the Five Nations
+(afterwards six) realized that they had been attacked unprovoked by
+the dominant white men of the St. Lawrence, called by the Montagnais
+_Mistigosh_, and by the Iroquois _Adoreset[¯u]i_ ("men of iron", from
+their armour). They became the bitter enemies of the French, and
+tendered help first to the Dutch to establish themselves in the valley
+of the Hudson, and secondly to the English. In the great Colonial wars
+of the early eighteenth century the Iroquois were invaluable allies to
+the British forces, Colonial and Imperial, and counted for much in the
+struggle which eventually cost France Nova Scotia, New Brunswick,
+Maine, the two Canadas, and Louisiana. On the other hand, the French
+alliance with the Hurons, Algonkins, and Montagnais, begun by this
+brotherhood-in-arms with Champlain, secured for France and the French
+such widespread liking among the tribes of Algonkin speech, and their
+allies and friends, that the two Canadas and much of the Middle West,
+together with Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois, became French in
+sympathy without any war of conquest. When the French dominion over
+North America fell, in 1759, with the capture of Quebec by Wolfe's
+army, tribes of Amerindians went on fighting for five years afterwards
+to uphold the banner and the rule of the beloved French king.
+
+On Champlain's next visit to Canada, in 1610, he handed over to the
+Algonkin Indians a French youth named Étienne Brulé (see p. 88), to
+be taught the Algonkin language (the use of which was spread far and
+wide over north-east America), and, further, sent a Huron youth to
+France to be taught French. Between 1611 and 1616 he had explored much
+of the country between Montreal (the foundations of which city he may
+be said to have laid on May 29, 1611, for his stockaded camp is now in
+the centre of it) and Lakes Huron and Ontario, especially along the
+Ottawa River, that convenient short cut (as a water route) between the
+St. Lawrence at Sault St. Louis (Montreal) and Lakes Huron and
+Superior. With short portages you can get in canoes from Montreal to
+the waters of Hudson Bay, or to Lake Winnipeg and the base of the
+Rocky Mountains.
+
+In exploring this "River of the Algonkins" (as he called it),
+Champlain was nearly drowned between two rocks, and much hurt, from
+over bravery and want of knowledge of how to deal with a canoe on
+troubled water; but on June 4, 1613, he stood on the site of the
+modern city of Ottawa--the capital of the vast Canadian Dominion--and
+gazed at the marvellous Rideau or Curtain Fall, where the Rideau River
+enters the Ottawa. But the air was resonant with the sound of falling
+water. Three miles above the falls of the Gatineau and the Rideau, the
+main Ottawa River descended with a roar and a whirl of white foam and
+rainbow-tinted mist into the chasm called the Chaudière or Kettle. On
+a later occasion he describes the way in which the Algonkins
+propitiated the Spirit of the Chasm:
+
+"Continuing our way, we came to the Chaudière Falls, where the savages
+carried out their customary ceremony. After transporting their canoes
+to the foot of the fall they assemble in one spot, where one of them
+takes up a collection on a wooden platter, into which each person puts
+a bit of tobacco. The collection having been made, the plate is placed
+in the midst of the troop, and all dance about it, singing after
+their style. Then one of the captains makes an harangue, setting forth
+that for a long time they have been accustomed to make this offering,
+by which means they are ensured protection against their enemies, that
+otherwise misfortune would befall them from the evil spirit. This
+done, the maker of the harangue takes the plate and throws the tobacco
+into the midst of the cauldron (the chasm of foaming water), whereupon
+they all together raise a loud cry. These poor people are so
+superstitious, that they would not believe it possible for them to
+make a prosperous journey without observing this ceremony at this
+place; for sometimes their enemies (Iroquois) await them at this
+portage, not venturing to go any farther on account of the difficulty
+of the journey. Consequently they are occasionally surprised and
+killed by the Iroquois at this place (the south bank of the Ottawa)."
+
+Above the Chaudière Champlain met the Algonkin chief, Tessouat, and
+thus described the burial places of his tribe:
+
+"On visiting the island I observed their cemeteries, and was struck
+with wonder as I saw sepulchres of a shape like shrines, made of
+pieces of wood fixed in the ground at a distance of about three feet
+from each other, and intersecting at the upper end. On the
+intersections above they place a large piece of wood, and in front
+another upright piece on which is carved roughly, as would be
+expected, the figure of the male or female interred. If it is a man,
+they add a shield, a sword attached to a handle after their manner, a
+mace, and bow and arrows. If it is a chief, there is a plume on his
+head, and some other _matachia_ or embellishment. If it is a child,
+they give it a bow and arrow, if a woman or girl, a boiler, an earthen
+vessel, a wooden spoon, and an oar. The entire sepulchre is six or
+seven feet long at most, and four wide; others are smaller. They are
+painted yellow and red, with various ornaments as neatly done as the
+carving. The deceased is buried with his dress of beaver or other
+skins which he wore when living, and they lay by his side all his
+possessions, as hatchets, knives, boilers, and awls, so that these
+things may serve him in the land whither he goes; for they believe in
+the immortality of the soul, as I have elsewhere observed. These
+carved sepulchres are only made for the warriors, for in respect to
+others they add no more than in the case of women, who are considered
+a useless class, accordingly but little is added in their case."
+
+In the summer of 1615 Champlain, returning from France, made his way
+up the Ottawa River, and, by a short portage, to Lake Nipissing,
+thence down French River to the waters of Lake Huron. On the banks of
+the French River he met a detachment of the Ottawa tribe (of the
+Algonkin family). These people he styled the _Cheveux Relevés_,
+because the men's hair was gathered up and dressed more carefully and
+becomingly on the top of the head than (he says) could at that time be
+done by a hairdresser in France. This arrangement of the hair gave the
+men a very handsome appearance, but here their toilet ended, for they
+wore no clothes whatever (in the summertime), making up for this
+simplicity by painting their faces in different colours, piercing
+their ears and nostrils and decorating them with shell beads, and
+tattooing their bodies and limbs with elaborate patterns.
+
+These Ottawas carried a club, a long bow and arrows, and a round
+shield of dressed leather, made (wrote Champlain) "from the skin of an
+animal like the buffalo".[26] The chief of the party explained many
+things to the white man by drawing with a piece of charcoal on the
+white bark of the birch tree. He gave him to understand that the
+present occupation of his band of warriors was the gathering of
+blueberries, which would be dried in the sun, and could then be
+preserved for eating during the winter.
+
+[Footnote 26: This was the first intimation probably that any European
+sent home for publication regarding the existence of the bison in
+North America, though the Spanish explorers nearly a hundred years
+before Champlain must have met with it in travelling through
+Louisiana, Texas, and northern Mexico. The bison is not known ever to
+have existed near Hudson Bay, or in Canada proper (basin of the St.
+Lawrence). South of Canada it penetrated to Pennsylvania and the
+Susquehanna River, but not farther eastward.]
+
+From French River, Champlain passed southwards to the homeland of the
+Hurons, which lay to the east of what Champlain called "the Fresh
+Water Sea" (Lake Huron). This country he describes in enthusiastic
+terms. The Hurons, like the other Iroquois tribes (and unlike the
+hunting races to the north of them), were agriculturists, and
+cultivated pumpkins, sunflowers,[27] beans and Indian corn.
+
+[Footnote 27: The Amerindians of the Lake regions made much use of the
+sunflowers of the region (_Helianthus multiflorus_). Besides this
+species of sunflower already mentioned, which furnishes tubers from
+its roots (the "Jerusalem" artichoke) others were valued for their
+seeds, and some or all of these are probably the originals of the
+cultivated sunflower in European gardens. The largest of these was
+called _Soleille_ by the French Canadians. It grew in the cultivated
+fields of the Amerindians to seven or eight feet in height, with an
+enormous flower. The seeds were carefully collected and boiled. Their
+oil was collected then from the water and was used to grease the hair.
+This same Huron country (the Simcoe country of modern times) was
+remarkable for its wild fruits. There was the Canada plum (_Prunus
+americana_), the wild black cherry (_Prunus serotina_), the red
+cherries (_P. pennsylvanica_), the choke cherry (_P. virginiana_),
+wild apples (_Pyrus coronaria_), wild pears (a small berry-like pear
+called "poire" by the French: _Pyrus canadensis_), and the may-apple
+(_Podophyllum peltatum_). Champlain describes this may-apple as of the
+form and colour of a small lemon with a similar taste, but having an
+interior which is very good and almost like that of figs. The
+may-apples grow on a plant which is two and a half feet high, with not
+more than three or four leaves like those of the fig tree, and only
+two fruits on each plant.]
+
+The Hurons persuaded Champlain to go with them to attack the Iroquois
+tribe of the Senekas (Entuhónorons) on the south shores of Lake
+Ontario. On the way thither he noticed the abundance of stags and
+bears, and, near the lake, of cranes, white and purple-brown.[28]
+
+[Footnote 28: The cranes of Canada--so often alluded to by the French
+explorers as "Grues"--are of two species, _Grus canadensis_, with its
+plumage of a purple-grey, and _Grus americanus_, which is pure white
+(see p. 139).]
+
+On the southern shores of the lake[29] were large numbers of chestnut
+trees, "whose fruit was still in the burr. The chestnuts are small but
+of a good flavour." The southern country was covered with forests,
+with very few clearings. After crossing the Oneida River the Hurons
+captured eleven of the Senekas, four women, one girl, three boys, and
+three men. The people had left the stockade in which their relations
+were living to go and fish by the lake shore. One of the Huron
+chiefs--the celebrated Iroquet, who had been so much associated with
+Champlain from the time of his arrival--proceeded at once to cut off
+the finger of one of these women prisoners. Whereupon Champlain,
+firmer than in years gone by, interposed and reprimanded him, pointing
+out that it was not the act of a warrior such as he declared himself
+to be, to conduct himself with cruelty towards women "who had no
+defence but their tears, so that one should treat them with humanity
+on account of their helplessness and weakness". Champlain went on to
+say that this act was base and brutal, and that if he committed any
+more of such cruelties he, Champlain, "would have no heart to assist
+or favour them in the war". To this Iroquet replied that their enemies
+treated them in the same manner, but that since this was displeasing
+to the Frenchmen he would not do anything more to women, but he would
+not promise to refrain from torturing the men.
+
+[Footnote 29: Lakes Ontario and Huron were probably first actually
+reached by Father Le Caron, a Recollett missionary who came out with
+Champlain in 1615 (see p. 90), and by Étienne Brulé, Champlain's
+interpreter.]
+
+However, in the subsequent fighting which occurred when they reached
+the six-sided stockade of the Senekas (a strong fortification which
+faced a large pond on one side, and was surrounded by a moat
+everywhere else except at the entrance), the Hurons and Algonkins
+showed a great lack of discipline. Champlain and the few Frenchmen
+with him, by using their arquebuses, drove the enemy back into the
+fort, but not without having some of their Indian allies wounded or
+killed. Champlain proposed to the Hurons that they should erect what
+was styled in French a _cavalier_--a kind of box, with high, loopholed
+sides, which was erected on a tall scaffolding of stout timbers. This
+was to be carried by the Hurons to within a pike's length of the
+stockade. Four French arquebusiers then scrambled up into the
+_cavalier_ and fired through the loopholes into the huts of the Seneka
+town. Meantime the Hurons were to set fire, if possible, to the wooden
+stockade. They managed the whole business so stupidly that the fire
+produced no effect, the flames being blown in the opposite direction
+to that which was desired. The brave Senekas threw water on to the
+blazing sticks and put out the fire. Champlain was wounded by an arrow
+in the leg and knee. The reinforcement of the five hundred Hurons
+expected by the allies did not turn up. The Hurons with Champlain lost
+heart, and insisted on retreating. Only the dread of the French
+firearms prevented the retreat being converted into a complete
+disaster. Whenever the Senekas came near enough to get speech with the
+French they asked them "why they interfered with native quarrels".
+
+Champlain being unable to walk, the Hurons made a kind of basket,
+similar to that in which they carried their wounded. In this he was so
+crowded into a heap, and bound and pinioned, that it was as impossible
+for him to move "as it would be for an infant in his swaddling
+clothes". This treatment caused him considerable pain after he had
+been carried for some days; in fact he suffered agonies while fastened
+in this way on to the back of a savage.
+
+He was afterwards obliged to pass the winter of 1615-6 in the Huron
+country. At that time it swarmed with game. Amongst birds, there were
+swans, white cranes, brent-geese, ducks, teal, the redbreasted thrush
+(which the Americans call "robin"), brown larks (_Anthus_), snipe, and
+other birds too numerous to mention, which Champlain seems to have
+brought down with his fowling-piece in sufficient quantities to feed
+the whole party whilst waiting for the capture of deer on a large
+scale.
+
+Meanwhile, many of the Indians were catching fish, "trout and pike of
+prodigious size". When they desired to secure a large number of deer,
+they would make an enclosure in a fir forest in the form of the two
+converging sides of a triangle, with an open base. The two sides of
+these traps were made of great stakes of wood closely pressed
+together, from 8 to 9 feet high; and each of the sides was 1000 yards
+long. At the point of the triangle there was a little enclosure. The
+Hurons were so expeditious in this work that in less than ten days
+these long fences and the "pound" or enclosure at their convergence
+were finished. They then started before daybreak and scattered
+themselves in the woods at a considerable distance behind the
+commencement of these fences, each man separated from his fellow by
+about 80 yards. Every Huron carried two pieces of wood, one like a
+drumstick and the other like a flat, resonant board. They struck the
+flat piece of wood with the drumstick and it made a loud clanging
+sound. The deer who swarmed in the forest, hearing this noise, fled
+before the savages, who drove them steadily towards the converging
+fences. As they closed up, the Hurons imitated very cleverly the
+yapping of wolves. This frightened the deer still more, so that they
+huddled at last into the final enclosure, where they were so tightly
+packed that they were completely at the men's mercy. "I assure you,"
+writes Champlain, "there is a singular pleasure in this chase, which
+takes place every two days, and has been so successful that in
+thirty-eight days one hundred and twenty deer were captured. These
+were made good use of, the fat being kept for the winter to be used as
+we do butter, and some of the flesh to be taken to their homes for
+their festivities."
+
+Champlain himself, in the winter of 1615, pursuing one day a
+remarkable bird "which was the size of a hen, had a beak like a parrot
+and was entirely yellow, except for a red head and blue wings, and
+which had the flight of the partridge"--a bird I cannot
+identify--lost his way in the woods. For two days he wandered in the
+wilderness, sustaining himself by shooting birds and roasting them.
+But at last he found his way back to a river which he recognized, and
+reached the camp of the Hurons, who were extremely delighted at his
+return. Had they not found him, or had he not come back of himself,
+they told him that they could never again have visited the French for
+fear of being held responsible for his death.
+
+By the month of December of this year (1615) the rivers, lakes, and
+ponds were all frozen. Hitherto, Champlain had had to walk when he
+could not travel in a canoe, and carry a load of twenty pounds, while
+the Indians carried a hundred pounds each. But now the water was
+frozen the Hurons set to work and made their sledges. These were
+constructed of two pieces of board, manufactured from the trunks of
+trees by the patient use of a stone axe and by the application of
+fire. These boards were about 6 inches wide, and 6 or 7 feet long,
+curved upwards at the forward end and bound together by cross pieces.
+The sides were bordered with strips of wood, which served as brackets
+to which was fastened the strap that bound the baggage upon the
+sledge. The load was dragged by a rope or strap of leather passing
+round the breast of the Indian, and attached to the end of the sledge.
+The sledge was so narrow that it could be drawn easily without
+impediment wherever an Indian could thread his way over the snow
+through the pathless forests.
+
+The rest of the winter and early spring Champlain spent alone, or in
+company with Father Joseph Le Caron (one of the Recollet
+missionaries), visiting the Algonkin and Huron tribes in the region
+east of Lake Huron. He has left this description of the modern country
+of Simcoe, the home, three hundred years ago, of the long-vanished
+Hurons[30]; and gives us the following particulars of their home
+life. The Huron country was a pleasant land, most of it cleared of
+forest. It contained eighteen villages, six of which were enclosed and
+fortified by palisades of wood in triple rows, bound together, on the
+top of which were galleries provided with stores of stones, and
+birch-bark buckets of water; the stones to throw at an enemy, and the
+water to extinguish any fire which might be put to the palisades.
+These eighteen villages contained about two thousand warriors, and
+about thirty thousand people in all. The houses were in the shape of
+tunnels, and were thatched with the bark of trees. Each lodge or house
+would be about 120 feet long, more or less, and 36 feet wide, with a
+10-foot passage-way through the middle from one end to the other. On
+either side of the tunnel were placed benches 4 feet high, on which
+the people slept in summer in order to avoid the annoyance of the
+fleas which swarmed in these habitations. In winter time they slept on
+the ground on mats near the fire. In the summer the cabins were filled
+with stocks of wood to dry and be ready for burning in winter. At the
+end of each of these long houses was a space in which the Indian corn
+was preserved in great casks made of the bark of trees. Inside the
+long houses pieces of wood were suspended from the roof, on to which
+were fastened the clothes, provisions, and other things of the
+inmates, to keep them from the attacks of the mice which swarmed in
+these villages. Each hut might be inhabited by twenty-four families,
+who would maintain twelve fires. The smoke, having no proper means of
+egress except at either end of the long dwelling, and through the
+chinks of the roof, so injured their eyes during the winter season
+that many people lost their sight as they grew old.
+
+[Footnote 30: They were almost completely exterminated by the Iroquois
+confederacy between thirty and forty years after Champlain's visit.]
+
+"Their life", writes Champlain, "is a miserable one in comparison
+with our own, but they are happy amongst themselves, not having
+experienced anything better, nor imagining that anything more
+excellent could be found."
+
+These Amerindians ordinarily ate two meals a day, and although
+Champlain and his men fasted all through Lent, "in order to influence
+them by our example", that was one of the practices they did _not_
+copy from the French.
+
+The Hurons of this period painted their faces black and red, mixing
+the colours with oil made from sunflower seed, or with bears' fat. The
+hair was carefully combed and oiled, and sometimes dyed a reddish
+colour; it might be worn long or short, or only on one side of the
+head. The women usually dressed theirs in one long plait. Sometimes it
+was done up into a knot at the back of the head, bound with eelskin.
+The men were usually dressed in deerskin breeches, with gaiters of
+soft leather. The shoes ("Moccasins") were made of the skin of deer,
+bears, or beavers. In addition to this the men in cold weather wore a
+great cloak. The edges of these cloaks would often be decorated with
+bands of brown and red colour alternating with strips of a
+whitish-blue, and ornamented with bands of porcupine quills. These,
+which were originally white or grey in colour, had been previously
+dyed a fine scarlet with colouring matter from the root of the
+bed-straw (_Galium tinctorum_). The women were loaded with necklaces
+of violet or white shell beads, bracelets, ear-rings, and great
+strings of beads falling below the waist. Sometimes they would have
+plates of leather studded with shell beads and hanging over the back.
+
+[Illustration: SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN; ALEXANDER HENRY THE ELDER]
+
+In 1616 Champlain returned to France, but visited Quebec in 1617 and
+1618. During the years spent at Quebec, which followed his
+explorations of 1616, he was greatly impeded in his work of
+consolidating Canada as a French colony by the religious strife
+between the Catholics and Huguenots, and the narrow-minded greed of
+the Chartered company of fur-trading merchants for whom he worked. But
+in 1620 he came back to Canada as Lieutenant-Governor (bringing his
+wife with him), and after attending to the settlement of a violent
+commercial dispute between fur-trading companies he tried to compose
+the quarrel between the Iroquois and the Algonkins, and brought about
+a truce which lasted till 1627.
+
+In 1628 came the first English attack on Canada. A French fleet was
+defeated and captured in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and in the
+following year Champlain, having been obliged to surrender Quebec (he
+had only sixteen soldiers as a garrison, owing to lack of food),
+voyaged to England more or less as a prisoner of state in the summer
+of 1629. He found, on arriving there, that the cession of Quebec was
+null and void, peace having been concluded between Britain and France
+two months before the cession. Charles I remained true to his compact
+with Louis XIII, and Quebec and Nova Scotia were restored to French
+keeping. In 1633 Champlain returned to Canada as Governor, bringing
+with him a considerable number of French colonists. _It is from 1633
+that the real French colonization of Canada begins_: hitherto there
+had been only one family of settlers in the fixed sense of the word;
+the other Frenchmen were fur traders, soldiers, and missionaries. But
+Champlain only lived two years after his triumphant return, and died
+at Quebec on Christmas Day, 1635.
+
+His character has been so well summed up by Dr. S.E. Dawson, in his
+admirable book on the _Story of the St. Lawrence Basin_, that I cannot
+do better than quote his words:
+
+"Champlain was as much at home in the brilliant court of France as in
+a wigwam on a Canadian lake, as patient and politic with a wild band
+of savages on Lake Huron as with a crowd of grasping traders in St.
+Malo or Dieppe. Always calm, always unselfish, always depending on
+God, in whom he believed and trusted, and thinking of France, which he
+loved, this single-hearted man resolutely followed the path of his
+duty under all circumstances; never looking for ease or asking for
+profit, loved by the wild people of the forest, respected by the
+courtiers of the king, and trusted by the close-fisted merchants of
+the maritime cities of France."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+After Champlain: from Montreal to the Mississippi
+
+
+A very remarkable series of further explorations were carried out as
+the indirect result of Champlain's work. In 1610 he had allowed a
+French boy of about eighteen years of age, named ÉTIENNE BRULÉ, to
+volunteer to go away with the Algonkins, in order to learn their
+language. Brulé was taken in hand by Iroquet,[1] a chief of the
+"Little Algonkins", whose people were then occupying the lands on
+either side of the Ottawa River, including the site of the now great
+city of Ottawa. After four years of roaming with the Indians, Brulé
+was dispatched by Champlain with an escort of twelve Algonkins to the
+headwaters of the Suskuehanna, far to the south of Lake Ontario, in
+order to warn the Andastes[2] tribe of military operations to be
+undertaken by the allied French, Hurons, and Algonkins against the
+Iroquois. This enabled Brulé to explore Lake Ontario and to descend
+the River Suskuehanna as far south as Chesapeake Bay, a truly
+extraordinary journey at the period. This region of northern Virginia
+had just been surveyed by the English, and was soon to be the site of
+the first English colony in North America.[3]
+
+[Footnote 1: Mentioned on p. 80.]
+
+[Footnote 2: The Andastes were akin to the Iroquois, but did not
+belong to their confederacy; they lived in Pennsylvania.]
+
+[Footnote 3: The inaccurate statement has frequently been written
+about Newfoundland being "the first British American colony".
+Newfoundland was reached by the ship in which John Cabot sailed on his
+1497 voyage of discovery, and a few years afterwards its shores were
+sought by the English in common with the French and the Portuguese,
+and later on the Spaniards and Basques, for the cod fishery. But no
+definite British settlement, such as subsequently grew into an actual
+colony, was founded in Newfoundland until the year 1624; the island
+was not recognized as definitely British till 1713, and no governor
+was appointed till 1728. The first permanent English colonial
+settlement in America was founded at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607; and
+in the Bermudas and Barbados (West Indies) soon afterwards.]
+
+In attempting to return to the valley of the St. Lawrence in 1616,
+with his Andaste guides, Brulé lost his way, and to avoid starvation
+surrendered himself to the Seneka Indians (the westernmost clan of the
+Iroquois) against whom the recent warlike operations of the French
+were being directed. Discovering his nationality, the Senekas decided
+to torture him before burning him to death at the stake. As they tore
+off his clothes they found that he was wearing an _Agnus Dei_ medal
+next his skin. Brulé told them to be careful, as it was a medicine of
+great power which would certainly kill them. By a coincidence, at that
+very moment a terrific thunderstorm burst from a sky which until
+recently had been all sunshine. The Senekas were so scared by the
+thunder and lightning that they believed Brulé to be a person of
+supernatural powers. They therefore released him, strove to heal such
+slight wounds as he had incurred, and carried him off to their
+principal town, where he became a great favourite. After a while they
+gave him guides to take him north into the country of the Hurons.
+
+His further adventures led him to discover Lake Superior and the way
+thither through the Sault Ste. Marie, and to reach a place probably
+not far from the south coast of Hudson Bay, in which there was a
+copper mine. Then he explored the Montagnais country north of Quebec,
+and even at one time (in 1629) entered the service of the English, who
+had captured Quebec and Tadoussac from the French. When the English
+left this region Brulé travelled again to the west and joined the
+Hurons once more.
+
+His licentious conduct amongst his Indian friends seems to have
+roused them to such a pitch of anger that in 1632 they murdered him,
+then boiled and ate his body. But immediately afterwards misfortune
+seemed to fall on the place. The Hurons were terrified at what they
+had done, and thought they heard or saw in the sky the spirits of the
+white relations of Brulé--some said the sister, some the
+uncle--threatening their town (Toanche), which they soon afterwards
+burnt and deserted.
+
+In 1615 Champlain, returning from France, had brought out with him
+friars of the Récollet order.[4] These were the pioneer missionaries
+of Canada, prominent amongst whom was FATHER LE CARON, and these
+Récollets traversed the countries in the basin of the St. Lawrence
+between Lake Huron and Cape Breton Island, preaching Christianity to
+the Amerindians as well as ministering to the French colonists and fur
+traders. One of these Récollet missionaries died of cold and hunger in
+attempting to cross New Brunswick from the St. Lawrence to the Bay of
+Fundy, and another--Nicholas Viel--was the first martyr in Canada in
+the spread of Christianity, for when travelling down the Ottawa River
+to Montreal he was thrown by the pagan Hurons (together with one of
+his converts) into the waters of a rapid since christened Sault le
+Récollet. Another Récollet, Father d'Aillon, prompted by Brulé,
+explored the richly fertile, beautiful country known then as the
+territory of the Neutral nation, that group of Huron-Iroquois
+Amerindians who strove to keep aloof from the fierce struggles between
+the Algonkins and Hurons on the one hand and the eastern Iroquois
+clans on the other. This region, which lies between the Lakes
+Ontario, Erie, and Huron, is the most attractive portion of western
+Canada. Lying in the southernmost parts of the Dominion, and nearly
+surrounded by sheets of open water, it has a far milder climate than
+the rest of eastern Canada.
+
+[Footnote 4: The Récollet (properly Recollect) friars were a strict
+branch of the Franciscan order that were sometimes called the
+Observantines. They were also known as "Recollects" (pronounced in
+French _récollet_) because they were required to be constantly keeping
+guard over their thoughts. This development of the Franciscan order of
+preaching missionary friars was originally a Spanish one, founded
+early in the sixteenth century, and becoming well established in the
+Spanish Netherlands. Many of them were Flemings or Walloons.]
+
+In 1626 the Jesuit order supplanted the Récollets, and commenced a
+campaign both of Christian propaganda and of geographical exploration
+which has scarcely finished in the Canada of to-day.
+
+In 1627 the war between the Iroquois Confederacy and the Huron and
+Algonkin tribes recommenced, and this, together with the British
+capture of Quebec and other portions of Canada, put a stop for several
+years to the work of exploration. This was not resumed on an advanced
+scale till 1634, when Champlain, unable himself, from failing health,
+to carry out his original commission of seeking a direct passage to
+China and India across the North-American continent, dispatched a
+Norman Frenchman named JEAN NICOLLET to find a way to the Western Sea.
+Nicollet, as a very young man, had lived for years amongst the
+Amerindian tribes, especially amongst the Nipissings near the lake of
+that name. Being charged, amongst other things, with the task of
+making peace between the Hurons and the tribes dwelling to the west of
+the great lakes, Nicollet discovered Lake Michigan. He was so
+convinced of the possibility of arriving at the Pacific Ocean, and
+thence making his way to China, that in the luggage which he carried
+in his birch-bark canoe was a dress of ceremony made of Chinese damask
+silk embroidered richly with birds and flowers. He was on his way to
+discover the Winnebago Indians, or "Men of the Sea", of whom Champlain
+had heard from the Hurons, with whom they were at war. But the great
+water from which they derived their name was not in this instance a
+sea, but the Mississippi River. The Winnebago Indians were totally
+distinct from the Algonkins or the Iroquois, and belonged to the
+Dakota stock, from which the great Siou confederation[5] was also
+derived.
+
+[Footnote 5: See p. 160.]
+
+Nicollet advanced to meet the Winnebagos clad in his Chinese robe and
+with a pistol in each hand. As he drew near he discharged his pistols,
+and the women and children fled in terror, for all believed him to be
+a supernatural being, a spirit wielding thunder and lightning.
+However, when they recovered from their terror the Winnebagos gave him
+a hearty welcome, and got up such lavish feasts in his honour, that
+one chief alone cooked 120 beavers at a single banquet.
+
+Nicollet certainly reached the water-parting between the systems
+of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, and under that
+name--Misi-sipi--"great water"--he heard through the Algonkin Indians
+of a mighty river lying three days' journey westward from his last
+camp. Winnebago (from which root is also derived the names of the
+Lakes Winnipeg and Winnipegosis much farther to the north-west) meant
+"salt" or "foul" water. Both terms might therefore be applied to the
+sea, and also to the lakes and rivers which, in the minds of the
+Amerindians, were equally vast in length or breadth.
+
+From 1648 to 1653 the whole of the Canada known to the French settlers
+and explorers was convulsed by the devastating warfare carried on by
+the Iroquois, who during that period destroyed the greater part of the
+Algonkin and Huron clans. The neutral nation of Lake Erie (the Erigas)
+was scattered, and between the shores of Lakes Michigan and Huron and
+Montreal the country was practically depopulated, except for the
+handfuls of French settlers and traders who trembled behind their
+fortifications. Then, to the relief and astonishment of the French,
+one of the Iroquois clans--the Onondaga--proposed terms of peace,
+probably because they had no more enemies to fight of their own
+colour, and wished to trade with the French.
+
+The fur trade of the Quebec province had attracted an increasing
+number of French people (men bringing their wives) to such settlements
+as Tadoussac and Three Rivers. Amongst these were the parents of
+PIERRE ESPRIT RADISSON. This young man went hunting near Three Rivers
+station and was captured in the woods by Mohawks (Iroquois) who
+carried him off to one of their towns and intended to burn him alive.
+Having bound him at a stake, they proceeded to tear out some of his
+finger nails and shoot arrows at the less vital parts of his body. But
+a Mohawk woman was looking on and was filled with pity at the
+sufferings of this handsome boy. She announced her intention of
+adopting him as a member of her family, and by sheer force of will she
+compelled the men to release him. After staying for some time amongst
+the Mohawks he escaped, but was again captured just as he was nearing
+Three Rivers. Once more he was spared from torture at the intercession
+of his adopted relations. He then made an even bolder bid for freedom,
+and fled to the south, up the valley of the Richelieu and the Hudson,
+and thus reached the most advanced inland post of Dutch America--then
+called Orange, now Albany--on the Hudson River. From this point he was
+conveyed to Holland, and from Holland he returned to Canada.
+
+Soon after his return he joined two Jesuit fathers who were to visit a
+mission station of the Jesuits amongst the Onondagas (Iroquois) on a
+lakelet about thirty miles south-east of the present city of
+Rochester. The Iroquois (whose language Radisson had learnt to speak)
+received them with apparent friendliness, and there they passed the
+winter. But in the spring Radisson found out that the Onondaga
+Iroquois were intending to massacre the whole of the mission.
+Instructed by him, the Jesuits pretended to have no suspicions of the
+coming attack, but all the while they were secretly building canoes at
+their fort. As soon as they were ready for flight, and the sun of
+April had completely melted the ice in the River Oswego, the French
+missionaries invited the Onondagas to a great feast, no doubt making
+out that it was part of the Easter festivities sanctioned by the
+Church. They pointed out to their guests that from religious motives
+as well as those of politeness it was essential that the _whole_ of
+the food provided should be eaten, "nothing was to be left on the
+plate". They set before their savage guests an enormous banquet of
+maize puddings, roast pigs, roast ducks, game birds, and fish of many
+kinds, even terrapins, or freshwater turtles. The Iroquois ate and ate
+until even _their_ appetites were satisfied. Then they began to cry
+off; but the missionaries politely insisted, and even told them that
+in failing to eat they were neglecting their religious duties. To help
+them in this respect they played hymn and psalm tunes on musical
+instruments. At last the Onondagas were gorged to repletion, and sank
+into a stertorous slumber at sunset. Whilst they slept, the Jesuits,
+their converts, and Radisson got into the already prepared canoes and
+paddled quickly down the Oswego River far beyond pursuit.
+
+Radisson next joined his brother-in-law, Medard Chouart, and after
+narrowly escaping massacre by the Iroquois (once more on the warpath
+along the Ottawa River) reached the northern part of Lake Huron, and
+Green Bay on the north-west of Lake Michigan. From Green Bay they
+travelled up the Fox River and across a portage to the Wisconsin,
+which flows into the Mississippi. Down this river they sped, meeting
+people of the great Siou confederation and Kri (Cree) Indians, these
+last an Algonkin nation roaming in the summertime as far north as
+Hudson's Bay, until at length they reached the actual waters of the
+Mississippi, first of all white men. Returning then to Lake Michigan,
+the shores of which seemed to them an earthly paradise with a climate
+finer than Italy, they journeyed northwards into Lake Huron, and
+thence north-westwards through the narrow passages of St. Mary's River
+into Lake Superior. The southern coast of Lake Superior was followed
+to its westernmost point, where they made a camp, and from which they
+explored during the winter (in snowshoes) the Wisconsin country and
+collected information regarding the Mississippi and its great western
+affluent the Missouri. The Mississippi, they declared, led to Mexico,
+while the other great forked river in the far west was a pathway,
+perhaps, to the Southern Sea (Pacific).
+
+The Jesuits, on the other hand, were convinced that Hudson's Bay (or
+the "Bay of the North") was at no great distance from Lake Superior
+(which was true) and that it must communicate to the north-west with
+the Pacific Ocean or the sea that led to China.
+
+In 1661, without the leave of the French Governor of Canada, who
+wanted them to take two servants of his own with them and to give him
+half the profits of the venture, Chouart and Radisson hurried away to
+the west, picked up large bodies of natives who were returning to the
+regions north of Lake Huron, with them fought their way through the
+ambushed Iroquois, and once more navigated the waters of Lake
+Superior. Once again they started for the Mississippi basin and
+explored the country of Minnesota, coming thus into contact with
+native tribes which lived on the flesh of the bison. In Minnesota they
+met a second time the Kri or Kinistino Indians of north-central
+Canada, and joined one of their camps in the spring of 1662, somewhere
+to the west of Lake Superior. With Kri guides they started away to the
+north and north-east, no doubt by way of the Lake of the Woods, the
+English River, Lake St. Joseph, and the Albany River, thus reaching
+the salt sea at James Bay, the southernmost extension of Hudson Bay.
+Or they may have proceeded by an even shorter route, though with
+longer portages for canoes, through Lake Nipigon to the Albany.
+
+The summer of 1662 they passed on the islands and shores of James Bay
+hunting "buffalo"[6] with the Indians. Then, in 1663, travelling back
+along the same route they had followed in the previous year, they
+regained Lake Superior, and so passed by the north of Lake Huron to
+the Ottawa River and the St. Lawrence. But on their return to Three
+Rivers they were arrested by the French Governor, D'Avaugour, who
+condemned them to imprisonment and severe fines. The courts of France
+gave them no redress, and in their furious anger Chouart and Radisson
+went over to the English, offered their services to England, and so
+brought about the creation of the Hudson Bay Company.
+
+[Footnote 6: More probably musk oxen.]
+
+Radisson's journey from England to Hudson Bay has been treated of in
+an earlier chapter: it is preferable to follow out to its finish the
+great, western impulse of the French, which led them to neglect for a
+time the doings of the British on the east coast of North America and
+in the sub-Arctic regions of Hudson Bay.
+
+From 1660 onwards the Jesuit missionaries again took up vigorously
+that work of Christianizing the Amerindians which had been so
+completely checked by the frightful ravages of the Iroquois between
+1648 and 1654.
+
+By 1669 the Jesuits had three permanent stations in western Canada.
+The first was the mission station at Sault Ste. Marie, the second was
+the station of Ste. Esprit, on Lake Superior (not far from the modern
+town of Ashland), and the third was the station of St. François Xavier
+at the mouth of the Fox River, on Green Bay, Lake Michigan.
+
+As regards some of the sufferings which these missionaries had to go
+through when travelling across Canada in the winter, I quote the
+following from _The Relations of the Jesuits_ (p. 35):--
+
+"I [Father de Crépieul] set out on the 16th of January, 1674, from the
+vicinity of Lake St. John, near the Saguenay River, with an Algonkin
+captain and two Frenchmen. We started after Mass, and walked five long
+leagues on snowshoes with much trouble, because the snow was soft and
+made our snowshoes very heavy. At the end of five leagues, we found
+ourselves on a lake four or five leagues long all frozen over, on
+which the wind caused great quantities of snow to drift, obscuring the
+air and preventing us from seeing where we are going. After walking
+another league and a half with great difficulty our strength began to
+fail. The wind, cold, and snow were so intolerable that they compelled
+us to retrace our steps a little, to cut some branches of fir which
+might in default of bark serve to build a cabin. After this we tried
+to light a fire, but were unable to do so. We were thus reduced to a
+most pitiful condition. The cold was beginning to seize us to an
+extraordinary degree, the darkness was great, and the wind blew
+fearfully. In order to keep ourselves from dying with cold, we resumed
+our march on the lake in spite of our fatigue, without knowing whither
+we were going, and all were greatly impeded with the wind and snow.
+After walking a league and a half we had to succumb in spite of
+ourselves and stop where we were. The danger we ran of dying from cold
+caused me to remember the charitable Father de Noue, who in a similar
+occasion was found dead in the snow, kneeling and with clasped
+hands.... We therefore remained awake during the rest of the night....
+On the following morning two Frenchmen arrived from Father Albanel's
+cabin very opportunely, and kindled a great fire on the snow.... After
+this we resumed our journey on the same lake, and at last reached the
+spot where Father Albanel was.... A serious injury, caused by the fall
+of a heavy load upon his loins, prevented him from moving, and still
+more, from performing a missionary's duties."
+
+One of the Jesuit fathers, Allouez, in founding the station of St.
+François Xavier on Green Bay, Lake Michigan, had gained further
+information about the wonderful Mississippi, which he called "Messi
+Sipi". He also thoroughly explored Lake Nipigon, to the north of Lake
+Superior. In 1669 two missionaries, named Dollier de Casson and
+Galinée, started from the seminary of St. Sulpice (Montreal) to reach
+the great tribes of the far west, supposed to be eager to learn of
+Christianity and known to be much more tractable than the Iroquois.
+These two missionaries, in their expedition of seven canoes and
+twenty-one Amerindians, were accompanied by a remarkable young man
+commonly known as La Salle, but whose real name was Robert
+Cavalier.[7]
+
+[Footnote 7: La Salle was the name of his property in France.]
+
+Before leaving Lake Ontario, they actually passed the mouth of the
+Niagara River and heard the falls, but had not sufficient curiosity to
+leave their canoes and walk a short distance to see them. The
+wonderful cascades of Niagara, where the St. Lawrence leaving Lake
+Erie plunges 328 feet down into Lake Ontario (which is not much above
+sea level), remained nearly undiscovered and undescribed until the
+year 1678, when they were visited by Father Hennepin. Near the western
+end of Lake Ontario the two Sulpician missionaries met another
+Frenchman, Jolliet, who had come down to Lake Superior by way of the
+Detroit passage, which is really the portion of the St. Lawrence
+connecting Lake Huron with Lake Erie. Jolliet told the missionary de
+Casson of a great tribe in the far west, the Pottawatomies, who had
+asked for missionaries, and who were of Algonkin stock. La Salle, on
+the other hand, was determined to make for the rumoured Ohio River,
+which lay somewhere to the south-west of Lake Erie.
+
+The two Sulpicians wintered in "the earthly paradise" to the north of
+Lake Erie, passing a delightful six months there in the amazing
+abundance of game and fish. They then met with various disasters to
+their canoes, and consequently gave up their western journey, passing
+northwards through Detroit and Lake St. Clair into Lake Huron, and
+thence to the Jesuit mission station of the Sault Ste. Marie. Here
+they were received rather coldly, as being rivals in the mission field
+and in exploration. They in their turn accused the Jesuits of thinking
+mainly, if not entirely, of the foundation of French colonies, and
+very little of evangelizing the natives.
+
+JOLLIET, a Canadian by birth,[8] was dispatched by the Viceroy of
+Canada in 1672 to explore the far west. Two years--1670--previously
+the French Government had for the first time adopted a really definite
+policy about Canada, and had taken formal possession of the Lake
+region and of all the territories lying between the lakes and the
+Mississippi. A great assembly of Indians was held at Sault Ste. Marie,
+near the east end of Lake Superior; and here a representative of the
+French Government, accompanied by numerous missionaries and by
+Jolliet, read a proclamation of the sovereignty of King Louis XIV of
+France and Navarre. Below a tall cross was erected a great shield
+bearing the arms of France. Father Allouez addressed the Indians in
+the Algonkin language, and told them of the all-powerful Louis XIV,
+who "had ten thousand commanders and captains, each as great as the
+Governor of Quebec". He reminded them how the troops of this king had
+beaten the unconquerable Iroquois, of how he possessed innumerable
+soldiers and uncountable ships; that at times the ground of France
+shook with the discharge of cannon, while the blaze of musketry was
+like the lightning. He pictured the king covered with the blood of his
+enemies and riding in the middle of his cavalry, and ordering so many
+of his enemies to be slain that no account could be kept of the number
+of their scalps, whilst their blood flowed in rivers. The Amerindians
+being what they were, addicted to warfare, and only recognizing the
+right of the strongest, it may be that this gospel of force was not
+quite so shocking and unchristian as it reads to us nearly 250 years
+afterwards, though it jars very much as coming from the lips of a
+missionary of Christianity. However, it must be remembered that but
+for the valour of the French soldiers in the awful period between 1648
+and 1666 (when the Mohawks received a thorough and well-deserved
+thrashing) many of the tribes addressed on this occasion by the Jesuit
+missionaries would have been completely exterminated; the Iroquois
+would have depopulated much of north-eastern America. It is obvious,
+indeed, from our study of the conditions of life amongst the
+Amerindians, that one reason why the New World was so poorly populated
+at the time of its discovery by Europeans was the wars of
+extermination between tribe and tribe; for America between the Arctic
+regions and Tierra del Fuego is marvellously well supplied with
+natural food products--game, fish, fruits, nuts, roots, and
+grain--much more so than any area of similar extent in the Old World.
+
+[Footnote 8: Born at Quebec in 1645.]
+
+Jolliet was to be accompanied on his westward expedition by Father
+JACQUES MARQUETTE,[9] a Jesuit missionary who had become well
+acquainted with the tribes visiting Lake Superior, and had learnt the
+Siou dialect of the Illinois people. On May 17, 1673, Jolliet and
+Marquette started from the Straits of Michili-Makinak with only two
+bark canoes and five Amerindians. They coasted along the north coast
+of Lake Michigan, passed into Green Bay, and thence up the River Fox.
+They were assisted by the Maskutins, or Fire Indians, and were given
+Miami guides. Thence the natives assisted them to transport their
+canoes and baggage over the very short distance that separates the
+upper waters of the Fox River from the Wisconsin River, and down the
+Wisconsin they glided till they reached the great Mississippi. The
+Governor of Quebec, who had sent Jolliet on this mission, believed
+that the Great River of the west would lead them to the Gulf of
+California, which was then called the Vermilion Sea by the Spaniards,
+because it resembled in shape and colour the Red Sea.
+
+[Footnote 9: Father Jacques Marquette was born in the province of
+Champagne, eastern France. He came to Canada when he was twenty-nine
+years old, having already been prepared by the Jesuits for priesthood
+and missionary work since his seventeenth year. He spent nine years in
+Canada, and died at the age of thirty-eight. He has left an enduring
+memory for goodness, courage, and purity of life.]
+
+"On the 17th of June (1673)", writes Father Marquette, "we safely
+entered the Mississippi with a joy that I cannot express. Its current
+is slow and gentle, the width very unequal. On its banks there are
+hardly any woods or mountains. The islands are most beautiful, and
+they are covered with fine trees. We saw deer and cattle (bison),
+geese, and swans. From time to time we came upon monstrous fish, one
+of which struck our canoe with such violence that I thought it was a
+great tree. On another occasion we saw on the water a monster with the
+head of a tiger, a sharp nose like that of a wild cat, with whiskers
+and straight erect ears. The head was grey, and the neck quite black
+(possibly a lynx).... We found that turkeys had taken the place of
+game, and the _pisikiou_, or wild cattle, that of the other animals."
+
+Father Marquette, of course, by his wild cattle means the bison, of
+which he proceeds to give an excellent description. He adds: "They are
+very fierce, and not a year passes without their killing some savages.
+When attacked, they catch a man on their horns if they can, toss him
+in the air, throw him on the ground, then trample him under foot and
+kill him. If a person fires at them from a distance with either a bow
+or a gun, he must immediately after the shot throw himself down and
+hide in the grass, for if they perceive him who has fired they run at
+him and attack him."
+
+Soon after entering the Mississippi, Marquette noticed some rocks
+which by their height and length inspired awe. "We saw upon one of
+them two painted monsters which at first made us afraid, and upon
+which the boldest savages dare not long rest their eyes. They are as
+large as a calf; they have horns on their heads like those of deer, a
+horrible look, red eyes, a beard like a tiger's, a face somewhat like
+a man's, a body covered with scales, and so long a tail that it winds
+all round the body and ends like that of a fish. Green, red, and black
+are the three colours composing the picture. Moreover, these two
+monsters are so well painted that we cannot believe that any savage is
+their author, for good painters in France would find it difficult to
+paint so well, and, besides, they are so high up on the rock that it
+is difficult to reach that place conveniently to paint them."[10]
+
+[Footnote 10: These remarkable rock pictures were situated immediately
+above the present city of Alton, Illinois. In 1812 they still remained
+in a good state of preservation, but the thoughtless Americans had
+gradually destroyed them by 1867 in quarrying the rock for building
+stone.]
+
+As the Jolliet expedition paddled down the Mississippi--ever so easily
+and swiftly--a marvellous panorama unfolded itself before the
+Frenchmen's fascinated gaze. Immense herds of bison occasionally
+appeared on the river banks, flocks of turkeys flew up from the glades
+and roosted in the trees and on the river bank. Everywhere the natives
+seemed friendly, and Father Marquette was usually able to communicate
+with them through his knowledge of the Illinois Algonkin dialect,
+which the Siou understood.
+
+[Illustration: INDIANS HUNTING BISON]
+
+On their first meeting with the Mississippi Indians, the French
+explorers were not only offered the natives' pipes to smoke in token
+of peace, but an old man amongst the latter uttered these words to
+Jolliet: "How beautiful the sun is, O Frenchman, when thou comest to
+visit us. Our village awaits thee, and thou shalt enter all our cabins
+in peace."... "There was a crowd of people," writes Marquette; "they
+devoured us with their eyes, but nevertheless preserved profound
+silence. We could, however, hear these words addressed to us from time
+to time in a low voice: 'How good it is, my brothers, that you should
+visit us'.
+
+"... The council was followed by a great feast, consisting of four
+dishes, which had to be partaken of in accordance with all their
+fashions. The first course was a great wooden platter full of
+sagamité, that is to say, meal of Indian corn boiled in water, and
+seasoned with fat. The Master of the Ceremonies filled a spoon with
+sagamité three or four times, and put it to my mouth as if I were a
+little child. He did the same to Monsieur Jollyet. As a second course
+he caused a second platter to be brought, on which were three fish. He
+took some pieces of them, removed the bones therefrom, and, after
+blowing upon them to cool them, he put them in our mouths as one would
+give food to a bird. For the third course, they brought a large dog
+that had just been killed, but, when they learned that we did not eat
+this meat, they removed it from before us. Finally, the fourth course
+was a piece of wild ox, the fattest morsels of which were placed in
+our mouths.... We thus pushed forward and no longer saw so many
+prairies, because both shores of the river are bordered with lofty
+trees. The cotton wood, elm and bass wood are admirable for their
+height and thickness. There are great numbers of wild cattle whom we
+hear bellowing. We killed a little parroquet, with a red and yellow
+head and green body.... We have got down to near the 33° of
+latitude.... We heard from afar savages who were inciting one another
+to attack us by their continual yelling. They were armed with bows and
+arrows, hatchets, clubs, and shields.... Part of them embarked in
+great wooden canoes, some to ascend, others to descend the river in
+order to surround us on all sides.... Some young men threw themselves
+into the water and seized my canoe, but the current compelled them to
+return to land. One of them hurled his club, which passed over without
+striking us. In vain I showed the calumet (pipe of peace), and made
+them signs that we were not coming to war against them. The alarm
+continued; they were already preparing to pierce us with arrows from
+all sides when God suddenly touched the hearts of the old men who were
+standing at the water's edge, who checked the ardour of their young
+men.... Whereon we landed, not without fear on our part. First we had
+to speak by signs, because none of them understood the six languages
+which I spoke. At last we found an old man who could speak a little
+Illinois. We informed them that we were going to the sea.
+
+"The next day was spent in feasting on Indian corn and dogs' flesh.
+The people here had an abundance of Indian corn, which they sowed at
+all seasons. They cook it in great earthen jars which are very well
+made, and also have plates of baked earth. The men go naked and wear
+their hair short; they pierce their noses, from which, as well as from
+their ears, hang beads.... Their cabins are made of bark, and are long
+and wide. They sleep at the two ends, which are raised two feet above
+the ground. They know nothing of the beaver, and their wealth consists
+in the skins of wild cattle. They never see snow in their country, and
+recognize the winter only through the rains."
+
+The expedition had passed the confluence of the Missouri and that of
+the Ohio, and had finally reached the place where the Arkansas River
+enters the Mississippi. Here the Frenchmen gathered from the natives
+that the sea was only ten days distant, and this sea they knew (for
+Jolliet was able to take astronomical observations and to make a rough
+survey) could only be the Gulf of Mexico. Jolliet feared if he
+prosecuted his journey any farther, he and his people would fall into
+the hands of the Spaniards and be imprisoned, if not killed.
+Therefore, at this point on the Lower Mississippi, the expedition
+turned back. Its return journey was a weary business, for the current
+was against the canoes as they were propelled northwards up the Great
+River. But Jolliet learnt from the natives of a better homeward route,
+that of following the Illinois River upstream until the expedition
+came within a very short distance of Lake Michigan, near where Chicago
+now stands. The canoes were carried over a low ridge of ground,
+launched again in the Chicago River, and so passed into Lake Michigan.
+(There is, in fact, at this point the remains of an ancient water
+connection between Lake Michigan and the Illinois River, and a canal
+now connects the two systems.) Jolliet, in describing this region,
+realized that by cutting a canal through two miles of prairie it would
+be possible to go "in a small ship" from Lake Erie or Lake Superior
+"to Florida".
+
+Father Marquette remained at his new mission on the Fox River (he died
+two years afterwards on the shores of the Straits of Michili-makinak).
+Jolliet, on returning by way of the Ottawa River to Quebec, was nearly
+drowned in the La Chine Rapids (Montreal), and all his papers and maps
+were lost. The natives with him also perished, but he struggled to
+shore with difficulty, and went on his way to Quebec to report his
+wonderful discoveries to the Governor, Frontenac. Fortunately Father
+Marquette had also kept a journal and had made maps, and these
+reaching the superior of his mission arrived in time to confirm
+Jolliet's statements.
+
+Jolliet married at Quebec, and proceeded to explore and develop the
+regions along the north coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, travelling
+in this work as far as Hudson's Bay. He was given by the French
+Government the Island of Anticosti as a reward for his achievements,
+but the work and capital which he put into the development of this
+long-neglected island came to nothing; for it was captured by the
+English, and Jolliet died a poor man whilst attempting to explore the
+coast of Labrador.
+
+As to ROBERT CAVALIER DE LA SALLE, he had, after all, discovered the
+Ohio, and had descended that river as far as the site of the present
+town of Louisville. Then he interested the Governor (Frontenac) of
+Canada in his enterprises. A fort, called Fort Frontenac, was built at
+what is now Kingston, at the point where the St. Lawrence leaves Lake
+Ontario. La Salle returned to France, and obtained the grant of the
+lordship of this fort and the surrounding country on conditions of
+maintaining the whole cost of the establishment, and making a
+settlement of colonists. Another visit to France in 1677-8 secured him
+further support and capital, and he returned from France with a
+companion, Henry de Tonty.
+
+La Salle, with de Tonty, started from Fort Frontenac in September,
+1678, so intensely anxious to commence his discoveries that he
+disregarded the difficulties of the winter season. On his way to
+Niagara he paid a visit to the Iroquois to conciliate them, and
+cleverly got from them permission to build a vessel on Lake Erie and
+also to erect a blacksmith's forge, near where Niagara now stands. The
+blacksmith's forge grew rapidly into a fort before the Indians were
+aware of what was being done. By August, 1679, he had built and
+launched (in spite of extraordinary calamities and misfortunes) on the
+Upper Niagara River the first sailing boat which ever appeared on the
+four great upper lakes of the St. Lawrence basin.
+
+In this ship he sailed through Lake Erie and past Detroit into Lake
+Huron, and thence to Green Bay (Lake Michigan), stopping at intervals
+amongst the canoes of the amazed natives, who for the first time heard
+the sound of cannon, for he had armed his vessel with guns. At Green
+Bay he collected a large quantity of furs, which had been obtained in
+trade by the men he had sent on in advance. He loaded up his sailing
+boat, the _Griffon_, and sent her on a voyage back to the east to
+transport this splendid load of furs to the merchants with whom he had
+become deeply indebted. Unhappily the _Griffon_ foundered in a storm
+on Lake Michigan, and was never heard of again. Meantime La Salle,
+with de Tonty and Father HENNEPIN, the discoverer of Niagara, had
+travelled in canoes to the south-east end of Lake Michigan, had passed
+up the Joseph River, and thence by portage into the Kankaki, which
+flows into the Illinois. This river he descended till he stopped near
+the site of the modern Peoria. Below this place he built a fort--for
+it was winter time--and although the natives were not very friendly he
+collected enough information from them to satisfy himself that he
+could easily pass down the Illinois to the Mississippi.
+
+He sent one of the Frenchmen, Michel Accault, together with Father
+Hennepin, to explore the Illinois down to the Mississippi; de Tonty he
+placed in charge of the fort with a small garrison; and then himself,
+on the last day of February, 1680, started to walk overland from Lake
+Michigan to Detroit. Eventually, by means of a canoe, which he
+constructed himself, he regained Fort Frontenac and Montreal. When he
+returned to Fort Crèvecoeur, on the Illinois River,[11] it was to meet
+with the signs of a horrible disaster. The Iroquois in his absence had
+descended on the place with a great war party. They had massacred the
+Illinois people dwelling in a big settlement near the fort, and the
+remains of their mutilated bodies were scattered all over the place.
+Their town had been burnt; the fort was empty and abandoned. There
+were no traces of the Frenchmen, however, amongst the skulls and
+skeletons lying around him; for the skulls retained sufficient hair to
+show that they belonged to Amerindians. Nevertheless, he deposited his
+new stock of goods and most of his men in the ruins of the Fort
+Crèvecoeur, and descended the River Illinois to the Mississippi. But
+he was obliged to turn back. On the west bank of the river were the
+scared Illinois Indians, on the east the raging Iroquois. Whenever La
+Salle could safely visit a deserted camp he would examine the remains
+of the tortured men tied to stakes to see if amongst them there was a
+Frenchman.
+
+[Footnote 11: He had named this place "Heartbreak" because when
+building it he had learnt of the loss of his sailing ship _Griffon_,
+with the splendid supply of furs which was to have paid off his debts,
+with all his reserve supplies and his men. This was not the limit of
+his troubles; for, after the overland journey of appalling hardships
+through a country of melting ice, flood, swamp, and hostile
+Iroquois--the Iroquois being furious with La Salle for having
+outwitted them in the building of this fort, and seeking him
+everywhere to destroy him--when he got to Montreal it was only to
+learn that a ship, coming from France with further supplies for his
+great journey had been wrecked at the mouth of the St. Lawrence!]
+
+But de Tonty was not dead. After incredible adventures he had escaped
+the raids of the Iroquois and had reached the Straits of
+Michili-makinak, between Lakes Michigan and Huron, and there met La
+Salle, who was once more on his way to Montreal.
+
+Again de La Salle and de Tonty, in the winter of 1681, returned to the
+south end of Lake Michigan, and made their way over the snow to the
+Illinois River. On the 6th February, 1682, they left the junction of
+the Illinois and the Mississippi to trace that great river to its
+outlet in the sea. La Salle reached the delta on the 6th April, 1682,
+having on the way taken possession of the country in the name of the
+King of France. Accault and Father Hennepin had meantime paddled up
+the Northern Mississippi as far as its junction with the Wisconsin. At
+this place their party was surrounded and captured by a large band of
+Siou warriors.
+
+The Frenchmen were at first in danger of being killed, as the Sious
+refused to smoke with them the pipe of peace. But being much less
+bloodthirsty than the Iroquois, they soon calmed down and treated
+their captives with a certain rough friendliness. All their goods were
+taken from them, even the vestments worn by Father Hennepin. But they
+were well supplied with food such as the country produced--bison,
+beef, fish, wild turkeys, and the grain of the wild rice, which made
+such excellent flour. They were gradually conveyed by the Siou[12] to
+a large settlement of that tribe on the shore of Mille Lacs, a sheet
+of water not far distant from the westernmost extremity of Lake
+Superior. Whilst staying at this Siou town Hennepin conversed with
+Indians from the far north and north-west, and from what they told him
+came to the conclusion that there was no continuous waterway or
+"Strait of Anian" across the North-American continent, but that
+the land extended to the north-west till it finally joined the
+north-eastern part of Asia--a guess that was not very far wrong. But
+he also surmised that there were rivers in the far west which led to
+an ocean--the Pacific--across which ships might go to Japan and China
+without passing to the southward of the Equator.
+
+[Footnote 12: The real name of the Siou, as far as we can arrive at it
+through the records of the French pioneers, was Issati or Naduessiu.]
+
+Whilst moving up and down the northern Mississippi, bison-hunting with
+the Indians, the Frenchmen were met near the site of St. Paul by one
+of the great French pioneers of the seventeenth century, the Sieur
+DANIEL DE GREYSOLON DU L'HUT. This remarkable man, who was an officer
+of the French army, had already planted the French arms at the
+Amerindian settlement of Mille Lacs in 1679, and had established
+himself as a powerful authority at the west end of Lake Superior. He
+had also summoned a great council of Amerindian tribes--the Siou from
+the Upper Mississippi, the Assiniboins from the Lake of the Woods
+(between Lake Superior and Lake Winnipeg), and the Kri Indians from
+Lake Nipigon. He had further discovered, in 1679, the water route of
+the St. Croix River from near Lake Superior to the Mississippi.
+
+Du L'Hut soon persuaded the Siou to let his fellow countrymen return
+with him to Lake Superior. Accault remained behind with the Siou,
+delighted with their wild, roving life, and no doubt married an Indian
+wife and became the father of some of those bold half-breeds who
+played such a great part in the subsequent history of innermost
+Canada. But Father Hennepin returned to Montreal, and made his way
+eventually to France, where he fell into great disgrace and was
+unfrocked. He had richly merited this treatment, for after he heard of
+the death of La Salle he impudently claimed the discovery of the whole
+course of the Mississippi River for himself, and for a long time was
+believed. He will certainly go down in history as the man who
+discovered and described Niagara Falls (in 1678), and he also assisted
+greatly to clear up the geography of the time by the information he
+collected from the Amerindians as to the vast extent of the
+North-American continent; but he was a boastful, unscrupulous man.
+
+Du L'Hut, who came to the rescue of Accault and Hennepin, was of noble
+family, and a member of the king's bodyguard. He decided, however, to
+seek his fortune in Canada, and obtained a commission as captain. It
+was his cousin, Henri de Tonty, who had accompanied La Salle. After
+returning to France to fight in the wars then going on, he came back
+to Canada with a younger brother, Claude. He had in him the spirit of
+great adventurers, and longed to visit the unknown countries of the
+upper Mississippi. In the early part of these journeys he rescued his
+fellow countrymen from the keeping of the Sious in the manner
+described. After that he spent _thirty_ years travelling and trading
+about North America, from the northern Mississippi into what we
+should now call Manitoba, and from the vicinity of Lake Winnipeg to
+Hudson Bay. He brought the great Amerindian nation of the Dakotas into
+direct relations with the French. He was absolutely fearless, and in
+no period of Canadian history has France been more splendidly
+represented in the personality of any of her officers than she was by
+Daniel de Greysolon du L'Hut. His was a tiresome name for English
+scribes and speakers. It was therefore written by them "Duluth" and
+pronounced D[)a]l[)a]th (instead of "Dülüt"). It is the name given to
+the township near the southernmost extremity of Lake Superior.
+
+When the journeys of du L'Hut came to an end--he died at Montreal in
+1710--and after the era of great French explorations in North America
+drew to a close, the French power was beginning to be eclipsed by that
+of the British, who were building up the foundations of a colony on
+the shores of Hudson's Bay, and were taking steps to acquire
+Newfoundland and to colonize New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
+
+Nevertheless, in 1720, the King of France, or rather the regent acting
+for the king, decided that a serious attempt must be made to discover
+the Western Sea, or Pacific Ocean, from the French posts which had
+been established in what is now known as Manitoba. The French had
+already discovered the Missouri, and had heard from several Indian
+tribes that it was possible to cross the Rocky Mountains and descend
+by other rivers to the waters of a great ocean, the coasts of which
+were visited by Spaniards. Several expeditions were sent out, more or
+less under the control of Jesuits, but did not accomplish much.
+
+The really great discoveries which link the "Great North-West" for all
+time in history with France and French names were initiated by PIERRE
+GAULTIER DE LA VÉRENDRYE, who was born in 1685 at the town of Three
+Rivers, in Lower Canada, where his father was Governor. He entered
+the army at the age of twelve, and took part in the French campaigns
+in Flanders, winning the rank of lieutenant at the battle of
+Malplaquet, where he received nine wounds and was left for dead on the
+field. He then returned to Canada, not having the necessary means with
+which to support the position of a lieutenant; and then, as France
+seemed to have entered upon a period of protracted peace, he
+determined to become an explorer. In 1728, when he was commandant of
+the trading post of Nipigon, to the north of Lake Superior, he heard
+from an Indian that there was a great lake beyond Lake Superior, out
+of which flowed a river towards the west, which ultimately led to a
+great salt lake where the water ebbed and flowed. As a matter of fact,
+these stories simply referred to Lake Winnipeg, but the importance of
+them lay in the fact that they acted as a powerful incentive to La
+Vérendrye to push his explorations westwards, and perhaps discover a
+route to the Pacific Ocean.[13]
+
+[Footnote 13: The water of Lake Winnipeg--whatever it may be now--was
+frequently stated by Amerindians in earlier days to be "stinking
+water", or salt, brackish water, disagreeable to drink, and this lake
+exhibits a curious phenomenon of a regular rise and fall, reminding
+the observer of a tide, a phenomenon by no means confined to Lake
+Winnipeg, but occurring on sheets of water of much smaller extent.]
+
+La Vérendrye afterwards went to Quebec, where he discussed his plans
+for Western exploration with the Governor of New France, the Marquis
+de Beauharnais, who was a distant connection of the Beauharnais family
+from which sprang the first husband of the Empress Joséphine, the
+grandfather of Napoleon III.
+
+This Governor entered into his scheme with enthusiasm, though he could
+obtain little or no money from the ministers of Louis XVI. But a way
+out of the difficulty was found by the Governor giving La Vérendrye
+the monopoly of the fur trade in the far North-West.[14] This
+monopoly enabled La Vérendrye to obtain the funds for his expenditure
+from the merchants of Montreal, and in the summer of 1731 he started
+out on his explorations, accompanied by three of his sons, his nephew,
+fifty soldiers and French Canadian canoe men, and a Jesuit missionary.
+For a guide they had the Indian, Oshagash, who had first told La
+Vérendrye of the western river and the salt water. After many delays,
+necessitated by the need for trading in furs to satisfy the merchants
+of Montreal, La Vérendrye and his expedition skated on snowshoes down
+the ice of the Winnipeg River and reached the shores of Lake Winnipeg.
+They were probably the first white men to arrive there. La Vérendrye
+established forts and posts along his route from Lake Nipigon, but his
+expedition had not been a commercial success. There was a deficit of
+£1700 between the amount realized in furs and the cost of the
+equipment and wages of the French and French Canadians. De Beauharnais
+made a fresh appeal to the French Court; he urged that the expenditure
+to convey La Vérendrye's expedition to the Pacific Ocean would not be
+a large one--perhaps only £1500.
+
+[Footnote 14: What we should call to-day a "concession".]
+
+But the French Court was obdurate; it would not furnish a penny. Thus
+La Vérendrye, in all probability, was prevented from forestalling the
+British explorers of sixty and seventy years later, besides the
+expeditions of Captain Cook and Captain Vancouver, which secured for
+Great Britain a foothold on the Pacific seaboard of British Columbia.
+
+La Vérendrye in his fort on Lake Winnipeg was in a desperate position.
+He made a hasty journey back to Montreal and even Quebec, to beat up
+funds and to pacify the capitalists of his fur-trading monopoly. He
+painted in glowing colours the prospects of cutting off the trade of
+the Hudson's Bay Company and the building up of an immense commerce in
+valuable furs, and these men agreed once again to furnish the funds
+for the extension of the expedition. On his return he took back with
+him his youngest son, Louis, a boy of eighteen. Whilst he had been
+absent from Fort St. Charles (a post which he had built on the Lake of
+the Woods, in communication by water with the Winnipeg River), on Lake
+Winnipeg, that place was visited by a party of Siou Indians. They
+found the fort occupied in the absence of the French by a number of
+Kri or "Knistino" Indians in French service. These Kris were
+frightened at the arrival of the Sious and fired guns at them. "Who
+fired on us?" demanded these haughty Indians from Dakota, and the Kris
+replied, "The French". Then the Sious withdrew, but vowed to be
+completely revenged on the treacherous white man.
+
+When La Vérendrye reached Fort St. Charles its little garrison was
+almost at the point of starvation. He had travelled himself ahead of
+his party, and the immense stock of supplies and provisions he was
+bringing up country were a long way behind him when he reached the
+fort. He therefore sent back his son Jean, together with the most
+active of his Canadian voyageurs and the Jesuit missionary, in order
+that they might meet the heavily laden canoes and hurry them up
+country as fast as possible. But this party was met by the Sious on
+Rainy River, who massacred them to a man. They were afterwards found
+lying in a circle on the beach, decapitated and mutilated. The heads
+of most of them were wrapped ironically in beaver skins, and La
+Vérendrye's son, Jean, was horribly cut and slashed, and his
+mutilated, naked body decorated with garters and bracelets of
+porcupine quills.
+
+Meantime, during his absence in Lower Canada, two of his sons in
+charge of Fort Maurepas, on Lake Winnipeg, had been very active. They
+had discovered the great size of this lake, and also the entrance of
+the Red River on the south. They then proceeded to explore both the
+Red River and its western tributary the Assiniboin. On the Assiniboin
+was afterwards built the post of Fort La Reine, and from this place in
+1738 La Vérendrye started with two of his sons, several other
+Frenchmen, a few Canadian voyageurs, and twenty-five Assiniboin
+Indians. Leaving the Assiniboin River, they crossed the North Dakota
+prairies on foot. Owing to the timidity of his Indian guides, La
+Vérendrye was not led direct to the Missouri River, the "Great River
+of the West", but along a zigzag route which permitted his guides to
+reinforce their numbers at Assiniboin villages, and every now and then
+join in a bison hunt. All the party were on foot, horses not then
+having reached the Assiniboin tribe. But on the 28th of November,
+1738, they drew near to the Missouri and were met by a chief of the
+great Mandan tribe, who was accompanied by thirty of his warriors, and
+who presented La Vérendrye with young maize cobs and leaves of native
+tobacco, these being regarded as emblems of peace and friendship.
+
+The Mandan tribe differed materially in its habits and customs from
+the Indians to the north, who supported themselves mainly, if not
+entirely, by hunting, who cared very little for agriculture, and moved
+continually like nomads over great stretches of country, living
+chiefly in tents or temporary villages. The Mandans, on the other
+hand, were a people who practised agriculture, and had permanent and
+well-constructed towns. In fact, their civilization and demeanour made
+such an impression on the Assiniboin and other northern tribes that
+they had been considered a sort of "white people", somewhat akin to
+Europeans, and La Vérendrye was a little disappointed to find them
+only Amerindians in race and colour.
+
+The six hundred Assiniboins who had gathered about La Vérendrye's
+expedition proved to be a great trouble to him, as they were
+constantly picking quarrels with the Mandans, who were very dishonest.
+Accordingly, La Vérendrye arranged with the Mandans to frighten them
+away by pretending that the Siou Indians were on the warpath. The six
+hundred Assiniboins bolted, but took with them La Vérendrye's
+interpreter, so that he was henceforth obliged to communicate with the
+Mandans by means of signs and gestures. This and other reasons decided
+him to return--even though it was the depth of winter, to Fort La
+Reine, but not before he had given the head chief of the Mandans a
+flag and a leaden plate which (unknown to the Mandans) meant taking
+possession of their country in the name of the French king.
+
+The journey back to Fort La Reine, over the plains of the Assiniboin,
+was a terrible experience. The party had to travel in the teeth of an
+almost unceasing north-east wind which was freezingly cold. Night
+after night they were obliged to dig deep holes in the snow for their
+sleeping places. La Vérendrye nearly died of agonizing pain and
+fatigue during this journey, and was a long time recovering from its
+effects.
+
+As they continued to receive friendly messages from the Mandans,
+inviting them to make further discoveries, LA VÉRENDRYE'S sons, PIERRE
+and FRANCOIS, set out in the spring of 1742, and, after some checks
+and disappointments, managed with a single Mandan guide to reach Broad
+Lands on the Little Missouri River, where they noticed the earths of
+different colours, blue, green, red, black, white, and yellow, which
+are so characteristic of this region. They reached the village of the
+Crow Indians, passed through a portion of the friendly tribe, the
+Cheyennes (the name was probably pronounced Shian) and got into the
+country which was constantly being ravaged by the Snake Indians, or
+Shoshones. Here, on the 1st of January, 1743, when the mists of
+morning cleared away, they saw upon the horizon the outline of huge
+mountains. As they travelled westwards or south-westwards, day after
+day, the jagged blue wall resolved itself into towering snow-capped
+peaks, glittering in the sun and provoking the appellation of "the
+Mountains of Bright Stones", a name probably given to the Rocky
+Mountains by the Amerindians, but used in all the earlier French and
+English maps until the end of the eighteenth century.[15]
+
+[Footnote 15: The term Rocky Mountains was probably first officially
+applied by the American expedition, under Lewis and Clarke, sent out
+by the United States Government in 1804 to take possession of the
+coast of Oregon, but it was used twenty or thirty years earlier by
+British explorers of Western Canada.]
+
+On the 12th of January they reached the very foot of the mountains,
+the slopes of which they saw were thickly covered with magnificent
+forests of pine and fir--forests, that have since suffered to an
+appalling extent from annual bush fires, which so far the United
+States Government seems unable to check. Here they were to meet with a
+bitter disappointment. They were travelling with a very large war
+party of the Bow Indians for the purpose, if need be, of attacking and
+routing the Shoshones; but a Shoshone camp at the base of the
+mountains was found to be deserted, and the Bow Indians jumped to the
+conclusion that the Shoshones had turned back through the forest
+unseen, and were now making with all speed for the principal war camp
+of the Bow Indians, where they would massacre the women and children.
+They would listen to no remonstrances from the two Frenchmen, who
+perforce had also to travel back, either alone or with the Bow
+Indians, in the direction of their war camp, where the idea of a
+Shoshone attack was found to be baseless. Eventually, the two La
+Vérendrye brothers were obliged to make their way to the Missouri
+River, and abandon any idea of finding a way to the Western Ocean
+across the Rocky Mountains.
+
+The French pioneers had already heard of the Spaniards in California,
+and the possibility of getting into touch with them. They had now
+discovered, first of all Europeans, the Rocky Mountains--that great
+snowy range of North America which extends from Robson Peak on the
+eastern borders of British Columbia to Baldy Peak in New Mexico.
+
+Afterwards the La Vérendryes directed their attention more to the
+opportunities of reaching the Far West through the streams that flowed
+into the system of Lake Winnipeg, and in this way discovered, in or
+about 1743, the great River Saskatchewan. This river La Vérendrye's
+sons followed up till they reached the junction between the North and
+the South Rivers, and then they probably learnt a good deal more of
+the Southern Saskatchewan, on which they may have built one or two
+posts. La Vérendrye himself thought that this would prove to be the
+best route by which the French could reach the Western Sea.
+
+By this time the French Government was becoming alive to the
+importance of these discoveries, and it conferred a decoration on La
+Vérendrye, and allowed him to hope that he might be furnished with
+means for further exploration. But he died soon afterwards, at the
+close of 1749, and after his death his sons were treated with gross
+ingratitude and neglect. The self-seeking Governor of New France
+endeavoured to secure the fur trade for his own friends, and sent an
+officer with a terribly long name--Captain Jacques Répentigny Le
+Gardeur de Saint Pierre--to continue the exploration towards the
+Pacific. From 1750 to 1763 the French occupation of this region of the
+two Saskatchewan Rivers was extended till in all probability the
+French got within sight of the northern Rocky Mountains in the
+vicinity of Calgary. Then came the English conquest of Canada to stop
+all further enterprise in this direction, and the story was next to be
+taken up by English, Scottish, and Canadian explorers.
+
+It will be men with English and Scottish names, mainly, who will
+henceforth complete the work begun and established so magnificently by
+Cartier, Brulé, Nicollet, Jolliet, La Salle, du L'Hut, and La
+Vérendrye, though the French Canadians will also play a notable part,
+together with "Americans", from New England.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+The Geographical Conditions of the Canadian Dominion
+
+
+Before we continue to follow the adventures of the pioneers of British
+North America, I think--even if it seems wearisome and discursive--my
+readers would better understand this story if I placed before them a
+general description of what is now the Dominion of Canada, more
+particularly as it was seen and discovered by the earliest European
+explorers.
+
+The most prominent feature on the east, and that which was nearest to
+Europe, was the large island of NEWFOUNDLAND, 42,000 square miles in
+extent, that is to say, nearly as large as England without Wales. It
+seems to bar the way of the direct sea access by the Gulf of St.
+Lawrence to the very heart of North America; and, until the Straits of
+Belle Isle and of Cabot were discovered, did certainly arrest the
+voyages of the earliest pioneers. Newfoundland, as you can see on the
+map, has been cut into and carved by the forces of nature until it has
+a most fantastic outline. Long peninsulas of hills alternate with
+deep, narrow gulfs, and about the south-east and east coasts there are
+innumerable islets, most of which in the days of the early discoverers
+were the haunt of millions of sea birds who resorted there for
+breeding purposes. The heart of Newfoundland, so to speak, is an
+elevated country with hills and mountains rising to a little over 2000
+feet. A great deal of the country is, or was, dense forests, chiefly
+consisting of fir trees. As numerous almost as the sea birds were the
+seals and walruses which frequented the Newfoundland coasts. Inland
+there were very large numbers of reindeer, generally styled nowadays
+by the French-Canadian name of _Caribou_[1]. Besides reindeer there
+were wolves, apparently of a smaller size than those of the mainland.
+There were also lynxes and foxes, besides polar bears, martens,
+squirrels, &c. The human inhabitants of Newfoundland, whom I shall
+describe in the next chapter, were known subsequently by the name of
+Beothuk, or Beothik, a nickname of no particular meaning. They had
+evidently been separated for many centuries from contact with the
+Amerindians of the mainland, though they may have been visited
+occasionally on the north by the Eskimo. They had in fact been so long
+separated from the other Amerindians of North America that they were
+strikingly different from them in their habits, customs, and language.
+
+[Footnote 1: The first Frenchmen visiting North America, and seeing
+the caribou without their horns, thought they were a kind of wild ass.
+The reindeer of Newfoundland is a sub-species peculiar to this
+island.]
+
+The climate of Newfoundland is not nearly so cold as that of the
+mainland, nor so hot in summer, but it is spoilt at times by fogs and
+sea mists which conceal the landscape for days together. In the
+wintertime, and quite late in the spring, quantities of ice hang about
+the shores of the islands, and when the warm weather comes, these
+accumulations of ice slip away into the Atlantic in the form of
+icebergs and are most dangerous to shipping.
+
+To the south-east of Newfoundland the sea is very shallow for hundreds
+of miles, the remains no doubt of a great extension of North America
+in the direction of Europe which had sunk below the surface ages ago.
+In this shallow water--the "Banks" of Newfoundland--fish, especially
+codfish, swarmed in millions, and still continue to swarm with little,
+if any, diminution from the constant toll of the fishing fleets.
+Another creature found in great abundance on these coasts is the true
+lobster,[2] which filled as important a part in the diet of the
+Beothuk natives, before the European occupation, as the salmon did in
+the dietary of the British Columbian tribes.
+
+[Footnote 2: _Homarus americanus_. The lobster of Newfoundland and the
+coasts of North-east America is closely related to the common lobster
+of British waters. These true lobsters resemble the freshwater
+crayfish in having their foremost pair of legs modified into large,
+unequal-sized claws. The European rock-lobster of the Mediterranean
+and French coasts (the _langouste_ of the French) has no large claws.]
+
+The next most striking feature in the geography of Eastern North
+America is NOVA SCOTIA. AS you look at it on the map this province
+seems to be a long peninsula connected with the mainland by the narrow
+isthmus of Chignecto; but its northernmost portion--Cape
+Breton--really consists of two big and two little islands, only
+separated from Nova Scotia by a very narrow strait--the Gut of Canso.
+On the north of Nova Scotia lies the large Prince Edward Island, and
+north of this again the small group of the Magdalen Islands,
+discovered by Cartier, the resort of herds of immense walruses at one
+time. Due west of Nova Scotia the country, first flat (like Nova
+Scotia itself) and at one time covered with magnificent forests, rises
+into a very hilly region which culminates on the north in the Shikshok
+Mountains of the Gaspé Peninsula (nearly 4000 feet in height) and the
+White Mountains (over 6000 feet) and the Adirondak Mountains (over
+5000 feet). The White, the Green, and the Adirondak Mountains lie just
+within the limits of the United States.
+
+North of the Gaspé Peninsula, in the great Gulf of St. Lawrence, is
+Anticosti Island, which rises on the south in a series of terraces
+until it reaches an altitude of about 2000 feet. This island, which is
+well wooded, was said to have swarmed with reindeer at one time, and
+perhaps other forms of deer also, and to have possessed grizzly bears
+which fed on the deer, besides Polar bears visiting it in the winter.
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF CANADA]
+
+Newfoundland is separated from the mainland of LABRADOR on the north
+by the Strait of Belle Isle, and from Cape Breton Island on the south
+by Cabot Strait. Labrador is an immense region on the continent, where
+the coast (except for the deep inlet of Melville Lake) soon rises into
+an elevated plateau 2000 feet in height, which is strewn with almost
+uncountable lakes, out of which rivers flow north, south, east, and
+west. On the north-east corner of Labrador there are mountains from
+3000 to 4000 feet, overlooking the sea. The whole of this vast
+Labrador or Ungava Peninsula, which is bounded on the south by the
+River and Gulf of St. Lawrence, and on the north by Hudson's Bay and
+Hudson's Straits, is an inhospitable land, at no time with much
+population.
+
+"The winter of Labrador is long and severe; one would need to have
+blood like brandy, a skin of brass, and an eye of glass not to suffer
+from the rigours of a Labrador winter. In the summer the frequent fogs
+render the air damp, and the constant breezes from the immense fields
+of ice floating in the gulf keep the land very cool, and make any
+alteration in the winter dress almost unnecessary" (James M'Kenzie).
+Labrador and the lands farther north on the continent of North America
+are separated from Greenland on the east by the broad straits--a great
+branch of the Atlantic--named after Davis and Baffin, who first
+explored them. Passing up Davis Strait, along the coast of Labrador to
+beyond 60° N. lat., the voyager comes to Hudson's Straits, which, if
+followed up first to the northwards and then to the south-west, would
+lead him into the great expanse of Hudson's Bay, one of the most
+important features in the geography of North America.
+
+HUDSON'S BAY, which is a great inland sea with an area of about
+315,000 square miles, has a southern loop or extension called James
+Bay, the shores of which are not at a very great distance either from
+Lake Superior to the south-west, or from the source of the River
+Saguenay on the south. The Saguenay flows into the Lower St. Lawrence
+River. It is therefore not surprising that as soon as the French began
+to settle in Lower Canada they heard of a vast northern inland sea of
+salt water--Hudson's Bay. But the people who discovered and surveyed
+Hudson's Bay during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth
+centuries were always on the search for a passage out of its waters
+into the Arctic Sea, which would enable them to get right round
+America into the Pacific Ocean.
+
+In Arctic North America Nature really seems to have been preparing
+during millions of years a grim joke with which to baffle exploring
+humanity! It is easy enough to pass from Davis Straits into Hudson's
+Bay, but to get out of Hudson's Bay in the direction of the Arctic
+Ocean is like getting out of a very cleverly arranged maze. There are
+innumerable false exits, which have disappointed one Arctic explorer
+after another. When they had discovered that Hudson's Bay to the south
+was only like a great bottle, and had no outlet, they explored its
+northern waters; and when they found Chesterfield Inlet on the
+north-west, which leads into Baker Lake, they thought perhaps here was
+the passage through into the Arctic Sea. But no; that was no good. To
+the north of Chesterfield Inlet was a broad channel called Roe's
+Welcome, which led into Wager Bay and through frozen straits into
+Fox's Channel, and this again into Ross Bay. Here only a very narrow
+isthmus separates Hudson's Bay from the Arctic Sea; but still it is an
+isthmus of solid land. Turning to the north-east and north there are
+the broad waters of Fox's Channel leading into Fox's Basin; but the
+north-west corner of this inland sea was so blocked with ice and
+islands that it was not until the year 1822 that the _real_ northern
+outlet of Hudson's Bay was discovered by Captain EDWARD PARRY to be
+the narrow Fury and Hecla Straits (the discovery was not completed
+until 1839 by the Hudson's Bay Company's explorers T. SIMPSON and W.
+DEASE).
+
+Here you have found the way out into the Gulf of Boothia, which
+communicates in the north with Barrow Strait and Baffin's Bay. But
+across the supposed peninsula of Boothia there were discovered, in
+1847, by Dr. JOHN RAE (also an officer of the Hudson's Bay Company)
+the narrow Bellot Straits, which lead into Franklin Straits and so
+into M'Clintock Channel and the Arctic Ocean. After this you might
+theoretically (if the ice permitted it) sail or steam your ship
+through Victoria Straits and Coronation Gulf till you got into
+Beaufort Sea (part of the open Arctic Ocean), or, by turning round
+Prince Albert Land, pass through the Prince of Wales' Straits or
+M'Clure Straits into the same Beaufort Sea.
+
+The North-West Passage across the Arctic extremity of North America,
+therefore, _did_ exist after all, and the directest route would be up
+Davis Straits, through Hudson's Straits into Fox's Basin, then through
+the Fury and Hecla Straits into the Gulf of Boothia, then through the
+Bellot Straits and Franklin Straits (past Victorialand and Kemp
+Peninsula) and out through the Dolphin and Union Straits into the
+Arctic Ocean, and so on round the north coast of Alaska, past Bering's
+Straits into Bering Sea and the Pacific. But of course the
+accumulations of ice completely block continuous navigation.
+
+The huge jagged island of BAFFIN'S LAND differs from much of Arctic
+America in that it has high land rising into mountains. This is so
+completely covered with ice that it is of little interest under
+present circumstances to the world of civilization, though the large
+herds of musk oxen which it once supported were of much use to Arctic
+explorers as a food supply in winter. The coasts are inhabited by a
+few thousand Eskimo, and Davis Straits and Baffin's Bay possess a
+certain amount of commercial importance owing to the whale fisheries
+which are carried on there by the British, the Danes, the Americans,
+and the Eskimo. In fact the importance of these whale fisheries have
+of late made the Americans of the United States a little inclined to
+challenge the British possession of these great Arctic islands. North
+Devon, North Somerset, Prince of Wales' Land, Melville Island, Banks
+Land, Prince Albert Land, &c. &c, are names of other great Arctic
+islands completely within the grip of the ice. The nature of their
+interior is almost unknown. They are at present of use to no form of
+man unless it be to a few wandering Eskimo, who come to their coasts
+in the summer to kill seals.
+
+The great NORTH-WEST TERRITORIES of the Canadian Dominion extend from
+the American frontier of Alaska (which is the 141° of W. long.) to the
+Ungava Peninsula, which abuts on Labrador. Where this vast region
+slopes to the Arctic Ocean and Hudson's Bay it is rather low and flat,
+except between Alaska and the Mackenzie River, and between the
+Mackenzie and the watershed of Hudson's Bay. The principal river
+system in the far North-West is that of the great Mackenzie River,
+which flows into the Arctic Ocean (Beaufort Sea) through an immense
+delta, and is one of the longest rivers in the world. The southernmost
+sources of the Mackenzie (such as the Peace River and the Athabaska
+River) rise in the Rocky Mountains to the east of British Columbia.
+These waters are stored for a time in Lake Athabaska, and then under
+the name of Slave River flow northwards into the Great Slave Lake, and
+out of this, under the name of Mackenzie River, into Beaufort Sea,
+through an immense delta. The Great Bear Lake is also a feeder of the
+Mackenzie.
+
+Two other Arctic rivers at one time thought to be of great importance
+as means of communication with the Arctic Ocean, are the Great Fish
+River, which flows into Elliot Bay, and the Coppermine River, which
+enters Coronation Gulf. The other northward-flowing rivers (passing
+through innumerable lakes and lakelets) enter Hudson's Bay.
+
+West of the great Mackenzie River rises the northernmost extension of
+the Rocky Mountains. All this easternmost part of Alaska, which is
+under British control, is a region of great elevation, something like
+parts of Central Asia. The streams which rise here unite in the great
+Yukon River, and this has its outlet in Bering's Sea. Some points of
+the great mountains within the limits of British territory in this
+direction reach to nearly 20,000 feet (Mount Logan).
+
+But the climate of the northern parts of the Canadian Dominion differs
+very greatly in the west as compared to the east. For instance, the
+northern parts of Labrador are cruelly Arctic, hopelessly frozen,
+though they are in the same latitude as St. Petersburg (the capital of
+European Russia) and as the splendidly forested northern parts of
+British Columbia. Eastern Labrador is a region in which explorers have
+frequently perished from cold and starvation. Although in the lofty
+parts of the Yukon country (three hundred and fifty miles north of
+treeless Labrador) the winter is intensely cold, and the ground is
+frozen for a considerable depth downwards, all the year round, there
+are still great forests; and a white and Amerindian population find it
+possible to live there all the year round, while animal life is
+extremely abundant. On the other hand, a good deal of the territory
+between Mackenzie River and Hudson's Bay is almost uninhabitable,
+except during the summertime, owing to the depth of the snow and the
+bare rocky nature of the ground.
+
+The treeless area north of Lake Athabaska (the "barren lands" of the
+Canadian Dominion) seems to consist of nothing but slabs of rock and
+loose stones. Yet this region is far from being without vegetation.
+The rock is often covered with a thin or thick sod of lichen
+("reindeer moss", in some districts three feet deep) intermixed with
+the roots of the wishakapakka herb (_Ledum palustre_, from which
+Labrador tea is made), of cranberries, gooseberries, heather (with
+white bell flowers), and a dwarf birch. This last, in sheltered places
+where a little vegetable soil has been formed, grows into a low
+scrubby bush. As to the gooseberries--here and farther south--Hearne
+describes them as "thriving best on the stony or rocky ground, open
+and much exposed to the sun". They spread along the ground like vines.
+The small red fruit is always most plentiful and fine on the under
+side of the branches, probably owing to the reflected heat of the
+stones. In the bleaker places a hard, black, crumply lichen--the
+"Tripe de roche" of the French Canadians (_Gyrophoreus_) grows on the
+rocks and stones, and is of great service to the Amerindians, as it
+furnishes them with a temporary subsistence when no animal food can be
+procured. This lichen, when boiled, turns to a gummy consistence
+something like sago. Hearne describes it as being remarkably good when
+used to thicken broth; but some other pioneers complained that it made
+them and their Indians seriously ill. Another lichen, "reindeer moss"
+(_Cladina_), is also eaten by men as well as deer. The _muskegs_, or
+bogs and marshes, produce in the summertime a very rapid growth of
+grass (as well as breeding swarms of mosquitoes!), and thus furnish
+food for the geese and swans which throng them between June and
+October.
+
+In the summertime all these northern territories of Canada--from the
+basin of Lake Winnipeg, with its white pelicans, to the Arctic
+circle--swarm with birds, wild swans, geese, ducks, plovers, grouse,
+cranes, eagles, owls of several kinds--especially the great snowy
+eagle-owl--red-breasted thrushes, black and white snow-buntings,
+scarlet grosbeaks (the female green and grey), crested jays, and
+ravens "of a beautiful glossy black, richly tinged with purple", but
+smaller in size than those of Europe.
+
+This is also the country for bears. Some grizzlies still linger here.
+Their range at one time extended to near the Arctic circle. In
+Alaska (British as well as United States) there is an enormous
+chocolate-coloured bear, the biggest in the world. The Polar bear,
+usually creamy white along the seacoast, is stated to range inland
+during the summer over the "barren grounds", and to develop either a
+permanent local variety or a seasonal change of coat, which is
+greyish-brown or blue-grey.
+
+The black bear in northern Canada is said to give birth at times to
+cubs which are cinnamon-brown in colour.
+
+"In the early summer the black bears swim up and down the northern
+rivers with their mouths open, swallowing the immense number of water
+insects which have come into being at that season." Hearne goes on to
+state that bears which have subsisted on this food for some days, when
+cut open emit a stench that is intolerable, and which taints their
+flesh to a sickening degree. The insects on which they feed are mostly
+of two kinds: one a sort of grasshopper with a hard black skin, and
+the other a soft, brown, sluggish fly. "This last is the most
+numerous. In some of the lakes such quantities are forced into the
+bays when the wind blows hard, that they are pressed together in dead
+multitudes and remain a great nuisance. I have several times, in my
+inland voyages from York Fort (Hudson's Bay), found it scarcely
+possible to land in some of those bays for the intolerable stench of
+those insects, which in some places were lying in putrid masses to the
+depth of two or three feet." It is more than probable that the bears
+occasionally feed on these dead insects. After the middle of July,
+when they take to a diet of berries, they are excellent eating, and
+continue to be so to the end of the winter.
+
+The Arctic foxes of this region when young are sooty black all over,
+and gradually change to a light ash-grey in colour, with a dark,
+almost blue, tint on the head, legs, and back. In winter they usually
+become white all over, with or without a black tip to the tail; but it
+is recorded by some travellers that not all the foxes of the _Canis
+lagopus_ species turn white; some keep their dark-grey colour all the
+year round. The common fox (_C. vulpes fulvus_) in Northern Canada is
+sometimes black, with white-tipped hairs. Wolves in these far northern
+regions do not seem to have been so abundant as farther south.
+
+The deer tribe are represented (north of the Athabaska region) by the
+reindeer and the elk (called by the Canadians "Moose"). The wapiti or
+red deer (for which the common Amerindian name in the north was
+_Waskesiu_) seldom ranged farther north than the vicinity of Lake
+Winnipeg. The reindeer of the "barren ground" sub-species extended to
+the Arctic seacoast, and were at one time especially abundant in
+Labrador. Here they were so tame, down to a hundred years ago, that
+fishermen were often known to shoot many of them from the windows of
+their huts near the seashore. This type (_Rangifer tarandus arcticus_)
+might possibly be domesticated; not so the larger and much wilder
+Caribou woodland reindeer of the more southern and western parts of
+the Dominion, which dislikes the neighbourhood of man. The elk or
+moose, east of the Rocky Mountains, was not found northward of about
+50° to 55°; but west of that range extended over all British Columbia
+and Alaska, in which latter country it grows to a giant size and
+develops enormous antlers.
+
+Hearne says of the elk in northern Canada: "In summer, when they
+frequent the margins of rivers and lakes, they are often killed by the
+Indians in the water while they are crossing rivers or swimming from
+the mainland to islands, &c. When pursued in this manner, they are
+the most inoffensive of all animals, never making any resistance; and
+the young ones are so simple that I remember to have seen an Indian
+paddle his canoe up to one of them and take it by the poll without the
+least opposition; the poor, harmless animal seeming at the same time
+as contented alongside the canoe as if swimming by the side of its
+dam, and looking up in our faces with the same fearless innocence that
+a house lamb would; making use of its fore foot almost every instant
+to clear its eyes of mosquitoes, which at that time were remarkably
+numerous.... The moose are also the easiest to tame and domesticate of
+any of the deer kind. I have repeatedly seen them at Churchill as tame
+as sheep, and even more so; for they would follow their keeper any
+distance from home, and at his call return with him without the least
+trouble, or ever offering to deviate from the path."
+
+The most northern range of the elk would seem to be the region round
+Lake Athabaska.
+
+The musk ox (_Ovibos_) is perhaps the most remarkable beast of Arctic
+Canada.[3] Samuel Hearne is my principal source for the following
+notes as to its habits and appearance: The number of bulls is very few
+in proportion to the cows, for it is rare to see more than two or
+three full-grown bulls with the largest herd; and from the number of
+the males that are found dead, the Indians are of opinion that they
+kill each other in contending for the females. In the rutting season
+they are so jealous of the cows that they run at either man or beast
+who offers to approach them, and have been observed to run and bellow
+even at ravens and other large birds which chanced to alight near
+them. They delight in the most stony and mountainous parts of the
+"barren ground", but are seldom found at any great distance from the
+woods. Though they are a beast of great magnitude, and apparently of a
+very unwieldy inactive structure, yet they climb the rocks with ease
+and agility, and are nearly as surefooted as a goat. Like it, too,
+they will feed on anything; and though they seem fondest of grass, yet
+in winter, when grass cannot be had in sufficient quantity, they will
+eat moss or any other herbage they can find, as also the tops of
+willows and the tender branches of the pine tree.
+
+[Footnote 3: The musk ox, which is not an ox, but a creature about
+midway in structure and affinities between cattle on the one hand and
+sheep and goats on the other, is a large beast comparatively, being
+the size of a small ox, but appearing very much larger than it is on
+account of the extremely thick coat of hair and wool. Both sexes have
+horns, and the horns, after meeting in the middle and making more or
+less of a boss over the forehead, droop down at the sides of the
+cheeks and then turn up with sharp points. The musk ox once ranged
+right across the northern world, from England and Scandinavia, through
+Germany, Russia, and Siberia, to Alaska and North America. Many
+thousands of years ago, during one of the Glacial periods, it
+inhabited southern England. At the present day it is extinct
+everywhere, excepting in the eastern parts of Arctic America, not
+going west of the Mackenzie River nor south of Labrador. It is also
+found in Greenland.]
+
+"The musk ox, when full grown, is as large as the generality of
+English black cattle; but their legs, though thick, are not so long,
+nor is their tail longer than that of a bear; and, like the tail of
+that animal, it always bends downward and inward, so that it is
+entirely hid by the long hair of the rump and hind quarters. The hunch
+on their shoulders is not large, being little more in proportion than
+that of a deer. Their hair is in some parts very long, particularly on
+the belly, sides, and hind quarters; but the longest hair about them,
+particularly the bulls, is under the throat, extending from the chin
+to the lower part of the chest between the fore legs. It there hangs
+down like a horse's mane inverted, and is fully as long, which gives
+the animal a most formidable appearance. It is of the hair from this
+part that the Eskimo make their mosquito wigs (face screens or masks).
+In winter the musk oxen are provided with a thick fine wool or fur
+that grows at the root of the long hair, and shields them from the
+intense cold to which they are exposed during that season; but as the
+summer advances this fur loosens from the skin, and by frequently
+rolling themselves on the ground it works out to the end of the hair,
+and in time drops off, leaving little for their summer clothing except
+the long hair. This season is so short in these high latitudes, that
+the new fleece begins to appear almost as soon as the old one drops
+off, so that by the time the cold becomes severe they are again
+provided with a winter dress."
+
+According to Hearne, the flesh of the musk ox does not resemble that
+of the bison, but is more like the meat of the moose or wapiti. The
+fat is of a clear white, "slightly tinged with a light azure". The
+calves and young heifers are good eating, but the flesh of the bulls
+both smells and tastes so strongly of musk as to be very disagreeable;
+"even the knife that cuts the flesh of an old bull will smell so
+strongly of musk that nothing but scouring the blade quite bright can
+remove it, and the handle will retain the scent for a long time".
+
+Bisons of the "wood" variety are (or were) found far up the heights of
+the Rocky Mountains and in the regions south-west of the Great Slave
+Lake. These "wood buffaloes" delight in mountain valleys, and never
+resort to the plains. And higher than anything, of course, range the
+great white mountain goat-antelopes (_Oreamnus montanus_) from
+northern Alaska to the Columbia River.
+
+The north and the north-west were, of course, pre-eminently the great
+fur-trading regions, though all parts of the vast Dominion have at one
+time or another yielded furs for commerce with the white man. The
+principal fur-bearing smaller mammals of the north and north-west were
+wolves, foxes, lynxes, gluttons (wolverene), otters, martens (sables)
+and black fishing martens, mink (a kind of polecat), ermine-stoats,
+weasels, polar hares (_Lepus timidus_), beavers, musquash, lemming,
+gopher or pouched ground-squirrels, and the common red squirrel of
+North America. The grey squirrel and striped chipmunk are only found
+in southern Canada.
+
+The musquash (_Fiber zibethicus_) is such a characteristic animal of
+northern Canada that it is worth while to give Hearne's description of
+it (I would mention it is really a huge _vole_, and no relation of the
+beaver):--
+
+"The musk rat or musquash builds a dwelling near the banks of ponds or
+swamps to shelter it from the bitter cold of the winter, but never on
+land, always on the ice, as soon as it is firm enough, taking care to
+keep a hole open to admit it to dive for its food, which chiefly
+consists of the roots of grass or arums. It sometimes happens in very
+cold winters that the holes communicating with their dwellings under
+the water are so blocked by ice that they cannot break through them.
+When this is the case, and they have no provisions left in the house,
+they begin to eat one another. At last there may be only one rat left
+out of a whole lodge. They occasionally eat fish, but in general feed
+very cleanly, and when fat are good eating. They are easily tamed and
+soon grow fond of their owner. They are very cleanly and playful, and
+'smell exceedingly pleasant of musk', but their resemblance to the rat
+is so great that few are partial to them, though of course they are
+much larger in size, and have webbed hind feet and a flat scaly tail.
+In Canadian regions farther south the musquash no longer builds on the
+ice, but in swamps, where it raises heaps of mud like islands in the
+surrounding water. On the top of these mounds they build their nests,
+and on the top of the musquash nest, or 'lodge', wild geese frequently
+lay their eggs and bring forth their young brood without any fear of
+being molested by foxes."
+
+The YUKON territories of the Dominion, and above all the State of
+BRITISH COLUMBIA, constitute a very distinct region from the rest of
+British North America, not only in their tribes of Amerindians but in
+their fauna, flora, and climate. British Columbia is one of the most
+beautiful and richly endowed countries in the world. Here, in spite
+of northern latitudes, the warm airs coming up from the Pacific Ocean
+act somewhat in the same way as the Gulf Stream on north-west Europe,
+and favour the growth of magnificent forests.
+
+All this north-western part of British Columbia is very mountainous,
+and the rocks are rich in minerals, especially gold in the Fraser and
+Columbia Rivers, far north in the upper valley of the Yukon, and
+copper and coal in Vancouver Island.
+
+The rainfall in British Columbia is considerable, and the
+flora--trees, plants, ferns--richer than anywhere else in North
+America, with many resemblances to the trees and plants of Japan and
+northern China. In British Columbia more than in any other part of the
+world are found the noblest developments of the pines, firs, and
+junipers (_Coniferæ_).
+
+The coast rivers swarm with salmon, and perhaps because of the
+abundance of sea fish close in shore there have been developed in the
+course of ages those remarkable aquatic mammals, the sea lions or fur
+seals (_Otaria_), whose relationship to the true seals is a very
+distant one. On the Alaskan coasts and islands is _Otaria ursina_, the
+creature which provides the sealskin fur of commerce. There is also
+the much larger sea lion (_Otaria stelleri_), on the coasts of British
+Columbia and Vancouver Island. Alexander Henry, jun., gives some
+interesting facts about this remarkable beast.
+
+"The natives at Oak Point, during the time Mr. Keith was there, killed
+five very large sea lions by spearing them at night. Two canoes being
+lashed together, they approach very softly, and throw their spears,
+which are fastened by a long, strong cord, with a barb so fixed in a
+socket that, when it strikes the animal and pierces the flesh, it is
+detached from the shaft of the spear, but remains fastened to the
+cord. This is instantly made fast between the canoes; the animal
+dives and swims down river, dragging the canoes with such velocity
+that they may be in danger of filling, and require great skill in
+steering. In this manner they are carried down some miles before the
+animal becomes exhausted with loss of blood, makes for the shore, and
+lies on the beach, where they dispatch it and cut it up. The price of
+a sea lion among the natives is one slave and an assortment of other
+articles. Mr. Keith bought the flesh of one of these animals, and we
+had some roasted; it resembles bear's meat. The hair is like that of a
+horse, in summer of a chestnut colour. The natives, and also the
+Russians, are particularly fond of marine animals, such as whales,
+&c.; they drink the oil like milk."
+
+Another notable water beast of the British Columbia coast was the sea
+otter (_Enhydris_), described on p. 305. Such an immense value was set
+on its fur that it is now nearly extinct within British limits.
+
+The huge chocolate-coloured bear of the Yukon valley has already been
+mentioned; also the very large, blackish-brown wild dog (_Canis
+pambasileus_), which from one or two passages in the writings of
+Canadian pioneers may also be found as far south as the British
+Columbian Rocky Mountains. In the Yukon country the elk (which was
+formerly very common in British Columbia) grows to gigantic
+proportions with longer and larger antlers than elsewhere. In the
+forested mountains of British Columbia (as well as farther north) are
+the wood bison, the white mountain goat, grizzly bears, black bears,
+two kinds of lynx, the wapiti red deer, and the large bighorn sheep.
+
+These (_Ovis montana_) sheep are of a grey or leaden colour; the rump
+and the inner side of the legs are white; the hoofs black, about one
+inch long. "The hair is rather soft, and at the roots is mixed with
+exceedingly fine white wool, which seems to grow only in certain
+patches. The neck is relatively much thicker than that of other
+animals of the same size; the legs and hoofs are also strongly built,
+like the neck." The horns of the female are comparatively small,
+flat, and have only a small bend backward; they are of a
+dirty-yellowish white, marked with closely connected annulations to
+the very tip. The legs are brown, as are also the ends of the hairs
+about the neck; the hoofs are black. "A ewe will weigh about 100 lb.
+when in full flesh, with only the entrails taken out. The head bears
+every resemblance to that of our European sheep." The colour of the
+males is nearly the same as that of the females, only rather browner;
+they are much larger and more strongly built, with a pair of enormous
+horns, which incline backward. As they grow they bend downward, and in
+the course of time form a complete curve and project forward. At the
+root the horns are nearly three inches square, the flat sides
+opposite; they are marked with closely connected ridges and end in a
+tapering flat point.
+
+When the horns grow to a great length, forming a complete curve, the
+tips project on both sides of the head so as to prevent the ram from
+feeding. This, with their great weight, causes the sheep to dwindle to
+a mere skeleton and die. The bighorn sheep feed much in the caverns of
+the Rocky Mountains, eating a kind of moss and grass growing on the
+floors of these caves, and also a peculiar soft, sweet-tasting "clay",
+of which the natives also are fond.
+
+The southern part of British Columbia contains the mule deer of
+western North America (_Mazama macrotis_), and a very strange rodent,
+the sewellel or mountain beaver (_Haplodon_), a creature distantly
+allied to squirrels, marmots, and beavers, but restricted in its
+distribution to a few parts of California, Oregon, and British
+Columbia. Amongst the birds noteworthy in the landscape are the
+white-headed sea eagles and Californian condors (_Pseudogryphus
+californianus_). Humming-birds range through British Columbia and
+Vancouver Island between mid-April and October.
+
+In the regions about the upper Kootenay River (Eastern British
+Columbia), before the railway was constructed, there were wild horses,
+descended, no doubt, from those which had escaped from the Spaniards
+in New Mexico and California. They went in large herds, and in the
+winter when the snow was deep the natives would try to catch them by
+running them down with relays of fresh horses, or driving them up the
+mountains into the deepest snow or some narrow pass. A noose would
+then be thrown about the exhausted animal, which would be instantly
+mounted by an Indian and broken immediately to the saddle. Some of
+these wild horses were exceedingly swift, well-proportioned, and
+handsome in shape, but they seldom proved as docile as those born in
+captivity. When in a wild condition they would snort so loudly through
+the nostrils on descrying an enemy that they could be heard at a
+distance of five hundred yards.
+
+The provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba--the MIDDLE
+WEST--represent mainly the great prairie region of the Canadian
+Dominion. Nearly all the streams here flow from the eastern side of
+the Rocky Mountains and direct their course to the basin of Lake
+Winnipeg and to Hudson's Bay. A few turn south-west to the Missouri
+and Mississippi. The landscapes here remind one more of the middle
+part of the United States. The climate is severe in winter but very
+warm and dry in summer. In the extreme south, within the basin of the
+upper Missouri, the "prickly pear" (_Opuntia_) cactus grows in
+sheltered places, and suggests affinities with distant Colorado and
+California.
+
+These great plains and river courses of the middle West were, until
+about fifty years ago, one of the world's great natural parks or
+zoological gardens. Large numbers of wapiti deer, of the smaller
+Virginian deer,[4] and of the prongbuck "antelope"[5] thronged the
+grassy flats, and elk browsed on the foliage of the thickets along the
+river banks. Grizzly bears and black bears,[6] large grey wolves, the
+small coyote wolf, the pretty little kit fox and large red fox preyed
+on these herbivores, as did also pumas and lynxes. Marmots and prairie
+hares (_Lepus campestris_)--often called rabbits by the pioneers, who
+also named the marmots "wood-chucks"--frolicked in the herbage, and
+formed the principal prey of the numerous rattlesnakes. By the shores
+of streams and lakes stood rows of stately cranes: the whooping crane,
+of large size, pure white, with black quill feathers, the crown of the
+head crimson scarlet and the long legs black; and the purple-brown
+crane, somewhat smaller in size. On hot, calm days in the region of
+Lake Winnipeg the cranes soar to an amazing height, flying in circles,
+till by degrees they are almost out of sight. Yet their loud note
+sounds so distinct and near that the spectator might fancy they were
+close to him.
+
+[Footnote 4: _Mazama americana_, similar to, but quite distinct from,
+the larger mule deer of British Columbia.]
+
+[Footnote 5: The prongbuck (_Antilocapra americana_) is not a true
+antelope, though in outward appearance it resembles a large gazelle.
+It was called "cabri" by the French Canadians.]
+
+[Footnote 6: "Bears make prodigious ravages in the brush and willows;
+the plum trees, and every tree that bears fruit share the same fate.
+The tops of the oaks are also very roughly handled, broken, and torn
+down, to get the acorns. The havoc they commit is astonishing...."
+--Alex. Henry, jun.]
+
+The air at this season is full of great birds--eagles, buzzards,
+hawks, and falcons--soaring in circles to look out for prey among the
+flocks of wild swans, white geese, bernicle geese and brent geese,
+duck and teal, which cover the backwaters and the marshes and shallow
+lagoons. Turkey buzzards, coming up from the south, act as scavengers
+during the summer months. Immense flocks of passenger pigeons,
+buntings, grosbeaks, attack the ripening fruits and the wild rice of
+the swamps. Grouse in uncountable numbers inhabit the drier tablelands
+and open moors.[7]
+
+[Footnote 7: Nowhere in the world are there so many kinds of grouse as
+in North America. In the more northern regions are several species of
+ptarmigan or snow partridges (_Lagopus_), which turn white in winter,
+and the spruce partridges (_Canachites_); in the more genial climate
+of the great plains of eastern Canada and in the Far West the ruffled
+grouse and hazel grouse (_Bonasa_), the sage cocks (_Centrocercus_),
+the prairie hens (_Tympanuchus_), and the blue or pine grouse
+(_Dendrapagus_).
+
+"To snare grouse requires no other process than making a few little
+hedges across a creek, or a few short hedges projecting at right
+angles from the side of an island of willows, which those birds are
+found to frequent. Several openings must be left in each hedge, to
+admit the birds to pass through, and in each of them a snare must be
+set; so that when the grouse are hopping along the edge of the willows
+to feed, which is their usual custom, some of them soon get into the
+snares, where they are confined till they are taken out. I have caught
+from three to ten grouse in a day by this simple contrivance, which
+requires no further attendance than going round them night and
+morning" (Hearne).]
+
+[Illustration: INDIANS LYING IN WAIT FOR MOOSE]
+
+But--a hundred years ago and more--the dominant features in the
+fauna of the Middle West was the bison. Between the Athabaska and
+Saskatchewan Rivers on the north, the Rocky Mountains on the west, and
+Lake Superior on the east the bison passed backwards and forwards over
+the great plains and prairies in millions, when white explorers first
+penetrated these lands. They moved in herds which concealed the ground
+from sight for miles. Here are some word pictures selected from the
+writings of the pioneers between 1770 and 1810:
+
+"The buffaloes chiefly delight in wide open plains, which in those
+parts produce very long coarse grass, or rather a kind of small flags
+and rushes, upon which they feed; but when pursued they always take to
+the woods. They are of such an amazing strength, that when they fly
+through the woods from a pursuer, they frequently brush down trees as
+thick as a man's arm; and be the snow ever so deep, such is their
+strength and agility, that they are enabled to plunge through it
+faster than the swiftest Indian can run in snowshoes. To this I have
+been an eyewitness many times, and once had the vanity to think that I
+could have kept pace with them; but though I was at that time
+celebrated for being particularly fleet of foot in snowshoes, I soon
+found that I was no match for the buffaloes, notwithstanding they were
+then plunging through such deep snow, that their bellies made a
+trench in it as large as if many sacks had been hauled through it. Of
+all the large beasts in those parts the buffalo is easiest to kill,
+and the moose are the most difficult; neither are the (red) deer very
+easy to come at, except in windy weather: indeed it requires much
+practice and a great deal of patience to slay any of them, as they
+will by no means suffer a direct approach, unless the hunter be
+entirely sheltered by woods or willows.
+
+"The flesh of the buffalo is exceedingly good eating, and so entirely
+free from any disagreeable smell or taste, that it resembles beef as
+nearly as possible."
+
+"The spots of wood along the Park River are ravaged by buffaloes
+(bison); none but the large trees are standing, the bark of which is
+rubbed perfectly smooth, and heaps of hair and wool lie at the bottom
+of the trees ... and even the grass is not permitted to grow.... The
+ground is trampled more by these cattle than about the gate of a
+farmyard."
+
+"The Kris informed me they had seen a calf as white as snow in a herd
+of buffalo. White buffalo are very scarce. They are of inestimable
+value among the nations of the Missouri.... There were also some of a
+dirty-grey colour, but these are very rare."
+
+"I brought home two buffalo calves alive; they no sooner lost sight of
+the herd than they followed my horse like dogs, directly into the
+fort. On chasing a herd at this season the calves follow it until they
+are fatigued, when they throw themselves down in high grass and lie
+still, hiding their heads if possible. But seeing only a man and his
+horse they remain quiet and allow themselves to be taken. Having been
+a little handled, they follow like dogs."
+
+In the spring, when the ice melted, innumerable buffaloes were killed
+through attempting to cross the rivers on the melting ice. They would
+drift by an observer (such as Alexander Henry, jun.) in entire herds
+of drowned corpses. Vast numbers perished. They formed one continuous
+line on the current for two days and two nights.
+
+"By this time the river was crowded with them, swimming across,
+bellowing and grunting terribly. The bulls really looked fierce; all
+had their tails up, and each appeared eager to land first. The scene
+would have struck terror to one unaccustomed to such innumerable
+herds. From out in the plains, as far as the eye could reach, to the
+middle of the river, they were rushing toward us, and soon began to
+land about ten yards off. I shot one dead on the spot, my ball having
+broken his neck; my hunter and guide only wounded theirs. This
+discharge suddenly halted those on the south side, and turned those
+that were still in the water."
+
+In the autumn:--"Plains burned in every direction and blind buffalo
+seen every moment wandering about. The poor beasts have all the hair
+singed off; even the skin in many places is shrivelled up and terribly
+burned, and their eyes are swollen and closed fast. It was really
+pitiful to see them staggering about, sometimes running afoul of a
+large stone, at other times tumbling down hill and falling into creeks
+not yet frozen over. In one spot we found a whole herd lying dead."
+
+Throughout British North America, from the Yukon to Newfoundland, and
+from Labrador to Vancouver's Island, the rivers and freshwater lakes
+swarm with fish, and fish that in most cases is exceedingly good to
+eat. Salmon are most strikingly abundant in the rivers of British
+Columbia and Newfoundland, but they also ascend most of the rivers
+flowing into the Atlantic and Hudson's Bay. In the great lakes of
+Canada and of the middle west there are trout and white fish
+(_Coregonus_), pike, bass, chub, barbel, and five species of sturgeon.
+In the rivers and lakes of the far north-west is found the blackfish
+(_Dallia_).
+
+Hearne writes of Lake Athabasca that it swarms with fish, such as
+pike, trout, perch, barbel, and other kinds not easily identified.
+Apparently there is also a form of gar-pike found here (see p. 74);
+this is described as having scales of a very large and stiff kind, and
+being a beautiful bright silver in colour. The size of these gar-pike
+range from two feet to four feet in length. Their flesh was delicately
+white and soft, but so foul and rank in taste that even the Indians
+would not eat it. The trout in Lake Athabaska seem to have been
+enormous, weighing from 35 to 40 pounds, while pike were of about the
+same weight.
+
+The Amerindian tribes and the early European explorers lived mainly on
+fish, which was a palatable and easily obtained food. Yet it must be
+admitted that they had a splendid array of large and small game from
+which to take their toll.
+
+Nor was the whole Dominion, from west to east and up to the Arctic
+zone, wanting in wild vegetable produce fit for man's consumption. The
+sugar maple (_Acer saccharinum_) and its ally the _Negundo_ maple
+provided a delicious syrup; the bark of certain poplars and the bast
+of the sugar pine were chewed for their well-flavoured sweetness; the
+wild rice of the marshes will be further described in the next
+chapter. The wild fruits included delicious strawberries, cherries,
+gooseberries, currants, black currants, grapes (in the south only),
+blackberries of many kinds, whortleberries, cranberries, pears of the
+service tree (_Pyrus canadensis_[8]), and raspberries of various
+types--red, yellow, and black. Southern Canada and Nova Scotia
+contained various nut trees of the walnut order (hickories,
+butter-nuts, &c.), and hazel nuts were found everywhere except in the
+north.
+
+[Footnote 8: Sometimes called _Amelanchier canadensis_.]
+
+We have left undescribed what is still politically the most important
+part of the whole of British North America--UPPER and LOWER CANADA.
+These regions lie within the basin of the great St. Lawrence River,
+beyond all doubt the most important waterway of North America, more
+important even than the Mississippi. The main origin of the St.
+Lawrence in the west is Lake Superior, the largest sea of fresh water
+in the world, which is connected with Lake Nipigon on the north. The
+waters of Lake Superior are carried over the Sault Ste. Marie rapids
+into Lake Huron and find a huge backwater in Lake Michigan.[9] Out of
+Lake Huron again they flow past Detroit into Lake Erie. From Duluth,
+at the westernmost extremity of Lake Superior, to Buffalo, on the
+easternmost point of Lake Erie, including all Lake Michigan and Lake
+Huron, with its bays and channels, a steamer can pass with just the
+one difficulty (easily surmounted) of the rapids at Sault Ste. Marie
+between Lake Superior and Lake Huron. But after you have left Lake
+Erie on the east you find yourself in the Niagara River, which at the
+Niagara Falls plunges several hundred feet downwards into Lake
+Ontario. From Lake Ontario to the sea along the St. Lawrence there is
+uninterrupted navigation, though there are rapids that require careful
+steering both with steamers and boats. Quebec marks the place where
+the St. Lawrence River suddenly broadens from a river into a tidal
+gulf of brackish or salt water. Ocean steamers from all over the world
+can come (except during the height of the winter, when the water
+freezes) to Quebec. But for the ice in wintertime Quebec would be
+_the_ great sea-port of eastern Canada.
+
+[Footnote 9: The south shore of Lake Superior, the whole of Lake
+Michigan, the west shore of Lake Huron, and the south coasts of Lake
+Erie and Lake Ontario are within the territories of the United
+States.]
+
+"If pitiless rock is commonly understood by an 'iron-bound shore',
+then the coasts of the River St. Lawrence along the northern side of
+the Gulf may truly be so styled, as nothing scarcely is to be seen
+for hundreds of leagues but bare rocky mountains, capes and cliffs in
+various shapes and figures, some of which are dotted with a few spruce
+firs, while others present their bald pates deprived of covering by
+the unmerciful hand of time." (James M'Kenzie).
+
+The winters of the Quebec province are extremely cold, but the summer
+and autumn are warm and sunny. The best winter climate, possibly, in
+all Canada (though not as good as that of Vancouver Island, British
+Columbia) is to be found in the small peninsula region, on the shores
+of Lakes Erie and Huron, between Toronto and Detroit. This is the
+district which the Jesuit missionaries described as "an earthly
+paradise" even during the winter-time.
+
+The following extracts, mostly from the journals of Alex. Henry, jun.,
+give a good idea of the difference in climate and temperature between
+the western and the central parts of the Canadian Dominion.
+
+The late spring of northern Canada (Lake Nipigon, 50° N. lat.):--About
+May 15, the tops of the poplars begin to appear green, with fresh
+buds; the hills are changing their hue from a dry straw colour to a
+delightful verdure, and fragrant odours greet us.
+
+"Early in March, 1800, in the Assiniboin country (Manitoba, about 29°
+N. lat.) the snow was entirely gone, for this winter had been an
+abnormally mild one for central Canada. The birds soon realized the
+openness of the season, for, on the 7th of March, turkey-buzzards
+began to arrive from the south, and cormorants, ducks, swans, and
+other spring birds; indeed, by the 24th of March not only had the snow
+quite melted, but the meadows had grown so dry with the hot sun that
+some accidents set them on fire. By April the 11th the weather had
+become excessively hot, and immense flocks of the traveller-pigeon
+(_Ectopistes_) flew northwards over the country."
+
+In somewhat similar latitudes (50°) the spring bursts on the Pacific
+coast region of British Columbia towards the end of February. "The
+tall raspberry bushes were in blossom with a beautiful red flower,
+which appeared more forward than the leaf (_Rubus spectabilis_). The
+elder had sprouts an inch long, the alder was also beginning to
+sprout, and willows were budding."
+
+Although nowhere in Upper and Lower Canada (or in the maritime
+provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia) are the forests so
+splendid as in parts of British Columbia, yet nevertheless when this
+region was first discovered the magnificence of its woodlands greatly
+impressed even the explorers of the sixteenth and seventeenth
+centuries, who were not as much given to praise of landscape beauty as
+are we of later times. These Canadian forests include oaks, elms,
+pines and firs, chestnuts and beeches, birch trees and sycamores,
+maples and poplars, willows, alders, and hazelnuts (these last
+sometimes growing into tall trees with thick trunks). The trees and
+low-growing plants are partly like those of the north-eastern United
+States, and partly resemble those of northern and central Europe.
+
+Nowadays, owing to two centuries of incessant killing, the beasts and
+birds of Upper and Lower Canada are not nearly so abundant as they
+were a hundred years ago. When Canada proper was first discovered, the
+wapiti red deer was still found in the basin of the St. Lawrence; it
+has long since been extinct. There are, however, still lingering,
+reindeer in the north, and elk in the forests of the east. There are
+also Virginian deer (_Mazama_), but there is no bison (and, so far as
+we know, never has been). There is no prongbuck, and many other
+creatures characteristic of the United States and British Columbia are
+not found in Upper and Lower Canada or in the maritime provinces. The
+tree porcupine (_Erethizon dorsatus_), which the Canadians call
+"Urson", or "Little Bear" is found still in the well-wooded regions
+of eastern and southern Canada, as well as in British Columbia and
+Alaska. In southern Canada there is the wood hare (_Lepus
+sylvaticus_), and in the east and north the varying hare (_L.
+americanus_) which turns white in winter.
+
+Perhaps the most characteristic animal of this region was and is still
+the beaver, though the beaver is found all over British North America
+as far north as the Saskatchewan province and westwards into British
+Columbia.
+
+It is curious that the Indians of central Canada had a belief
+(recorded by French and English pioneers) that occasionally in the
+dusk, or at night, they have seen an enormously large beaver in the
+water, so large that at first sight they have taken it for a moose.
+Travellers who have related this have surmised that the Indian perhaps
+saw a bear swimming, or a female moose, and in the dim light mistook
+it for a giant beaver. But as we know that there were once giant
+beavers (_Trogontherium_) as large as a bear, existing in England, it
+is just possible there may have been a gigantic type of beaver
+lingering in Canada before the opening up of the country by Europeans.
+
+The beaver of North America is a very similar animal to the beaver
+which used to exist wild in Wales, England, France, Germany, and
+central Europe, and which still lingers in some parts of the Rhine
+valley, Poland, Russia, and Siberia; but the American form is
+classified as a separate species--_Castor canadensis_.
+
+Beavers were sometimes exterminated or diminished in numbers by an
+epidemic disease, which, according to JAMES TANNER[10], destroyed vast
+quantities of them.
+
+[Footnote 10: A remarkable eighteenth-century pioneer who joined the
+Indians when a boy and lived as one of them.]
+
+"I found them dead or dying in the water, on the ice, and on the land;
+sometimes I found one that, having cut a tree half down, had died at
+its roots; sometimes one who had drawn a stick of timber halfway to
+his lodge was lying dead by his burthen. Many of them which I opened
+were red and bloody about the heart. Those in large rivers and running
+water suffered less; almost all of those that lived in ponds and
+stagnant water, died. Since that year the beaver have never been so
+plentiful in the country of Red River and Hudson's Bay as they used
+formerly to be."
+
+The great attraction which Canada offered to France and England as a
+field of adventure lay in its wonderful supply of furs. The beaver
+skins were perhaps the commonest article of export, and were generally
+regarded as a unit of value, such as a shilling might be. Other skins
+were valued at "so many beavers," or the smaller ones at half or a
+quarter of a beaver each. Besides beaver skins, which were used for
+making hats, as well as capes and coats, the following furs and skins
+were formerly, or are still, exported from Canada. "Buffalo"
+robes--the carefully rubbed-down hides of the bison, rendered, by
+shaving and rubbing, so thin and supple that they could be easily
+folded; reindeer and musk-ox skins treated in the same way; marten or
+sable skins; mink (a kind of polecat); ermine (the white winter dress
+of the stoat); the fishing marten, or pekan; otter skins; black bear
+and white polar bear skins; raccoon, muskwash, squirrel, suslik, and
+marmot skins, and the soft white fur of the polar hare; the white
+skins of the Arctic fox, the skins of the blue fox, black fox, and red
+fox;[11] wolf skins, and the furs of the wolverene or glutton, and of
+the skunk--a handsome black-and-white creature of the weasel family,
+which emits a most disgusting smell from a gland in its body. (The
+skunk only comes from the south-central parts of the Canadian
+Dominion). At one time a good many swans' skins were exported for the
+sake of the down between the feathers, also the skins of grebes.
+
+[Footnote 11: The blue fox is the Arctic fox (_Canis lagopus_) in its
+summer dress; the black fox is a beautiful variety or sub-species of
+the common fox (_C. vulpes_); so also is the red or "cross" fox. There
+is also common throughout the Canadian Dominion the pretty little kit
+fox (_Canis velox_).]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A general fact that must not be forgotten in studying the adventures
+of the pioneers of Canada was the means which Nature and savage man
+had provided or invented for quickly traversing in all directions this
+enormous area of nearly half North America. These means consisted (1)
+of the distribution of salt and fresh water in such a way that by
+means of ocean-sailing ships explorers coming from the east could
+enter through straits and bays of the sea into the heart of Canada;
+and (2) the facility, on quitting the seashore, of passing up
+navigable rivers in boats or canoes into big lakes, and from these
+lakes into other rivers leading to other lakes. Moreover, the
+different river systems approached so closely to one another that even
+the Amerindians and the Eskimo, long before the white man, had
+realized that they had only to pick up their light canoes and carry
+them a few miles, to launch them on fresh waters which might provide
+hundreds or even thousands of miles of continuous travel. These are
+the celebrated "portages" of Canadian history, from the French word
+_porter_, to carry, transport. Sometimes the portages were made still
+easier for loaded canoes by a road being cleared through the scrub and
+over the rocks, and wooden rollers placed across it. Strong men could
+then easily haul a loaded canoe over these wooden rollers until it
+could be launched again in the water. Often these portages were made
+to circumvent dangerous rapids or waterfalls. The Indians and the
+French Canadians soon learnt how to steer canoes down rushes of
+water--rapids--which we should think very dangerous on an English
+river; but of course many of the rivers were obstructed at intervals
+by descents of water which no canoe could traverse up or down, and in
+these cases a path was cut from one smooth part of the river to
+another, and the canoe carried or hauled overland.
+
+In this way the great French and British explorers found it possible
+to travel by water from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean across a
+width of land of something like 2500 miles. The only serious walking
+that had to be done was the crossing somewhere or other of the Rocky
+Mountains, where the streams, of course, were far too precipitate in
+descent to be navigable. In the hot, dusty plains of Assiniboia and
+the upper Missouri region the Amerindians had introduced horses,
+obtained indirectly from Spanish Mexico, and these were of great
+service to the white pioneers, especially in their pursuit of the
+bison.
+
+So much for the summer season, when the rivers were full and
+overflowing, and the ground consisted of bare rock, sand, or soil
+covered with vegetation; the abundance of navigable streams and the
+suitability of the country to horses rendered very little walking
+necessary for those who wished to traverse the Canadian Dominion from
+end to end.
+
+But the winter changed these conditions, the rivers became coated with
+thick ice, and the ground was covered, except in steep places, with an
+unvarying mantle of snow. Yet transport became just as easy as in the
+summertime, though perhaps a trifle more fatiguing. Men and women put
+on snowshoes shaped like tennis rackets, and flew over the hard snow
+quicker than a canoe could travel, dragging after them small sledges
+on which their luggage was packed; or, if they had not much luggage,
+carrying it slung round the shoulders and scurrying away on their
+snowshoes even swifter for the weight they carried; or they travelled
+over the smooth ice of the rivers and lakes.
+
+Winter travellers, however, were sometimes troubled with a disorder
+known as the snowshoe evil. This arose from the placing of an unusual
+strain on the tendons of the leg, occasioned by the weight of the
+snowshoe. It often resulted in severe inflammation of the lower leg.
+The local remedy was a drastic one: it was to place a piece of lighted
+touchwood on the most inflamed part, and to leave it there till the
+flesh was burnt to the nerve!
+
+In the north and the regions round Hudson's Bay, and also in the far
+west--British Columbia and Alaska--there were dogs, more or less of
+the Eskimo breed, trained by Eskimo or by Amerindians to drag the
+sledges. In the months of December and January it is true that the
+daylight in Arctic Canada (north of Lake Athapaska) became so short
+that the sun at its greatest altitude only appeared for two or three
+hours a short distance above the horizon. But there were
+compensations. The brilliancy of the Aurora Borealis, even without the
+assistance of the moon and the stars, made some amends for that
+deficiency, for it was frequently so light all night that travellers
+could see to read a very small print (Samuel Hearne). The importance
+of these "Northern lights" must not be overlooked in forming an
+opinion on the habitability of the far north in the "dark" winter
+months. The display was frequent and brilliant.
+
+The Athapaskan Indians called this phenomenon _Edthin_, that is to
+say, "reindeer". When the Aurora Borealis was particularly bright in
+the sky they would say that deer were plentiful in that part of the
+heavens. Their fancy in this respect was not quite so silly as one
+might think. They had learnt from experience that the Aurora Borealis
+was in some way connected with electricity, and experience had equally
+shown them that the skin of the reindeer, if briskly stroked by the
+hand on a dark night, would emit as many electric sparks as the back
+of a cat. On the other hand, the Amerindians in the southern and more
+temperate regions thought the Aurora Borealis was a vast concourse of
+"spirits of the happy day" dancing in the clouds.
+
+Thus there were no climatic reasons why, both in summer and in winter,
+immense distances should not be quickly covered in Canada between the
+Rocky Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean. This is how a mere hundred of
+white pioneers opened up Canada to the knowledge of the civilized
+world far quicker than the same area could have been discovered in
+Africa or Asia. Sometimes, for about a month, between the melting of
+the snow and ice and the steady flowing of the rivers in the late
+spring, or between the uncertain autumn of November and the confirmed
+winter of December, there might be an interval of a few weeks in which
+journeys had to be made on foot under conditions of great hardship,
+through mud, swamp, and over sharp stones or slippery rocks.
+
+"The plains are covered with water from the melting of the snow so
+suddenly, and our men suffer much, as they are continually on the
+march, looking after Indians in every creek and little river. The
+water is commonly knee deep, in some places up to the middle, and in
+the morning is usually covered with ice, which makes it tedious and
+even dangerous travelling. Some of our men lose the use of their legs
+while still in the prime of life", wrote one eighteenth-century
+pioneer, in the Canadian spring.
+
+Severe as were the winter conditions of climate, the explorers were
+just as willing to travel through the winter as the summer, because in
+the winter they were spared the awful plague of mosquitoes and midges
+which still renders summer and early-autumn travel throughout the
+whole of Canada, from the United States borders on the south to the
+Arctic Ocean on the north, a severe trial, and even an unbearable
+degree of physical suffering.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+The Amerindians and Eskimo: the Aborigines of British North America
+
+
+I have already attempted to describe in the first chapter the ancient
+peopling of America from north-eastern Asia, but it might be useful if
+I gave here some description of the Eskimo and Amerindian tribes of
+the Canadian Dominion at the time of its gradual discovery by
+Europeans, especially during the great explorations of the eighteenth
+and early nineteenth centuries.
+
+It is evident that the ESKIMO--who are quite distinct from the
+Amerindians in physical type, language, customs, and industries--have
+been for thousands of years the only inhabitants of Arctic America.
+When the Norsemen came to the New World they seem to have met with
+Eskimo as far south as New England, but in more recent times the
+Eskimo have only been found inhabiting the extreme north and
+north-east: in Greenland, on the Labrador coast, on Baffin's Land, and
+along the Arctic coast of the North-American continent, between the
+Coppermine River and the westernmost extremity of Alaska, as well as
+on the opposite islands and promontories of Asia.
+
+Their name for themselves as a people is usually "Innuit" (in
+Greenland, "Karalit"). Eskimo is a corruption of _Eskimantsik_, a
+northern Algonkin word meaning "eaters of raw flesh". Although their
+geographical range extends over a distance of about three thousand
+five hundred miles--from north-easternmost Asia to the east coast of
+Greenland--the difference in their dialects is little more than that
+between French and Italian; whereas the difference between the speech
+of one Amerindian tribe and another--even where they belong to the
+same language group--is very great--not less than that between German
+and Latin, or English and French, or even between Russian and
+Hindustani. This fact--of the widespread Eskimo language--makes some
+authorities suppose that the presence of the Eskimo in Arctic America
+cannot be such a very ancient event as, from other evidence, one might
+believe. Perhaps the bold travelling habits of the Eskimo--which makes
+them range over vast distances of ice and snow when hunting seals,
+walruses, whales, musk ox, or reindeer--enables them to keep in touch
+with their far-away relations.
+
+The canoes or _kayaks_ in which they travel (first described by the
+Norsemen in the tenth century) are made out of the hide of the seal or
+walrus. The leather is stretched over a framework constructed from
+driftwood or whales' bones. There is a hole in the middle for the man
+or woman to insert their legs. This hole they fill up with their
+bodies. If the canoe capsizes, the Eskimo cannot fall out, but bobs up
+immediately. He and the canoe are really "one-and-indivisible" when he
+is navigating the seas and lakes, plying deftly a large paddle.
+
+In regard to food they were certainly not particular or squeamish.
+They loved best of all whales' blubber, or to drink the fishy-tasting
+oil from bodies of whales, seals, or walruses. Besides the meat of
+Polar bears and of any fur animals they could catch, or the musky beef
+of the musk ox, they devoured eagerly sea birds' eggs, Iceland moss,
+and even the parasitic insects of their own heads and bodies! Hearne
+relates that they will eat with a relish whole handfuls of maggots
+that have been produced in meat by the eggs of the bluebottle fly! On
+the other hand, they held cannibalism in horror, whereas for two-two's
+their Amerindian neighbours on the west and south would eat human
+flesh without repugnance.
+
+The Eskimo, though occasionally tall, are as a rule stumpy and
+thickset, with very small hands and feet, broad faces, and projecting
+cheekbones, a narrow nose without the aquiline bridge of the
+Amerindian, slanting narrow eyes, and long heads containing large
+well-developed brains. In disposition the Eskimo are nearly always
+merry, affectionate to one another, honest, and modest. Modern
+travellers in the Arctic regions give them invariably a high
+character; but Frobisher, Davis, and the explorers of the sixteenth
+and seventeenth centuries accused them of treachery and an inclination
+to steal. Iron in any shape or form they could hardly resist taking.
+Moreover, if they are the same people as the Skraellings of the Norse
+traditions they must have been of a fiercer disposition a thousand
+years ago.
+
+The Amerindians who inhabited (more or less) the rest of the Canadian
+Dominion, and the whole remainder of the New World, differed in
+physical appearance from the Eskimo mainly in being taller and better
+proportioned, with shorter and rounder heads, larger, fuller eyes, a
+bigger nose, and a handsomer personal appearance. The skin colour, as
+a rule, was darker and browner than the greyish- or pinkish-yellow of
+the Eskimo.
+
+The various human types that went to form the Amerindian race (beside
+the Eskimo element in them) seem to have entered north-west America
+from Asia, and first to have peopled the Pacific slopes of the Rocky
+Mountains, after which they wandered farther and farther south till
+they got into a warmer climate. Then they crossed the Rocky Mountains
+and peopled the centre and east of what is now the United States. As
+they pushed their way north up the valleys of the great rivers, they
+no doubt killed, mingled with, or pushed back the Eskimo. At last
+their northernmost extensions reached to the Mackenzie River, the
+vicinity of Hudson's Bay, Labrador, and Newfoundland. But in all the
+middle, west, and even east of Canada they seem to have been
+_relatively recent arrivals_,[1] not to have inhabited the country for
+a great many centuries before the white man came, and all their
+recorded and legendary movements in North America have been from the
+south-west towards the north-east (after they had got across the Rocky
+Mountains). The few cultivated plants they had, such as maize (Indian
+corn), tobacco, and pumpkins, they brought with them or received from
+the south.
+
+[Footnote 1: There may have been an earlier race inhabiting north-east
+America which was killed out or driven away by the last Glacial
+period.]
+
+The only domestic animal possessed by either Eskimo or Amerindian was
+the dog. We are most of us by now familiar with the type of the Eskimo
+dog--a large, wolf-like animal with prick ears and a bushy tail curled
+over its back. In this carriage of the tail the Eskimo and most other
+true dogs differ from wolves, with whom the tail droops between the
+hind quarters. But there is a small wild American wolf--the
+coyote--which carries its tail more upright, like that of the true
+dog; and the coyote seems indeed an intermediate form between the wolf
+and the original wild dog. Most of the domestic dogs of the
+Amerindians[2] (as distinguished from those of the Eskimo) seem to
+have been derived from the coyote or small wolf of central North
+America.
+
+[Footnote 2: "The dogs of the Northern Indians are of various sizes
+and colours, but all of them have a foxy or wolf-like appearance,
+sharp noses, bushy tails, and sharp ears standing erect." (Samuel
+Hearne).
+
+Hearne also remarks that the northern Indians had a superstitious
+reverence and liking for the wolf. They would frequently go to the
+mouth of the burrows where the female wolves lived with their young,
+take out the puppies and play with them, and even paint the faces of
+the young wolves with vermilion or red ochre.
+
+When first observed by Europeans the unhappy Beothiks (of
+Newfoundland) had apparently no domestic dogs, only "tame wolves",
+whom they distinguished from the wild wolves by marking their ears.
+They were made more angry by the European seamen attacking and killing
+the wolves than by anything else they did. Apparently some kind of
+alliance had been struck up between the Beothiks--a nation of
+hunters--and the wolf packs which followed in their tracks; and the
+Newfoundland wolves were on the way to becoming domesticated "dogs".
+Later on it was realized that the island _did_ produce a special
+breed--the celebrated Newfoundland dog--the original type of which was
+much smaller than the modern type, nearly or entirely black in colour,
+with a sharper muzzle and less pendulous ears. But its feet were as
+strongly webbed and its habits as aquatic as those of the
+"Newfoundland" of the modern breed. Some people have noticed the
+resemblance between the farmers' dogs in Norway and the Newfoundland
+type, and have thought that the latter may not be altogether of wolf
+extraction, but be descended from the dogs brought from Norway and
+Iceland by the Norse adventurers who visited Newfoundland in the tenth
+and eleventh centuries.]
+
+On the Pacific coast there were other types of domestic dog,
+resembling greatly breeds that are found in eastern Asia and the
+Pacific islands. Some of these were naked, and others grew silky hair,
+which was woven by the natives into cloth (see p. 323). The Eskimo dog
+almost certainly has been derived from northern Asia, and is closely
+related to the well-known Chinese breed--the chow dog--and the
+domestic breeds of ancient Europe. Even the commonest type of house
+dog in the Roman Empire was very much like an Eskimo or a chow in
+appearance. There is a true wild dog, however, in the Yukon province
+of the Canadian Dominion and in Alaska--_Canis pambasileus_--a dark,
+blackish-brown in colour. This may have been a parent of the Eskimo
+dog, but it is also doubtless closely allied to the original (extinct)
+wild dog of northern Asia, from which the chow and many other breeds
+are directly descended. The Eskimo never under ordinary circumstances
+ate their dogs; on the other hand, the Amerindians were fond of dog's
+flesh, and in some tribes simply bred dogs for the table.
+
+When Europeans first reached America all these Amerindian tribes, and
+also the Eskimo, were still, for all practical purposes, in the Stone
+Age. Those who lived in the north had discovered the use of copper and
+had shaped for themselves knives and spear blades out of copper, but
+not even this metal was in use to any great extent, and for the most
+part they relied, down to the end of the eighteenth century, for their
+implements and weapons, on polished and sharpened stones, on deer's
+antlers, buffalo horns, sticks, sharp shells, beavers' incisor
+teeth,[3] the claws or spines of crustaceans, flints, and suchlike
+substances--in short, they were leading the same life and using almost
+exactly the same tools as the long-since-vanished hunter races of
+Europe of five thousand to one hundred thousand years ago--the people
+who pursued the mammoth, the bison, the Irish "elk", and the other
+great beasts of prehistoric Europe. Indeed, North America represented
+to some extent, as late as a hundred years ago, what Europe must have
+looked like in the days of palæolithic Man.
+
+[Footnote 3: Of which they made very serviceable chisels.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The AMERINDIANS of the Canadian Dominion (when the country first
+became known to Europeans) belonged to the following groups and
+tribes. The order of enumeration begins in the east and proceeds
+westwards. I have already mentioned the peculiar _Beothiks_ of
+Newfoundland.[4] In Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick,
+and the Gaspé Peninsula there were the _Mikmak_ Indians belonging to
+the widespread ALGONKIN family or stock. West and south of the
+Mikmaks, in New Brunswick and along the borders of New England, were
+other tribes of the Algonkin group: the Etchemins, Abenakis,
+Tarratines, Penobscots, _Mohikans_, and Adirondacks. North of these,
+in the eastern part of the Quebec province, on either side of the Gulf
+of St. Lawrence, were the _Montagnais_. This name, though it looks
+like a French word meaning "mountaineers", was also spellt Montagnet,
+and in various other ways, showing that it was originally a native
+name, pronounced Montanyé. The Montagnais in various clans extended
+northwards across Labrador until they touched the Eskimo, with whom
+they constantly fought. The interior of Labrador was inhabited by
+another Algonkin tribe, the _Naskwapi_, living in a state of rude
+savagery. The _Algonkins_ proper, whose tribe gave their name to the
+whole stock because the French first became acquainted with them as a
+type, dwelt in the vicinity of Montreal, Lake Ontario, and the valley
+of the St. Lawrence. In upper Canada, about the great lakes and the
+St. Lawrence valley, were the Chippeways, or _Ojibwés_, and the
+Ottawas. West and north of Lake Michigan were the Miamis, the
+Potawátomis, and the Fox Indians (the Saks or Sawkis). Between Lake
+Winnipeg and Lake Superior were the _Cheyennes_ (Shians); between
+North and South Saskatchewan, the _Blackfeet_ or Siksika Indians
+(sections of which were also called Bloods, Paigans, Piegans, &c).
+North of Lake Winnipeg, as far as Lake Athabaska, and almost from the
+Rocky Mountains to the shores of Hudson's Bay, were the widespread
+tribe of the _Kris_, or _Knistino_.[5] The Gros Ventres or Big
+Bellies--properly called _Atsina_--inhabited the southern part of the
+middle west, between the Saskatchewan and the Missouri basins; and the
+Monsoni or Maskegon were found in eastern Rupert Land.
+
+[Footnote 4: See also pp. 156, 164, 186, and 199. In this list I have
+put in italics the names of the tribes more important in history, and
+in capitals the principal group names.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Kinistino, Kiristineaux, Kilistino; called "Crees" or
+"Kris" for short.]
+
+All the above-enumerated tribes, except the Beothik indigenes of
+Newfoundland, belong to the great and widespread ALGONKIN group.
+(Algonkin is a word derived from the "Algommequin" of Champlain.) In
+the valley of the St. Lawrence the French first encountered those
+Indians whom they called _Huron_. This was a French word meaning
+"crested", because these people wore their hair in a great crest over
+the top and back of the head, which reminded the French of the
+appearance of a wild boar (_Hure_). The real name of the Hurons, who
+dwelt at a later date between Lakes Huron, Erie, Ontario, and the
+neighbourhood of Montreal, was _Waiandot_ (Wyandot); but they went
+under a variety of other names, according to the clans, such as the
+Eries and the Atiwándoran or Neutral Nation. They were also called the
+"Good" Iroquois, to distinguish them from the six other nations, the
+IROQUOIS proper of the French Canadians, who signalized themselves by
+fiendish and frightful warfare against the French and the various
+tribes of Algonkin Indians. The Hurons and the rest of the six tribes
+grouped under the name of IROQUOIS[6] were of the same stock
+originally, forming a separate group like that of the Algonkins,
+though they are supposed to be related distantly to the Dakota or
+Siou. Amongst the "Six Nations" or tribes banded together in warfare
+and policy were the celebrated "Mohawks" who dwelt on the southern
+borders of the St. Lawrence basin and near Lake Champlain. As the
+others of the six nations (including the Senekas and Onondagas)
+inhabited the eastern United States, well outside the limits of
+Canada, they need not be referred to here.
+
+[Footnote 6: "Iroquois" was a name invented by Champlain (see p. 69).
+Apparently this confederation called themselves _Hodenosauni_. The
+termination "ois" in all French-American names is pronounced
+"wa"--Irokwá.]
+
+Between the South Saskatchewan, the Rocky Mountains, and Lake
+Superior, nearly outside the limits of the Canadian Dominion, was the
+great DAKOTA, or Siou group,[7] divided into the distinct tribe of
+_Assiniboin_ or "Stone" Indians (because they used hot stones in
+cooking), the "Crows" or Absaroka, the Hidatsa or Minitari (also
+called Big Bellies, like the quite distinct Atsina of the Algonkin
+family), the Menómini (the most north-eastern amongst the Siouan
+tribes, and the first met with by the British and French Canadians
+south-west of Lake Superior), the Winnebagos on the southern borders
+of Manitoba, the Yanktons or Yanktonnais, the "_Santi Siou_"
+proper--generally calling themselves _Dakota_ or Mdewakanton--and the
+"Tétons" along the northern Dakota frontier and into the Rocky
+Mountains--also known as _Blackfeet_, Sans Arcs ("without bows"),
+"Two-kettles", "Brulés" or "Burnt" Indians, &c.
+
+[Footnote 7: The far-famed term _Siou_ is said to have been an
+abbreviation of one of the original French names for this type of
+Amerindian, _Nadouessiou_. In early books they are often called the
+Nadouessies.]
+
+Next must be mentioned the very important and widespread ATHAPASKAN or
+Déné (Tinné) group, named after Lake Athapaska (or Athabaska), because
+that sheet of water became a great rallying place for these northern
+tribes. The Athapaskan group of Indians indeed represents the
+"Northern Indians" of the Hudson's Bay Company's reports and
+explorers. They drew a great distinction between the Northern Indians
+(the Athapaskan tribes) and the Southern Indians, which included all
+the other Amerindian groups dwelling to the south of the Athapaskan
+domain. But although nowadays so much associated with the far north
+and north-west of America, the Athabaskan group evidently came from a
+region much farther south, and has been cut in half by other tribal
+movements, wars, and migrations; for the Athapaskan family also
+includes the Apaches and the Navaho of the south-western portions of
+the United States and the adjoining territories of Mexico. The
+northern and southern divisions of the Athapaskan group are separated
+by something like twelve hundred miles. The following are the
+principal tribes into which the Northern ATHAPASKAN group was divided
+at the time of the first explorations of the north-west. There were
+the _Chippewayan_ Indians[8] round about Lake Athapaska, and the
+Caribou Eaters or Ethen-eldeli between Lake Athapaska and Reindeer
+Lake. The "_Slaves_", or Slave Indians of the Great Slave Lake and the
+upper Mackenzie River; the Beaver and Sarsi Indians (known also as the
+Tsékehn), about the Peace River and the northern part of Alberta
+province; and the _Yellow Knives_, or Totsan-ottine (so called from
+their being found with light-coloured copper knives when first
+discovered by Europeans), north-east of the Great Slave Lake and along
+the Coppermine River: the _Dogribs_ between the Great Slave Lake and
+Great Bear Lake, perhaps (except in Alaska) the most northern
+extension of the Amerindian type towards the Arctic regions. West of
+the Dogribs dwelt--and still dwell--the interesting tribe of _Hare_
+Indians, or Kawcho-Tinné. They extend northwards to the Anderson
+River, on the verge of the Arctic Ocean. West of the lower Mackenzie
+River, and stretching thence to the Porcupine or Yukon Rivers, are the
+Squinting Indians ("Loucheux", or Kuchin), who in former times were
+met with much farther to the south-east than at the present day.
+Finally, there are the Nahani Indians, who have penetrated through the
+Rocky Mountains to the Stikine River, reaching thus quite close to the
+Pacific Ocean. This penetration northwards of groups of Athapaskan
+Indians into districts inhabited for the most part by Amerindian
+tribes differing widely in language and customs from all those _east_
+of the Rocky Mountains, explains the way in which stories of the great
+western sea--the Pacific--reached, by means of trading intercourse,
+those Amerindian tribes of the middle-west and upper Canada, and so
+stirred up the French and English explorers of the seventeenth and
+eighteenth centuries to make the marvellous journeys which are
+recounted in this book.
+
+[Footnote 8: These northern Indians are described by Hearne as having
+very low foreheads, small eyes, high cheekbones, Roman noses, broad
+cheeks, and long, broad chins. Their skins were soft, smooth and
+polished, somewhat copper-coloured, and inclining towards a dingy
+brown. The hair of the head was black, strong, and straight. They were
+not in general above middle size, though well proportioned.]
+
+_West_ of the Rocky Mountains, in British Columbia and Vancouver
+Island (besides southern Alaska), the Amerindian tribes form the
+N[¯u]tka-Columbian group, which is markedly distinct from the
+Amerindians _east_ of the Rocky Mountains, from whom they differ
+_widely_ in language, type, and culture. They are divided into quite a
+large number of small separate groups--the Wakashan or _N[¯u]tkas_ of
+Vancouver Island and south-western British Columbia, the Shahaptian or
+"Nez percés" Indians of the Columbia basin, and the Chin[¯u]ks of
+the lower Columbia River, the _Salishan_ or "Flathead" group
+(including the Atn[¯a]s) of the Fraser and Thompson Rivers and central
+British Columbia; and the _Haida_ Indians of Queen Charlotte's Islands
+and the north-west coast of British Columbia. It must be remembered
+that these different groups are only based on the relationships of
+their component tribes in language or dialect, and do not always imply
+that the tribes belonging to them had the same customs and
+dispositions; but they were generally able to communicate with one
+another in speech, whereas if they met the Indians of another group
+the language might be so totally different that they could only
+communicate by means of signs.
+
+[Illustration: AN AMERINDIAN TYPE OF BRITISH COLUMBIA]
+
+Sign and gesture language[9] was extraordinarily developed amongst all
+the Amerindian races from the Arctic Ocean to the Antarctic. Not only
+that, but they were quick to understand the purpose of pictures. They
+could draw maps in the sand to explain the geography of their country,
+and Europeans could often make them understand what they required by
+rough drawings. They themselves related many events by means of a
+picture language--the beginning of hieroglyphics; and in the
+south-eastern parts of Canada, as in the United States, these signs or
+pictographs were recorded in bead-shell work--the celebrated "wampum".
+
+[Footnote 9: "It is surprising how dexterous all these natives of the
+plains are in communicating their ideas by signs. They hold
+conferences for several hours, upon different subjects, during the
+whole of which time not a single word is pronounced upon either side,
+and still they appear to comprehend each other perfectly well. This
+mode of communication is natural to them; their gestures are made with
+the greatest ease, and they never seem to be at a loss for a sign to
+express their meaning" (Alex. Henry the Younger, 1800). But it should
+also be noted that during the last hundred years the peoples belonging
+to the N[¯u]tka-Columbian group have developed a trade language which
+they use in common. This is a mixture of Chin[¯u]k, English, French,
+Chinese, and Hawaaian.]
+
+All these tribes, of course, varied very much in personal appearance,
+though not in disposition. The vanished Beothiks of Newfoundland are
+described as having been a good-looking tall people, with large black
+eyes and a skin so light, when washed free from dirt or paint, that
+the Portuguese compared them to gipsies; and the writer of Fabian's
+_Chronicle_, who saw two of them (brought back by Cabot) at Henry
+VII's Court, in 1499, took them for Englishmen when they were dressed
+in English clothes. It was these people--subsequently killed out by
+the British settlers on Newfoundland--who originated the term "Red
+Indians", or, in French, _Peaux Rouges_, because their skins, like
+those of so many other Amerindians, were painted with red ochre.
+
+Many of the British Columbian peoples made themselves artificially
+ugly by flattening the sides of the head. To press the skull whilst it
+was soft, they squeezed the heads of their children between boards;
+others, such as the warlike tribes of the upper Missouri, had a
+passion for submitting themselves to mutilation by the medicine man of
+the clan, in order to please the sun god. Such would submit to large
+strips being cut from the flesh of their shoulders, arms, or legs, or
+having their cheeks slashed. The result, of course, was to leave their
+limbs and features horribly scarred when they healed up. In some
+tribes, however, a young man could not obtain--or retain--a wife
+unless he had shown his bravery by submitting to this mutilation.
+Women often cut off one or more joints of their fingers to show their
+grief for the death of children.
+
+In some tribes, especially of the far north-west and of the Rocky
+Mountains, the personal habits of men and women, or of the women only,
+were so filthy, and their dislike to bathing so pronounced, that they
+became objects of loathing to white men; in other tribes personal
+cleanliness was highly esteemed, especially on the seacoast of British
+Columbia or along the banks of the great rivers. Usually the men were
+better looking and better developed than the women--for one reason,
+because they were better fed.
+
+Here is a description by PETER GRANT--a pioneer of the North-West
+Company--of the Ojibwé Indians dwelling near the east end of Lake
+Superior at the beginning of the nineteenth century:--
+
+"Their complexion is a whitish cast of copper colour, their hair
+black, long, straight, and of a very strong texture. The young men
+allow several locks of the hair to fall down over the face, ornamented
+with ribbons, silver brooches, &c. They gather up another lock from
+behind the head into a small clump, and wrap it up with very thin
+plates of silver, in which they fix the tail feathers of the eagle or
+any other favourite bird with the wearing of which they have
+distinguished themselves in war. They are very careful with their
+hair, anointing it with bears' oil, which gives it a smooth and glossy
+appearance. The teeth are of a beautiful ivory white, the cheeks
+rather high and prominent, the eyes black and lively. Their
+countenances are generally pleasant, and they might often be called
+handsome. The ears are pierced in infancy, and the lobe is extended to
+an unnatural size by suspending lead or any other heavy metal from the
+outer rim, which in time brings them down near the shoulder. The nose
+ornaments hang down half an inch, and nearly touch the upper lip.
+
+"The men are bold, manly, and graceful in their gait, always carrying
+their bodies erect and easy. On the other hand, the women, by walking
+with the toes of their feet turned inwards, have a disagreeable and
+lame appearance. The men are specially fond of painting their faces
+and bodies with vermilion, white and blue clay, charcoal or soot mixed
+with a little grease or water. With this colour they daub the body,
+legs, and thighs in bars and patches, and take the greatest pains
+about painting the face, usually with red and black. Their skins are
+generally tattooed with figures representing the sun, stars, eagles,
+serpents, &c, especially objects which have appeared to them in their
+dreams. The women's faces are much less painted, usually a spot of red
+on each cheek and a circle of red round the roots of the hair or
+eyes."
+
+Here is a summary of what Alexander Henry, sen., wrote of the _Kri_ or
+_Knistino_ Indians of Lake Athabaska about 1770:--
+
+"The men in general tattoo their bodies and arms very much. The women
+confine this ornamentation to the chin, having three perpendicular
+lines from the middle of the chin to the lip, and one or more running
+on each side, nearly parallel with the corner of the mouth. Their
+dress consists of leather; that of the men is a pair of leggings,
+reaching up to the hip and fastened to the girdle. Between the legs is
+passed a strip of woollen stuff, but when this cannot be procured they
+use a piece of dressed leather about nine inches broad and four feet
+long, whose ends are drawn through the girdle and hang down before and
+behind about a foot.... The shirt is of soft dressed leather, either
+from the prong-buck or young red deer, close about the neck and
+hanging to the middle of the thigh; the sleeves are of the same, loose
+and open under the arms to the elbows, but thence to the wrist sewed
+tight. The cap is commonly a piece of leather, or skin with the hair
+on, shaped to fit the head, and tied under the chin; the top is
+usually decorated with feathers or other ornament. Shoes are made of
+buffalo (bison) hide, dressed in the hair, and mittens of the same.
+Over the whole a buffalo robe is thrown, which serves as covering day
+and night.
+
+"Such is their common dress, but on particular occasions they appear
+to greater advantage, having their cap, shirt, leggings, and shoes
+perfectly clean and white, trimmed with porcupine quills and other
+ingenious work of their women, who are supposed to be the most skilful
+hands in the country at decorations of this kind. The women's dress
+consists of the same materials as the men's. Their leggings do not
+reach above the knee, and are gathered below that joint; their shoes
+always lack decoration. The shift or body garment reaches down to the
+calf, where it is generally fringed and trimmed with quillwork; the
+upper part is fastened over the shoulders by strips of leather; a flap
+or cape hangs down about a foot before and behind, and is ornamented
+with quillwork and fringe. This covering is quite loose, but tied
+around the waist with a belt of stiff parchment fastened on the side,
+where also some ornaments are suspended. The sleeves are detached from
+the body garment; from the wrist to the elbow they are sewed, but
+thence to the shoulder they are open underneath and drawn up to the
+neck, where they are fastened across the breast and back.
+
+"Their ornaments are two or three coils of brass wire twisted around
+the rim of each ear, in which incisions are made for that purpose;
+blue beads, brass rings, quillwork, and fringe occasionally answer.
+Vermilion (a red clay) is much used by the women to paint the face.
+
+"Their hair is generally parted on the crown and fastened behind each
+ear in large knots, from which are suspended bunches of blue beads or
+other ingenious work of their own. The men adjust their hair in
+various forms; some have it parted on top and tied in a tail on each
+side, while others make one long _queue_ which hangs down behind, and
+around which is twisted a strip of otter skin or dressed buffalo
+entrails. This tail is frequently increased in thickness and length by
+adding false hair, but others allow it to flow loose naturally. Combs
+are seldom used by the men, and they never smear the hair with grease,
+but red earth is sometimes put upon it. White earth daubed over the
+hair generally denotes mourning. The young men sometimes have a bunch
+of hair on the crown, about the size of a small teacup, and nearly in
+the shape of that vessel upside down, to which they fasten various
+ornaments of feathers, quillwork, ermine tails, &c. Red and white
+earth and charcoal are much used in their toilets; with the former
+they usually daub their robes and other garments, some red and others
+white. The women comb their hair and use grease on it."
+
+The Slave Indians (a tribe of the Athapaskan family) tattooed their
+cheeks with charcoal inserted under the skin, also daubed their
+bodies, robes, and garments profusely with red earth (generally
+called, in the text of travellers, vermilion), but they had another
+favourite pigment, procured from the regions on the west of the Rocky
+Mountains, some kind of graphite, like the lead of lead pencils. With
+this they marked their faces in black lead after red earth has been
+applied, and thus gave themselves a ghastly and savage appearance.
+Their dress consists of a leather shirt trimmed with human hair and
+porcupine-quill work, and leggings of leather. Their shoes and caps
+were made of bison leather, with the hair outside. Their necklaces
+were strings of grizzly-bear claws, and a "buffalo" robe was thrown
+over all occasionally. Some of them occasionally had quite light
+skins--when free of dirt or paint--and grey eyes, and their hair,
+instead of being black, was greyish-brown. These last features (grey
+eyes and brown hair) characterized many individuals among the northern
+British-Columbian tribes.
+
+The Naskwapis of inland Labrador--allied in speech to the Kris and the
+Montagnais, but in blood to the Eskimo--are described as above the
+middle size in height, slender, and long-legged, their cheeks being
+very prominent, eyes black, nose rather flat, mouth large, lips thick,
+teeth white, hair rough and black, and the complexion a yellowish
+"frog" colour. They were dressed in elaborate and warm garments made
+of reindeer skin. The ordinary covering for the head of the men was
+the skin of a bear's head. "Thus accoutred, with the addition of a
+bow and quiver, a stone axe, and a bone knife, a Naskwapi man
+possessed no small degree of pride and self-importance" (James
+M'Kenzie).
+
+The handsomest tribes of Amerindians encountered by the Canadian
+pioneers seem to have been the Ojibwés of Lake Superior, the Iroquois
+south of the St. Lawrence, and the Mandans of the upper Missouri.
+
+Until well on in the nineteenth century none of the Canadian
+Amerindians were particular about wearing clothes if the weather was
+hot. The men, especially, were either quite oblivious of what was
+seemly in clothing (except perhaps the Iroquois) or thought it
+necessary to go naked into battle, or to remove all clothing before
+taking part in religious ceremonies.
+
+It is commonly supposed that the Red Man was a rather glum person,
+seldom seen to smile and averse to showing any emotion. That is not
+the impression one derives from the many pen portraits of Amerindians
+in the journals of the great pioneers. Here, on the contrary, you see
+the natives laughing, smiling, kissing eagerly their wives and
+children after an absence, displaying exuberant and cordial friendship
+towards the white man who treated them well, having love quarrels and
+fits of raging jealousy, moods of deep remorse after a fight, touching
+devotion to their comrades or chiefs, and above all to their children.
+They are most emotional, indeed, and, apart from this chapter you will
+find frequent descriptions of how they wept at times over the
+remembrance of their dead relations and friends.
+
+Hearne remarked, in 1772, that when two parties of Athapaska Indians
+met, the ceremonies which passed between them were very formal. They
+would advance within twenty or thirty yards of each other, make a full
+halt, and then sit or lie down on the ground, not speaking for some
+minutes. At length one of them, generally an elderly man, broke
+silence by acquainting the other party with every misfortune that had
+befallen him and his companions from the last time they had seen or
+heard of each other, including all deaths and other calamities which
+had happened to any other Indians during the same period. When he
+finished, another orator, belonging to the other party, related in
+like manner all the bad news that had come to _his_ knowledge. If
+these orations contained any news that in the least affected either
+party, it would not be long before some of them began to sigh and sob,
+and soon after to break out into a loud cry, which was generally
+accompanied by most of the grown persons of both sexes; and sometimes
+it was common to hear them all--men, women, and children--joining in
+one universal howl. When the first transports of grief had subsided,
+they advanced by degrees, and both parties mixed with each other, the
+men with the men, the women with the women. They then passed round
+tobacco pipes very freely, and the conversation became general. They
+had now nothing but good news left to tell, and in less than half an
+hour probably nothing but smiles and cheerfulness would be seen on
+every face.
+
+One direction in which the Amerindians did not shine was in their
+treatment of women. This perhaps was worse than in other uncivilized
+races. Woman was very badly used, except perhaps for the first year of
+courtship and marriage. Courtship began by the young man throwing
+sticks at the girl[10] who pleased his fancy, and if she responded he
+asked her in marriage. But not long after she had become a mother she
+sank into the position of a household drudge and beast of burden. For
+example, amongst the Beaver Indians, an Athapaskan tribe of the far
+north-west, it is related by Alexander Mackenzie that the women are
+permanently crippled and injured in physique by the hardships they
+have to undergo. "Having few dogs for transport in that country, the
+women alone perform that labour which is allotted to beasts of burden
+in other countries. It is not uncommon whilst the men carry nothing
+but a gun, that their wives and daughters follow with such weighty
+burdens that if they lay them down they cannot replace them; nor will
+the men deign to perform the service of hoisting them on to their
+backs. So that during their journeys they are frequently obliged to
+lean against a tree for a small degree of temporary relief. When they
+arrive at the place which their tyrants have chosen for their
+encampment, they arrange the tent in a few minutes by forming a curve
+of poles meeting at the top and expanding into a circle of twelve or
+fifteen feet in diameter at the bottom, covered with dressed skins of
+the moose sewn together. During these preparations the men sit down
+quietly to the enjoyment of their pipes, if they happen to have any
+tobacco."
+
+[Footnote 10: The manner of courtship among the Ojibwés seemed to
+Peter Grant not only singular, but rude. "The lover begins his first
+addresses by gently pelting his mistress with bits of clay, snowballs,
+small sticks, or anything he may happen to have in his hand. If she
+returns the compliment, he is encouraged to continue the farce, and
+repeat it for a considerable time, after which more direct proposals
+of marriage are made by word of mouth."]
+
+Among the Ojibwé and Huron Indians of the Great Lakes the men
+sometimes obliged their wives to bring up and nourish young bears
+instead of their own children, so that the bears might eventually be
+fattened for eating. If food was scarce, the women went without before
+even the male slaves of the tribe were unprovided with food. Women
+might never eat in the society of males, not even if these males were
+slaves or prisoners of war. If food was very scarce, the husband as
+likely as not killed and ate a wife; perhaps did this before slaying
+and eating a valuable dog. (On the other hand, Mackenzie instances the
+case of a woman among the Slave Indians who, in a winter of great
+scarcity, managed to kill and devour her husband and several
+relations.) So terrible was the ill-treatment of the women in some
+tribes that these wretched beings sometimes committed suicide to end
+their tortures. Even in this, however, they were not let off lightly,
+for the Siou men invented as a tenet of their religion the saying that
+"Women who hang themselves are the most miserable of all wretches in
+the other world".
+
+On the other hand, the kind treatment of children by fathers as well
+as mothers is an "Indian" trait commented on by writer after writer.
+Here is a typical description by Alexander Henry the Elder, concerning
+the children of the Ojibwé tribe:
+
+"As soon as the boys begin to run about, they are provided with bows
+and arrows, and acquire, as it were 'by instinct', an astonishing
+dexterity in shooting birds, squirrels, butterflies, &c. Hunting in
+miniature may be justly said to comprise the whole of their education
+and childish diversion. Such as excel in this kind of exercise are
+sure of being particularly distinguished by their parents, and seldom
+punished for any misbehaviour, but, on the contrary, indulged in every
+degree of excess and caprice. I have often seen grown-up boys of this
+description, when punished for some serious fault, strike their father
+and spit in his face, calling him 'bad dog', or 'old woman', and,
+sometimes, carrying their insolence so far as to threaten to stab or
+shoot him, and, what is rather singular, these too-indulgent parents
+seem to encourage such unnatural liberties, and even glory in such
+conduct from their favourite children. I heard them boast of having
+sons who promised at an early age to inherit such bold and independent
+sentiments.... Children of nine or ten years of age not only enjoy
+the confidence of the men, but are generally considered as companions
+and very deliberately join in their conversations."
+
+When death overtook anybody the grief of the female relations was
+carried to great excess. They not only cut their hair, cried and
+howled, but they would sometimes, with the utmost deliberation,
+employ some sharp instrument to separate the nail from the finger and
+then force back the flesh beyond the first joint, which they
+immediately amputated. "Many of the old women have so often repeated
+this ceremony that they have not a complete finger remaining on either
+hand" (Mackenzie).
+
+[Illustration: CARIBOU SWIMMING A RIVER]
+
+The Amerindians of North America were religious and superstitious, and
+had a firm faith in a world of spiritual agencies within or outside
+the material world around us. Most of them believed in the existence
+of "fairies",--woodland, earth, mountain, or water spirits--whom they
+declared they could see from time to time in human semblance. Or such
+spirit or demi-god might assume for a time or permanently the form of
+an animal. To all such spirits of earth, air, and water, or to the
+sacred animals they inhabited, sacrifices would be offered and prayers
+made. Great importance was attributed to dreams and visions. They
+accustomed themselves to make long fasts, so that they might become
+light-headed and see visions, or hear spirit voices in a trance. To
+prepare their minds for this state they would go four or five days
+without food, and even abstain from drinking.
+
+Undoubtedly their "medicine men" developed great mesmeric powers, and
+this force, combined with rather clumsy juggling and ventriloquism,
+enabled them to perform a semblance of "miracles". The Iroquois
+offered much opposition to Christianity, thinking it would tame their
+warriors too quickly and affect their national independence; but by
+the greater part of the Amerindians the message of the Gospel brought
+by the French priests was eagerly received, and the converts became
+many and most sincere. Their reverence for the missionaries and belief
+in them was increased when they saw how effectually they were able to
+protect them from too-rapacious white adventurers, fierce soldiers,
+and unscrupulous traders.
+
+The Miamis of Lake Michigan held the symbol of the cross in great
+respect. A young Frenchman who was trading with them got into a
+passion and drew his sword to avenge himself for a theft committed on
+his goods. The Miama chieftain, to appease him, showed him the cross,
+which was planted in the ground at the end of his lodge, and said to
+him: "Behold the tree of the Black Gown; he teaches us to pray and not
+to lose our temper,"--of course, referring to the missionary in the
+black gown who had been amongst them. Before the cross was planted
+here these Miamis kept in their houses one or more bogies, to which
+they appealed in times of distress or sickness. One of these was the
+skull of the bison with its horns. Another was the skin of the bear
+raised on a pole in the middle of the hut and retaining the head,
+which was usually painted green. The women sometimes died of terror
+from the stories told them by the men about these idols, and the
+Jesuits did a great deal of good by getting them abolished in many
+places.
+
+The Supreme Being of the Eskimos was a goddess rather than a god: a
+mother of all things who lived under the sea. On the other hand, most
+of the Amerindian tribes believed in one great God of the Sky--Manito,
+as He was called by the peoples of Algonkin stock, Nainubushan by the
+Siou and their kindred. This Being was usually kindly disposed towards
+man; but they also (in most cases) believed in a _bad_ Manito, who was
+responsible for most of the harm in the world. But sometimes the Great
+Manito was capricious, or apparently made many mistakes which he had
+afterwards to rectify. Thus the Siou tribes of Assiniboia believed
+that the Supreme Being (whom they called Eth-tom-é) first created
+mankind and all living things, and then, through some oversight or
+mistake, caused a great flood to cover the earth's surface. So in a
+hurry he was obliged to make a very large canoe of twigs and
+branches, and into this he put a pair of every kind of bird and beast,
+besides a family of human beings, who were thus saved from drowning,
+and began the world afresh when the waters subsided. This legend was
+something like the story of Noah's ark, but seems in some form or
+another to have existed in the mind of all the North-American peoples
+before the arrival of Christian missionaries. Much the same story was
+told by the Ojibwés about the Great Hare-God, Nainiboju.
+
+The Siou and the Ojibwé (and other tribes also) believed that after
+death the soul lay for a time in a trance, and then found itself
+floating towards a River which must be crossed. Beyond the River lay
+the Happy Hunting Grounds, the Elysian fields; but to oppose the weary
+soul anxious to reach this paradise there ramped on the other side a
+huge, flaming-red bison bull, if it had been ordained by the Great
+Spirit that the soul's time was not yet come, this red bison pushed it
+back, and the soul was obliged to re-enter the body, which then awoke
+from its trance or swoon and resumed its worldly activities.
+
+Suicide was regarded as the most heinous of crimes. Any man killing
+himself deliberately, fell into the river of the ghost world and was
+never heard of again, while women who hanged themselves "were regarded
+as the most miserable of all wretches in the other world".
+
+Their belief in spirits--even ancestral spirits--taking up an abode in
+the bodies of beasts, birds, or reptiles, or even in plants or stones,
+caused them to view with respect of a superstitious kind many natural
+objects. Some one thing--a beast, bird, reptile, fish, plant, or
+strange stone had been fixed on as the abode of his tutelary spirit by
+some father of a family. The family grew into a clan, and the clan to
+a tribe, and the object sacred in the eyes of its father and founder
+became its "totem", crest, or symbol. As a rule, whatever thing was
+the _totem_ of the individual or the clan was held sacred in their
+eyes, and, if it was an animal, was not killed, or, if killed, not
+eaten. Many of the northern Indians would refrain from killing the
+wolf or the glutton, or if they did so, or did it by accident, they
+would refuse to skin the animal. The elder people amongst the
+Athapaskan Indians, in Hearne's day, would reprove the young folk for
+"speaking disrespectfully" of different beasts and birds.
+
+Their ideas of medicine and surgery were much mixed up with a belief
+in magic and in the mysterious powers of their "medicine men". This
+person, who might be of either sex, certainly knew a few simple
+medicines to be made from herbs or decoctions of bark, but for the
+most part he attempted to cure the sick or injured by blowing lustily
+on the part affected or, more wisely, by massage. A universal cure,
+however, for all fevers and mild ailments was sweating. Sweating huts
+were built in nearly every settlement. They were covered over in a way
+to exclude air as much as possible. The inside was heated with red-hot
+stones and glowing embers, on to which from time to time water was
+poured to fill the place with steam. The Amerindians not only went
+through these Turkish baths to cure small ailments but also with the
+idea of clearing the intelligence and as a fitting preliminary to
+negotiations--for peace, or alliance, or even for courtship. In many
+tribes if a young "brave" arrived with proposals of marriage for a
+man's daughter he was invited to enter the sweating house with her
+father, and discuss the bargain calmly over perspiration and the
+tobacco pipe.
+
+Tobacco smoking indeed was almost a religious ceremony, as well as a
+remedy for certain maladies or states of mind. The "pipe of peace" has
+become proverbial. Nevertheless tobacco was still unknown in the
+eighteenth century to many of the Pacific-coast and far-north-west
+tribes, as to the primitive Eskimo. It was not a very old practice in
+the Canadian Dominion when Europeans first arrived there, though it
+appeared to be one of the most characteristic actions of these
+red-skinned savages in the astonished eyes of the first pioneers. They
+used pipes for smoking, however, long before tobacco came among them,
+certain berries taking the place of tobacco.
+
+The Amerindians of the southern parts of Canada and British Columbia
+were more or less settled peoples of towns or villages, of fixed homes
+to which they returned at all seasons of the year, however far afield
+they might range for warfare, trade, or hunting. But the more northern
+tribes were nomads: people shifting their abode from place to place in
+pursuit of game or trade. Unlike the people of the south and west
+(though these only grew potatoes) they were not agriculturists: the
+only vegetable element in their food was the wild rice of the marshes,
+the sweet-tasting layer between the bark and the wood of certain
+trees, and the fruits or fungi of the forest or the lichen growing on
+the rocks. Though these people might in summertime build some hasty
+wigwam of boughs and moss, their ordinary dwelling place was a tent.
+
+The Wood Indians, or Opimitish Ininiwak, of the Athapaskan group
+(writes Alexander Henry, sen.) had no fixed villages; and their lodges
+or huts were so rudely fashioned as to afford them very inadequate
+protection against the weather. The greater part of their year was
+spent in travelling from place to place in search of food. The animal
+on which they chiefly depended was the _hare_--a most prominent animal
+in Amerindian economy and tradition. This they took in springes. From
+its skin they made coverings with much ingenuity, cutting it into
+narrow strips and weaving this into the shape of a blanket, which was
+of a very warm and agreeable quality.
+
+The Naskwapi Algonkins of inland Labrador were savages that led a
+wandering life through the bare, flat parts of that country,
+subsisting chiefly upon flesh, and clothing themselves with the skin
+of the caribou, which they caught in pitfalls or shot with the bow
+and arrow. "Very few sights, I believe, can be more distressing to the
+feelings of humanity than a Labrador savage, surrounded by his wife
+and five or six small children, half-famished with cold and hunger in
+a hole dug out of the snow and screened from the inclemency of the
+weather by the branches of the trees. Their whole furniture is a
+kettle hung over the fire, not for the purpose of cooking victuals,
+but for melting snow" (James M'Kenzie).
+
+A description of the tents of the Kris or Knistino (Algonkins of the
+Athabaska region), written by Alexander Henry, sen., applies with very
+little difference to all the other tribes dwelling to the east of the
+Rocky Mountains.[11]
+
+[Footnote 11: See also p. 249.]
+
+These tents were of dressed leather, erected with poles, generally
+seventeen in number, of which two were tied together about three feet
+from the top. The first two poles being erected and set apart at the
+base, the others were placed against them in a slanting position,
+meeting at the top, so that they all formed nearly a circle, which was
+then covered with the leather. This consisted of ten to fifteen
+dressed skins of the bison, moose, or red deer, well sewed together
+and nicely cut to fit the conical figure of the poles, with an opening
+above, to let out smoke and admit the light. From this opening down to
+the door the two edges of the tent were brought close together and
+well secured with wooden pegs about six inches long, leaving for the
+door an oval aperture about two feet wide and three feet high, below
+which the edges were secured with similar pegs. This small entrance
+did well enough for the natives, who would be brought up to it from
+infancy, but a European might be puzzled to get through, as a piece of
+hide stretched upon a frame of the same shape as the door, but
+somewhat larger, hung outside, and must be first raised by the hand of
+the incomer.
+
+Such tents were usually spacious, measuring twenty feet in diameter.
+The fire was always made in the centre, around which the occupants
+generally placed a range of stones to prevent the ashes from
+scattering and to keep the fire compact. New tents were perfectly
+white; some of them were painted with red and black figures. These
+devices were generally derived from the dreams of the Amerindians,
+being some mythical monster or other hideous animal, whose description
+had been handed down from their ancestors. A large camp of such tents,
+pitched regularly on a level plain, had a fine effect at a distance,
+especially when numerous bands of horses were seen feeding in all
+directions.
+
+The "lodges" or long houses made of poles, fir branches, moss, &c.,
+wherein, among the Iroquois, Algonkin, and Siou peoples, several
+families made a common habitation, are described here and there in the
+course of the narrative. The houses of the coast tribes of British
+Columbia were bigger, more elaborate, and permanent, and in this
+region the natives had acquired some idea of carpentry, and had learnt
+to make planks of wood by splitting with wedges or hewing with adzes.
+
+One of these British Columbian houses was measured, and found to be
+seventy feet long by twenty-five feet wide; the entrance in the gable
+end was cut through a plank five and a half feet wide, and nearly
+oval. A board suspended on the outside answered for a door; on the
+other side of the broad plank was rudely carved a large painted figure
+of a man, between whose legs was the passage. But other houses on the
+Pacific coast, visited by Cook or Vancouver, are said to have been
+large enough to accommodate seven hundred people. These houses of the
+Pacific coast region were exceedingly filthy, sturgeon and salmon
+being strewn about in every direction. The men inhabiting them were
+often disgusting in their behaviour, while the women are declared to
+have been "devoid of shame or decency".
+
+According to Mackenzie, such habitations swarmed with fleas, and even
+the ground round about them "was alive with this vermin". The
+Alexander Henrys, both uncle and nephew, complain of the flea plague
+(partly due to the multitude of dogs) in every Indian village or
+encampment.
+
+The domestic implements of the Amerindians were few. Pottery seems to
+have been unknown amongst the northern tribes to the east and north of
+the Mississippi valley, but earthen jars and vessels were made by the
+Dakota-Siou group in the valley of the Mississippi. Amongst these
+agricultural Indians the hoe was made of a buffalo's blade bone
+fastened to a crooked wooden handle. The Ojibwés manufactured chisels
+out of beavers' teeth. The Eskimo and some of the neighbouring
+Amerindian tribes used oblong "kettles" of stone--simply great blocks
+of stone chipped, rubbed, and hollowed out into receptacles, with
+handles at both ends. (It is suggested that they borrowed the idea of
+these stone vessels for cooking from the early Norse settlers of
+Greenland; see p. 18.)
+
+The Amerindians of the regions west of the Rocky Mountains made
+kettles or cooking vessels out of blocks of "cedar" (_Juniper_) wood;
+east of the Rocky Mountains the birch-bark kettle was universal. Of
+course these vessels of wood or bark could not be placed on the fire
+or embers to heat or boil the contents, as was possible with the
+"kettles" of stone or the cooking pots of clay. So the people using
+them heated the water in which the food or the soup was boiled by
+making stones red-hot in the fire and then dropping them into the
+birch-bark or cedar-wood tubs. Many of the northern Indians got into
+the way of eating their food raw because of the difficulty of making a
+fire away from home.
+
+In regard to food, neither Amerindian nor Eskimo was squeamish. They
+were almost omnivorous, and specially delighted in putrid or noisome
+substances from which a European would turn in loathing, and from the
+eating of which he might conceivably die.
+
+It was only in the extreme south of Canada or in British Columbia
+(potatoes only) that any agriculture was carried on and that the
+natives had maize, pumpkins, and pease to add to their dietary; but
+(as compared to the temperate regions of Europe and Asia) Nature was
+generous in providing wild fruits and grain without trouble of
+husbandry. The fruits and nuts have been enumerated elsewhere, but a
+description might be given here of the "wild oats" (_Avena fatua_) and
+the "wild rice" of the regions of central Canada and the middle west.
+The wild oats made a rough kind of porridge, but were not so important
+and so nourishing as the wild rice which is so often mentioned in the
+stories of the pioneers, who liked this wild grain as much as the
+Indians did.
+
+This wild rice (_Zizania aquatica_) grew naturally in small rivers and
+swampy places. The stems were hollow, jointed at intervals, and the
+grain appeared at the extremity of the stalk. By the month of June
+they had grown two feet above the surface of the shallow water, and
+were ripe for harvesting in September. At this period the Amerindians
+passed in canoes through the water-fields of wild rice, shaking the
+ears into the canoes as they swept by. The grain fell out easily when
+ripe, but in order to clean it from the husk it was dried over a slow
+fire on a wooden grating. After being winnowed it was pounded to flour
+in a mortar, or else boiled like rice, and seasoned with fat. "It had
+a most delicate taste", wrote Alexander Henry the Elder.
+
+Fish was perhaps the staple of Amerindian diet, because in scarcely
+any part of the Canadian Dominion is a lake, river, or brook far away.
+In the region of the Great Lakes fish were caught in large quantities
+in October, and exposed to the weather to be frozen at nighttime. They
+were then stored away in this congealed state, and lasted good--more
+or less--till the following April.
+
+Pemmican--that early form of potted meat so familiar to the readers of
+Red-Indian romances--was made of the lean meat of the bison. The
+strips of meat were dried in the sun, and afterwards pounded in a
+mortar and mixed with an equal quantity of bison fat. Fish "pemmican"
+was sun-dried fish ground to powder.
+
+A favourite dish among the northern Indians was blood mixed with the
+half-digested food found in the stomach of a deer, boiled up with a
+sufficient quantity of water to make it of the consistency of pease
+porridge. Some scraps of fat or tender flesh were shredded small and
+boiled with it. To render this dish more palatable they had a method
+of mixing the blood with the contents of the stomach in the paunch
+itself, and hanging it up in the heat and smoke of the fire for
+several days--in other words, the Scotch haggis. The kidneys of both
+moose and buffalo were usually eaten _raw_ by the southern Indians,
+for no sooner was one of those beasts killed than the hunter ripped up
+its belly, snatched out the kidneys, and ate them warm, before the
+animal was quite dead. They also at times put their mouths to the
+wound the ball or the arrow had made, and sucked the blood; this, they
+said, quenched thirst, and was very nourishing.
+
+The favourite drink of the Ojibwé Indians in the wintertime was hot
+broth poured over a dishful of pure snow.
+
+The Amerindians of the Nipigon country (north of Lake Superior) and
+the Ojibwés and Kris often relapsed into cannibalism when hard up for
+food. Indeed some of them became so addicted to this practice that
+they simply went about stalking their fellow Indians with as much
+industry as if they were hunting animals. "These prowling ogres caused
+such terror that to sight the track of one of them was sufficient to
+make twenty families decamp in all the speed of their terror"
+(Alexander Henry). It was deemed useless to attempt any resistance
+when these monsters were coming to kill and eat. The people would even
+make them presents of clothes and provisions to allow them and their
+children to live. There were women cannibals as well as men (see p.
+171).
+
+As the greater part of their food came from the chase, and their only
+articles of commerce likewise, they devoted themselves more entirely
+to hunting and fishing than to any other pursuit. The women did most
+of the fishing (and all the skin-curing for the fur market and for
+their own dress), while the men pursued with weapons the beasts of the
+chase, trapped them in pitfalls or snares, or drove them into "pounds"
+(excavated enclosures).
+
+Illustrating the wonderful sagacity of the Amerindians as game
+trackers, Alexander Henry the Elder tells the following story in the
+autumn of 1799:--
+
+"We had not gone far from the house before we fell upon the fresh
+tracks of some red deer (wapiti), and soon after discovered the herd
+in a thicket of willows and poplars; we both fired, and the deer
+disappeared in different directions. We pursued them, but to no
+purpose, as the country was unfavourable. We then returned to the spot
+where we had fired, as the Indian suspected that we had wounded some
+of them. We searched to see if we could find any blood; on my part, I
+could find tracks, but no blood. The Indian soon called out, and I
+went to him, but could see no blood, nor any sign that an animal had
+been wounded. However, he pointed out the track of a large buck among
+the many others, and told me that from the manner in which this buck
+had started off he was certain the animal had been wounded. As the
+ground was beaten in every direction by animals, it was only after a
+tedious search that we found where the buck had struck off. But no
+blood was seen until, passing through a thicket of willows, he
+observed a drop upon a leaf, and next a little more. He then began to
+examine more strictly, to find out in what part of the body the
+animal had been wounded; and, judging by the height and other signs,
+he told me the wound must have been somewhere between the shoulder and
+neck. We advanced about a mile, but saw nothing of the deer, and no
+more blood. I was for giving up the chase; but he assured me the wound
+was mortal, and that if the animal should lie down he could not rise
+again. We proceeded two miles farther, when, coming out upon a small
+open space, he told me the animal was at no great distance, and very
+probably in this meadow. We accordingly advanced a few yards, and
+there we found the deer lying at the last gasp. The wound was exactly
+as I had been told. The sagacity of the Saulteurs [Ojibwés] in tracing
+big wood animals is astonishing. I have frequently witnessed
+occurrences of this nature; the bend of a leaf or blade of grass is
+enough to show the hunter the direction the game has taken. Their
+ability is of equally great service to war parties, when they discover
+the footsteps of their enemies."
+
+The Assiniboin Indians (a branch of the Sious) down to about fifty
+years ago captured the bison of the plains in hundreds at a time by
+driving them into large excavated areas below the level of the ground.
+
+Alexander Henry, jun., gives the following description of this
+procedure in 1810:--
+
+"The pounds are of different dimensions, according to the number of
+tents in one camp. The common size is from sixty to one hundred paces
+or yards in circumference, and about five feet in height. Trees are
+cut down, laid upon one another, and interwoven with branches and
+green twigs; small openings are left to admit the dogs to feed upon
+the carcasses of the (old) bulls, which are generally left as useless.
+This enclosure is commonly made between two hummocks, on the declivity
+or at the foot of rising ground. The entrance is about ten paces wide,
+and always fronts the plains. On each side of this entrance commences
+a thick range of fascines, the two ranges spreading asunder as they
+extend to the distance of one hundred yards, beyond which openings are
+left at intervals; but the fascines soon become more thinly planted,
+and continue to spread apart to the right and left until each range
+has been extended about three hundred yards from the pound. The labour
+is then diminished by only placing at intervals three or four cross
+sticks, in imitation of a dog or other animal (sometimes called 'dead
+men'); these extend on the plain for about two miles, and double rows
+of them are planted in several other directions to a still greater
+distance. Young men are usually sent out to collect and bring in the
+buffalo--a tedious task, which requires great patience, for the herd
+must be started by slow degrees. This is done by setting fire to dung
+or grass. Three young men will bring in a herd of several hundred from
+a great distance. When the wind is aft it is most favourable, as they
+can then direct the buffalo with great ease. Having come in sight of
+the ranges, they generally drive the herd faster, until it begins to
+enter the ranges, where a swift-footed person has been stationed with
+a buffalo robe over his head, to imitate that animal; but sometimes a
+horse performs this business. When he sees buffaloes approaching he
+moves slowly toward the pound until they appear to follow him; then he
+sets off at full speed, imitating a buffalo as well as he can, with
+the herd after him. The young men in the rear now discover themselves,
+and drive the herd on with all possible speed. There is always a
+sentinel on some elevated spot to notify the camp when the buffalo
+appear; and this intelligence is no sooner given than every man,
+woman, and child runs to the ranges that lead to the pound to prevent
+the buffalo from taking a wrong direction. Then they lie down between
+the fascines and cross sticks, and, if the buffalo attempt to break
+through, the people wave their robes, which causes the herd to keep
+on, or turn to the opposite side, where other persons do the same.
+When the buffalo have been thus directed to the entrance of the pound,
+the Indian who leads them rushes into it and out at the other side,
+either by jumping over the enclosure or creeping through an opening
+left for that purpose. The buffalo tumble in pell-mell at his heels,
+almost exhausted, but keep moving around the enclosure from east to
+west, and never in a direction against the sun. What appeared
+extraordinary to me on those occasions was that, when word was given
+to the camp of the near approach of the buffalo, the dogs would skulk
+away from the pound and not approach until the herd entered. Many
+buffaloes break their legs and some their necks in jumping into the
+pound, as the descent is generally six or eight feet, and stumps are
+left standing there. The buffalo being caught, the men assembled at
+the enclosure, armed with bows and arrows; every arrow has a
+particular mark of the owner, and they are let fly until the whole
+herd is killed. Then the men enter the pound, and each claims his own;
+but commonly there is what they term the master of the pound, who
+divides the animals and gives each tent an equal share, reserving
+nothing for himself. But in the end he is always the best provided
+for; everyone is obliged to send him a certain portion, as it is in
+his tent that the numerous ceremonies relating to the pound are
+observed. There the young men are always welcome to feast and smoke,
+and no women are allowed to enter, as that tent is set apart for the
+affairs of the pound. Horses are sometimes used to collect and bring
+in buffalo, but this method is less effectual than the other; besides,
+it frightens the herds and soon causes them to withdraw to a great
+distance. When horses are used the buffalo are absolutely driven into
+the pound, but when the other method is pursued they are in a manner
+enticed to their destruction."
+
+A somewhat similar method was adopted by the northern Kris and
+Athapascans for the capture of reindeer.
+
+As regards means of transport, the use of dogs as draught animals was
+by no means confined to the Eskimo: they were used in wintertime to
+draw sledges over the snow or ice by nearly all the northern Indian
+tribes, and by the people of the Rocky Mountains and Pacific coast.
+After the Amerindians of the prairies and plains received horses
+(indirectly through the Spaniards of Mexico)[12] they sometimes
+employed the smaller and poorer kind of ponies as pack animals; but
+for the most part throughout the summer season of the Canadian
+Dominion--from May to October--transport and travel by canoe was the
+favourite method.
+
+[Footnote 12: See p. 150.]
+
+There were four very well marked types of canoe or boat in British
+North America. There was the already-described Eskimo _kayak_, made of
+leather stretched over a framework of wood or bone; the Amerindians of
+the Dominion, south of the Eskimo and east of the Rocky Mountains,
+used the familiar "birch-bark" canoe;[13] the peoples of the Pacific
+coast belt possessed something more like a boat, made out of a
+hollowed tree trunk and built up with planks; and the tribes of the
+Upper Mississippi used round coracles. Here are descriptions of all
+three kinds of Amerindian canoe from the pens of eighteenth-century
+pioneers: The birch-bark canoe used on the Great Lakes was about
+thirty-three feet long by four and a half feet broad, and formed of
+the smooth rind or bark of the birch tree fastened outside a wooden
+framework. It was lined with small splints of juniper cedar, and the
+vessel was further strengthened with ribs of the same wood, of which
+the two ends were fastened to the gunwales. Several bars rather than
+seats were laid across the canoe from gunwale to gunwale, the small
+roots of the spruce fir afforded the fibre with which the bark was
+sewn or stitched, and the gum of the pine tree supplied the place of
+tar and oakum. Bark, some spare fibre, and gum were always carried in
+each canoe for repairs, which were constantly necessary (one
+continually reads in the diaries of the pioneers of "stopping to gum
+the canoe"). The canoes were propelled with paddles, and occasionally
+a sail.
+
+[Footnote 13: In the far north-west, on the rivers of the Pacific
+slope, the natives used spruce-fir bark instead of birch.]
+
+The aborigines of Newfoundland--the Beothiks--are said to have known
+the birch-bark canoe, framework canoe, but to have employed
+"dug-outs"--hollowed tree trunks. The canoes of the Mandans of the
+upper Missouri basin were like coracles, of circular form, made of a
+framework of bent willow branches over which was stretched a raw
+bison-hide with the hair inside. This was sewn tightly round the
+willow rim. In lieu of a paddle they use a pole about five feet long,
+split at one end to admit a piece of board about two feet long and
+half a foot broad, which was lashed to the pole and so formed a kind
+of cross. There was but one for each canoe. The paddler of this
+coracle made directly for the opposite shore; every stroke he gave
+turned his "dish" almost entirely round; to recover his position and
+go on his intended route, he must give a stroke on the other side,
+which brought him up again; and so on till he got over, not without
+drifting down sometimes nearly a mile.
+
+Alexander Henry, jun., thus describes a canoe of the Clatsop people on
+the Lower Columbia (Pacific coast, opposite Vancouver Island): "This
+was a war canoe--the first of the kind I had seen. She was about
+thirty-six feet long and wide in proportion, the stem rising upright
+about six feet, on top of which was a figure of some imaginary monster
+of uncouth sculpture, having the head of a carnivorous animal with
+large erect ears but no body, clinging by arms and legs to the upper
+end of the canoe, and grinning horribly. The ears were painted green,
+the other parts red and black. The stern also rose about five feet in
+height, but had no figure carved on it. On each side of both stem and
+stern broad strips of wood rose about four feet, having holes cut in
+them to shoot arrows through. She had a high sprit-sail made of
+handkerchiefs and pieces of gunny-cloth or jute, forming irregular
+stripes, I am told these Indians commonly have pieces of squared
+timber, not unlike a three-inch plank, high and broad, perforated to
+shoot arrows through; this is fixed on the bow of the war canoe to
+serve as bulwarks in battle."
+
+Canoe voyages were mainly embarked on for trading; but in all
+probability before the coming of the European there was little trading
+done between one tribe and another, except in the region _west_ of the
+Rocky Mountains, in which--especially to the north--the Amerindians
+were so different in their habits and customs from those dwelling east
+of the mountains as to suggest that they must very occasionally have
+been in touch with some world outside America, such as Hawaii,
+Kamschatka, or Japan. In these Pacific coastlands they used a white
+seashell as a currency and a medium of exchange. So also did the
+Iroquois people and the southern Algonkin tribes, in the form of
+"wampum". The principal articles of barter were skins of fur animals,
+porcupine quills, dogs, slaves, and women.
+
+First Hunting (to supply food), then Trading in the products of the
+chase, and lastly War were the main subjects which occupied the
+Amerindian's thoughts before the middle of the nineteenth century.
+They usually went to war to turn other tribes out of profitable
+hunting grounds or productive fisheries; or because they wanted slaves
+or more wives; or because a chief or a medicine man had a dream; or
+because some other notability felt he had given way too much to tears
+over some personal or public sorrow, and must show his manliness by
+killing the people of another tribe. In their wars they knew no mercy
+when their blood was up, and frequently perpetrated frightful
+cruelties for the sheer pleasure of seeing human suffering. Yet these
+devilish moods would alternate with fits of sentimentality. A man or a
+woman would suddenly take a war prisoner, or a person who was wounded
+or half-tortured to death, under their protection, and a short time
+afterwards the whole war party would be greeting this rescued wretch
+(usually a man--they were far more pitiless towards women) as brother,
+son, or friend, and even become quite maudlin over a scratch or a
+bruise; whereas an hour or so before they were on the point of
+disembowelling, or of driving splinters up the nails and setting them
+on fire. In warfare they often gave way to cannibalism.
+
+Though extremely fond of singing--they sang when they were merry; when
+they thought they were going to die; when they were victorious in
+hunting, love, or war; when they were defeated; when they were
+paddling a canoe or sewing a moccasin--they had but a poor range of
+musical instruments. Most of the tribes used flutes made out of the
+wing bones of cranes or out of reeds, and some had small trumpets of
+wood, bark, or buffalo horn. The Pacific coast Indians made gongs or
+"xylophones" out of blocks or slabs of resonant wood.
+
+Here is a specimen of Amerindian singing. It is the song which
+accompanied the famous Calumet dance in celebration of the peacemaking
+qualities of tobacco-smoking. It was taken down by the Jesuit
+missionaries in the seventeenth century from the Ilinwa (Illinois)
+Algonkin Indians of the middle west, and its notation reminds one of
+Japanese music.
+
+  [Musical notation and words:
+
+     THE CALUMET OR TOBACCO-PIPE DANCE
+
+     Ni-na-ha-ni,  ni-na-ha-ni,  ni-na-ha-ni
+     na-ni  on-go;  Ni-na-ha-ni,  ni-na-ha-ni,
+     ni-na-ha-ni  ho-ho; ni-na-ha-ni,  ni-na-ha-ni,
+     ni-na-ha-ni, Ka-wa ban-no-ge  at-chi-cha
+     Ko-ge  a-ke  a-w[¯a]; Ba-no-ge  a-chi-cha
+     sha-go-be  hé, hé,  hé! Min-tin-go  mi-ta-de
+     pi-ni,  pi-ni  hé!  A-chi-cha  lé  ma-chi
+     mi nam ba mik-tan-de, mik-tan-de  pi-ni, pini hé!]
+
+
+     Ninahani, &c, ongo; ninahani, &c, hoho; ninahani, &c.
+     Kawa bannoge atchicha Koge ake aw[¯a];
+     Banoge atchicha shagobe hé hé hé! Mintingo mitade
+     Pini pini hé! Atchicha lé machi mi nam ba miktande,
+     Miktande pini pini hé!
+
+Dancing was little else than posturing and jumping in masks--usually
+made to look like the head of a wild beast. But the men were usually
+very athletic. Wrestling competitions were almost universal,
+especially as a means of winning a wife. The conqueror in a wrestling
+match took the wife or wives of the defeated man. Their running powers
+for endurance and speed became justly celebrated.
+
+"Their principal and most inveterate game is that of the hoop," writes
+Alexander Henry, sen., "which proves as ruinous to them as the platter
+does to the Saulteurs (Ojibwé)." This game was played in the following
+manner. A hoop was made about two feet in diameter, nearly covered
+with dressed leather, and trimmed with quillwork, feathers, bits of
+metal, and other trinkets, on which were certain particular marks. Two
+persons played at the same time, by rolling the hoop and accompanying
+it, one on each side; when it was about to fall, each gently threw one
+arrow in such a manner that the hoop might fall upon it, and according
+to that mark on the hoop which rested on the arrows they reckoned the
+game. They also played another game by holding some article in one
+hand, or putting it into one of two shoes, the other hand or shoe
+being empty. They had another game which required forty to fifty small
+sticks, as thick as a goose quill and about a foot long; these were
+all shuffled together and then divided into two bunches, and according
+to the even or odd numbers of sticks in the bunch chosen, the players
+lost or won.
+
+A favourite game amongst the Ojibwé is described as "the hurdle",
+which is another name for the Canadian national game of La Crosse.
+When about to play, the men, of all ages, would strip themselves
+almost naked, but dress their hair in great style, put ornaments on
+their arms, and belts round their waists, and paint their faces and
+bodies in the most elaborate style. Each man was provided with "a
+hurdle", an instrument made of a small stick of wood about three feet
+long, bent at the end to a small circle, in which a loose piece of
+network is fixed, forming a cavity big enough to receive a leather
+ball about the size of a man's fist. Everything being prepared, a
+level plain about half a mile long was chosen, with proper barriers or
+goals at each end. Having previously formed into two equal parts, they
+assembled in the very middle of the field, and the game began by
+throwing up the ball perpendicularly in the air, when instantly both
+parties (writes an eyewitness) "formed a singular group of naked men,
+painted in different colours and in the most comical attitudes
+imaginable, holding their rackets elevated in the air to catch the
+ball". Whoever was so fortunate as to catch it in his net ran with it
+to the barrier with all his might, supported by his party; whilst the
+opponents were pursuing and endeavouring to knock the ball out of the
+net. He who succeeded in doing so ran in the same manner towards the
+opposite barrier, and was, of course, pursued in his turn. If in
+danger of being overtaken, he might throw it with his hurdle towards
+any of his associates who happened to be nearer the barrier than
+himself. They had a particular knack of throwing it a great distance
+in this manner, so that the best runners had not always the advantage;
+and, by a peculiar way of working their hands and arms while running,
+the ball never dropped out of their "hurdle".
+
+"The best of three heats wins the game, and, besides the honour
+acquired on such occasions, a considerable prize is adjudged to the
+victors. The vanquished, however, generally challenge their
+adversaries to renew the game the next day, which is seldom refused.
+The game then becomes more important, as the honour of the whole
+village is at stake, and it is carried on with redoubled impetuosity,
+every object which might impede them in their career is knocked down
+and trodden under foot without mercy, and before the game is decided,
+it is a common thing to see numbers sprawling on the ground with
+wounded legs and broken heads, yet this never creates any disputes or
+ill-will after the play is decided" (Alexander Henry, sen.).
+
+It has been computed that in the middle of the eighteenth century the
+Amerindian population of the vast territories now known as the
+Dominion of Canada numbered about 300,000. It now stands at an
+approximate 110,000. The chief diminution has taken place in
+Newfoundland, Lower and Upper Canada, New Brunswick, Assiniboia, and
+British Columbia. There may even have been an increase in the north
+and north-west. The first great blow to the Amerindians of these
+regions was the smallpox epidemic of 1780. The next was the effect of
+the strong drink[14] introduced by the agents of the Hudson's Bay and,
+still more, the two North-west Companies. Phthisis or pulmonary
+consumption also seems to have been introduced from Europe (though
+Hearne thought that the Northern Indians had it before the white man
+came). In fact, before the European invaded America neither Eskimo nor
+Amerindian seem to have had many diseases. They suffered from ulcers,
+scurvy, digestive troubles, rheumatism, headache, bronchitis, and
+heart complaints, but from few, if any, "germ" diseases.
+
+[Footnote 14: Before the white man came to _North_ America the natives
+had no form of intoxicating drink.]
+
+Some of the agents of the North-west Company apologize in their
+writings for the amount of rum that was circulated among the
+Amerindians at the orders of that company to stimulate trade, by
+saying that it was seven parts water. Nevertheless it excited them to
+madness, as the following extracts show. These are mostly taken from
+the journals of Alexander Henry the Younger, but they are typical of
+what was recorded by many other writers who describe the far interior
+of British North America between 1775 and 1835.
+
+"To see a house full of drunken Indians, consisting of men, women, and
+children, is a most unpleasant sight; for, in that condition, they
+often wrangle, pull each other by the hair, and fight. At times, ten
+or twelve of both sexes may be seen fighting each other promiscuously,
+until at last they all fall on the floor, one upon another, some
+spilling rum out of a small kettle or dish which they hold in their
+hands, while others are throwing up what they have just drunk. To
+add to this uproar, a number of children, some on their mothers'
+shoulders, and others running about and taking hold of their clothes,
+are constantly bawling, the elder ones, through fear that their
+parents may be stabbed, or that some other misfortune may befal them
+in the fray. These shrieks of the children form a very unpleasant
+chorus to the brutal noise kept up by their drunken parents."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"In a drinking match at the Hills yesterday, Gros Bras (Thick Arms) in
+a fit of jealousy stabbed Aupusoi to death with a hand-dague (dagger);
+the first stroke opened his left side, the second his belly, and the
+third his breast; he never stirred, although he had a knife in his
+belt, and died instantly. Soon after this Aupusoi's brother, a boy
+about ten years of age, took the deceased's gun, loaded it with two
+balls, and approached Gros Bras's tent. Putting the muzzle of the gun
+through the door the boy fired the two balls into his breast and
+killed him dead, just as he was reproaching his wife for her affection
+for Aupusoi, and boasting of the revenge he had taken. The little
+fellow ran into the woods and hid. Little Shell (Petite Coquille)
+found the old woman, Aupusoi's mother, in her tent; he instantly
+stabbed her. Ondainoiache then came in, took the knife, and gave her a
+second stab. Little Shell, in his turn taking the knife, gave a third
+blow. In this manner did these two rascals continue to murder the old
+woman, as long as there was any life in her. The boy escaped into
+Langlois' house, and was kept hid until they were all sober. Next
+morning a hole was dug in the ground, and all three were buried
+together. This affair kept the Indians from hunting, as Gros Bras was
+nearly related to the principal hunters."
+
+     *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Grand' Gueule stabbed Perdrix Blanche with a knife in six places.
+Perdrix Blanche fighting with his wife, fell in the fire and almost
+roasted, but had strength enough left notwithstanding his wounds to
+bite her nose off."
+
+     *       *       *       *       *
+
+"In the first drinking match a murder was committed in an Assiniboine
+tent, but fortunately it was done by an Ojibwé. L'Hiver stabbed
+Mishewashence to the heart three times, and killed him instantly. The
+wife and children cried out, and some of my people ran to the tent
+just as L'Hiver came out with the bloody knife in his hand, expecting
+we would lay hold of him. The first person he met was William Henry,
+whom he attempted to stab in the breast; but Henry avoided the stroke,
+and returned the compliment with a blow of his cudgel on the fellow's
+head. This staggered him; but instantly recovering he made another
+attempt to stab Henry. Foiled in this design, and observing several
+coming out of the fort, he took to his heels and ran into the woods
+like a deer. I chased him with some of my people, but he was too fleet
+for us. We buried the murdered man, who left a widow and five
+helpless orphans, having no relations on this river. The behaviour of
+two of the youngest was really piteous while we were burying the body;
+they called upon their deceased father not to leave them, but to
+return to the tent, and tried to prevent the men from covering the
+corpse with earth, screaming in a terrible manner; the mother was
+obliged to take them away."
+
+     *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Men and women have been drinking a match for three days and nights,
+during which it has been drink, fight--drink, fight--drink, and fight
+again--guns, axes, and knives being their weapons--very disagreeable."
+
+     *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Mithanasconce was so troublesome (in drink) that we were obliged to
+tie him with ropes to prevent his doing mischief. He was stabbed in
+the back in three different places about a month ago. His wounds were
+still open, and had an ugly appearance; in his struggling to get loose
+they burst out afresh and bled a great deal. We had much trouble to
+stop the blood, as the fellow was insensible to pain or danger; his
+only aim was to bite us. We had some narrow escapes, until we secured
+his mouth, and then he fell asleep."
+
+     *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Some Red Lake Indians having traded here for liquor which they took
+to their camp, quarrelled amongst themselves. One jumped on another
+and bit his nose off. It was some time before the piece could be
+found; but, at last, by tumbling and tossing the straw about, it was
+recovered, stuck on, and bandaged, as best the drunken people could,
+in hopes it would grow again" (Alexander Henry, jun.).
+
+     *       *       *       *       *
+
+As regards drunkenness, several authors among the early explorers
+declared that the French Canadian voyageurs were more disagreeable
+when drunk even than the Amerindians, for their quarrels were noisier
+and more deadly. "Indeed I had rather have fifty drunken Indians in
+the fort than sixty-five drunken Canadians", writes Alexander Henry in
+1810. And yet the extracts I have given from his journal show that it
+would be hard to beat the Amerindians for disagreeable ferocity when
+intoxicated.
+
+Henry, summing up his experiences before leaving for the Pacific coast
+in 1811, writes these remarks in his diary:--
+
+"What a different set of people they would be, were there not a drop
+of liquor in the country! If a murder is committed among the Saulteurs
+(Ojibwés), it is always in a drinking match. We may truly say that
+liquor is the root of all evil in the north-west. Great bawling and
+lamentation went on, and I was troubled most of the night for liquor
+to wash away grief."
+
+As a rule, the treatment of the Amerindians by the British and French
+settlers was good, except the thrusting of alcohol on them. But in
+Newfoundland a great crime was perpetrated. Between the middle of the
+seventeenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries the British
+fishermen and settlers on the coasts of Newfoundland had _destroyed_
+the native population of Beothik Indians.
+
+Before the English arrived on the coasts of Newfoundland the Beothiks
+lived an ideal life for savages. They were well clothed with beasts'
+skins, and in the winter these were supplemented by heavy fur robes.
+Countless herds of reindeer roamed through the interior, passing from
+north to south in the autumn and returning in the spring. Vast flocks
+of willow grouse (like ptarmigan) were everywhere to be met with; the
+many lakes were covered with geese, swans, and ducks. The woods were
+full of pigeons; the salmon swarmed up the rivers to breed; the sea
+round the coasts was--except in the wintertime--the richest fishery in
+the world. They caught lobsters in the rock pools, and speared or
+clubbed seals and great walruses for their flesh and oil. An
+occasional whale provided them with oil, blubber, and meat. The Great
+Auk--which could not fly--swarmed in millions on the cliffs and
+islets. So abundant was this bird, and so fat, that its body was
+sometimes used as fuel, or as a lamp. In the summertime their fish and
+flesh diet could be varied by the innumerable berries growing
+wild--strawberries, raspberries, currants, cranberries, and
+whortleberries. The _capillaire_ plant yielded a lusciously sweet,
+sugary substance.[15]
+
+[Footnote 15: This was the Moxie plum or creeping snowberry
+(_Chiogenes hispidula_).]
+
+[Illustration: GREAT AUKS, GANNETS, PUFFINS, AND GUILLEMOTS]
+
+The Beothiks were a tall, good-looking people, with large black eyes
+and a light-coloured skin. The early French and Biscayan seamen, who
+resorted to the coasts of Newfoundland for the whale fisheries,
+reported these "Red Indians" to be "an ingenious and tractable people,
+if well used, who were ready to help the white men with great labour
+and patience in the killing, cutting-up, and boiling of whales, and
+the making of train oil, without other expectation of reward than a
+little bread or some such small hire".
+
+Yet from the beginning of the seventeenth century the Beothiks--then
+about four thousand in number--were ill-treated by the European
+fishermen who frequented the Newfoundland coasts. They soon greatly
+decreased in numbers, and became very shy of white men. The French,
+when they occupied the south coast of Newfoundland, brought over
+Mikmak Indians to chase and kill the Beothiks or "Red" Indians. The
+Eskimo attacked them from Labrador. Finally, when Newfoundland became
+British in the eighteenth century, the English fishermen settlers and
+fur hunters attacked and slew the harmless Beothiks with a wanton
+ferocity (described by horror-struck officers of the British navy)
+which is as bad as anything attributed to the Spaniards in Cuba and
+Hispaniola. By about 1830 they were all extinct. As late as 1823 the
+following anecdote is recorded of two English settlers whose names are
+hidden behind the initials C and A. "When near Badger Bay they fell in
+with an Indian man and woman, who approached, apparently soliciting
+food. The man was first killed, and the woman, who was afterwards
+found to be his daughter, in despair remained calmly to be fired at,
+when she was also shot through the chest and immediately expired. This
+was told Mr. Cormack by the man who did the deed." Even English women
+in the late eighteenth century were celebrated for their skill "in
+shooting Red Indians and seals".
+
+"For a period of nearly two hundred years this barbarity had
+continued, and it was considered meritorious to shoot a Red Indian.
+'To go to look for Indians' came to be as much a phrase as to look for
+partridges (ptarmigan). They were harassed from post to post, from
+island to island; their hunting and fishing stations were
+unscrupulously seized by the invading English. They were shot down
+without the least provocation, or captured to be exposed as
+curiosities to the rabble at the fairs of the western towns of
+Christian England at twopence a piece."[16]
+
+[Footnote 16: These are the remarks of an English chaplain in the
+island, quoted by the Rev. George Patterson, who contributed a most
+interesting article on the vanished Beothiks of Newfoundland to the
+Royal Society of Canada in 1891.]
+
+Too late--when the worry and anxiety of the Napoleonic wars were
+over--the British Government sent a commission of naval officers to
+enquire into the treatment of the Beothiks by the settlers. One woman
+alone remained, as a frightened semi-captive, to be consoled and
+soothed. There are Indians in the south of Newfoundland at the present
+day, but they are Mikmaks who come over from the adjoining regions of
+Cape Breton and Nova Scotia. So tender, indeed, is the modern
+government of the island towards these (out of compunction for the
+past) that they are allowed to kill the reindeer and other wild
+animals without the licence which is exacted from white people, and so
+are actually injuring Newfoundland's resources!
+
+Since the great Dominion of Canada was brought into existence in 1871
+as a unified, responsible government, the treatment of the remaining
+Amerindian natives of British North America has been admirable; and
+splendid work has been done in reclaiming them to a wholesome
+civilization by the Moravian, Roman Catholic, and Church of England
+missionaries.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The Hudson Bay Explorers and the British Conquest of all Canada
+
+
+In a general way the discovery of the main features of the vast
+Canadian Dominion may be thus apportioned amongst the different
+European nations. First came the British, led by an Italian pilot.
+They discovered Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland.
+Then came the Portuguese, who discovered the north-east of
+Newfoundland and the coast of Labrador, while a French expedition
+under an Italian captain reached to Nova Scotia and southern
+Newfoundland. A Spanish expedition under a Portuguese leader shortly
+afterwards reached the coast of New Brunswick. After that the French
+from Brittany, Normandy, and the west coast of France laid bare the
+_west_ coast of Newfoundland, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the River St.
+Lawrence, and the Great Lakes.
+
+Sir Francis Drake led the way in the exploration of the north-west
+coast of North America. He reached, in 1579, as far north on that side
+as the country of Oregon, which he christened New Albion. This action
+stirred up the Spaniards, who explored the coast of California, and in
+1591-2 sent an Ionian Island pilot, Apostolos Valeriano (commonly
+called Juan de Fuca), in charge of an expedition to discover the
+imagined Straits of Anian. He gave strength to this idea of a
+continuous water route across temperate North America by entering (in
+1592) the straits, since called Juan de Fuca, between Vancouver Island
+and the modern State of Washington, and passing thence into the
+Straits of Georgia, which bear a striking resemblance in their
+features to the Straits of Magellan.
+
+French explorers and adventurers, as we have seen, penetrated from the
+basin of the St. Lawrence to the north and west until they touched the
+southern extension of Hudson Bay (James's Bay), discovered Lake
+Winnipeg and the Saskatchewan Rivers, the upper Missouri and the whole
+course of the Mississippi, and finally recorded the existence of the
+Rocky Mountains.
+
+Parallel with these movements the British discovered the broad belt of
+sea between Greenland and North America and the whole area of Hudson
+Bay. After the French had ceased to reign in North America, the
+British were to reveal the great rivers flowing into the Arctic Ocean,
+the coasts and islands of the Arctic Ocean, the Yukon River, and the
+coasts and islands of British Columbia and Alaska.
+
+The first Europeans, however, to reach Alaska were Russians led by
+Vitus Bering, a great Danish sea captain in the Russian service.
+Bering was born in 1680 at Horsens, in the province of Aarhuus, E.
+Denmark, and entered the service of Peter the Great, who was desirous
+of knowing where Asia terminated and America began. Bering discovered
+the straits which bear his name in 1728, and in 1741 was wrecked and
+died on Bering's Island. Captain James Cook, the British discoverer of
+Australia and of so many Pacific islands, completed the work of Bering
+in 1788 in charting the north-west American coast right into the
+Arctic Ocean.
+
+It has already been related in Chapter III how the Hudson's Bay
+Chartered Company came to be founded. Soon after their first pioneers
+were established, in 1670, at Fort Nelson, on the west coast of Hudson
+Bay, near where York Factory now stands, there was born--or brought
+out from England as an infant--a little boy named Henry Kellsey, who
+as a child took a great fancy to the Amerindians who came to trade at
+Fort Nelson. As he played with them, and they returned his affection,
+he learnt their language, and--for some inconceivable reason--this
+gave great offence to the stupid governor of the fort (indeed, when
+Kellsey as a grown man, some years afterwards, compiled a vocabulary
+of the Kri language for the use of traders, the Hudson's Bay Company
+ordered it to be suppressed). Stupid Governor Geyer not only objected
+to Kellsey picking up the Kri language, but punished him most severely
+for that and for his boyish tricks and jokes; so much so, that
+Kellsey, when he was about ten years old, ran away with the returning
+Indians, some of whom had grown very fond of him whilst they stayed at
+Fort Nelson.
+
+Six years afterwards an Indian brought to the governor of the fort a
+letter written by Kellsey in charcoal on a piece of white birch bark.
+In this he asked the governor's pardon for running away, and his
+permission to return to the fort. As a kind reply was sent, Kellsey
+appeared not long afterwards grown into a young man, accompanied by an
+Indian wife and attended by a party of Indians. He was dressed exactly
+like them, but differed from them in the respect which he showed to
+his native wife. She attempted to accompany her husband into the
+factory or place of business, and the governor stopped her; but
+Kellsey at once told him in English that he would not enter himself if
+his wife was not suffered to go with him, and so the governor
+relented. After this Kellsey (who must then have been about seventeen)
+seems to have regularly enrolled himself in 1688 in the service of the
+Company, and he was employed as a kind of commercial traveller who
+made long journeys to the north-west to beat up a fur trade for the
+Company and induce tribes of Indians to make long journeys every
+summer to the Company's factory with the skins they had secured
+between the autumn and the spring. In this way Kellsey penetrated
+into the country of the Assiniboines, and he finally reached a more
+distant tribe or nation called by the long name of Néwátamipoet.[1]
+Kellsey first of all made for Split Lake, up the Nelson River, and
+thence paddled westwards in his canoe for a distance of 71 miles. Here
+he abandoned the canoe, and, for what he estimated as 316 miles, he
+tramped through a wooded country, first covered with fir and pine
+trees, and farther on with poplar and birch. Apparently he then
+reached a river flowing into Reindeer Lake. In a general way his steps
+must have taken him in the direction of Lake Athapaska.
+
+[Footnote 1: Spelt in the documents of the Hudson's Bay Company,
+Naywatame-poet.]
+
+On the way he had much trouble with the Assiniboin Indians and Kris,
+with whom he had caught up, and with whom he was to travel in the
+direction of these mysterious Néwátamipoets. The last-named tribe, who
+were probably of the Athapaskan group, had killed, a few months
+previously, three of the Kri women, and the Kri Indians who belonged
+to Kellsey's party were bent, above all things, on attacking the
+Néwátamipoets and punishing them for this outrage. Kellsey only wished
+to open up peaceful relations with them and create a great trade in
+furs with the Hudson's Bay Company, so he kept pleading with the
+Indians not to go to war with the Néwátamipoets. On this journey,
+however, one of the Kri Indians fell ill and died. The next day the
+body was burnt with much ceremony--first the flesh, and then the
+bones--and after this funeral the companions of the dead man began to
+reason as to the cause of his death, and suddenly blamed Kellsey.
+Kellsey had obstructed them from their purpose of avenging their slain
+women, therefore the gods of the tribe were angry and claimed this
+victim in the man who had died. Kellsey was very near being sent to
+the other world to complete the sacrifice; but he arranged for "a
+feast of tobacco"--in other words, a calm deliberation and the smoking
+of the pipe of peace. He explained to the angry Indians that his
+Company had not supplied him with guns and ammunition with which to go
+to war, but to induce them to embark on the fur trade and to kill wild
+animals for their skins. If, instead of this, they went to war, or
+injured him, they need never again go down to Fort Nelson for any
+further trade or supplies. Four days afterwards, however, the
+attention of the whole party was concentrated on bison.
+
+Bison could now be seen in abundance. Kellsey was already acquainted
+with the musk ox, which he had seen in the colder regions near to
+Hudson Bay; but the bison seemed to him quite different, with horns
+growing like those of an English ox, black and short. In the middle of
+September he reached the country of the Néwátamipoets, and presented
+to their chief, on behalf of the Hudson's Bay Company, a present of
+clothes, knives, awls, tobacco, and a gun, gunpowder, and shot. On
+this journey Kellsey encountered the grizzly bear, a more common
+denizen of the western regions of North America. According to his own
+account, he and one of the Indians with him were attacked by two
+grizzly bears and obliged to climb into the branches of trees. The
+bears followed them; but Kellsey fired and killed one, and later on
+the other also. For this feat he was greatly reverenced by the
+Indians, and received the name of Mistopashish, or "little giant".
+Kellsey afterwards rose to be governor of York Fort, on the west coast
+of Hudson Bay.
+
+The next great explorer ranging westward from Hudson Bay was Anthony
+Hendry.[2] Anthony Hendry left York factory in 1754, with a company of
+Kri Indians, to make a great journey of exploration to the west, and
+with the deliberate intention of wintering with the natives and not
+returning for that purpose to Hudson Bay. By means of canoe travel and
+portages he reached Oxford Lake. From here he gained Moose Lake, and
+soon afterwards "the broad waters of the Saskatchewan--the first
+Englishman to see this great river of the western plains".[3]
+Twenty-two miles upstream from the point where it reached the
+Saskatchewan he came to a French fort which had only been standing for
+a year, and which represented probably the farthest advance northwards
+of the French Canadians.
+
+[Footnote 2: The young or old reader of this and other books dealing
+with the exploration of the Canadian Dominion will be indeed puzzled
+between the various Hendrys and Henrys. The last-named was a prolific
+stock, from which several notable explorers and servants of the
+fur-trading companies were drawn. In this book a careful distinction
+must be made between the _Anthony_ Hendrey or Hendey, who commenced
+his exploration of the west in 1754; the unrelated _Alexander_ Henry
+the Elder, who journeyed between 1761 and 1776; and the nephew of the
+last-named, Alexander Henry the Younger, whose pioneering explorations
+occurred between 1799 and 1814.]
+
+[Footnote 3: _The Search for the Western Sea_, by Lawrence J. Burpee.]
+
+[Illustration: Map of EASTERN CANADA and NEWFOUNDLAND]
+
+The situation was a rather delicate one, for the Hudson's Bay Company
+was a thorn in the side of French Canada. However, in this
+year--1754--the two nations were not actually at war, and the two
+Frenchmen in charge of the fort received him "in a very genteel
+manner", and invited him into their home, where he readily accepted
+their hospitality. At first they spoke of detaining him till the
+commandant of the fort returned, but abandoned this idea after
+reflection, and Hendry continued his journey up the Saskatchewan. He
+then left the river and marched on foot over the plains which separate
+the North and the South Saskatchewan Rivers. The South Saskatchewan
+was found to be a high stream covered with birch, poplar, elder, and
+fir. He and his Indian guides were searching for the horse-riding
+Blackfeet Indians.[4] All the Amerindians known to the Hudson's Bay
+Company hitherto travelled on foot, using snowshoes in the winter; but
+vague rumours had reached the Company that in the far south-west there
+were great nations of Indians which did all their hunting on
+horseback.
+
+[Footnote 4: See p. 159.]
+
+Hendry had now found them, and he also met a small tribe of
+Assiniboins--the Mekesue or Eagle Indians--who differed from the
+surrounding tribes by going about, at any rate in the summertime,
+absolutely naked. Here, too, between the two Saskatchewans, they saw
+herds of bison on the plains grazing like English cattle. But they
+also found elk (moose), wapiti or red deer, hares, grouse, geese, and
+ducks. He records in his journal: "I went with the young men
+a-buffalo-hunting, all armed with bows and arrows; killed several;
+fine sport. We beat them about, lodging twenty arrows in one beast. So
+expert were the natives that they will take the arrows out of the
+buffalo when they are foaming and raging with pain and tearing up the
+ground with their feet and horns until they fall down." The
+Amerindians killed far more of these splendid beasts than they could
+eat, and from these carcasses they merely took the tongues and a few
+choice pieces, leaving the remainder to the wolves and the grizzly
+bears.
+
+At last they arrived at the temporary village of the Blackfeet. Two
+hundred tents or _tipis_ were pitched in two parallel rows, and down
+this avenue marched Anthony Hendry, gazed at silently by many
+Blackfeet Indians until he reached the large house or lodge of their
+great chief, at the end of the avenue of tents. This lodge was large
+enough to contain fifty persons. The chief received him seated on the
+sacred skin of a white buffalo. The pipe of peace was then produced
+and passed round in silence, each person taking a ceremonial puff.
+Boiled bison beef was then brought to the guests in baskets made of
+willow branches. Hendry told the great chief of the Blackfeet that he
+had been sent by the great leader of the white men at Hudson Bay to
+invite the Blackfeet Indians to come to these eastern waters in the
+summertime, and bring with them beaver and wolf skins, for which they
+would get, in return, guns, ammunition, cloth, beads, and other trade
+goods. But this chief, though he listened patiently, pointed out that
+this fort on Hudson Bay was situated at a very great distance, that
+his men only knew how to ride horses, and not how to paddle canoes.
+Moreover, they could not live without bison beef, and disliked fish.
+
+After leaving the headquarters of the Blackfeet, Hendry rambled over
+the beautiful country of fir woods and pine woods until he must have
+got within sight of the Rocky Mountains, though these are not
+mentioned in his journal. Then, after passing the winter (which did
+not begin as regards cold weather till the 2nd of December, and was
+over at the end of March) he returned to the French fort on the
+Saskatchewan, where he was received by the Commandant, de La Corne,
+with great kindness and hospitality. These Frenchmen, he found, were
+able to speak in great perfection several Indian languages; they were
+well dressed, and courtly in manners, and led a civilized life in
+these distant wilds. They had excellent trade goods and were sincerely
+liked by the Indians, but for some reason or other they lacked
+Brazilian tobacco, which seems to have been a commodity much in favour
+amongst the Indians. With this the Hudson's Bay Company were kept well
+supplied, and that alone enabled them in any degree to compete with
+the French. But in ten years more this French fort would be abandoned
+owing to the cession of Canada to Britain.
+
+The British, in fact, all through the first half of the eighteenth
+century, by their superiority in sea power, were steadily strangling
+the French empire in North America. Acadia, or Nova Scotia, and New
+Brunswick had been, as we have seen, recognized as British in 1713,
+and Newfoundland, also, subject to certain conditions, giving France
+the exclusive right to fish on the _western_ and _northern_ coasts of
+Newfoundland. The result was that when "New France", or Canada and
+Louisiana combined, was at its greatest extent of conquered and
+administered territory, France held but a very limited seacoast from
+which to approach it--just the mouth of the Mississippi, and a little
+bit of Alabama on the south and Cape Breton Island on the east. Cape
+Breton Island was commanded by the immensely strong fortress of
+Louisburg, and the possession of this place gave the French some
+security in entering the Gulf of St. Lawrence through Cabot Straits.
+But Louisburg was captured by the British colonists of New England
+(United States) in 1745; and although it was given back to France
+again, it was reoccupied in 1758, and served as a basis for the
+armaments which were directed against Quebec in 1759, and which
+resulted at the close of that year in the surrender of that important
+city. In 1763 all Canada was ceded to the British, and Louisiana
+(which had become the western barrier of the about-to-be-born United
+States) was ceded to Spain; the French flag flew no more on the
+Continent of North America, save in the two little islands of St.
+Pierre and Miquelon adjoining Newfoundland, wherein it still remains
+as a reminder of the splendid achievements of Frenchmen in America.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+The Pioneers from Montreal: Alexander Henry the Elder
+
+
+After 1763, when the two provinces of Canada were definitely ceded to
+Great Britain, the exploring energies of the Hudson's Bay Fur-trading
+Company revived. But before this rather sluggish organization could
+take full advantage of the cessation of French opposition, independent
+British pioneers were on their way to explore the vast north-west and
+west, soon carrying their marvellous journeys beyond the utmost limits
+reached by La Vérendrye and his sons. Eventually these pioneers, who
+had Montreal for their base and who wisely associated themselves in
+business and exploration with French Canadians, founded in 1784 a
+great trading association known as the North-west Trading Company. A
+few years later certain Scottish pioneers brought a rival exploration
+and trading corporation into existence and called it the "X.Y.
+Company". In 1804 these rival Montreal fur-trading associations were
+fused into a new North-west Trading Company. Between this and the old
+Hudson's Bay Company an intensely bitter rivalry and enmity--almost at
+times a state of war--arose, and continued until 1821, when the
+North-west Company and that of Hudson's Bay amalgamated. It is
+necessary that these dry details should be understood in order that
+the reader may comprehend the motives and reasons which prompted the
+journeys which are about to be described.
+
+Jonathan Carver, of Boston, U.S.A., was perhaps the pioneer of all
+the British traders into the far west of Canada, beyond Lake Superior,
+after Canada had been handed over to the British.[1] In 1766-7 he
+reached the Mississippi at its junction with the St. Peter or
+Minnesota River, and journeyed up it to the land of the Dakota. Thomas
+Currie, of Montreal, in 1770 travelled as far as Cedar Lake,[2] where
+there had been established the French post of Fort Bourbon. He was
+succeeded the next year by James Finlay, who extended his explorations
+to the Saskatchewan, whither he was followed by Alexander Henry the
+Elder in 1775.
+
+[Footnote 1: Carver was not so remarkable for his actual journeys as
+for his confident predictions of a feasible transcontinental route
+being found to the Pacific coast.]
+
+[Footnote 2: The white-barked conifer, which gives its name to this
+lake, is _Thuja occidentalis_. There are no real "cedars" in America.]
+
+Alexander Henry (styled The Elder to distinguish him from his famous
+nephew of the same name) was a native of New Jersey (U.S.A.), where he
+was born in 1739. His parents were well-to-do people of the middle
+class who are believed to have emigrated at the beginning of the
+eighteenth century from the West of England, and to have been related
+to Matthew Henry, the Bible commentator. Their son, Alexander,
+received a good education, and after some commercial apprenticeship at
+Albany (New York) came to Quebec when Canada was occupied by the
+British in 1760; at which period he was about twenty-one years old. He
+was in such a hurry to try a trading adventure in the country of the
+great lakes that he ventured into central Canada before it was
+sufficiently calmed down and reconciled to British rule. The
+hostility, curiously enough, manifested itself much more among the
+Amerindians than the settlers of French blood. These white men had not
+been so well treated by the arrogant French officers and officials as
+much to mind the change to the greater freedom of British government.
+But the Indian chiefs and people loved the French, largely owing to
+the goodness and solicitude of the missionaries.
+
+"The hostility of the Indians", wrote Henry in his journal, travelling
+along the coast of Lake Huron, "was exclusively against the English.
+Between them and my Canadian attendants, there appeared the most
+cordial goodwill. This circumstance suggested one means of escape, of
+which, by the advice of my friend, Campion, I resolved to attempt
+availing myself; namely, that of putting on the dress usually worn by
+such of the Canadians as pursue the trade into which I had entered,
+and assimilating myself, as much as I was able, to their appearance
+and manners. To this end I laid aside my English clothes and covered
+myself only with a cloth passed about the middle; a shirt, hanging
+loose; a 'molton', or blanket coat, and a large, red worsted cap. The
+next thing was to smear my face and hands with dirt and grease; and,
+this done, I took the place of one of my men, and, when the Indians
+approached, used the paddle with as much skill as I possessed. I had
+the satisfaction to find, that my disguise enabled me to pass several
+canoes without attracting the smallest notice."
+
+When he reached Fort Michili-makinak[3] he wrote: "At two o'clock in
+the afternoon, the Chipeways came to my house, about sixty in number,
+and headed by Minaváváná, their chief. They walked in single file,
+each with his tomahawk in one hand and scalping knife in the other.
+Their bodies were naked from the waist upward, except in a few
+examples, where blankets were thrown loosely over the shoulders. Their
+faces were painted with charcoal, worked up with grease; their bodies,
+with white clay, in patterns of various fancies. Some had feathers
+thrust through their noses, and their heads decorated with the
+same.... It is unnecessary to dwell on the sensations with which I
+beheld the approach of this uncouth, if not frightful assemblage.
+
+"The chief entered first, and the rest followed without noise. On
+receiving a sign from the former, the latter seated themselves on the
+floor.
+
+"Minaváváná appeared to be about fifty years of age. He was six feet
+in height, and had, in his countenance, an indescribable mixture of
+good and evil.... Looking steadfastly at me, where I sat in ceremony,
+with an interpreter on either hand and several Canadians behind me, he
+entered at the same time into conversation with Campion, enquiring how
+long it was since I left Montreal, and observing that the English, as
+it would seem, were brave men, and not afraid of death, since they
+dared to come, as I had done, fearlessly among their enemies."
+
+[Footnote 3: The famous place of call (the name means "Turtle Island")
+in the narrow strait between Lakes Huron and Michigan, and near Lake
+Superior. (See p. 230.) But some authorities declare that
+Michili-makinak means "Island of the great wounded person".]
+
+The Indians now gravely smoked their pipes, whilst Henry inwardly
+endured tortures of suspense. At length, the pipes being finished, a
+long pause of silence followed. Then Minaváváná, taking a few strings
+of wampum in his hand, began a long speech, of which it is only
+necessary to give a few extracts:--
+
+"Englishman, it is to you that I speak, and I demand your attention!
+
+"Englishman, although you have conquered the French, you have not yet
+conquered us! We are not your slaves. These lakes, these woods and
+mountains, were left to us by our ancestors. They are our inheritance,
+and we will part with them to none. Your nation supposes that we, like
+the white people, cannot live without bread--and pork--and beef! But,
+you ought to know, that He, the Great Spirit and Master of Life, has
+provided food for us in these spacious lakes, and on these woody
+mountains.
+
+"Englishman, our father, the King of France, employed our young men to
+make war upon your nation. In this warfare many of them have been
+killed, and it is our custom to retaliate, until such time as the
+spirits of the slain are satisfied. But the spirits of the slain are
+to be satisfied in either of two ways. The first is by the spilling of
+the blood of the nation by which they fell; the other by covering the
+bodies of the dead, and thus allaying the resentment of their
+relations. This is done by making presents.
+
+"Englishman, your king has never sent us any presents, nor entered
+into any treaty with us, wherefore he and we are still at war; and,
+until he does these things, we must consider that we have no other
+father, nor friend, among the white men, than the King of France; but,
+for you, we have taken into consideration, that you have ventured your
+life among us in the expectation that we should not molest you. You do
+not come armed with an intention to make war; you come in peace, to
+trade with us, and supply us with necessaries, of which we are in
+want. We shall regard you, therefore, as a brother, and you may sleep
+tranquilly, without fear of the Chipeways.... As a token of our
+friendship, we present you with this pipe to smoke."
+
+When Minaváváná had finished his harangue, an Indian presented Henry
+with a pipe, the which, after he had drawn smoke through it three
+times, was carried back to the chief, and after him to every person in
+the room. This ceremony ended, the chief arose, and gave the
+Englishman his hand, in which he was followed by all the rest.
+
+At the Sault Ste Marie, on the river connecting Lake Superior and
+Huron, Henry spent part of the spring of 1763-4, and engaged with a
+few French Canadians and Indians in making maple sugar, the season for
+which--April--was now at hand.
+
+A temporary house for eight persons was built in a convenient part of
+the maple woods, distant about three miles from the fort. The men
+then gathered the bark of white birch trees, and made out of it
+vessels to hold the sap which was to flow from the incisions they cut
+in the bark of the maple trees. Into these cuts they introduced wooden
+spouts or ducts, and under them were placed the birch-bark vessels.
+When these were filled, the sweet liquid was poured into larger
+buckets, and the buckets were emptied into bags of elkskin containing
+perhaps a hundred gallons. Boilers (probably of metal, introduced by
+the French) were next set up in the camp over fires kept burning day
+and night, and the maple sap thus boiled became, by concentration,
+maple sugar.
+
+The women attended to all the business of sugar manufacture, while the
+men cut wood and went out hunting and fishing to secure food for the
+community; though, as a matter of fact, sugar and syrup were their
+main sustenance during all this absence from home. "I have known
+Indians", wrote Henry, "to live for a time wholly on maple sugar and
+syrup and become fat." The sap of the maple had certain medicinal
+qualities which were exceedingly good for persons who had previously
+been eating little else than meat and fish, so that the three weeks of
+sugar-boiling in Canada was, no doubt, a splendid assistance to the
+health of the natives. On this particular occasion described by Henry,
+the party returned, after three weeks' absence, to the Sault Ste Marie
+with 1600 lb. of maple sugar, and 36 gallons of syrup.[4]
+
+[Footnote 4: There are at least two species of maple in Canada
+yielding sugar from their sap; but the best is _Acer saccharinum_. The
+maple leaf is the national emblem of Canada.]
+
+Henry returned in the summer of 1763 to Fort Michili-makinak. The
+place was then held by a British garrison under Major Etherington.
+Shortly after Henry's arrival, an Ojibwé chief named Wáwátam came
+often to his lodgings, and, taking a great fancy to the Englishman,
+asked leave to become his blood brother. He was about forty-five
+years of age, and of an excellent character amongst his nation. He
+warned Henry that he, Wáwátam, had had bad dreams during the winter,
+in which he had been disturbed "by the noises of evil birds", and gave
+him other roundabout warnings that the Indians of different tribes
+were going to attack the British garrison at Michili-Makinak, and
+endeavour to destroy all the English in Upper Canada. Henry did not
+pay over much attention to this warning, because "the Indian manner of
+speech is so extravagantly figurative".
+
+The King's birthday was celebrated with, no doubt, somewhat tipsy
+rejoicings in the summer of 1763. The Ojibwé Indians outside the fort
+pretended they were going to have a great game of La Crosse with the
+S[¯a]ki or "Fox" Indians. This game was got up to find a pretext for
+entering the fort and taking the British officers and garrison at a
+disadvantage. Some of the officers and soldiers, suspecting nothing in
+the way of danger, were outside the fort by the waterside. However,
+the sport commenced, and suddenly the ball was struck over the pickets
+of the fort. At once the Ojibwés, pretending great ardour in their
+game, came leaping, struggling and shouting over the defences into the
+fort as though "in the unrestrained pursuit of a rude, athletic
+exercise". Once inside the fortifications, they attacked the
+unsuspicious and unarmed soldiers and officers, of whom they killed
+seventy out of ninety.
+
+Henry had not gone with the others, but had stayed in his room writing
+letters. Suddenly he heard the Indian warcry and a noise of general
+confusion. Looking out of his window he saw a crowd of Indians inside
+the fort furiously cutting down and scalping every Englishman they
+could reach. Meantime, the French Canadian inhabitants of the fort
+looked on calmly, neither intervening to stop the Indians, nor
+suffering any injury from them. Realizing that all his fellow
+countrymen were practically destroyed, Henry endeavoured to hide
+himself. He entered the house of his next-door neighbour, a Frenchman,
+and found the whole family at the windows gazing at the scene of blood
+before them. He implored this Frenchman to put him into some place of
+safety until the massacre was over. The latter merely shrugged his
+shoulders and intimated that he could do nothing for him; but a Pani
+Indian woman, a slave of this Frenchman, beckoned to Henry to follow
+her, and hid him in a garret. Then the Indians burst into the house
+and asked the Frenchman if he had got any Englishmen concealed, the
+latter returned an evasive answer, telling them to search for
+themselves. Henry hid himself under a heap of birch-bark vessels,
+which were used in maple-sugar manufacture. The door was unlocked, the
+four Indians dashed in, their bodies covered with blood, and armed
+with tomahawks. The hidden man thought that the throbbing of his heart
+must make a noise loud enough to betray him. The Indians searched the
+garret, and one of them approached Henry so closely as almost to touch
+him; yet he remained undiscovered, possibly owing to the dark colour
+of his clothes and the dim light in the room. Then the Indians, after
+describing to the Frenchman how many they had killed and scalped,
+returned downstairs, and the door was locked behind them.
+
+But the next day the Indians insisted on a further search, and,
+regarding every attempt at concealment as vain, Henry, by a desperate
+resolve, rose from his bed and presented himself in full view to the
+Indians as they entered the room. They were all in a state of
+intoxication and entirely naked. One of them, upwards of six feet in
+height, had all his face and body covered with charcoal and grease,
+but with a large white ring encircling each of his eyes. This man,
+walking up to Henry, seized him with one hand by the collar of his
+coat, and in the other held up a large carving knife, making a feint
+as if to plunge it into his breast, his eyes meanwhile fixed
+steadfastly on those of the Englishman. At length, after some seconds
+of the most anxious suspense, he dropped Henry's arm, saying: "I won't
+kill you," adding that he had often fought in war with the English and
+brought away many scalps, but that on a certain occasion he had lost a
+brother whose name was Musinigon, and that he would adopt Henry in his
+place.
+
+One would like the story to have stopped here at this happy turn of
+events, but Wenniway (as this saviour of Henry was called) entertained
+a very fickle regard for his adopted brother, and, though he once or
+twice intervened, subsequently took no great pains to see that his
+life was spared. However, for the time being he was reprieved, and
+regarded Wenniway as his "master". Nevertheless, he was soon haled out
+of the house by another Indian, apparently coming with Wenniway's
+authority. This man ordered him to undress, and then took away all his
+clothes, giving him such dirty rags or strips of leather as he
+possessed himself. He frankly owned that his motive for stripping him
+was that, as he wished afterwards to kill him, Henry's clothes might
+not be stained with blood! With the intention of assassinating him, in
+fact, he dragged Henry along to a region of bushes and sandhills, and
+then produced a knife and attempted to execute his purpose. But with
+the rage and strength of absolute despair Henry wrenched himself free,
+pushed his would-be murderer on one side, and ran for his life towards
+the fort.
+
+Here Wenniway rather indifferently helped him to take refuge in the
+house of the Frenchman in which he had formerly hidden, but the same
+night he was roused from sleep and ordered to come below, where to his
+surprise he found himself in the presence of three of the British
+officers who had formerly commanded in this fort, and who were now
+prisoners of the Ojibwés. The Indian chiefs for the time being had
+handed these men over to the surveillance of the French Canadians,
+together with the seventeen surviving English soldiers and traders.
+Henry, like the others, was almost without clothes. The French
+Canadian in whose house he had taken refuge refused to give him as
+much as a blanket, but another Canadian, less indifferent to the
+sufferings of a fellow white man, did give him a blanket, but for
+which he would certainly have perished from cold.
+
+The next day he and the other English prisoners were embarked in
+canoes and taken away to Lake Michigan. On reaching the mouth of that
+lake, at the Beaver Islands, the Ojibwé canoes, on account of the fog,
+were obliged to approach the lands of the Ottawa Indians. These last
+suddenly seized the canoes as they entered shallow water, and
+professed great indignation at the capture of Fort Michili-Makinak and
+the slaughter of the Englishmen. They declared their intention of
+saving the survivors, and charged the Ojibwés with being about to kill
+and eat them. By the Ottawa Indians, therefore, the twenty Englishmen
+were carried back again and deposited in Fort Michili-Makinak, which
+was now taken possession of by the Ottawas. The English were still
+held as prisoners. After hearing all the Ojibwés had to say, and
+receiving from them large presents, the Ottawas finally decided to
+restore their English prisoners to the Ojibwés, who consequently took
+them away with ropes tied round their necks, and put them into an
+Indian habitation. Here, as they were starving, they were offered
+loaves of bread, but with the horrible accompaniment of seeing the
+slices cut with knives still covered with the blood of the murdered
+English. The Ojibwés moistened this blood on the knife blades with
+their spittle, and rubbed it on the slices of bread, offering this
+food then to their prisoners, so that they might force them to eat the
+blood of their countrymen.
+
+The next morning, however, there appeared before Ménéhewéhná, the
+great war chief of the Ojibwés, Henry's friend and adopted brother,
+Wáwátam. This man made an earnest speech to the council of Ojibwé
+chiefs and braves, in which he pleaded hard for the Englishman's life,
+at the same time tendering from out of his own goods a considerable
+ransom. After much pipe-smoking and an embarrassing silence, the war
+chief rose to his feet and accepted the ransom, giving Wáwátam
+permission to take away into safety his adopted brother. "Wáwátam led
+me to his lodge, which was at the distance of a few yards only from
+the prison lodge. My entrance appeared to give joy to the whole
+family; food was immediately prepared for me; and I now ate the first
+hearty meal which I had made since my capture. I found myself one of
+the family; and, but that I had still my fears as to the other
+Indians, I felt as happy as the situation could allow."
+
+The next day seven of the English prisoners were killed by the
+Ojibwés, and Henry actually saw their dead bodies being dragged out
+into the open. They had been killed in cold blood by an Indian chief
+who had just arrived from a hunting expedition, and who, not having
+been present at the attack on the fort, now desired to satisfy his
+warlike instincts and his agreement with the policy of the Ojibwés by
+going into the lodge where the English officers and men were tied up,
+and slaughtering seven of them in cold blood.
+
+Shortly afterwards two of the Ojibwés took the fattest amongst the
+dead men, cut off his head, and divided his body into five parts, one
+of which was put into each of five kettles hung over as many fires,
+which were kindled for this purpose at the door of the house in which
+the other prisoners were tied up. They then sent to insist on the
+attendance at their cannibal feast of Wáwátam, the adopted brother and
+protector of Henry. The invitation was delivered after the Amerindian
+fashion. A small cutting of cedar wood about four inches in length
+supplies the place of the written or printed invitation to dinner of
+European civilization, and the man who bore the slip of cedar wood
+gave particulars as to place and time by word of mouth. Guests on
+these occasions were expected to bring their own dish and spoon.
+
+In spite of repugnance, Wáwátam, to save his life and that of Henry,
+was obliged to go. He returned after an absence of half an hour,
+bringing back in his dish the portion given to him--a human hand and a
+large piece of flesh. His objection to eat this gruesome food was
+apparently not very deep or persistent. He excused the custom by
+saying that amongst all Amerindian nations there existed this practice
+of making a war feast from out of the bodies of the slain after a
+successful battle.
+
+Soon after this episode of horror the Ojibwés abandoned Fort
+Michili-Makinak, for fear the English should come to attack it. Henry
+was hidden by his adopted brother, Wáwátam, in a cave, where he found
+himself by the light of the next morning sleeping on a bed of human
+bones, which the night before he had taken to be twigs and boughs. The
+whole of the cave was, in fact, filled with these human remains. No
+one knew or remembered the reason. Henry thought that the cave had
+been an ancient receptacle for the bones of persons who had been
+sacrificed and devoured at war feasts; for, however contemptuous they
+may be of the flesh, the Amerindians paid particular attention
+to the bones of human beings--whether friends, relations, or
+enemies--preserving them unbroken, and depositing them in some
+place kept exclusively for that purpose.
+
+The great chief of the Ojibwés, however, advised that Henry, who had
+rejoined Wáwátam, should be dressed in disguise as an Indian to save
+him from any further harm, for the natives all round about were
+preparing for what they believed to be an inevitable war with the
+English.
+
+"I could not but consent to the proposal, and the chief was so kind as
+to assist my friend and his family in effecting that very day the
+desired metamorphosis. My hair was cut off, and my head shaved, with
+the exception of a spot on the crown, of about twice the diameter of a
+crown piece. My face was painted with three or four different colours;
+some parts of it red, and others black. A shirt was provided for me,
+painted with vermilion, mixed with grease. A large collar of wampum[5]
+was put round my neck, and another suspended on my breast. Both my
+arms were decorated with large bands of silver above the elbow,
+besides several smaller ones on the wrists; and my legs were covered
+with _mitasses_, a kind of hose, made, as is the favourite fashion, of
+scarlet cloth. Over all I was to wear a scarlet blanket or mantle, and
+on my head a large bunch of feathers. I parted, not without some
+regret, with the long hair which was natural to it, and which I
+fancied to be ornamental; but the ladies of the family, and of the
+village in general, appeared to think my person improved, and now
+condescended to call me handsome, even among Indians."
+
+[Footnote 5: Shell beads.]
+
+He then went away to live with his protectors, and with them passed a
+by no means unhappy autumn, winter, and spring, hunting and fishing.
+
+Here are some of his adventures at this period.
+
+"To kill beaver, we used to go several miles up the rivers, before the
+approach of night, and after the dusk came on, suffer the canoe to
+drift gently down the current, without noise. The beavers, in this
+part of the evening, come abroad to procure food, or materials for
+repairing their habitations, and as they are not alarmed by the canoe,
+they often pass it within gunshot.
+
+"On entering the River Aux Sables, Wáwátam took a dog, tied its feet
+together, and threw it into the stream, uttering, at the same time, a
+long prayer, which he addressed to the Great Spirit, supplicating his
+blessing on the chase, and his aid in the support of the family,
+through the dangers of a long winter. Our 'lodge' was fifteen miles
+above the mouth of the stream. The principal animals, which the
+country afforded, were red deer (wapiti), the common American deer,
+the bear, racoon, beaver, and marten.
+
+"The beaver feeds in preference on young wood of the birch, aspen, and
+poplar tree[6]; but, in defect of these, on any other tree, those of
+the pine and fir kinds excepted. These latter it employs only for
+building its dams and houses. In wide meadows, where no wood is to be
+found, it resorts, for all its purposes, to the roots of the rush and
+water lily. It consumes great quantities of food, whether of roots or
+wood; and hence often reduces itself to the necessity of removing into
+a new quarter. Its house has an arched dome-like roof, of an
+elliptical figure, and rises from three to four feet above the surface
+of the water. It is always entirely surrounded by water; but, in the
+banks adjacent, the animal provides holes or _washes_, of which the
+entrance is below the surface, and to which it retreats on the first
+alarm.
+
+"The female beaver usually produces two young at a time, but not
+unfrequently more. During the first year, the young remain with their
+parents. In the second, they occupy an adjoining apartment, and assist
+in building, and in procuring food. At two years old, they part, and
+build houses of their own; but often rove about for a considerable
+time before they fix upon a spot. There are beavers, called, by the
+Indians, _old bachelors_, who live by themselves, build no houses, and
+work at no dams, but shelter themselves in holes. The usual method of
+taking these is by traps, formed of iron, or logs, and baited with
+branches of poplar.
+
+"According to the Indians, the beaver is much given to jealousy. If a
+strange male approaches the cabin, a battle immediately ensues. Of
+this the female remains an unconcerned spectator, careless as to which
+party the law of conquest may assign her. The Indians add that the
+male is as constant as he is jealous, never attaching himself to more
+than one female.
+
+"The most common way of taking the beaver is that of breaking up its
+house, which is done with trenching tools, during the winter, when the
+ice is strong enough to allow of approaching them; and when, also, the
+fur is in its most valuable state.
+
+"Breaking up the house, however, is only a preparatory step. During
+this operation, the family make their escape to one or more of their
+_washes_. These are to be discovered by striking the ice along the
+bank, and where the holes are, a hollow sound is returned. After
+discovering and searching many of these in vain, we often heard the
+whole family together in the same wash. I was taught occasionally to
+distinguish a full wash from an empty one, by the motion of the water
+above its entrance, occasioned by the breathing of the animals
+concealed in it. From the washes, they must be taken out with the
+hands; and in doing this, the hunter sometimes receives severe wounds
+from their teeth. Whilst I was a hunter with the Indians, I thought
+beaver flesh was very good; but after that of the ox was again within
+my reach, I could not relish it. The tail is accounted a luxurious
+morsel.
+
+"One evening, on my return from hunting, I found the fire put out, and
+the opening in the top of the lodge covered over with skins--by this
+means excluding, as much as possible, external light. I further
+observed that the ashes were removed from the fireplace, and that dry
+sand was spread where they had been. Soon after, a fire was made
+withoutside the cabin, in the open air, and a kettle hung over it to
+boil.
+
+"I now supposed that a feast was in preparation. I supposed so only,
+for it would have been indecorous to enquire into the meaning of what
+I saw. No person, among the Indians themselves, would use this
+freedom. Good breeding requires that the spectator should patiently
+wait the result.
+
+"As soon as the darkness of night had arrived, the family, including
+myself, were invited into the lodge. I was now requested not to speak,
+as a feast was about to be given to the dead, whose spirits delight in
+uninterrupted silence.
+
+"As we entered, each was presented with his wooden dish and spoon,
+after receiving which we seated ourselves. The door was next shut, and
+we remained in perfect darkness.
+
+"The master of the family was the master of the feast. Still in the
+dark, he asked everyone, by turn, for his dish, and put into each two
+boiled ears of maize. The whole being served, he began to speak. In
+his discourse, which lasted half an hour, he called upon the manes of
+his deceased relations and friends, beseeching them to be present, to
+assist him in the chase, and to partake of the food which he had
+prepared for them. When he had ended, we proceeded to eat our maize,
+which we did without other noise than what was occasioned by our
+teeth. The maize was not half boiled, and it took me an hour to
+consume my share. I was requested not to break the spikes,[7] as this
+would be displeasing to the departed spirits of their friends.
+
+"When all was eaten, Wáwátam made another speech, with which the
+ceremony ended. A new fire was kindled, with fresh sparks, from flint
+and steel; and the pipes being smoked, the spikes were carefully
+buried, in a hole made in the ground for that purpose, within the
+lodge. This done, the whole family began a dance, Wáwátam singing, and
+beating a drum. The dance continued the greater part of the night, to
+the great pleasure of the lodge. The night of the feast was that of
+the first day of November."
+
+[Footnote 6: _Populus nigra_, called by the French Canadians _liard_.]
+
+[Footnote 7: The grains of maize (Indian corn) grow in compact cells,
+round a pithy core.]
+
+In the month of January, Henry happened to observe that the trunk of a
+very large pine tree was much torn by the claws of a bear, made both
+in going up and down. On further examination he saw there was a large
+opening, in the upper part, near which the smaller branches were
+broken. From these marks, and from the additional circumstances that
+there were no tracks on the snow, there was reason to believe that a
+bear lay concealed in the tree.
+
+He communicated his discovery to his Indian friends, and it was agreed
+that all the family should go together in the morning to cut down the
+tree, the girth of which was not less than eighteen feet! This task
+occupied them for one and a half days with their poor little axes,
+till about two o'clock in the second afternoon the tree fell to the
+ground. For a few minutes everything remained quiet, and Henry feared
+that all his expectations would be disappointed; but, as he advanced
+to the opening, there came out a female bear of extraordinary size,
+which he had shot and killed before she had proceeded many yards.
+
+"The bear being dead, all my assistants approached, and all, but more
+particularly my old mother, (as I was won't to call her), took the
+bear's head in their hands, stroking and kissing it several times;
+begging a thousand pardons for taking away her life; calling her their
+relation and grandmother; and requesting her not to lay the fault upon
+them, since it was truly an Englishman that had put her to death.
+
+"This ceremony was not of long duration; and if it was I that killed
+their grandmother, they were not themselves behindhand in what
+remained to be performed. The skin being taken off, we found the fat
+in several places six inches deep. This, being divided into two parts,
+loaded two persons; and the flesh parts were as much as four persons
+could carry. In all, the carcass must have exceeded five
+hundredweight.
+
+"As soon as we reached the lodge, the bear's head was adorned with all
+the trinkets in the possession of the family, such as silver armbands
+and wristbands, and belts of wampum; and then laid upon a scaffold,
+set up for its reception, within the lodge. Near the nose was placed a
+large quantity of tobacco.
+
+"The next morning no sooner appeared, than preparations were made for
+a feast to the manes. The lodge was cleaned and swept; and the head of
+the bear lifted up, and a new Stroud blanket, which had never been
+used before, spread under it. The pipes were now lit; and Wáwátam blew
+tobacco smoke into the nostrils of the bear, telling me to do the
+same, and thus appease the anger of the bear, on account of my having
+killed her.
+
+"At length, the feast being ready, Wáwátam commenced a speech,
+resembling, in many things, his address to the manes of his relations
+and departed companions; but, having this peculiarity, that he here
+deplored the necessity under which men laboured, thus to destroy their
+_friends_. He represented, however, that the misfortune was
+unavoidable, since without doing so, they could by no means subsist.
+The speech ended, we all ate heartily of the bear's flesh; and even
+the head itself, after remaining three days on the scaffold, was put
+into the kettle. The fat of our bear was melted down, and the oil
+filled six porcupine-skin bags. A part of the meat was cut into
+strips, and fire-dried, after which it was put into the vessels
+containing the oil, where it remained in perfect preservation, until
+the middle of summer."
+
+In the spring of 1762 Henry once more returned to Fort
+Michili-Makinak, and went sugar-making with his Indian companions.
+Whilst engaged in this agreeable task, a child belonging to one of the
+party fell into a kettle of boiling syrup. It was instantly snatched
+out, but with little hope of its recovery. So long, however, as it
+lived, a continual feast was observed; and this was made "to the Great
+Spirit and Master of Life", that he might be pleased to save and heal
+the child. At this feast Henry was a constant guest; and often found
+some difficulty in eating the large quantity of food which, on such
+occasions as these, was put upon his dish.
+
+Several sacrifices were also offered; among which were dogs, killed
+and hung upon the tops of poles, with the addition of blankets and
+other articles. These, also, were yielded to the Great Spirit, in the
+humble hope that he would give efficacy to the medicines employed. But
+the child died. To preserve the body from the wolves it was placed
+upon a scaffold, and then later carried to the borders of a lake, on
+the border of which was the burial ground of the family.
+
+"On our arrival there, which happened in the beginning of April, I did
+not fail to attend the funeral. The grave was made of a large size,
+and the whole of the inside lined with birch bark. On the bark was
+laid the body of the child, accompanied with an axe, a pair of
+snowshoes, a small kettle, several pairs of common shoes, its own
+strings of beads, and--because it was a girl--a carrying belt and a
+paddle. The kettle was filled with meat. All this was again covered
+with bark; and at about two feet nearer the surface logs were laid
+across, and these again covered with bark, so that the earth might by
+no means fall upon the corpse.
+
+"The last act before the burial, performed by the mother, crying over
+the dead body of her child, was that of taking from it a lock of hair
+for a memorial. While she did this, I endeavoured to console her by
+offering the usual arguments: that the child was happy in being
+released from the miseries of this present life, and that she should
+forbear to grieve, because it would be restored to her in another
+world, happy and everlasting. She answered that she knew it, and that
+by the lock of hair she should discover her daughter; for she would
+take it with her. In this she alluded to the day when some pious hand
+would place in her own grave, along with the carrying belt and paddle,
+this little relic, hallowed by maternal tears."
+
+After many ups and downs of hope and despair, and many narrow escapes
+of being killed and made into broth for warlike Ojibwés, Henry at
+length obtained permission to travel with a party of Ojibwé Indians
+who were invited to visited Sir William Johnson at Niagara. This
+British Governor of Canada was attempting to enter into friendly
+relations with the Amerindian tribes, and induce them to accept
+quietly the transference of Canada from French to English control.
+
+[Illustration: SCENE ON CANADIAN RIVER: WILD SWANS FLYING UP DISTURBED
+BY BEAR]
+
+Before starting, however, to interview this great White Governor, the
+Ojibwés decided to consult their oracle, the Great Turtle, after which
+Fort Michili-Makinak was named.[8] Behind Fort Michili-Makinak is an
+extraordinary mound or hill of stone supposed to resemble this reptile
+exactly, and in fact to be in some way the residence of a supernatural
+giant turtle.
+
+[Footnote 8: Michili, pronounced "Mishili", means "great", and
+Makinak, "turtle", in the translation of some Canadian writers. The
+turtle in question is, of course, not the turtle of sea waters, but
+the Snapping Turtle (_Chelydra serpentina_) found in most Canadian
+lakes and the big rivers of North America, east of the Rocky
+Mountains.]
+
+For invoking and consulting the Great Turtle, the first thing to be
+done was to build a large house, within which was placed a kind of
+tent, for the use of the priest and reception of the spirit. The tent
+was formed of moose skins, hung over a framework of wood made out of
+five pillars of five different species of timber, about ten feet in
+height and eight inches in diameter, set up in a circle of four feet
+in diameter, with their bases two feet deep in the soil. At the top
+the pillars were bound together by a circular hoop of withies. Over
+the whole of this edifice were spread the moose skins, covering it at
+top and round the sides, and made fast with thongs of the same, except
+that on one side a part was left unfastened, to admit of the entrance
+of the priest.
+
+The ceremonies did not commence till the approach of night. To give
+light inside the house several fires were kindled round the tent.
+Nearly the whole village assembled in the house, Alexander Henry among
+the rest. It was not long before the priest appeared, almost in a
+state of nakedness. As he approached the tent the skins were lifted
+up, as much as was necessary to allow of his creeping under them on
+his hands and knees. His head was scarcely within side when the
+edifice, massive as it has been described, began to shake; and the
+skins were no sooner let fall than the sounds of numerous voices were
+heard beneath them--some yelling, some barking as dogs, some howling
+like wolves; and in this horrible concert were mingled screams and
+sobs of despair, anguish, and the sharpest pain. Articulate speech was
+also uttered, as if from human lips, but in a tongue unknown to any of
+the audience.
+
+After some time these confused and frightful noises were succeeded by
+a perfect silence; and now a voice, not heard before, seemed to
+manifest the arrival of a new character in the tent. This was low and
+feeble, resembling the cry of a young puppy. The sound was no sooner
+distinguished than all the Indians clapped their hands for joy,
+exclaiming that this was the Chief Spirit, the Turtle, the Spirit that
+never lied! Other voices, which they had distinguished from time to
+time, they had previously hissed, as recognizing them to belong to
+evil and lying spirits, the deceivers of mankind.
+
+Then came from the tent a succession of songs, in which a diversity
+of voices met the ear. From his first entrance, till these songs were
+finished, we heard nothing in the proper voice of the priest. But now
+he addressed the multitude, declaring the presence of the Great
+Turtle, and the spirit's readiness to answer such questions as should
+be proposed. The questions were to come from the chief of the village,
+who was silent, however, till after he had put a large quantity of
+tobacco into the tent, introducing it at the aperture. This was a
+sacrifice offered to the spirit; for the spirits were supposed by the
+Indians to be as fond of tobacco as themselves. This done, the chief
+desired the priest to enquire: Whether or not the English were
+preparing to make war upon the Indians? and whether or not there were
+at Fort Niagara a large number of English troops?
+
+The priest was heard to put the questions, and then the tent shook and
+rocked so violently that Henry expected to see it levelled with the
+ground. But apparently answers were given, after which a terrific cry
+announced, with sufficient intelligibility, the departure of the
+Turtle. Subsequently the priest interpreted the Great Turtle's
+answers, which gave a great deal of information regarding the
+disposition and numbers of the English soldiers, and the presents
+which Sir William Johnson was preparing for the Ojibwés; and which
+finally approved the wisdom of the embassy proceeding on its way.
+
+Journeying along the shores of Lake Huron, they stopped to avoid a
+gale of wind and to rest. Henry, gathering firewood, disturbed a
+rattlesnake which manifested hostile intentions. He went back to the
+canoe to fetch his gun; but upon telling the Ojibwés that he was about
+to kill a rattlesnake they begged him to desist. They then seized
+their pipes and tobacco pouches and returned with him to the place
+where he had left the rattlesnake, which was still coiled up and
+angry.
+
+"The Indians, on their part, surrounded it, all addressing it by
+turns, and calling it their _grandfather_; but yet keeping at some
+distance. During this part of the ceremony they filled their pipes;
+and now each blew the smoke towards the snake, who, as it appeared to
+me, really received it with pleasure. In a word, after remaining
+coiled, and receiving incense for the space of half an hour, it
+stretched itself along the ground, in visible good humour. Its length
+was between four and five feet. Having remained outstretched for some
+time, at last it moved slowly away, the Indians following it, and
+still addressing it by the title of grandfather, beseeching it to take
+care of their families during their absence, and to be pleased to open
+the heart of Sir William Johnson, so that he might _show them
+charity_, and fill their canoe with rum.
+
+"One of the chiefs added a petition, that the snake would take no
+notice of the insult which had been offered him by the Englishman, who
+would even have put him to death, but for the interference of the
+Indians, to whom it was hoped he would impute no part of the offence."
+
+Early the next morning they proceeded on their way, with a serene sky
+and very little wind, so that to shorten the journey they determined
+to steer across the lake to an island which just appeared on the
+horizon. But after hoisting a sail the wind increased, and the
+Indians, beginning to be alarmed, frequently called on the rattlesnake
+to come to their assistance. By degrees the waves grew high, and at
+last it blew a hurricane, Henry and his companions expecting every
+moment to be swallowed up. From prayers the Indians now proceeded to
+sacrifices, both alike offered to the god-rattlesnake, or
+_manito-kinibik_. One of the chiefs took a dog, and, after tying its
+fore legs together, threw it overboard, at the same time calling on
+the snake to preserve the party from being drowned, and desiring him
+to satisfy his hunger with the carcass of the dog. The snake was
+unpropitious, and the wind increased. Another chief sacrificed
+another dog, with the addition of some tobacco. In the prayer which
+accompanied these gifts he besought the snake, as before, not to
+avenge upon the Indians the insult which he had received from the
+Englishman. "He assured the snake that I was _absolutely_ an
+Englishman, and of kin neither to him nor to them."
+
+"At the conclusion of this speech, an Indian, who sat near me,
+observed, that if we were drowned it would be for my fault alone, and
+that I ought myself to be sacrificed, to appease the angry manito; nor
+was I without apprehensions, that in case of extremity this would be
+my fate; but, happily for me, the storm at length abated, and we
+reached the island safely."
+
+The next day they arrived at the shore of Lake Ontario. Here they
+remained two days to make canoes out of the bark of the elm tree, in
+which they might travel to Niagara. For this purpose the Indians first
+cut down a tree, then stripped off the bark in one entire sheet of
+about eighteen feet in length, the incision being lengthwise. The
+canoe was now complete as to its bottom and sides. Its ends were next
+closed, by sewing the bark together; and a few ribs and bars being
+introduced, the architecture was finished. In this manner they made
+two canoes; of which one carried eight men, and the other nine.
+
+A few days later Henry was handed over safe and sound to Sir William
+Johnson at Niagara. He was then given the command of a corps of Indian
+allies which was to accompany the expedition under General Bradstreet
+to raise the siege of Detroit, which important place had been long
+invested by a great Indian chief, Pontiac, who still carried on the
+war on behalf of King Louis XV. This enterprise was successful, and
+British control was extended to many places in central Canada. Henry
+returned to Fort Michili-Makinak and regained much of the property
+which he had lost in the Indian attacks. As some compensation for his
+former sufferings he received from the British commandant of
+Michili-Makinak the exclusive fur trade of Lake Superior.
+
+The currency at that period, and long before, in Canadian history, was
+in beaver skins, which were approximately valued at the price of two
+shillings and sixpence a pound. Otter skins were valued at six
+shillings each, and marten skins at one shilling and sixpence, and
+others in proportion; but all these things were classed at being worth
+so many beaver skins or proportion of beaver skins. Thus, for example,
+the native canoemen and porters engaged by Henry for his winter hunts
+were paid each at the rate of a hundred pounds weight of beaver
+skins.[9]
+
+[Footnote 9: The smallest change, so to speak, was the skin of a
+marten, worth one shilling and sixpence. If you went to a canteen for
+a drink you paid your score with a marten skin, unless the value of
+your refreshment exceeded the sum of eighteen pence.]
+
+At various places on the River Ontonagan, which flows into Lake
+Superior, Henry was shown the extraordinary deposits of copper, which
+presented itself to the eye in masses of various weight. The natives
+smelted the copper and beat it into spoons and bracelets. It was so
+absolutely pure of any alloy that it required nothing but to be beaten
+into shape. In one place Henry saw a mass of copper weighing not less
+than five tons, pure and malleable, so that with an axe he was able to
+cut off a portion weighing a hundred pounds. He conjectured that this
+huge mass of copper had at some time been dislodged from the side of a
+lofty hill and thence rolled into the position where he found it.
+Farther to the north of Lake Superior he found pieces of virgin copper
+remarkable for their form, some resembling leaves of vegetables, and
+others the shapes of animals.
+
+In these journeys he collected some of the native traditions, amongst
+others that of the Great Hare, Naniboju, who was represented to him as
+the founder or creator of the Amerindian peoples. An island in Lake
+Superior was called Naniboju's burial place. Henry landed there, and
+"found on the projecting rocks a quantity of tobacco, rotting in the
+rain; together with kettles, broken guns, and a variety of other
+articles. His spirit is supposed to make this its constant residence;
+and here to preside over the lake, and over the Indians, in their
+navigation and fishing."
+
+In the spring of the following year (1768), whilst the snow still lay
+many feet thick on the ground, he and his men made sugar from the
+maple trees on a mountain, and for nearly three weeks none of them ate
+anything but maple sugar, consuming a pound a day, desiring no other
+food, and waxing fat and strong on this diet. Then they returned to
+the banks of the Ontonagan River, where the wild fowl appeared in such
+abundance that one man, with a muzzle-loading gun, could kill in a day
+sufficient birds for the sustenance of fifty men. As soon as the ice
+and snow had melted, parties of Indians came in from their winter's
+hunt, bringing to Henry furs to pay him for all the goods he had
+advanced. In this way the whole of his outstanding credit was
+satisfied, with the exception of thirty skins, which represented the
+contribution due from one Indian who had died. In this case even, the
+man's family had sent all the skins they could gather together, and
+gradually acquitted themselves of the amount due, in order that the
+spirit of the dead man might rest in peace, which it could not do if
+his debts were not acquitted.
+
+In the following autumn he had an experience which showed him how near
+famine was to great abundance, and how ready the Amerindians were in
+cases of even slight privation to turn cannibal, kill and eat the
+weaker members of the party. He was making an excursion to the Sault
+de Sainte Marie, and took with him three half-breed Canadians and a
+young Indian woman who was journeying in that direction to see her
+relations. As the distance was short, and they expected to obtain much
+fish by the way, they only took with them as provisions a quart of
+maize for each person. On the first night of their journey they
+encamped on the island of Naniboju and set their net to catch fish.
+But there arose a violent storm, which continued for three days,
+during which it was impossible for them to take up the net or to leave
+the island. In consequence of this they ate up all their maize. On the
+evening of the third day the storm abated, and they rushed to examine
+the net. It was gone! It was impossible to return to the point of
+their departure, where there would have been plenty of food, on
+account of the strong wind against them. They therefore steered for
+the Sault de Sainte Marie. But the wind veered round, and for nine
+days blew a strong gale against their progress in this direction,
+making the waves of the lake so high that they were obliged to take
+refuge on the shore.
+
+Henry went out perpetually to hunt, but all he got during those nine
+days were two small snow-buntings. The Canadian half-breeds with him
+then calmly proposed to kill and feed upon the young woman. One of
+these men, indeed, admitted that he had had recourse to
+this expedient for sustaining life when wintering in the north-west
+and running out of food. But Henry indignantly repudiated the
+suggestion. Though very weak, he searched everywhere desperately for
+food, and at last found on a very high rock a thick lichen, called by
+the French Canadians _tripe de roche_,[10] looking, in fact, very much
+like slices of tripe. Henry fetched the men and the Indian woman, and
+they set to work gathering quantities of this lichen. The woman was
+well acquainted with the mode of preparing it, which was done by
+boiling it into a thick mucilage, looking rather like the white of an
+egg. On this they made hearty meals, though it had a bitter and
+disagreeable taste. After the ninth day of their sufferings the wind
+fell, they continued their journey, and met with kindly Indians, who
+supplied them with as many fish as they wanted. Nevertheless, they all
+were so ill afterwards that they nearly died, from the effects of the
+lichen diet.
+
+[Footnote 10: See p. 128.]
+
+Some time after this Henry resolved to search for the marvellous
+island of Yellow Sands,[11] an island of Lake Superior which, it is
+true, the French had discovered, but about which they kept up a good
+deal of mystery. The Indian legend was that the sands of this small
+island consisted of gold dust, and the Ojibwé Indians, having
+discovered this, and attempting to bring some away, they were
+disturbed by a supernatural being of amazing size, sixty feet in
+height, which strode into the water and commanded them to deliver back
+what they had taken away. Terrified at his gigantic stature, they
+complied with his request, since which time no Indian has ever dared
+to approach the haunted coast. Henry, however, with his men, finally
+discovered this Island of Yellow Sands in 1771, in the north-east part
+of Lake Superior. It was much smaller than he had been led to expect,
+and very low and studded with small lakes, probably made by the action
+of beavers damming up the little streams. He found no supernatural
+monster to dispute the island with him, but a number of large
+reindeer, so unused to the sight of man that they scarcely got out of
+his way, so that he was able to shoot as many as he wanted. The
+ancestors of these reindeer may have reached the island either by
+floating ice or by swimming. They seem, with the birds, to have been
+the island's only inhabitants, and to have increased and multiplied to
+a remarkable extent, small portions of the island's surface being
+actually formed of immense accumulations of reindeer bones.
+
+[Footnote 11: The Isle of Yellow Sands, famed in legend for its
+terrible serpents and ogre sixty feet high, was subsequently
+identified with the Ile de Pont Chartrain, which is distant sixty
+miles from the north shore of Lake Superior.]
+
+Amongst the birds of the island, besides geese and pigeons, were
+hawks. No serpents whatever were seen by the party, but Henry remarks
+that the hawks nearly made up for them in abundance and ferocity. They
+appeared very angry at the intrusion of these strangers on the sacred
+island, and hovered round perpetually, swooping at their faces and
+even carrying off their caps.
+
+In 1775 Henry, having been greatly disappointed over an attempt to
+work the copper of Lake Superior, entered with vigour into a fur trade
+with the north-west. He penetrated from Lake Superior to the Lake of
+the Woods and reached the great Lake Winnipeg. Here he encountered the
+Kristino,[12] Knistino, or Kri Indians. He found these people very
+different in appearance from the other Amerindian tribes farther
+south. The men were almost entirely naked in spite of the much colder
+climate. Their bodies were painted with an ochre or clay so red that
+it was locally known by the French Canadians as vermilion. Every man
+and boy had his bow strung and in his hand, with the arrow, ready to
+attack in case of need. Their heads were shaved all over except for a
+large spot on the crown. Here the hair grew very long, and was rolled
+and gathered into a tuft; and this tuft, which was the object of the
+greatest care, was covered with a piece of skin. The lobes of their
+ears were pierced, and through the opening was inserted the bones of
+fish or small beasts. The women wore their hair in great length all
+over the head. It was divided by a parting, and on each side was
+collected into a roll fastened above the ear and covered with a piece
+of painted skin or ornamented with beads. The clothing of the women
+was of leather, the dressed skins of buffalo or deer. This cloak was
+fastened round the waist by a girdle, and the legs were covered with
+leather gaiters. The Kristino men were eager that their women should
+marry Europeans, because the half-breed children proved to be bolder
+warriors and better hunters than themselves. Henry found that although
+the Kris were much addicted to drunkenness they were peaceable when
+inebriated, and, moreover, detached two of their number, who refused
+ever to touch the liquor under such circumstances, in order that they
+might guard the white men, and not allow any drunken Indian to
+approach their camp.
+
+[Footnote 12: See p. 166.]
+
+Henry and his party, after crossing Lake Winnipeg, ascended the
+Saskatchewan (in the autumn of 1775). On their way up this river they
+came to a village of Paskwaya Indians, which consisted of thirty
+families, who were lodged in tents of a circular form, composed of
+dressed bison skins stretched upon poles twelve feet in length. On
+their arrival the chief of this village, named Chatik, which name
+meant Pelican,[13] called the party rather imperiously into his lodge
+or meeting house, and then told them very plainly that his armed men
+exceeded theirs in number, and that he would put the whole of the
+party to death unless they were very liberal in their presents. To
+avoid misunderstanding, he added that he would inform them exactly
+what it was that he required: Three casks of gunpowder, four bags of
+shot and ball, two bales of tobacco, three kegs of rum, and three
+guns, together with knives, flints, and other articles. He went on to
+say that he had already seen white men, and knew that they promised
+more than they performed. He, personally, was a peaceful man, who
+contented himself with moderate views in order to avoid quarrels;
+nevertheless, he desired that an immediate answer should be given
+before the strangers quitted his lodge. A hurried consultation took
+place, and Henry could do nothing but comply with the chief's demands,
+for he was powerless to resist. Having, therefore, intimated his
+acceptance of these demands, he was invited to smoke the pipe of
+peace, and then obtained permission to depart. After this the goods
+demanded were handed over, but Chatik managed to snatch more rum from
+them before they got safely away.
+
+[Footnote 13: Elsewhere Henry observes the great numbers of pelicans
+to be seen on Lake Winnipeg.]
+
+In the winter of 1776 Henry, who, together with his party, had
+received welcome hospitality from the Hudson's Bay Company's station
+at Cumberland House, resolved to reach the western region known as the
+Great Plains, or Prairies--that immense tract of country through which
+flow the Athabaska, the Saskatchewan, the Red River, and the Missouri.
+He and his party, of course, travelled on snowshoes, and their goods
+were packed on sledges made of thin boards, and drawn after them by
+the men. The cold was intense, so that, besides wearing very warm
+woollen clothes, they were obliged to wrap themselves in blankets of
+beaver skin and huge bison robes. On these plains there were
+occasional knolls covered with trees, which were usually called
+"islands". These provided the precious fuel which alone enabled the
+travellers to support the intense cold of the nights.
+
+After fifteen days of very difficult travel, during which it had been
+impossible to kill any game, as the beasts were mostly hidden in the
+dense woods on these rare hillocks, the situation of his party became
+alarming. They were now on the borders of the plains, and the trees
+were getting small and scanty. On the twentieth day of their journey
+they had finished the last remains of their provisions. But Henry had
+taken the precaution of concealing a large cake of chocolate[14] as a
+reserve in case of great need. His men had walked till they were
+exhausted, and had lost both strength and hope, when Henry informed
+them of the treasure which was still in store. They filled the big
+kettle with snow. It held two gallons of water, and into this was put
+one square of the chocolate. The quantity was scarcely sufficient to
+give colour to the water, but each man drank off a gallon of this hot
+liquor and felt much refreshed. The next day they marched vigorously
+for six hours on another two gallons of chocolate and water. For five
+days the chocolate kept them going, though more by faith than by any
+actual nourishment that it imparted. They now began to be surrounded
+by large herds of wolves, who seemed to be conscious of their dire
+extremity and the probability that they would soon fall an easy prey,
+yet were cunning enough to keep out of gunshot. At last, however, at
+sunset on the fifth day, they discovered on the ice the remains of an
+elk's carcass on which the wolves had left a little flesh. From these
+elk bones a meal of strong and excellent soup was soon prepared, and
+the men's bodies thrilled with new life.
+
+[Footnote 14: Chocolate from St. Domingue (Haiti) was a favourite form
+of portable nutriment among the French Canadians, who also provided a
+means of subsistence for long journeys called _praline_. This was made
+of roasted Indian corn on which sugar had been sprinkled. It was a
+most nourishing food, as well as being an agreeable sweet-meat.]
+
+"Want had lost his dominion over us. At noon we saw the horns of a red
+deer, standing in the snow, on the river. On examination we found that
+the whole carcass was with them, the animal having broken through the
+ice in the beginning of the winter, in attempting to cross the river,
+too early in the season; while his horns, fastening themselves in the
+ice, had prevented him from sinking. By cutting away the ice we were
+enabled to lay bare a part of the back and shoulders, and thus procure
+a stock of food amply sufficient for the rest of our journey. We
+accordingly encamped, and employed our kettle to good purpose, forgot
+all our misfortunes, and prepared to walk with cheerfulness the twenty
+leagues which, as we reckoned, still lay between ourselves and Fort
+des Prairies. Though the deer must have been in this situation ever
+since the month of November, yet its flesh was perfectly good. Its
+horns alone were five feet high or more, and it will therefore not
+appear extraordinary that they should be seen above the snow."
+
+The next day they reached the Fort des Prairies, established by the
+Hudson's Bay people, on the verge of the Assiniboin country. The
+journey was resumed in company with Messrs. Patterson and Holmes, and
+accompanied by a band of natives. They had entered the bison country,
+and were regaled by the Indians with bison tongue and beef.
+
+"Soon after sunrise we descried a herd of oxen (bison) extending a
+mile and a half in length, and too numerous to be counted. They
+travelled, not one after another, as, in the snow, other animals
+usually do, but, in a broad phalanx, slowly, and sometimes stopping to
+feed.... Their numbers were so great that we dreaded lest they should
+fairly trample down the camp; nor could it have happened otherwise,
+but for the dogs, almost as numerous as they, who were able to keep
+them in check. The Indians killed several when close upon their tents,
+but neither the fire of the Indians nor the noise of the dogs could
+soon drive them away." The poor animals were more frightened of the
+frightful snowstorm which was raging than of what man or dog might do
+to them in the shelter of the woods.
+
+At last the party reached the residence of the great chief of the
+Assiniboins, whose name was "Great Road". These Amerindians received
+Henry and his people with the greatest respect, giving them a
+bodyguard, armed with bows and spears, who escorted them to the lodge
+or tent prepared for their reception. This was of circular form,
+covered with leather, and not less than twenty feet in diameter. On
+the ground within, bison skins were spread for beds and seats.
+
+"One-half of the tent was appropriated to our use. Several women
+waited upon us, to make a fire and bring water, which latter they
+fetched from a neighbouring tent. Shortly after our arrival these
+women brought us water, unasked for, saying that it was for washing.
+The refreshment was exceedingly acceptable, for on our march we had
+become so dirty that our complexions were not very distinguishable
+from those of the Indians themselves."
+
+Invited to feast with the great chief, they proceeded to the tent of
+"Great Road", which they found neither more ornamented nor better
+furnished than the rest. At their entrance the chief arose from his
+seat, saluted them in the Indian manner by shaking hands, and
+addressed them in a few words, in which he offered his thanks for the
+confidence which they had reposed in him in trusting themselves so far
+from their own country. After all were seated, on bearskins spread on
+the ground, the pipe, as usual, was introduced, and presented in
+succession to each person present. Each took his whiff, and then let
+it pass to his neighbour. The stem, which was four feet in length, was
+held by an officer attendant on the chief. The bowl was of red marble
+or pipe stone.
+
+When the pipe had gone its round, the chief, without rising from his
+seat, delivered a speech of some length, after which several of the
+Indians began to weep, and they were soon joined by the whole party.
+"Had I not previously been witness" (writes Henry) "to a weeping scene
+of this description, I should certainly have been apprehensive of some
+disastrous catastrophe; but, as it was, I listened to it with
+tranquillity. It lasted for about ten minutes, after which all tears
+were dried away, and the honours of the feast were performed by the
+attending chiefs." This consisted in giving to every guest a dish
+containing a boiled bison's tongue. Henry having enquired why these
+people always wept at their feasts, and sometimes at their councils,
+he was answered that their tears flowed to the memory of their
+deceased relations, who were formerly present on these occasions, and
+whom they remembered as soon as they saw the feast or the conference
+being got ready.[15]
+
+[Footnote 15: The Assiniboins (whom Henry calls the Osinipoilles) are
+the Issati of older travellers, and have sometimes been called the
+Weeper Indians, from their tendency to tears.]
+
+The chief to whose kindly reception they were so much indebted was
+about five feet ten inches high, and of a complexion rather darker
+than that of the Indians in general. His appearance was greatly
+injured by the condition of his head of hair, and this was the result
+of an extraordinary superstition.
+
+"The Indians universally fix upon a particular object, as sacred to
+themselves; as the giver of their prosperity, and as their preserver
+from evil. The choice is determined either by a dream, or by some
+strong predilection of fancy; and usually falls upon an animal, or
+part of an animal, or something else which is to be met with, by land,
+or by water; but 'Great Road' had made choice of his _hair_--placing,
+like Samson, all his safety in this portion of his proper substance!
+His hair was the fountain of all his happiness; it was his strength
+and his weapon, his spear and his shield. It preserved him in battle,
+directed him in the chase, watched over him on the march, and gave
+length of days to his wife and children. Hair, of a quality like this,
+was not to be profaned by the touch of human hands. I was assured that
+it had never been cut nor combed from his childhood upward, and, that
+when any part of it fell from his head, he treasured up that part with
+care: meanwhile, it did not escape all care, even while growing on the
+head; but was in the special charge of a spirit, who dressed it while
+the owner slept. All this might be; but the spirit's style of
+hairdressing was at least peculiar; the hair being suffered to remain
+very much as if it received no dressing at all, and matted into ropes,
+which spread themselves in all directions."
+
+From this Assiniboin village Henry saw, for the first time, one of
+those herds of horses which the Assiniboins possessed in numbers. The
+herd was feeding on the skirts of the plain. The horses were provided
+with no fodder, but were left to find food for themselves, which they
+did in winter by removing the snow with their feet till they reach
+the grass. This was everywhere on the ground in plenty.
+
+Amongst these people they saw the paunch or stomach of a bison
+employed as a kettle. This was hung in the smoke of a fire and filled
+with snow. As the snow melted, more was added, till the paunch was
+full of water. The lower orifice of the organ was used for drawing off
+the water, and stopped with a plug and string.
+
+Henry also noticed amongst the Assiniboins the celebrated lariat. This
+is formed of a stone of about two pounds weight, which is sewed up in
+leather and made fast to a wooden handle two feet long. In using it
+the stone is whirled round the handle by a warrior sitting on
+horseback and riding at full speed. Every stroke which takes effect
+brings down a man, a horse, or a bison. To prevent the weapon from
+slipping out of the hand, a string, which is tied to the handle, is
+also passed round the wrist of the wearer.
+
+Alexander Henry extended his travels in the north-west within four
+hundred and fifty miles of Lake Athabaska. He met at this point some
+Chipewayan slaves in the possession of the Assiniboins, and heard from
+them (1) of the Peace River in the far west which led one through the
+Rocky Mountains (he uses that name) to a region descending towards a
+great sea (the Pacific Ocean); and (2) of the Slave River which, after
+passing through several lakes, also reached a great sea on the north.
+This, of course, was an allusion to the Mackenzie River. Here were
+given and recorded the chief hints at possible lines of exploration
+which afterwards sent Alexander Mackenzie and other explorers on the
+journeys that carried British-Canadian enterprise and administration
+to the shores of the Pacific and Arctic Oceans.
+
+After 1776 Alexander Henry ceased his notable explorations of the far
+west. In that year he paid a visit to England and France, returning to
+Canada in 1777. Whilst in France he was received at the French Court
+and had the privilege of relating to Queen Marie Antoinette some of
+his wonderful adventures and experiences. After two more visits to
+England he settled down at Montreal as a merchant (autumn of 1780),
+and in 1784 he joined with other great pioneers in founding, at
+Montreal, The North-west Trading Company. Eventually he handed over
+his share in this enterprise to his nephew, Alexander Henry the
+Younger, and established himself completely in a life of ease and
+quiet. He died at Montreal in 1824, aged eighty-five years.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Samuel Hearne
+
+
+The first noteworthy explorer of the far north was SAMUEL HEARNE,[1]
+who had been mate of a vessel in the employ of the whale fishery of
+Hudson Bay. He entered the service of the Hudson's Bay Company about
+1765, and was selected four years afterwards by the Governor of Prince
+of Wales's Fort (a certain Moses Norton, a half-breed) to lead an
+expedition of discovery in search of a mighty river flowing
+northwards, which was rumoured to exist by the Eskimo. This
+"Coppermine" River was said to flow through a region rich in deposits
+of copper. From this district the northern tribes of Indians derived
+their copper ornaments and axeheads.
+
+[Footnote 1: Hearne was born in London in 1745. He entered the Royal
+Navy as a midshipman at the tender age of eleven, and remained in the
+Navy till about 1765, when he went out to Hudson Bay with the rank of
+quartermaster. He must have acquired a considerable education, even in
+botany and zoology. He not only wrote well, and was a good surveyor
+for rough map making, but he had a considerable talent as a
+draughtsman.]
+
+Samuel Hearne started on the 6th of November, 1769, from Prince of
+Wales's Fort at the mouth of the Churchill River, on the north-west
+coast of Hudson Bay. Presumably he and the two "common white men" who
+were with him travelled on snowshoes and hauled small sledges after
+them. Travelling westward they passed over bleak hills with very
+little vegetation--"the barren grounds, where, in general, we thought
+ourselves well off if we could scrape together as many shrubs as would
+make a fire; but it was scarcely ever in our power to make any other
+defence against the weather than by digging a hole in the snow down to
+the moss, wrapping ourselves up in our clothing, and lying down in it,
+with our sledges set up edgeways to windward". But the principal
+Indian guide that he engaged was so obviously determined to make the
+expedition a failure that Hearne returned to his base, Prince of
+Wales's Fort, and made a second start on the 23rd of February, 1770,
+this time taking care not to be accompanied by any other white men,
+and insisting that the Indians who accompanied him should be more
+carefully chosen.
+
+It must be remembered that in all these early expeditions, French and
+English, the explorers relied for their food almost entirely on what
+could be obtained as they went along, in the way of venison, grouse,
+geese, fish, and wild fruits. In the springtime they would probably
+get goose eggs and some form of maple sugar through the Indians. From
+the summer to the autumn there would be an abundance of wild fruits
+and nuts, but for the rest of the year it would be a diet almost
+entirely of flesh or fish. As a stand-by there was probably
+_pemmican_, made in times of plenty from fish, from bison meat and
+fat, or from the dried flesh of deer or musk oxen; but tea, coffee,
+bread, biscuits, and such like accessories were absolutely unknown to
+them, in fact they lived exactly as the Amerindians did. Their
+habitations, of course, were the tents or houses of the natives, or
+what they made for themselves.
+
+In order to pitch an Indian tent in winter it was first necessary to
+search for a level piece of dry ground, and this could only be
+ascertained by thrusting a stick through the snow, down to the ground,
+all over the proposed plot. When a suitable site had been found the
+snow was then cleared away down to the very moss, in the shape of a
+circle. When a prolonged stay was contemplated, even the moss was cut
+up and removed, as it was very liable when dry to catch fire. A
+quantity of poles were then procured, proportionate in number and
+length to the size of the tent cloth and the number of persons the
+tent was intended to contain. Two of the longest poles were tied
+together at the top and raised to an angle of about 45 degrees from
+the ground, so that the lower ends extended on either side as widely
+as the proposed diameter of the tent. The other poles were then
+arranged on either side of the first two, so that they formed a
+complete circle round the bottom, and their points were tied together
+at the top. The tent cloth was usually of thin moose leather, and in
+shape resembled the vane of a fan, so that the large outer curve
+enclosed the bottom of the poles, and the smaller one fitted round the
+apex of the poles at the top, leaving an open space which let out the
+smoke and let in air and light. The fire was made on the ground in the
+centre of the floor, which floor was covered all over with small
+branches of firs and pines serving as seats and beds. Pine foliage and
+branches were laid round the bottom of the poles on the outside, and a
+quantity of snow was packed all round the exterior of the tent, thus
+excluding a great part of the external air, and contributing much to
+the warmth within.
+
+For a month or more Hearne camped in this fashion by the side of a
+lake, waiting till the season was sufficiently open for him to
+continue his journey by water. He and his party of Indians lived
+mainly on fish, but when these became scarce they attempted to snare
+grouse or kill deer. In the intervals of rare meals all the party
+smoked or slept, unless they were obliged to go out to hunt and fish.
+They would delight, after killing deer, in securing as much as
+possible of the blood and turning it into broth by boiling it in a
+kettle with fat and scraps of meat. This was reckoned a dainty dish.
+Their spoons, dishes, and other necessary household furniture were cut
+out of birch bark.
+
+[Illustration: LAKE LOUISE, THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS]
+
+By the 19th of May, geese, swans, ducks, gulls, and other birds of
+passage were so plentiful, flying from south to north, and halting to
+rest at the lake, that Hearne felt the time had come to resume his
+journey, provisions being now very plentiful and the worst of the thaw
+over. The weather was remarkably fine and pleasant as the party
+travelled northwards.
+
+There must have been good patent medicines even in those days. Of
+these Hearne possessed "Turlington's Drops" and "Yellow Basilicon",
+and with these he not only healed the terrible wounds of a valuable
+Indian who had cut his leg most severely (when making birch-bark
+dishes, spoons, &c), but also the hand of another Indian, which was
+shattered with the bursting of a gun. These medicines soon restored
+the use of his hand, so that in a short time he was out of danger,
+while the carver of birch-bark spoons was able to walk. Nevertheless,
+although they were to the south of the 60th degree of latitude, the
+snow was not completely melted until the end of June.
+
+All at once the weather became exceedingly hot, the sledges had to be
+thrown away, and each man had to carry on his back a heavy load. For
+instance, Hearne was obliged to carry his quadrant for taking
+astronomical observations, and its stand; a trunk containing books and
+papers, &c.; a large compass; and a bag containing all his wearing
+apparel; also a hatchet, a number of knives, files, &c., and several
+small articles intended for presents to the natives--in short, a
+weight of _sixty pounds_. Moreover, the barren ground was quite
+unsuited to the pitching of the southern type of tent, the poles of
+which obviously could not be driven into the bare rock, so that Hearne
+was obliged to sleep in the open air in all weathers. Very often he
+was unable to make a fire, and was constantly reduced to eating his
+meat quite raw. "Notwithstanding these accumulated and complicated
+hardships, we continued in perfect health and good spirits." The
+average day's walk was twenty miles, sometimes without any other
+subsistence than a pipe of tobacco and a drink of water.
+
+At last they saw three musk oxen grazing by the side of a small lake.
+This seemed a splendid piece of fortune, but, to their mortification,
+before they could get one of them skinned, a tremendous downpour of
+rain ensued, so as to make it out of their power to have a fire, for
+their only form of fuel was moss. And the flesh of the musk ox eaten
+raw was disgusting; it was coarse and tough, and tasted so strongly of
+musk that Hearne could hardly swallow it. "None of our natural wants,"
+he writes, "except thirst, are so distressing or hard to endure as
+hunger.... For want of action, the stomach so far loses its digestive
+powers that, after long fasting, it resumes its office with pain and
+reluctance." After these prolonged fasts, his stomach was scarcely
+able to contain two or three ounces of food without producing the most
+agonizing pain. "We fasted many times two whole days and nights, and
+twice for three days; once for nearly seven days, during which we
+tasted not a mouthful of anything, except a few cranberries, water,
+scraps of old leather, and burnt bones."
+
+At a place 63° north latitude he bought a canoe for a single knife
+"the full value of which did not exceed one penny", having been told
+that they would soon reach rivers through which they could not wade.
+And, moreover, they found an Indian who was willing to carry it. In
+July his guide persuaded him to join an encampment of natives--about
+six hundred persons living in seventy tents--asserting that, as it was
+no use proceeding much farther north in their search for the
+Coppermine River that season, it would be well to winter to the west,
+and resume their northern journey in the spring. The country, though
+quite devoid of trees, and mostly barren rock, was covered with a herb
+or shrub called by the Indian name of Wishakapakka,[2] from which the
+European servants of the Hudson's Bay Company had long been used to
+prepare a kind of tea by steeping it in boiling water. Here there were
+multitudes of reindeer feeding on the _Cladina_ lichen and the Indians
+with Hearne killed large numbers for the food of the party, and also
+for their skins and the marrow in their bones.
+
+[Footnote 2: This word is said to be a corruption or altered form of
+_Wishakagami[¯u]_, a liquid or broth (Kri language). The drink made
+from this shrub or herb (_Ledum palustre_) is now known as Labrador
+tea. It is a bitter aromatic infusion.]
+
+The Indian who had volunteered to carry the canoe proved unequal to
+his task. But Hearne found another of his carriers who was willing to
+take the burden. In order, therefore, to be readier with his gun to
+shoot deer, he transferred a portion of his own load to the ex-canoe
+carrier. This portion consisted of the invaluable quadrant and its
+stand, and a bag of gunpowder. The gunpowder was of such importance to
+Hearne and his party that one wonders he made this exchange; for if he
+lost this powder he had no means of killing game, and was entirely
+dependent for food on the troop of Indians with whom he was
+travelling, and whom he knew to be most niggardly and inhospitable.
+Judge, therefore, of his horror when, at the end of a day's march,
+this weakly Indian porter was missing with his load. All night Hearne
+was unable to sleep with anxiety, and the whole of the next day he
+spent searching the rocky ground for miles to discover some sign of
+the missing man. At that season of the year it was like looking for a
+needle in a pottle of hay, for there was no snow, and equally no
+herbage, on which a man's foot could leave traces. However, at last,
+by some miracle, they discovered the load by the banks of a little
+river where a party of Indians had crossed.
+
+Shortly afterwards, leaving his quadrant on its stand for a few
+minutes, whilst he went to eat his dinner, a violent wind arose and
+blew the whole thing on to the rocks, so that the quadrant was
+smashed and rendered useless. On this account he determined once more
+to return to Fort Prince of Wales. The Northern Indians[3] with whom
+Hearne travelled backwards towards the fort were most inhospitable,
+not to say dangerous. They robbed him of most of his goods, and
+refused to allow their women to assist his people to dress the
+reindeer skins out of which it would be necessary shortly to make
+coverings to protect them from the severe cold of the autumn. In fact
+Hearne was in rather a desperate condition by September, 1770, when he
+was joined by a party of Indians under a famous leader, whom he calls
+Matonabi.
+
+[Footnote 3: The Indians of the Athapaskan or Déné group were usually
+called the _Northern Indians_ by the Hudson Bay people, in comparison
+to all the other tribes of the more temperate regions farther south,
+who were known as the _Southern Indians_ (Algonkins, &c.).]
+
+Matonabi, though of Athapaskan stock, had, when a boy, resided several
+years at Prince of Wales's Fort, and learnt a little English, and,
+above all, was a master of several Algonkin dialects or languages, so
+that he could discourse with the Southern Indians. As soon as he heard
+of Hearne's distress he furnished him with a good, warm suit of skins,
+and had the reindeer skins dressed for the Indian carriers who
+accompanied Hearne. In journeying together, Matonabi invited him to
+return once more, with himself as guide, to discover the copper mines.
+
+"He attributed all our misfortunes to the misconduct of my guides, and
+the very plan we pursued, by the desire of the Governor, in not taking
+any women with us on this journey, was, he said, the principal thing
+that occasioned all our wants. 'For,' said he, 'when all the men are
+heavy laden, they can neither hunt nor travel to any considerable
+distance; and in case they meet with success in hunting, who is to
+carry the produce of their labour?' 'Women,' added he, 'were made for
+labour; one of them can carry, or haul, as much as two men can do.
+They also pitch our tents, make and mend our clothing, keep us warm at
+night; and, in fact, there is no such thing as travelling any
+considerable distance, or for any length of time, in this country,
+without their assistance.' 'Women,' said he again, 'though they do
+everything, are maintained at a trifling expense; for as they always
+stand cook, the very licking of their fingers in scarce times is
+sufficient for their subsistence.'
+
+"This," added Hearne, "however odd it may appear, is but too true a
+description of the situation of women in this country: it is at least
+so in appearance; for the women always carry the provisions, though it
+is more than probable they help themselves when the men are not
+present."
+
+On the 7th of December, 1770, Samuel Hearne started again
+from Prince of Wales's Fort, Hudsons Bay, but under very much happier
+circumstances, Matonabi being practically in charge of the expedition.
+
+Unfortunately, on reaching the Egg River, where Matonabi's people had
+made a _cache_ or hiding place in which they had stored a quantity of
+provisions and implements, they found that other Indians had
+discovered this hiding place and robbed it of nearly every article.
+This was a great disappointment to Matonabi's people; but Hearne
+remarks the fortitude with which they bore this, nor did one of them
+ever speak of revenge. But the expedition's scarcity of food obliged
+them to push on from morning till night, day after day; yet the road
+being very bad, and their sledges heavy, they were seldom able to do
+more than eighteen miles a day. Hearne himself writes that he never
+spent so dull a Christmas. For the last three days he had not tasted a
+morsel of anything, except a pipe of tobacco and a drink of snow
+water, yet he had to walk daily from morning till night heavily laden.
+However, at the end of December they reached Island Lake, where they
+entered a camp of Matonabi's people, and here they found a little
+food in the way of fish and dried venison. From Island Lake they made
+their way in a zigzag fashion, stopping often to drive reindeer into
+pounds to secure large supplies of venison and of skins, till, in the
+month of April, 1771, they reached a small lake with an almost
+unpronounceable name, which meant "Little Fish Hill", from a high hill
+which stood at the west end of this sheet of water.
+
+On an island in this lake they pitched their tents, as deer were very
+numerous. During this time also they were busily employed in preparing
+staves of birch wood, about seven or eight feet long, to serve as tent
+poles in the summer, and in the winter to be converted into snowshoe
+frames. Here also Chief Matonabi purchased another wife. He had now
+with him no less than seven, most of whom would for size have made
+good grenadiers. He prided himself much on the height and strength of
+his wives, and would frequently say few women could carry off heavier
+loads. In fact in this country wives were very seldom selected for
+their beauty, but rather for their strength.
+
+"Ask a Northern Indian," wrote Hearne, "'What is beauty?' He will
+answer: 'A broad, flat face, small eyes, high cheekbones, three or
+four broad black lines across each cheek, a low forehead, a broad
+chin, a clumsy hook nose, and a tawny hide.'"
+
+But the model woman amongst these Indians was one who was capable of
+dressing all kinds of skins and making them into clothing, and who was
+strong enough to carry a load of about a hundred pounds in weight in
+summer, and to haul perhaps double that weight on a sledge in winter.
+"As to their temper, it is of little consequence; for the men have a
+wonderful facility in making the most stubborn comply with as much
+alacrity as could possibly be expected." When the men kill any large
+beast the women are always sent to bring it to the tent. When it is
+brought there, every operation it undergoes, such as splitting,
+drying, pounding, is performed by the women. When anything is prepared
+for eating it is the women who cook it; and when it is done, not even
+the wives and daughters of the greatest chiefs in the country are
+served until all the males--even the male slaves--have eaten what they
+think proper. In times of scarcity it was frequently the lot of the
+women to be left without a single mouthful; though, no doubt, they
+took good care to help themselves in secret.
+
+[Illustration: SAMUEL HEARNE; ALEXANDER MACKENZIE]
+
+Hearne mentions that in this country among the Northern Indians the
+names of the boys were various and generally derived from some place,
+or season of the year, or animal; whilst the names of the girls were
+chiefly taken from some part or property of a marten,[4] such as the
+white marten, the black marten, the summer marten, the marten's head,
+foot, heart, or tail.
+
+[Footnote 4: A fur-bearing animal (_Mustela americana_), very like the
+British pine marten.]
+
+From the Lake of Little Fish Hill the party moved on to Lake Clowey,
+and here the Northern Indians set to work to build their canoes in the
+warm and dry weather, which was about to come in at the end of May.
+These canoes were very slight and simple in construction and
+wonderfully light, which was necessary, for some of the northern
+portages might be a hundred to one hundred and fifty miles in length,
+over which the canoes would have to be carried by the Indians. All the
+tools employed in those days, in building such canoes and making
+snowshoes and all the other furniture and utensils of Indian life,
+consisted of a _hatchet_, a _knife_, a _file_, and an _awl_ obtained
+from the stores of the Hudson's Bay Company. In the use of these tools
+they were so dexterous that everything they manufactured was done with
+a neatness which could not be excelled by the most expert mechanic.
+These northern canoes were flat-bottomed, with straight, upright
+sides, and sharp prow and peak. The stern part of the canoe was wider
+than the rest in order to receive the baggage. The average length of
+the canoe would be from twelve to thirteen feet, and the breadth in
+the widest part about two feet. Generally but a single paddle was
+used, and that rather attenuated. When transporting the canoes from
+one river to another, a strong band of bark or fibre would be fastened
+round the thwarts of the canoe, and then slung over the breast and
+shoulders of the Indian that was carrying it.
+
+From Lake Clowey the northern progress was made on foot, steady and
+fatiguing walking over the barren grounds. The wooded region had been
+left behind to the south; but for a distance of about twenty miles
+outside the living woods there was a belt of dry stumps more or less
+ancient. According to Hearne, these vestiges of trees to the north of
+the present forest limit were an indication that the climate had grown
+colder during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, because,
+according to the traditions of the Indians and the remembrances of
+their old people, the forest had formerly extended much farther to the
+north.
+
+Whilst they were staying for the canoe building at Lake Clowey, Hearne
+was a great deal bothered by the domestic troubles of his Indian
+friend Matonabi. This man had been constantly trying to add to his
+stock of wives as he passed up country, and at Clowey he had met the
+former husband of one of these women whom he had carried off by force.
+The man ventured to reproach him, whereupon Matonabi went into his
+tent, opened one of his wives' bundles, and with the greatest
+composure took out a new, long, box-handled knife; then proceeded to
+the tent of the man who had complained, and without any parley
+whatever took him by the collar and attempted to stab him to death.
+The man had already received three bad knife wounds in the back before
+other people, rushing in to his assistance, prevented Matonabi from
+finishing him. After this, Matonabi returned to his tent as though
+nothing had happened, called for water, washed the blood off his hands
+and knife, and smoked his pipe as usual, asking Hearne if he did not
+think he had done quite right!
+
+"It has ever been the custom among those people for the men to wrestle
+for any woman to whom they are attached; and of course the strongest
+party always carries off the prize. A weak man, unless he be a good
+hunter and well beloved, is seldom permitted to keep a wife that a
+stronger man thinks worth his notice; for at any time when the wives
+of those strong wrestlers are heavy laden either with furs or
+provisions, they make no scruple of tearing any other man's wife from
+his bosom and making her bear a part of his luggage. This custom
+prevails throughout all their tribes, and causes a great spirit of
+emulation among their youth, who are upon all occasions, from their
+childhood, trying their strength and skill in wrestling. This enables
+them to protect their property, and particularly their wives, from the
+hands of those powerful ravishers, some of whom make almost a
+livelihood by taking what they please from the weaker parties without
+making them any return. Indeed it is represented as an act of great
+generosity if they condescend to make an unequal exchange, as, in
+general, abuse and insult are the only return for the loss which is
+sustained.
+
+"The way in which they tear the women and other property from one
+another, though it has the appearance of the greatest brutality, can
+scarcely be called fighting. I never knew any of them receive the
+least hurt in these _rencontres_; the whole business consists in
+hauling each other about by the hair of the head; they are seldom
+known either to strike or kick one another. It is not uncommon for one
+of them to cut off his hair and to grease his ears immediately before
+the contest begins. This, however, is done privately; and it is
+sometimes truly laughable to see one of the parties strutting about
+with an air of great importance, and calling out: 'Where is he? Why
+does he not come out?' when the other will bolt out with a clean-shorn
+head and greased ears, rush on his antagonist, seize him by the hair,
+and, though perhaps a much weaker man, soon drag him to the ground,
+while the stronger is not able to lay hold of him. It is very frequent
+on those occasions for each party to have spies, to watch the other's
+motions, which puts them more on a footing of equality. For want of
+hair to pull, they seize each other about the waist, with legs wide
+extended, and try their strength by endeavouring to vie who can first
+throw the other down."
+
+"Early in the morning of the twenty-ninth 'Captain' Keelshies (an
+Indian) joined us. He delivered to me a packet of letters and a
+two-quart keg of French brandy, but assured me that the powder, shot,
+tobacco, knives, &c, which he received at the fort for me, were all
+expended. He endeavoured to make some apology for this by saying that
+some of his relations died in the winter, and that he had, according
+to native custom, thrown all his own things away; after which he was
+obliged to have recourse to my ammunition and other goods to support
+himself and a numerous family. The very affecting manner in which he
+related this story, often crying like a child, was a great proof of
+his extreme sorrow, which he wished to persuade me arose from the
+recollection of his having embezzled so much of my property; but I was
+of a different opinion, and attributed his grief to arise from the
+remembrance of his deceased relations. However, as a small recompense
+for my loss, he presented me with four ready-dressed moose skins,
+which was, he said, the only retribution he could then make. The moose
+skins, though not the twentieth part of the value of the goods which
+he had embezzled, were in reality more acceptable to me than the
+ammunition and the other articles would have been, on account of their
+great use as shoe leather, which at that time was a very scarce
+article with us, whereas we had plenty of powder and shot."
+
+During Hearne's stay at Lake Clowey a great number of Indians entered
+into a combination with those of his party to travel together to the
+Coppermine River, with no other intent than to murder the Eskimo who
+frequented that river in considerable numbers. Before leaving Lake
+Clowey all the Northern Indians who had assembled there prepared their
+arms for the encounter, and did not forget to make shields before they
+left the woods of Clowey. These shields were composed of thin boards
+about three-quarters of an inch thick, two feet broad, and three feet
+long, and were intended to ward off the arrows of the Eskimo.
+
+When the now large expedition reached a river with the fearful name of
+Congecathawhachaga, they found a portion of the tribe known as Copper
+Indians,[5] and these had never before seen a white man. They gave a
+very friendly reception to Hearne on account of Matonabi.
+
+[Footnote 5: Or "Tantsawh[¯u]ts". Like the "Dog-rib" Indians,
+mentioned farther on, they belonged to the "Northern", Tinné,
+Athabaskan type.]
+
+"They expressed as much desire to examine me from top to toe as a
+European naturalist would a nondescript animal. They, however, found
+and pronounced me to be a perfect human being, except in the colour of
+my hair and eyes; the former, they said, was like the stained hair of
+a buffalo's tail, and the latter, being light, were like those of a
+gull. The whiteness of my skin also was, in their opinion, no
+ornament, as they said it resembled meat which had been sodden in
+water till all the blood was extracted. On the whole I was viewed as
+so great a curiosity in this part of the world that during my stay
+there, whenever I combed my head, some or other of them never failed
+to ask for the hairs that came off, which they carefully wrapped up,
+saying: 'When I see you again, you shall again see your hair'."
+
+The Copper Indians sent a detachment of their men in the double
+capacity of guides and warriors, and the whole party now turned
+towards the north-west, and after some days' walking reached the Stony
+Mountains. "Surely no part of the world better deserves that name",
+wrote, Hearne. They appeared to be a confused heap of stones quite
+inaccessible to the foot of man. Nevertheless, with the Copper Indians
+as guides, they got over this range, though not without being obliged
+frequently to crawl on hands and knees. This range, however, had been
+so often crossed by Indians coming to and fro that there was a very
+visible path the whole way, the rocks, even in the most difficult
+places, being worn quite smooth. By the side of the path there were
+several large, flat stones covered with thousands of small pebbles.
+These marks had been gradually built up by passengers going to and fro
+from the copper mines in the far north. The weather all this time,
+although the month was July, was very bad--constant snow, sleet, and
+rain. Hearne seldom had a dry garment of any kind, and in the caves
+where they lodged at night the water was constantly dropping from the
+roof. Their food all this time was raw venison. One snowstorm which
+fell on them was heavier than was customary even in the winter, but at
+last the weather cleared up and sunshine made the journey far more
+tolerable.
+
+As they descended the northern side of the Stony Mountains they
+crossed a large lake, passing over its unmelted ice, and called it
+Musk-ox Lake, from the number of these creatures which they found
+grazing on the margin of it.
+
+This was not the first time that Hearne had seen the musk ox. These
+animals were wont to come down as far south as the shores of Hudson
+Bay.
+
+On the northern side of the Stony Mountains Hearne was taken by the
+Indians to see a place which he called Grizzly-bear Hill, which took
+its name from the numbers of those animals (presumably what we call
+grizzly bears) which resorted here for the purpose of bringing forth
+their young in a cave in this hill. On the east side of the adjoining
+marsh Hearne was amazed at the sight of the many hills and dry ridges,
+which were turned over like ploughed land by the long claws of these
+bears in searching for the ground squirrels and mice which constitute
+a favourite part of their food. It was surprising to see the enormous
+stones rolled out of their beds by the bears on these occasions.
+
+As they neared the Coppermine River the weather became very warm, and
+the country had a good supply of firewood. Reindeer were abundant,
+and, the Indians having killed some of these, Hearne sat down to the
+most comfortable meal he had had for some months.
+
+It was a kind of haggis, called by the Amerindians "biati", made with
+the blood of the reindeer, a good quantity of fat shredded small, some
+of the tenderest of the flesh, together with the heart and lungs, cut,
+or more commonly torn, into small slivers--all which would be put into
+the stomach, and roasted by being suspended before the fire by a
+string. Care had to be taken that it did not get too much heat at
+first, as the bag would thereby be liable to be burnt and the contents
+be let out. When it was sufficiently done it emitted steam, "which",
+writes Hearne, "is as much as to say: 'Come, eat me now'; and if it be
+taken in time, before the blood and other contents are too much done,
+it is certainly a most delicious morsel, even without pepper, salt, or
+any other seasoning."
+
+It was now almost impossible to sleep at night for the mosquitoes,
+which swarmed in myriads as soon as the warmth of the sun melted the
+ice and snow. When Hearne actually reached the banks of the Coppermine
+River he was a little disappointed at its appearance, as it seemed to
+be only one hundred and eighty yards wide, shallow, and full of
+shoals. The Chipewayan Amerindians with him now sent out their spies
+to try and locate the Eskimo. Presently they found that there were
+five tents of them on the west side of the river.
+
+"When the Indians received this intelligence no further attendance or
+attention was paid to my survey, but their whole thoughts were
+immediately engaged in planning the best method of attack, and how
+they might steal on the poor Eskimo the ensuing night and kill them
+all when asleep. To accomplish this bloody design more effectually the
+Indians thought it necessary to cross the river as soon as possible;
+and, by the account of the spies, it appeared that no part was more
+convenient for the purpose than that where we had met them, it being
+there very smooth, and at a considerable distance from any fall.
+Accordingly, after the Indians had put all their guns, spears,
+shields, &c, in good order, we crossed the river....
+
+"When we arrived on the west side of the river, each painted the front
+of his shield; some with the figure of the sun, others with that of
+the moon, several with different kinds of birds and beasts of prey,
+and many with the images of imaginary beings, which, according to
+their silly notions, are the inhabitants of the different elements,
+Earth, Sea, Air, &c. On enquiring the reason of their doing so, I
+learned that each man painted his shield with the image of that being
+on which he relied most for success in the intended engagement. Some
+were content with a single representation; while others, doubtful, as
+I suppose, of the quality and power of any single being, had their
+shields covered to the very margin with a group of hieroglyphics quite
+unintelligible to everyone except the painter. Indeed, from the hurry
+in which this business was necessarily done, the want of every colour
+but red and black, and the deficiency of skill in the artist, most of
+those paintings had more the appearance of a number of accidental
+blotches, than 'of anything that is on the earth, or in the water
+under the earth'....
+
+"After this piece of superstition was completed, we began to advance
+towards the Eskimo tents; but were very careful to avoid crossing any
+hills, or talking loud, for fear of being seen or overheard by the
+inhabitants."
+
+When the attacking party was within two hundred yards of the Eskimo
+tents, they lay in ambush for some time, watching the motions of their
+intended victims; and here the Indians wanted Hearne (for whom they
+had a sincere affection) to stay till the fight was over; but to this
+he would not consent, lest, when the Eskimo came to be surprised, they
+should try every way to escape, and, finding him alone, kill him in
+their desperation.
+
+While they lay in ambush the Northern Indians performed the last
+ceremonies which were thought necessary before the engagement. These
+chiefly consisted in painting their faces: some all black, some all
+red, and others with a mixture of the two; and to prevent their hair
+from blowing into their eyes, it was either tied before or behind, and
+on both sides, or else cut short all round. The next thing they
+considered was to make themselves as light as possible for running,
+which they did by pulling off their stockings, and either cutting off
+the sleeves of their jackets, or rolling them up close to their
+armpits; and though the mosquitoes at that time "were so numerous as
+to surpass all credibility", yet some of the Indians actually pulled
+off their jackets and entered the lists nearly or quite naked. Hearne,
+fearing he might have occasion to run with the rest, thought it also
+advisable to pull off his stockings and cap, and to tie his hair as
+close up as possible.
+
+By the time the Indians had made themselves thus "completely
+frightful", it was nearly one in the morning. Then, finding all the
+Eskimo quiet in their tents, they rushed forth from their ambuscade,
+and fell on the poor, unsuspecting creatures, unperceived till they
+were close to the very eaves of the tents. A horrible massacre
+forthwith took place, while Hearne stood neutral in the rear.
+
+"The scene was shocking beyond description. The poor unhappy victims
+were surprised in the midst of their sleep, and had neither time nor
+power to make any resistance; men, women, and children, in all upward
+of twenty, ran out of their tents stark naked, and endeavoured to make
+their escape; but the Indians having possession of all the landside,
+to no place could they fly for shelter. One alternative only remained,
+that of jumping into the river; but, as none of them attempted it,
+they all fell a sacrifice to Indian barbarity!
+
+"The shrieks and groans of the poor expiring wretches were truly
+dreadful; and my horror was much increased at seeing a young girl,
+seemingly about eighteen years of age, killed so near me, that when
+the first spear was stuck into her side she fell down at my feet, and
+twisted round my legs, so that it was with difficulty that I could
+disengage myself from her dying grasp. As two Indian men pursued this
+unfortunate victim, I solicited very hard for her life; but the
+murderers made no reply till they had stuck both their spears through
+her body, and transfixed her to the ground. They then looked me
+sternly in the face, and began to ridicule me by asking if I wanted an
+Eskimo wife; and paid not the smallest regard to the shrieks and agony
+of the poor wretch, who was twining round their spears like an eel!"
+
+On his requesting that they would at least put the woman out of her
+misery, one of the Indians hastily drew his spear from the place where
+it was first lodged, and pierced it through her breast near the heart.
+The love of life, however, even in this most miserable state, was so
+predominant, that "though this might justly be called the most
+merciful act that could be done for the poor creature, it seemed to be
+unwelcome, for, though much exhausted by pain and loss of blood, she
+made several efforts to ward off the friendly blow."... "My own
+situation and the terror of my mind at beholding this butchery,
+cannot easily be conceived, much less described; though I summed up
+all the fortitude I was master of on the occasion, it was with
+difficulty that I could refrain from tears; and I am confident that my
+features must have feelingly expressed how sincerely I was affected at
+the barbarous scene I then witnessed; even at this hour I cannot
+reflect on the transactions of that horrid day without shedding
+tears."
+
+There were other Eskimo on the opposite shore of the river. Though
+they took up their arms to defend themselves, they did not attempt to
+abandon their tents, for they were utterly unacquainted with the
+nature of firearms; so much so that when the bullets struck the
+ground, they ran in crowds to see what was sent them, and seemed
+anxious to examine all the pieces of lead which they found flattened
+against the rocks. At length one of the Eskimo men was shot in the
+calf of his leg, which put them in great confusion. They all
+immediately embarked in their little canoes, and paddled to a shoal in
+the middle of the river, which being somewhat more than a gunshot from
+any part of the shore, put them out of the reach of our barbarians.
+
+"When the savages discovered that the surviving Eskimo had gained the
+shore above-mentioned, the Northern Indians began to plunder the
+tents of the deceased of all the copper utensils they could find; such
+as hatchets, bayonets, knives, &c, after which they assembled on the
+top of an adjacent hill, and, standing all in a cluster, so as to form
+a solid circle, with their spears erect in the air, gave many shouts
+of victory, constantly clashing their spears against each other, and
+frequently calling out _tima! tima!_[6] by way of derision to the poor
+surviving Eskimo, who were standing on the shoal almost knee deep in
+water."
+
+[Footnote 6: "_Tima_ in the Eskimo language is a friendly word similar
+to _what cheer_?"--Hearne.]
+
+"It ought to have been mentioned in its proper place," writes Hearne,
+after describing further atrocities, "that in making our retreat up
+the river, after killing the Eskimo on the west side, we saw an old
+woman sitting by the side of the water killing salmon, which lay at
+the foot of the fall as thick as a shoal of herrings. Whether from the
+noise of the fall, or a natural defect in the old woman's hearing, it
+is hard to determine, but certain it is, she had no knowledge of the
+tragical scene which had been so lately transacted at the tents,
+though she was not more than two hundred yards from the place. When we
+first perceived her she seemed perfectly at ease, and was entirely
+surrounded with the produce of her labour. From her manner of
+behaviour, and the appearance of her eyes, which were as red as blood,
+it is more than probable that her sight was not very good; for she
+scarcely discerned that the Indians were enemies, till they were
+within twice the length of their spears of her. It was in vain that
+she attempted to fly, for the wretches of my crew transfixed her to
+the ground in a few seconds, and butchered her in the most savage
+manner. There was scarcely a man among them who had not a thrust at
+her with his spear; and many in doing this aimed at torture rather
+than immediate death, as they not only poked out her eyes, but stabbed
+her in many parts very remote from those which are vital.
+
+"It may appear strange that a person supposed to be almost blind
+should be employed in the business of fishing, and particularly with
+any degree of success; but when the multitude of the fish is taken
+into the account, the wonder will cease. Indeed they were so numerous
+at the foot of the fall, that when a light pole, armed with a few
+spikes, which was the instrument the old woman used, was put under
+water, and hauled up with a jerk, it was scarcely possible to miss
+them. Some of my Indians tried the method, for curiosity, with the old
+woman's staff, and seldom got less than two at a jerk, sometimes
+three or four. Those fish, though very fine, and beautifully red, are
+but small, seldom weighing more (as near as I could judge) than six or
+seven pounds, and in general much less. Their numbers at this place
+were almost incredible, perhaps equal to anything that is related of
+the salmon in Kamschatka, or any other part of the world."
+
+Hearne seems to have been so intent on geographical discovery that he
+did not allow his feelings to influence him very long against the
+society of his Amerindian companions, who apparently sat down and ate
+a dish of salmon with him an hour or so after they had killed this
+last old woman! The Indians now told him that they were ready again to
+assist him in making an end of his survey, and apparently on foot, for
+the Coppermine River was not navigable here, even for a boat.
+
+Thus, first of all white men coming overland, he reached the sea coast
+of the Arctic Ocean. The tide was then out, and a good deal of the sea
+surface was covered with ice, on which he observed many seals lying
+about. Along the sea coast and river banks were many birds; gulls,
+divers or loons, golden plovers, green plovers, curlews, geese, and
+swans. The country a little way inland was obviously inhabited by
+numbers of musk oxen, reindeer, bears, wolves, gluttons, foxes, polar
+hares, snowy owls, ravens, ptarmigans, gopher ground-squirrels, stoats
+(ermines), and mice. In this region also he saw a bird which the
+Copper Indians called the Alarm Bird. He tells us that in size and
+colour it resembles a "Cobadekoock"; but as none of us know what that
+is, we can only go on to imagine that the Alarm Bird was a kind of
+owl, as Hearne says it was "of the owl genus". When it perceived
+people or beasts it directed its way towards them immediately, and,
+after hovering over them for some time, flew over them in circles or
+went away with them in the same direction as they walked. All this
+time the bird made a loud screaming noise like the cry of a child.
+These owls were sometimes accustomed to follow the Indians for a whole
+day, and the Copper Indians believed that they would in some way
+conduct them to herds of deer and musk oxen, which without the birds'
+assistance might never be found. They also warned Indians of the
+arrival of strangers. The Eskimo, according to Hearne, paid no heed to
+these birds, and it was thus that they allowed themselves to be
+surprised and massacred, for if they had looked out from the direction
+in which the Chipewayans were lying in ambush, they would have seen a
+large flock of these owls continually flying about and making
+sufficient noise to awaken any man out of the soundest sleep.
+
+The country on either side of the estuary of the Coppermine River was
+not without vegetation. There were stunted pines and tufts of dwarf
+willows, and the ground was covered with a lichen or herb, which the
+English of the Hudson's Bay Company knew by the name of
+Wishakapaka,[7] and which they dried and used instead of tea. There
+were also cranberry and heathberry bushes, but without fruit. The
+scrub grew gradually thinner and smaller as one approached the sea,
+and at the mouth of the river there was nothing but barren hills and
+marsh.
+
+[Footnote 7: _Ledum palustre_.]
+
+The unfortunate Eskimo of this region, judging by the examples seen by
+Hearne, were of low stature, with broad thickset bodies. Their
+complexion was a dirty copper colour, but some of the women were
+almost fair and ruddy. Their dress, their arms and fishing tackle were
+precisely similar to those of the Greenland Eskimo. Their tents were
+made of deerskins, and were pitched in a circular form. But these were
+only their summer habitations, those for the winter being partly
+underground, with a roof framework of poles, over which skins were
+stretched; and of course Nature did the rest, covering the roof with
+several feet of snow. Owing to being almost entirely surrounded by
+snow, these winter houses were very warm. Their household furniture
+consisted of stone kettles and wooden troughs of various sizes, also
+dishes, scoops, and spoons made of musk-ox horns. The stone kettles
+(which some people think they borrowed from the Norse discoverers of
+America in the eleventh century) were as large as to be capable of
+containing five or six gallons. They were, of course, carved out of
+solid blocks of stone, every one of them being ornamented with neat
+moulding round the rims, and some of the large ones with fluted work
+at each corner. In shape they were oblong, wider at the top than the
+bottom, and strong handles of solid stone were left at each end to
+lift them up.
+
+The Eskimo hatchets were made of a thick lump of copper about five or
+six inches long, and one and a half to two inches broad. They were
+bevelled away at one end like a chisel. This piece of copper was
+lashed into the end of a piece of wood about twelve or fourteen inches
+long. The men's daggers and the women's knives were also made of
+copper. The former were in shape like the ace of spades, and the
+handle was made of reindeer antler.
+
+With the Eskimo was a fine breed of dogs, with erect ears, sharp
+noses, bushy tails. They were all tethered to stones to prevent them
+from eating the flesh that was spread all over the rocks to dry.
+Apparently, these beautiful dogs were left behind still tethered by
+the wicked Amerindians, after the massacre of their owners. Hearne,
+however, noticed with these Coppermine River Eskimo that the men were
+entirely bald, having all their head hair pulled out by the roots. The
+women wore their hair at the usual length.
+
+Before leaving this region to return southwards, Hearne was led by the
+Indians to one of the copper mines about thirty miles south-east of
+the river mouth. It was no more than a jumble of rocks and gravel,
+which had been rent in many ways, apparently by an earthquake shock.
+This mine was at the time of Hearne's visit very poor in copper, much
+of the metal having already been removed.
+
+The Copper Indians set a great value on this native metal even at the
+present day, and prefer it to iron for almost every use except that of
+a hatchet, a knife, and an awl. "For these three necessary
+implements", writes Hearne, "copper makes but a very poor substitute."
+
+On the return journey, in the course of which the Great Slave
+Lake--which Hearne calls "Lake Athapuscow"--was discovered and crossed
+on the ice, the party travelled so hard and stayed so seldom to rest
+that Hearne suffered terribly with his legs and feet. "I had so little
+power to direct my feet when walking, that I frequently knocked them
+against the stones with such force, as not only to jar and disorder
+them, but my legs also; and the nails of my toes were bruised to such
+a degree, that several of them festered and dropped off. To add to
+this mishap, the skin was entirely chafed off from the tops of both my
+feet, and between every toe; so that the sand and gravel, which I
+could by no means exclude, irritated the raw parts so much, that for a
+whole day before we arrived at the women's tents, I left the print of
+my feet in blood almost at every step I took. Several of the Indians
+began to complain that their feet also were sore; but, on examination,
+not one of them was the twentieth part in so bad a state as mine. This
+being the first time I had been in such a situation, or seen anybody
+foot-foundered, I was much alarmed, and under great apprehensions for
+the consequences. Though I was but little fatigued in body, yet the
+excruciating pain I suffered when walking had such an effect on my
+spirits, that if the Indians had continued to travel two or three days
+longer at that unmerciful rate, I must unavoidably have been left
+behind; for my feet were in many places quite honeycombed by the dirt
+and gravel eating into the raw flesh."
+
+"Among the various superstitious customs of those people, it is worth
+remarking, and ought to have been mentioned in its proper place, that
+immediately after my companions had killed the Eskimo at the Copper
+River, they considered themselves in a state of uncleanness, which
+induced them to practise some very curious unusual ceremonies. In the
+first place, all who were absolutely concerned in the murder were
+prohibited from cooking any kind of victuals, either for themselves or
+others. As luckily there were two in company who had not shed blood,
+they were employed always as cooks till we joined the women. This
+circumstance was exceedingly favourable on my side; for had there been
+no persons of the above description in company, that task, I was told,
+would have fallen on me; which would have been no less fatiguing and
+troublesome, than humiliating and vexatious.
+
+"When the victuals were cooked, all the murderers took a kind of red
+earth, or ochre, and painted all the space between the nose and chin,
+as well as the greater part of their cheeks, almost to the ears,
+before they would taste a bit, and would not drink out of any other
+dish, or smoke out of any other pipe, but their own; and none of the
+others seemed willing to drink or smoke out of theirs."
+
+He goes on to relate that they practised the custom of painting the
+mouth and part of the cheeks before each meal, and drinking and
+smoking out of their own utensils, till the winter began to set in,
+and during the whole of that time they would never kiss any of their
+wives or children. They refrained also from eating many parts of the
+deer and other animals, particularly the head, entrails, and blood;
+and during their "uncleanness" their food was never cooked in water,
+but dried in the sun, eaten quite raw, or broiled. When the time
+arrived that was to put an end to these ceremonies, the men, without a
+female being present, made a fire at some distance from the tents,
+into which they threw all their ornaments, pipe stems, and dishes,
+which were soon consumed to ashes; after which a feast was prepared,
+consisting of such articles as they had long been prohibited from
+eating, and when all was over each man was at liberty to eat, drink,
+and smoke as he pleased, "and also to kiss his wives and children at
+discretion, which they seemed to do with more raptures than I had ever
+known them to do it either before or since".
+
+On the 11th of January, as some of Hearne's companions were hunting,
+they saw the track of a strange snowshoe, which they followed, and at
+a considerable distance came to a little hut, where they discovered a
+young woman sitting alone. As they found that she understood their
+language, they brought her with them to the tents. On examination she
+proved to be one of the Western Dog-rib Indians, who had been taken
+prisoner by the Athapaska Indians in the summer of 1770. From these,
+in the following summer, she had escaped, with the intention of
+returning to her own country, but the distance being so great, and the
+way being unknown to her, she forgot the track, so she built the hut
+in which they found her, to protect her from the weather during the
+winter, and here she had resided from the first setting in of the cold
+weather. For seven months she had seen no human face. During all this
+time she had supported herself in comparative comfort by snaring
+grouse, rabbits, and squirrels; she had also killed two or three
+beaver, and some porcupines. That she did not seem to have been in
+want was evident, as she had a small stock of provisions by her when
+she was discovered, and was in good health and condition; and Hearne
+thought her "one of the finest women", of the real Indian type, that
+he had seen in any part of North America.
+
+"The methods practised by this poor creature to procure a livelihood
+were truly admirable, and are great proofs that necessity is the real
+mother of invention. When the few deer sinews that she had an
+opportunity of taking with her were all expended in making snares and
+sewing her clothing, she had nothing to supply their place but the
+sinews of the rabbits' [he means hares'] legs and feet; these she
+twisted together for that purpose with great dexterity and success.
+The rabbits, &c, which she caught in those snares, not only furnished
+her with a comfortable subsistence, but of the skins she made a suit
+of neat and warm clothing for the winter. It is scarcely possible to
+conceive that a person in her forlorn situation could be so composed
+as to be capable of contriving or executing anything that was not
+absolutely necessary to her existence; but there were sufficient
+proofs that she had extended her care much farther, as all her
+clothing, beside being calculated for real service, showed great taste
+and exhibited no little variety of ornament. The materials, though
+rude, were very curiously wrought and so judiciously placed as to make
+the whole of her garb have a very pleasing, though rather romantic,
+appearance.
+
+"Her leisure hours from hunting had been employed in twisting the
+inner rind or bark of willows into small lines, like net twine, of
+which she had some hundred fathoms by her; with this she intended to
+make a fishing net as soon as the spring advanced. It is of the inner
+bark of willows, twisted in this manner, that the Dog-rib Indians make
+their fishing nets, and they are much preferable to those made by the
+Northern Indians.
+
+"Five or six inches of an iron hoop, made into a knife, and the shank
+of an arrowhead of iron, which served her as an awl, were all the
+metals this poor woman had with her when she eloped, and with these
+implements she had made herself complete snowshoes, and several other
+useful articles.
+
+"Her method of making a fire was equally singular and curious, having
+no other materials for that purpose than two hard sulphurous stones.
+These, by long friction and hard knocking, produced a few sparks,
+which at length communicated to some touchwood (a species of fungus
+which grew on decayed poplars); but as this method was attended with
+great trouble, and not always with success, she did not suffer her
+fire to go out all the winter...."
+
+Hearne regained Prince of Wales's Fort on Hudson Bay in June, 1772.
+Subsequently he was dispatched, in the year 1774, to found the first
+great inland trading station and fort of the Hudson's Bay Company
+which was established at any considerable distance westward of Hudson
+Bay--the first step, in fact, which led to this chartered company
+becoming in time the ruler and colonizing agent of Alberta and British
+Columbia. Hearne chose for his station of "Cumberland House" a site at
+the entrance to Pine Island Lake on the lower Saskatchewan River.
+
+In 1775 he became Governor of his old starting-point on Hudson
+Bay--Fort Prince of Wales. During the American war with France, the
+French admiral, La Pérouse, made a daring excursion into Hudson Bay
+(1782), and summoned Hearne to surrender his fort. This he felt
+obliged to do, not deeming his small garrison strong enough to resist
+the French force.
+
+Samuel Hearne returned to England in 1787, and died (probably in
+London) in 1792.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Alexander Mackenzie's Journeys
+
+
+It has been already mentioned that the conquest of Canada by the
+British led to a great increase in travel for the development of the
+fur trade. Previously, under the French, permission was only granted
+to a few persons to penetrate into the interior to trade with the
+natives, commerce being regarded as a special privilege or monopoly to
+be sold or granted by the Crown. But after the British had completely
+assumed control, nothing was done to bar access to the interior. So
+long as the Catholic missionaries had been practically placed in
+charge of the Amerindians, and had served as buffers between them and
+unscrupulous traders, they--the Amerindians--had been saved from two
+scourges, smallpox and strong drink.[1] But now, unhappily, all
+restrictions about trade in alcohol were removed. In their eagerness
+to obtain ardent spirits and "high" wine, the Indians eagerly welcomed
+British traders and French Canadians in their midst. The fur trade
+developed fast. The Hudson's Bay Company had established its trading
+stations only in the vicinity or on the coasts of that inland sea, far
+away from the two Canadas, from the Middle West and the vast North
+West. After a little reluctance and suspicion, most of the northern
+Amerindian tribes were persuaded to deflect their caravans from the
+routes leading to Hudson Bay, and to meet the British, the New
+Englander ("Bostonian"), and the French Canadian traders at various
+rendezvous on Lake Winnipeg and its tributary lakes and rivers. The
+principal depot and starting-point for the north-west traders was
+_Grand Portage_, on the north-west coast of Lake Superior, whence
+canoes and goods were transferred by a nine-mile portage to the waters
+flowing to Rainy Lake, and so onwards to the Winnipeg River and the
+vast system of the Saskatchewan, the Red River, and the Assiniboine.
+
+[Footnote 1: See Sir Alexander Mackenzie's _Travels_, p. 5.]
+
+Amongst the pioneers in this new development of the fur trade, who
+became also the great explorers of northernmost America, was Alexander
+Henry (already described), THOMAS CURRIE, JAMES FINLAY, PETER POND,[2]
+JOSEPH and BENJAMIN FROBISHER, and SIMON M'TAVISH. These and some of
+their supporting merchants in Montreal resolved to form a great
+fur-trading association, the celebrated North-west Trading Company,
+and did so in 1784.
+
+[Footnote 2: Peter Pond was a native of Connecticut, and in the
+opinion of his trading associates rather a ruffian. He was strongly
+suspected of having murdered an amiable Swiss fur trader named Wadin,
+and at a later date he actually did kill his trading partner, Ross.]
+
+Two of the Montreal merchant firms participating in this confederation
+(Gregory and M'Leod) were inclined to play a somewhat independent
+part, and called themselves the New North-west Trading Company. They
+had the foresight to engage as their principal agents in the
+north-west (Sir) ALEXANDER MACKENZIE and his cousin RODERICK
+MACKENZIE. Both these young men were Highlanders, probably of Norse
+origin. Alexander Mackenzie was born at Stornoway, in the Island of
+Lewis (Hebrides), in 1763. He was only sixteen when he started for
+Canada to take up a position as clerk in the partnership concern of
+Gregory & M'Leod at Montreal.
+
+It may be said here briefly that this "New North-west Company" went at
+first by the nickname of "The Little Company" or "The Potties", this
+last being an Amerindian corruption of the French _Les Petits_. Later
+it developed into the "X.Y. Company", or "Sir Alexander Mackenzie &
+Co.". Although much in rivalry with the original "Nor'-westers", the
+rivalry never degenerated into the actual warfare, the indefensible
+deeds of violence and treachery, which later on were perpetrated by
+the Hudson's Bay Company on the agents of the North-west, and returned
+with interest by the latter. Often the New North-west agents and the
+original Nor'-westers would camp or build side by side, and share
+equably in the fur trade with the natives; their canoemen and
+French-Canadian _voyageurs_ would sing their boating songs in chorus
+as they paddled side by side across the lakes and down the rivers, or
+marched with their heavy loads over the portages and along the trails.
+Eventually, in 1804, the X.Y. Company and the North-west fused into
+the North-west Trading Company, which until 1821 fought a hard fight
+against the encroachments and jealousy of the Hudson's Bay Company.
+
+During the period, however, from 1785 to 1812 the men of the
+north-west, of Montreal, and Grand Portage (as contrasted with those
+of Hudson Bay) effected a revolution in Canadian geography. They
+played the rôle of imperial pioneers with a stubborn heroism, with
+little thought of personal gain, and in most cases with full
+foreknowledge and appreciation of what would accrue to the British
+Empire through their success. It is impossible to relate the
+adventures of all of them within the space of any one book, or even of
+several volumes. Moreover, this has been done already, not only in
+their own published journals and books, but in the admirable works of
+Elliot Coues, Dr. George Bryce, Dr. S.J. Dawson, Alexander Ross, and
+others. I must confine myself here to a description of the adventures
+of Sir Alexander Mackenzie, with a glance at incidents recorded by
+Simon Fraser and by Alexander Henry the Younger.
+
+Mackenzie, having been appointed at the age of twenty-two a partner in
+the New North-west Company, proceeded to Grand Portage in 1785, and
+by the year 1788 (after founding Fort Chipewayan on Lake Athabaska)
+conceived the idea of following the mysterious Slave River to its
+ultimate outlet into the Arctic or the Pacific Ocean. He left Fort
+Chipewayan on June 3, 1789, accompanied by four French-Canadian
+_voyageurs_, two French-Canadian women (wives of two _voyageurs_), a
+young German named John Steinbruck, and an Amerindian guide known as
+"English Chief". This last was a follower and pupil of the Matonabi
+who had guided Hearne to the Coppermine River and the eastern end of
+the Great Slave Lake. The party of eight whites packed themselves and
+their goods into one birch-bark canoe. English Chief and his two
+wives, together with an additional Amerindian guide and a hunter,
+travelled in a second and smaller canoe. The expedition, moreover, was
+accompanied as far as Slave River by LE ROUX, a celebrated
+French-Canadian exploring trader who worked for the X.Y. Company. The
+journey down the Slave River was rendered difficult and dangerous by
+the rapids. Several times the canoes and their loads had to be lugged
+past these falls by an overland portage. Mosquitoes tortured the whole
+party almost past bearance. The leaders of the expedition and their
+Indian hunter had to be busily engaged (the Indian women also) in
+hunting and fishing in order to get food for the support of the party,
+who seemed to have had little reserve provisions with them. Pemmican
+was made of fish dried in the sun and rubbed to powder. Swans, geese,
+cranes, and ducks fell to the guns; an occasional beaver was also
+added to the pot. When they reached the Great Slave Lake they found
+its islands--notwithstanding their barren appearance--covered with
+bushes producing a great variety of palatable fruits--cranberries,
+juniper berries, raspberries, partridge berries, gooseberries, and the
+"pathogomenan", a fruit like a raspberry.
+
+Slave Lake, however, was still, in mid-June, under the spell of
+winter, its surface obstructed with drifting ice. In attempting to
+cross the lake the frail birch-bark canoes ran a great risk of being
+crushed between the ice floes. However, at length, after halting at
+several islands and leaving Le Roux to go to the trading station he
+had founded on the shores of Slave Lake, Mackenzie and his two canoes
+found their way to the river outlet of Slave Lake, that river which
+was henceforth to be called by his name. Great mountains approached
+near to the west of their course. They appeared to be sprinkled with
+white stones, called by the natives "spirit stones"--indeed over a
+great part of North America the Rocky Mountains were called "the
+Mountains of Bright Stones"--yet these brilliant patches were nothing
+more wonderful than unmelted snow.
+
+A few days later the party encountered Amerindians of the Slave and
+Dog-rib tribes, who were so aloof from even "Indian" civilization that
+they did not know the use of tobacco, and were still in the Stone Age
+as regards their weapons and implements. These people, though they
+furnished a guide, foretold disaster and famine to the expedition, and
+greatly exaggerated the obstacles which would be met with--rapids near
+the entrance of the tributary from Great Bear Lake--before the salt
+water was reached.
+
+The canoes of these Slave and Dog-rib tribes of the Athapaskan (Tinné)
+group were covered, not with birch bark, but with the bark of the
+spruce fir.
+
+The lodges of the Slave Indians were of very simple structure: a few
+poles supported by a fork and forming a semicircle at the bottom, with
+some branches or a piece of bark as a covering. They built two of
+these huts facing each other, and made a fire between them. The
+furniture consisted of a few dishes of wood, bark, or horn. The
+vessels in which they cooked their victuals were in the shape of a
+gourd, narrow at the top and wide at the bottom, and made of _wátápé_.
+
+This was the name given to the divided roots of the spruce fir, which
+the natives wove into a degree of compactness that rendered it capable
+of containing a fluid. Wátápé fibre was also used to sew together
+different parts of the bark canoes. They also made fibre or thread
+from willow bark. Their cooking vessels made of this wátápé not only
+contained water, but water which was made to boil by putting a
+succession of hot stones into it. It would, of course, be impossible
+to place these vessels of fibre on a fire, and apparently none of the
+Amerindians of temperate North America knew anything about pottery.
+Those that were in some degree in touch with the Eskimo used kettles
+or cauldrons of stone. Elsewhere the vessels for boiling water and
+cooking were made of bark or fibre, and the water therein was made to
+boil by the dropping in of red-hot stones. The arrows of these Slave
+Indians were two and a half feet long, and the barb was made of bone,
+horn, flint, or copper. Iron had been quite lately introduced,
+indirectly obtained from the Russians in Alaska. Their spears were
+pointed with barbed bone, and their daggers were made of horn or bone.
+Their great club, the _pógamagán_, was made of a reindeer's antler.
+Axes were manufactured out of a piece of brown or grey stone, six to
+eight inches long and two inches thick. They kindled fire by striking
+together a piece of iron pyrites and touchwood, and never travelled
+without a small bag containing such materials.
+
+The Amerindians along the lower Mackenzie had heard vague and terrible
+legends about the Russians, far, far away on the coast of Alaska; they
+were represented as beings of gigantic stature, and adorned with
+wings; which, however, they never employed in flying (possibly the
+sails of their ships). They fed on large birds, and killed them with
+the greatest ease. They also possessed the extraordinary power of
+killing with their eyes (no doubt putting up a gun to aim), and they
+travelled in canoes of very large dimensions.
+
+[Illustration: BIG-HORNED SHEEP OF ROCKY MOUNTAINS]
+
+"I engaged one of these Indians," writes Mackenzie, "by a bribe of
+some beads, to describe the surrounding country upon the sand. This
+singular map he immediately undertook to delineate, and accordingly
+traced out a very long point of land between the rivers ... which he
+represented as running into the great lake, at the extremity of which
+he had been told by Indians of other nations there was a white man's
+fort." The same people described plainly the Yukon River westward of
+the mountains, and told Mackenzie it was a far greater stream than the
+one he was exploring. This was the first "hint" of the existence of
+the great Alaskan river which was ever recorded. They also spoke to
+Mackenzie of "small white buffaloes" (?the mountain goat), which they
+found in the mountains west of the Mackenzie.
+
+Whenever and wherever Mackenzie's party met these northernmost tribes
+of Athapascan Indians they were always ready to dance in between short
+spells of talking. This dancing and jumping was their only amusement,
+and in it old and young, male and female, went to such exertions that
+their strength was exhausted. As they jumped up and down they imitated
+the various noises produced by the reindeer, the bear, and the wolf.
+
+In descending the Mackenzie River, and again on the return journey
+upstream, Mackenzie notices the abundance of berries on the banks of
+the river, especially the kind which was called "pears" by the French
+Canadians. These were of a purple hue, rather bigger than a pea, and
+of a luscious taste. There were also gooseberries and a few
+strawberries. Quantities of berries were collected and dried, but
+while on the lower Mackenzie the expedition fed mainly on fat geese.
+On the beach of the great river they found an abundance of a sweet
+fragrant root which Mackenzie calls "liquorice".
+
+Mackenzie seemed to think that along the lower Mackenzie River, near
+the sea, there were not only reindeer, bears, wolverines, martens,
+foxes, and hares, but a species of white buffalo or white musk ox,
+which may have been the mountain goat above referred to. He noted, in
+the cliffs or banks of the lower Mackenzie, pieces of "petroleum"
+which bore a resemblance to yellow wax but was more friable. His
+Indian guide informed him that rocks of a similar kind were scattered
+about the country at the back of the Slave Lake, near where the
+Chipewayans collected copper. If so, there may be a great oilfield yet
+to be discovered in Arctic Canada.
+
+On the river coming out of the Bear Lake Mackenzie discovered coal;
+the whole beach was strewn with it. He was attracted towards it by
+seeing smoke and noticing a strong sulphurous smell. The whole bank of
+the river was on fire for a considerable distance, and he thought this
+was due to the natives having camped there and set fire to the coal in
+the bank from their hearths. But subsequent travellers have also found
+this lignite coal burning to waste, and imagine that, being full of
+gas, it catches fire spontaneously if any landslip or other accident
+exposes it to moist air. In 1906 it was still burning!
+
+According to Mackenzie, the ground in the regions about the lower
+reaches of the Mackenzie River is always frozen at least five inches
+down from the surface, yet he found small spruce trees growing in
+patches near the delta of this river, besides pale-yellow raspberries
+of an agreeable flavour, and a great variety of other plants and
+herbs.
+
+As the expedition drew near to the estuary of the great Mackenzie
+River a range of lofty snowy mountains rose into sight on the west.
+These mountains were said by the natives to swarm with large
+bears--probably of the huge chocolate-coloured Alaska type; and again
+a mention was made of "small white buffaloes", which were in all
+probability the large white mountain goat (_Oreamnus_). The
+Amerindians along the river greatly magnified the dangers, predicting
+impassable rapids between the confluence of the Great Bear River and
+the sea. But these stories were greatly exaggerated. Every now and
+then the river would narrow and flow between white precipitous
+limestone walls of rock, but there was no obstacle to navigation,
+though it was very deep and the current fast.
+
+The travellers now began to get within touch of the Eskimo and to hear
+of their occasional raids up the river from the sea. They were said to
+use slings, from which they flung stones with such dexterity as to
+prove formidable in their fights with the Amerindians, who regarded
+them with great respect, the more so because of their intercourse with
+the mysterious white people (Russians) from whom they obtained iron.
+
+Mackenzie just managed to reach within sight of the sea, beyond the
+delta of the river, his most northern point being about 69° 14" north
+latitude. Hence he gazed out northwards over a vast expanse of
+piled-up ice in which several small islands were embedded. In the
+spaces of open water whales were visible (the small white whale,
+_Beluga_). The water in between the islands was affected by the tide.
+The travellers had, in fact, reached the Arctic ocean. But, owing to
+the fickleness of their guides, and the danger of being detained by
+some obstacle in these northern latitudes without proper supplies for
+the winter, Mackenzie was afraid to stay for further investigations,
+and on July 16, 1789, turned his back on the sea and commenced his
+return journey up the stream of the great river which was henceforth
+to bear his name.
+
+The strength of the current made the homeward travel much more
+lengthy and tedious. The Indians of the party were troublesome, and
+the principal guide, English Chief, was sulky and disobedient. This
+man had insisted on being accompanied by two of his wives, of whom he
+was so morbidly jealous that he could scarcely bring himself to leave
+them for an hour in order to go hunting or to prospect the country;
+consequently he did little or nothing in the killing of game, and this
+kept the expedition on very small rations. Mackenzie got wroth with
+him, and so gave him a sound rating. This irritated English Chief to a
+high degree, and after a long and vehement harangue he burst into
+tears and loud and bitter lamentations. Thereat his friends and wives
+commenced crying and wailing vociferously, though they declared that
+their tears were shed, not for any trouble between the white man and
+English Chief, but because they suddenly recollected all the friends
+and relations they had lost within the last few years! "I did not
+interrupt their grief for two hours, but as I could not well do
+without them, I was at length obliged to sooth it and induce the chief
+to change his resolution (to leave me), which he did with great
+apparent reluctance."
+
+Later on English Chief told Mackenzie that he feared he might have to
+go to war, because it was a custom amongst the Athapaskan chiefs to
+make war after they had given way to the disgrace attached to such a
+feminine weakness as shedding tears. Therefore he would undertake a
+warlike expedition in the following spring, but in the meantime he
+would continue with Mackenzie as long as he wanted him.
+
+Mackenzie, rejoining Le Roux at the Slave Lake, safely reached his
+station at Fort Chipewayan on September 12, 1789, just as the approach
+of winter was making travel in these northern regions dangerous to
+those who relied on unfrozen water as a means of transit.
+
+Mackenzie seems to have been a little disappointed with the results
+of his northward journey; perhaps he had thought that the outlet of
+Slave Lake and the Mackenzie River would be into the Pacific, the _Mer
+de l'Ouest_ of his Canadian _voyageurs_. Yet he must have realized
+that he had discovered something very wonderful after all: the
+beginning of Alaska, the approach to a region which, though lying
+within the Arctic circle, has climatic conditions permitting the
+existence of trees, abundant vegetation, and large, strange beasts,
+and which, moreover, is highly mineralized. His work in this
+direction, however (and that of Hearne), was to be completed in the
+next century by SIR JOHN FRANKLIN, SIR GEORGE BACK, SIR JOHN
+RICHARDSON, and SIR JOHN ROSS--all knighthoods earned by magnificent
+services in geographical exploration--and by THOMAS SIMPSON, Dr. John
+Rae,[3] WARREN DEASE, JOHN M'LEOD, ROBERT CAMPBELL, and other servants
+of the Hudson's Bay Company.
+
+[Footnote 3: See p. 125.]
+
+In October, 1792, Mackenzie had determined to make a great attempt to
+reach the Pacific Ocean. By this time he and his colleagues had
+explored the Peace River (the main tributary of Slave Lake), and had
+realized that they could travel up it into the heart of the Rocky
+Mountains. He wintered and traded at a place which he called "New
+Establishment", on the banks of the Peace River, near the foothills of
+the Rocky Mountains. He left this station on May 9, 1793, accompanied
+by ALEXANDER MACKAY,[4] six French Canadians, and two Indian guides.
+They travelled up the Peace River in a twenty-five-foot canoe, and at
+first passed through scenery the most beautiful Mackenzie had ever
+beheld. He describes it as follows:--
+
+"The ground rises at intervals to a considerable height, and
+stretching inwards to a considerable distance: at every interval or
+pause in the rise, there is a very gently ascending space or lawn,
+which is alternate with abrupt precipices to the summit of the whole,
+or at least as far as the eye could distinguish. This magnificent
+theatre of nature has all the decorations which the trees and animals
+of the country can afford it: groves of poplars in every shape vary
+the scene; and their intervals are enlivened with vast herds of elks
+and buffaloes: the former choosing the steeps and uplands and the
+latter preferring the plains. At this time the buffaloes were attended
+with their young ones, who were striking about them; and it appeared
+that the elks would soon exhibit the same enlivening circumstance. The
+whole country displayed an exuberant verdure; the trees that bear a
+blossom were advancing fast to that delightful appearance, and the
+velvet rind of their branches reflecting the oblique rays of a rising
+or setting sun, added a splendid gaiety to the scene which no
+expressions of mine are qualified to describe."
+
+[Footnote 4: Alexander Mackay long afterwards left the service of the
+North-west Company, and was killed by savages on the Alaska coast,
+near Nutka Sound.]
+
+Of course, as they neared the Rocky Mountains the navigation of the
+Peace River became more and more difficult. At last they left the
+river to find their way across the mountains till they should reach
+the headwaters of a stream flowing towards the Pacific Ocean.
+Sometimes they only accomplished three miles a day, having to carry
+all their goods and their canoe. The mountainous country was covered
+with splendid forests of spruce, pine, cypress, poplar, birch, willow,
+and many other kinds of trees, with an undergrowth of gooseberries,
+currants, and briar roses. The travellers generally followed paths
+made by the elk,[5] just as in the dense forests of Africa the way
+sometimes is cleared for human travellers by the elephant. Every now
+and again they resumed their journey on the river between the falls
+and cascades. The mountains seemed to be a solid mass of limestone, in
+some places without any covering of foliage.
+
+[Footnote 5: For the word "elk" Mackenzie uses "moose deer". "Elk" in
+the Canadian Dominion is misapplied to the great Wapiti red deer.]
+
+"In no part of the north-west", writes Mackenzie, "did I see so much
+beaver work" (along the eastern branch of the Peace River). In some
+places the beavers had cut down acres of large poplars, and were
+busily at work on their labours of dam-making during the night,
+between the setting and the rising sun.
+
+Gnats and mosquitoes came with the intense heat of June to make life
+almost unbearable. As they got close to the Rocky Mountains they
+encountered Amerindians who had never seen a white man before, and who
+at first received them with demonstrations of great hostility and
+fright. But owing to the diplomatic skill of Mackenzie they gradually
+yielded to a more friendly attitude, and here he decided to camp until
+the natives had become familiarized with him and his party, and could
+give them information as to his route. But they could only tell that,
+away to the west beyond the mountains, a month's travel, there was a
+vast "lake of stinking water", to which came, for purposes of trade,
+other white men with vessels as big as islands.
+
+These Rocky Mountain Indians made their canoes from spruce bark[6] in
+the following manner: The bark is taken off the spruce fir to the
+whole length of the intended canoe, only about eighteen feet, and is
+sewed with _wátápé_ at both ends. Two laths are then laid across the
+end of the gunwale. In these are fixed the bars, and against them the
+ribs or timbers, that are cut to the length to which the bark can be
+stretched; and to give additional strength, strips of wood are laid
+between them. To make the whole water-tight, gum is abundantly
+employed.
+
+[Footnote 6: See p. 281.]
+
+Obtaining a guide from these people, Mackenzie continued his journey
+along the Parsnip, or southern branch of the upper Peace River,
+partly by water, partly by land till he reached its source,[7] a lake,
+on the banks of which he saw innumerable swans, geese, and ducks. Wild
+parsnips grew here in abundance, and were a grateful addition to the
+diet of the travellers. As to birds, they not only saw blue jays and
+yellow birds, but the first humming bird which Mackenzie had ever
+beheld in the north-west.[8]
+
+[Footnote 7: Mr. Burpee points out that this was really the
+southernmost source of the mighty congeries of streams which flowed
+northwards to form the Mackenzie River system. Having traced the
+Mackenzie to the sea, its discoverer now stood four years afterwards
+at its most remote source, 2420 miles from its mouth at which he had
+seen the ice floes and the whales.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Humming birds arrive annually in British Columbia between
+April and May, and stay there till the autumn. They winter in the
+warmer parts of California.]
+
+From this tiny lake he made his way over lofty mountains to another
+lake at no great distance, and from this a small stream called the Bad
+River flowed southwards to join a still bigger stream, which Mackenzie
+thought might prove to be one of the branches of the mighty Columbia
+River that flows out into the Pacific through the State of Oregon. It
+really was the Fraser River, and of the upper waters of the Fraser
+Mackenzie was the discoverer.[9]
+
+[Footnote 9: The great surveyor and map maker, David Thompson, was the
+first white man to reach the upper waters of the _Columbia_ River. The
+Fraser River was afterwards followed to its outlet in the Straits of
+Georgia (opposite Vancouver Island) by Simon Fraser.]
+
+[Illustration: THE UPPER WATERS OF THE FRASER RIVER]
+
+Their experiences down the little mountain stream which was to take
+them into the Fraser nearly ended in complete disaster. "The violence
+of the current being so great as to drive the canoe sideways down the
+river, and break her by the first bar, I instantly jumped into the
+water and the men followed my example; but before we could set her
+straight, or stop her, we came to deeper water, so that we were
+obliged to re-embark with the utmost precipitation.... We had hardly
+regained our situations when we drove against a rock which shattered
+the stern of the canoe in such a manner, that it held only by the
+gunwales, so that the steersman could no longer keep his place. The
+violence of this stroke drove us to the opposite side of the river,
+which is but narrow, when the bow met with the same fate as the
+stern.... In a few moments, we came across a cascade which broke
+several large holes in the bottom of the canoe, and started all the
+bars.... The wreck becoming flat on the water, we all jumped out ...
+and held fast to the wreck; to which fortunate resolution we owed our
+safety, as we should otherwise have been dashed against the rocks by
+the force of the water, or driven over the cascades.... At length we
+most fortunately arrived in shallow water, and at a small eddy, where
+we were enabled to make a stand, from the weight of the canoe resting
+on the stones, rather than from any exertions of our exhausted
+strength.... The Indians, when they saw our deplorable situation,
+instead of making the least effort to help us, sat down and gave vent
+to their tears."
+
+Nobody, however, had been killed, though much of the luggage was lost,
+and what remained had to be spread out to dry. Many of Mackenzie's
+people, however, when they took stock of their misfortunes, were
+rather pleased than otherwise, as they thought the disaster would stop
+him from any further attempt to reach the Western Sea. He wisely
+listened to their observations without replying, till their panic was
+dispelled, and they had got themselves warm and comfortable with a
+hearty meal and a glass of rum; though a little later only by their
+indifferent carelessness they nearly exploded the whole of the
+expedition's stock of gunpowder.
+
+Fortunately the weather was fine. Mackenzie and his fellow
+countryman, Mackay, allowed nothing to dismay them or damp their
+spirits. Bark was obtained from the forest, the canoe was repaired,
+and they heard from their guide that this violent little stream
+would before long join a great and much smoother river. But they
+were tormented with sandflies and mosquitoes, and a day or two
+afterwards the guide bolted, while the expedition had to cross
+morasses in which they were nearly engulfed, and the water journey
+was constantly obstructed by driftwood. Nevertheless, at last they
+had "the inexpressible satisfaction of finding themselves on the
+bank of a navigable river on the western side of the first great
+range of mountains". Here they re-embarked, and were cheerful in
+spite of heavy rain.
+
+As they paddled down this great stream, more than two hundred yards
+wide, snow-capped mountains rose immediately above the river. The
+current was strong, but perfectly safe. Flocks of ducks, entirely
+white, except the bill and a part of the wing, rose before them. Smoke
+ascending in columns from many parts of the woods showed that the
+country was well inhabited, and the air was fragrant with the strong
+odour of the gum of cypress and spruce fir.
+
+Then came a series of cascades and falls and a most arduous portage
+of the heavy canoe. These labours were somewhat lightened by the
+discovery of quantities of wild onions growing on the banks; but
+these, when mixed with the pemmican, on which the party was
+subsisting, stimulated their appetites to an inconvenient degree,
+seeing that they were on short commons. Meeting with strange Indians
+they found no one to interpret, and had to use signs. But on the banks
+of the Fraser they were lucky enough to find the "real red deer", the
+great wapiti stag, which is absent from the far north-west, beyond the
+region of the Saskatchewan. The canoe was loaded with venison. The
+banks of the Fraser River sank to a moderate height and were covered
+with poplars and cypresses, birch trees, junipers, alders, and
+willows. The deserted house or lodge of some Amerindian tribe was
+visited on the banks. It was a finer structure than anything that
+Mackenzie had seen since he left Fort Michili-Makinak in upper
+Canada. It had been constructed for three families. There were three
+fireplaces and three beds and a kind of larder for the purpose of
+keeping fish. The whole "lodge" was twenty feet long by three wide,
+and had three doors. The walls were formed of straight spruce timbers
+with some skill of carpentry. The roof was covered with bark, and
+large rods were fixed across the upper part of the building, where
+fish might hang and dry.
+
+As they continued to descend the Fraser River, with here and there a
+rapid which nearly swamped the canoe, and lofty cliffs of red and
+white clay like the ruins of ancient castles (stopping on their way to
+bury supplies of pemmican against their return, and to light a fire on
+the top of the burial place so as to mislead bears or other animals
+that might dig it up), they were more or less compelled to seek
+intercourse with the new tribes of Amerindians, whose presence on the
+river banks was obvious. As usual, Mackenzie had to exercise great
+bravery, tact, and guile to get into peaceful conversation with these
+half-frightened, half-angry people. The peacemaking generally
+concluded with the distribution of trinkets amongst the men and women,
+and presents of sugar to the children. Talking with these folk,
+however, through such interpreters as there were amongst the Indians
+of his crew, he learnt that lower down on the Fraser River there was a
+peculiarly fierce, malignant race, living in vast caves or
+subterranean dwellings, who would certainly massacre the Europeans if
+they attempted to pass through their country on their way to the sea.
+He therefore stopped and set some of his men to work to make a new
+canoe. He noticed, by the by, that these Amerindians of the Fraser had
+small pointed canoes, "made after the fashion of the Eskimo".
+
+Renewing their voyage, they reached a house the roof of which just
+appeared above the ground. It was deserted by its inhabitants, who had
+been alarmed at the approach of the white men, but in the
+neighbourhood appeared gesticulating warriors with bows and arrows.
+Yet these people of underground houses turned out to be friendly and
+very ready to give information, partly because they were in
+communication with the Amerindian tribes to the east of the Rocky
+Mountains. From the elderly men of this tribe Mackenzie ascertained
+that the Fraser River flowed south by east, was often obstructed by
+rapids, and, though it would finally bring them to a salt lake or
+inlet, and then to the sea, it would cause them to travel for a great
+distance to the south. He noticed the complete difference in the
+language of these Atna or Carrier Indians[10] and that of the Nagailer
+or Chin Indians of the Athapaskan group on the eastern side of the
+Rocky Mountains.
+
+[Footnote 10: Apparently these were of the Sikanni tribe, and only
+another branch of the great Tinné (Athapaskan) stock.]
+
+He, however, learnt from these Atna Indians that although the Fraser
+was out of the question as a quick route to the sea, if he retraced
+his journey a little up this river he would find another stream
+entering it from the west, and along this they could travel upstream.
+And then the route to the water "which was unfit to drink", and the
+region to which came people with large ships, would be of no great
+length. Accordingly, after having had a tree engraved with Mackenzie's
+name and the date, by the bank of the Fraser River, the expedition
+returned to the subterranean house which they had seen the day before.
+
+"We were in our canoe by four this morning, and passed by the Indian
+hut, which appeared in a state of perfect tranquillity. We soon came
+in sight of the point where we first saw the natives, and at eight
+were much surprised and disappointed at seeing Mr. Mackay and our two
+Indians coming alone from the ruins of a house that had been partly
+carried away by the ice and water, at a short distance below the place
+where we had appointed to meet. Nor was our surprise and apprehension
+diminished by the alarm which was painted in their countenances....
+They informed me they had taken refuge in that place, with the
+determination to sell their lives ... as dear as possible. In a very
+short time after we had separated, they met a party of the Indians,
+whom we had known at this place, and were probably those whom we had
+seen landing from their canoe. These Indians appeared to be in a state
+of extreme rage, and had their bows bent, with their arrows across
+them. The guide stopped to ask them some questions, which our people
+did not understand, and then set off with his utmost speed. Mr.
+Mackay, however, followed, and did not leave him till they were both
+exhausted with running.... The guide then said that some treacherous
+design was meditated against them, ... and conducted them through very
+bad ways as fast as they could run. When he was desired to slacken his
+pace, he answered that they might follow him in any manner they
+pleased, but that he was impatient to get to his family, in order to
+prepare shoes and other necessaries for his journey. They did not,
+however, think it prudent to quit him, and he would not stop till ten
+at night. On passing a track that was but lately made, they began to
+be seriously alarmed, and on enquiring of the guide where they were,
+he pretended not to understand. Then they all laid down, exhausted
+with fatigue, and without any kind of covering; they were cold, wet,
+and hungry, but dared not light a fire, from the apprehension of an
+enemy. This comfortless spot they left at the dawn of day, and, on
+their arrival at the lodges, found them deserted; the property of the
+Indians being scattered about, as if abandoned for ever. The guide
+then made two or three trips into the woods, calling aloud, and
+bellowing like a madman. At length he set off in the same direction as
+they had come, and had not since appeared. To heighten their misery,
+as they did not find us at the place appointed, they concluded that
+we were all destroyed, and had already formed their plan to take to
+the woods, and cross in as direct a line as they could proceed, to the
+waters of the Peace River, a scheme which could only be suggested by
+despair. They intended to have waited for us till noon, and if we did
+not appear by that time, to have entered without further delay on
+their desperate expedition."
+
+Making preparations for warfare, if necessary, yet neglecting no
+chance of re-entering into friendly relations with the natives,
+Mackenzie set to work to repair the wretched canoe, which was
+constantly having holes knocked through her. He dealt tactfully with
+the almost open mutiny of his French Canadians and Indians. At last
+everyone settled down to the making of a new canoe, on an island in
+the river where there were plenty of spruce firs to provide the
+necessary bark. Even here they were plagued with thunderstorms.
+Nevertheless, the men set to work, and as they worked Mackenzie
+addressed them with simple fervour, saying he knew of their plans to
+desert him, but, come what might, _he_ was resolved to travel on to
+the westwards until he reached the waters of the Pacific.
+
+This calmed down the mutineers, and, to the great relief of all
+concerned, that very afternoon the runaway guide of the Atna people
+returned and apologized for having deserted them. He then offered once
+again to conduct them to the seacoast. Nevertheless, again he fled,
+and Mackenzie was obliged to guide the expedition, according to the
+information he had gathered from the natives, up the small western
+affluent of the upper Fraser, which he called the West Road River (now
+known as the Blackwater).
+
+His perseverance was rewarded, for after proceeding up this river for
+some distance he saw two canoes coming towards them containing the
+runaway guide and six of his relations. The guide was dressed in a
+painted beaver robe, and looked so splendid that they scarcely knew
+him again. Once more he declared it really was his intention not to
+disappoint them. Soon afterwards they landed, buried their property
+and provisions, and placed their canoe on a stage, shaded by a
+covering of small trees and branches from the sun. Each man carried on
+his back four bags and a half of pemmican, of an average weight of
+eighty-five pounds, or other loads (instruments, goods for presents,
+ammunition, &c.) of ninety pounds in weight. Moreover, each of the
+Canadians carried a gun. The Amerindian servants of the expedition
+were only asked to carry loads of forty-five pounds in weight.
+Mackenzie's pack, and that of his companion, Mackay, amounted to about
+seventy pounds. Loaded like this they had to scramble up the wooded
+mountains, first soaked in perspiration from the heat and then
+drenched with heavy rain. Nevertheless they walked for about thirteen
+miles the first day. Now they began to meet natives who were closely
+in touch with the seacoast, which lay to the west at a distance of
+about six days' journey.
+
+"We had no sooner laid ourselves down to rest last night than the
+natives began to sing, in a manner very different from what I had been
+accustomed to hear among savages. It was not accompanied either with
+dancing, drum, or rattle; but consisted of soft, plaintive tones, and
+a modulation that was rather agreeable: it had somewhat the air of
+church music." The country through which they travelled abounded in
+beavers. It was the month of July, however, and they were harassed
+with thunderstorms, some of which were followed by hailstones as big
+as musket balls. After one such storm the ground was whitened for two
+miles with these balls of ice.
+
+In order not to be deserted by all of their new guides, Mackenzie was
+obliged to insist on one of them sharing his hut. This young
+Amerindian was dressed in beaver garments which were a nest of
+vermin. His hair was greased with fish oil, and his body smeared with
+red earth, so that at first Mackenzie thought he would never be able
+to sleep; but such was his fatigue that he passed a night of profound
+repose, and found the guide still there in the morning. In this region
+he notes that the balsam fir of Canada was abundant, the tree which
+provided the gum that cured Cartier's expedition of scurvy. Some of
+the natives with whom they now came into contact were remarkable for
+their grey eyes, a feature often observed amongst the Amerindians of
+the North Pacific coast.
+
+"On observing some people before us, our guides hastened to meet them,
+and, on their approach, one of them stepped forward with an axe in his
+hand. This party consisted only of a man, two women, and the same
+number of children. The eldest of the women, who probably was the
+man's mother, was engaged, when we joined them, in clearing a circular
+spot, of about five feet in diameter, of the weeds that infested it;
+nor did our arrival interrupt her employment, which was sacred to the
+memory of the dead. The spot to which her pious care was devoted
+contained the grave of a husband and a son, and whenever she passed
+this way she always stopped to pay this tribute of affection."
+
+By this time, exposure to wind and sun, the attacks of mosquitoes and
+flies, the difficulty of washing or of changing their clothes, had
+made all the Europeans of the party as dark in skin colour as the
+Amerindians, so that such natives as they met who had the courage to
+examine them, did so with the intention of discovering whether they
+had any white skin left. The natives whom they now encountered
+(belonging to the maritime tribes) were comely in appearance, and far
+more cleanly than the tribes of the north-west. As already mentioned,
+they had grey eyes, sometimes tinged with hazel. Their stature was
+noble, one man measuring at least six feet four inches. They were
+clothed in leather, and their hair was nicely combed and dressed with
+beads. One of a travelling band of these Indians, finding that
+Mackenzie's party was on short rations and very hungry, offered to
+boil them a kettle of fish roes.
+
+"He took the roes out of a bag, and having bruised them between two
+stones, put them in water to soak. His wife then took an handful of
+dry grass in her hand, with which she squeezed them through her
+fingers. In the meantime her husband was employed in gathering wood to
+make a fire, for the purpose of heating stones. When she had finished
+her operation, she filled a _wátápé_ kettle nearly full of water, and
+poured the roes into it. When the stones were sufficiently heated,
+some of them were put into the kettle, and others were thrown in from
+time to time, till the water was in a state of boiling. The woman also
+continued stirring the contents of the kettle, till they were brought
+to a thick consistency; the stones were then taken out, and the whole
+was seasoned with about a pint of strong rancid oil. The smell of this
+curious dish was sufficient to sicken me without tasting it, but the
+hunger of my people surmounted the nauseous meal. When unadulterated
+by the stinking oil these boiled roes are not unpalatable food."
+
+Farther on their journey their hunger was alleviated by wild parsnips,
+also roots which appeared, when pulled up, like a bunch of white peas,
+with the colour and taste of a potato. On their way they were obliged
+to cross snow mountains, where the snow was so compact that their feet
+hardly made any perceptible impression. "Before us appeared a
+stupendous mountain, whose snow-clad summit was lost in the clouds."
+These mountains, according to the Indians, abounded in white
+goats.[11] Emerging from the mountains on to the lower ground, sloping
+towards the sea, at nightfall they came upon a native village in the
+thickness of the woods. Desperate with his fatigue, and risking any
+danger to obtain rest, Mackenzie walked straight into one of the
+houses, where people were busily employed in cooking fish, threw down
+his burden, shook hands with the people, and sat down.
+
+[Footnote 1: _Oreamnus_.]
+
+"They received me without the least appearance of surprise, but soon
+made signs for me to go up to the large house, which was erected, on
+upright posts, at some distance from the ground. A broad piece of
+timber with steps cut in it led to the scaffolding even with the
+floor, and by this curious kind of ladder I entered the house at one
+end; and having passed three fires, at equal distances in the middle
+of the building, I was received by several people, sitting upon a very
+wide board, at the upper end of it. I shook hands with them, and
+seated myself beside a man, the dignity of whose countenance induced
+me to give him that preference...."
+
+Later on, this man, seeing Mackenzie's people arriving tired and
+hungry, rose and fetched from behind a plank, four feet wide, a
+quantity of roasted salmon. A whole salmon was offered to Mackenzie,
+and another to Mackay; half a salmon was given to each of the French
+Canadian _voyageurs_. Their host further invited them to sleep in the
+house, but, Mackenzie thinking it preferable to camp outside, a fire
+was lit to warm the weary travellers, and each was lent a thick board
+on which to sleep, so that he might not lie on the bare ground.
+
+"We had not long been seated round the fire when we received a dish of
+salmon roes, pounded fine and beat up with water so as to have the
+appearance of a cream. Nor was it without some kind of seasoning that
+gave it a bitter taste. Another dish soon followed, the principal
+article of which was also salmon roes, with a large proportion of
+gooseberries, and an herb that appeared to be sorrel. Its acidity
+rendered it more agreeable to my taste than the former preparation.
+Having been regaled with these delicacies, for such they were
+considered by that hospitable spirit which provided them, we laid
+ourselves down to rest with no other canopy than the sky. But I never
+enjoyed a more sound and refreshing rest, though I had a board for my
+bed and a billet for my pillow."
+
+The gooseberries, wortleberries, and raspberries which Mackenzie ate
+at this hospitable village were the finest he ever saw or tasted of
+their respective kinds. They were generally eaten together with the
+dry roes of salmon. Salmon was the staple food of the country, and
+very abundant in the river which Mackenzie was following down to the
+Pacific shore. The fish were usually caught in weirs, and also by
+dipping nets. The natives were so superstitious about the salmon, that
+they believed they would give offence to the spirits if they ate any
+other animal food, especially meat. They would scarcely allow
+Mackenzie to carry venison in his canoe, in case the salmon should
+smell it and abandon the river.
+
+After this welcome rest they embarked in two canoes on the stream
+which Mackenzie calls the Salmon River. The stream was rapid, and they
+proceeded at a great rate, stopping every now and then to get out and
+walk round salmon weirs. Nevertheless, although other Indians ran
+before them announcing their approach towards a village, the noise of
+which was apparent in the distance, they were received at this place
+in a very hostile way, the men rapidly arming themselves with bows and
+arrows, spears, and axes. But Mackenzie walked on alone to greet them,
+and shook hands with the nearest man. Thereupon an elderly man broke
+from the crowd and took Mackenzie in his arms. Another then came and
+paid him the same compliment. One man to whom he presented his hand
+broke the string of a handsome robe of sea-otter skin and threw it
+over Mackenzie.
+
+The chief made signs to the white men to follow him to his house,
+which Mackenzie found to be of larger dimensions and better materials
+than any he had yet seen. "Very clean mats" were spread in this house
+for the chief, his counsellors, and the two white men. A small roasted
+salmon was then placed before each person.
+
+"When we had satisfied ourselves with the fish, one of the people who
+came with us from the last village approached, with a kind of ladle in
+one hand, containing oil, and in the other something that resembled
+the inner rind of the cocoanut, but of a lighter colour. This he
+dipped in the oil, and, having eaten it, indicated by his gestures how
+palatable he thought it. He then presented me with a small piece of
+it, which I chose to taste in its dry state, though the oil was free
+from any unpleasant smell. A square cake of this was next produced,
+when a man took it to the water near the house, and having thoroughly
+soaked it, he returned, and, after he had pulled it to pieces like
+oakum, put it into a well-made trough, about three feet long, nine
+inches wide, and five deep. He then plentifully sprinkled it with
+salmon oil, and manifested by his own example that we were to eat of
+it. I just tasted it, and found the oil perfectly sweet, without which
+the other ingredient would have been very insipid. The chief partook
+of it with great avidity after it had received an additional quantity
+of oil. This dish is considered by these people as a great delicacy;
+and on examination, I discovered it to consist of the inner rind of
+the hemlock pine tree, taken off early in summer, and put into a
+frame, which shapes it into cakes of fifteen inches long, ten broad,
+and half an inch thick; and in this form I should suppose it may be
+preserved for a great length of time. This discovery satisfied me
+respecting the many hemlock trees which I had observed stripped of
+their bark."
+
+Mackenzie found some of the older men here with long beards, and to
+one of them he presented a pair of scissors for clipping his beard.
+
+After describing some remarkable oblong "tables" (as they might be
+called) of cedar wood--twenty feet long by eight feet broad--made of
+thick cedar boards joined together with the utmost neatness, and
+painted with hieroglyphics and the figures of animals; and his visit
+to a kind of temple in the village, into the architecture of which
+strangely carved and painted figures were interwoven; Mackenzie
+goes on to relate an episode giving one a very vivid idea of the
+helplessness of "native" medicine in many diseases.
+
+He was taken to see a son of the chief, who was suffering from a
+terrible ulcer in the small of his back, round which the flesh was
+gangrened, one of his knees being afflicted in the same way. The poor
+fellow was reduced to a skeleton, and apparently drawing very near to
+death.
+
+"I found the native physicians busy in practising their skill and art
+on the patient. They blew on him, and then whistled; at times they
+pressed their extended fingers with all their strength on his stomach;
+they also put their forefingers doubled into his mouth, and spouted
+water from their own with great violence into his face. To support
+these operations the wretched sufferer was held up in a sitting
+posture, and when they were concluded he was laid down and covered
+with a new robe made of the skin of a lynx. I had observed that his
+belly and breast were covered with scars, and I understood that they
+were caused by a custom prevalent among them of applying pieces of
+lighted touchwood to their flesh, in order to relieve pain or
+demonstrate their courage. He was now placed on a broad plank, and
+carried by six men into the woods, where I was invited to accompany
+them. I could not conjecture what would be the end of this ceremony,
+particularly as I saw one man carry fire, another an axe, and a third
+dry wood. I was, indeed, disposed to suspect that, as it was their
+custom to burn the dead, they intended to relieve the poor man from
+his pain, and perform the last sad duty of surviving affection. When
+they had advanced a short distance into the wood, they laid him upon a
+clear spot, and kindled a fire against his back, when the physician
+began to scarify the ulcer with a very blunt instrument, the cruel
+pain of which operation the patient bore with incredible resolution.
+The scene afflicted me, and I left it."
+
+The chief of this village had probably met Captain Cook about ten
+years before. He had been down in a large canoe[12] with forty of his
+people to the seacoast, where he saw two large vessels.
+
+[Footnote 12: Mackenzie thus describes one of the large sea-going
+canoes of the coast natives: "This canoe was built of cedar,
+forty-five feet long, four feet broad, and three and a half in depth.
+It was painted black and decorated with white figures of different
+kinds. The gunwale fore and aft was inlaid with the teeth of the sea
+otter." He adds that "these coast tribes (north of Vancouver Island
+and of Queen Charlotte Sound) had been in indirect contact with the
+Spaniards since the middle of the sixteenth century, and with the
+Russians from the middle of the eighteenth century. Therefore, from
+these two directions they had learnt the use of metal, and had
+obtained copper, brass, and iron. They may possibly have had copper
+earlier still from the Northern Indians on the other side of the Rocky
+Mountains; but brass and iron they could, of course, only have
+obtained from Europeans. They had already become very deft at dealing
+with these metals, and twisted the iron into collars which weighed
+upwards of twelve pounds, also beating it into plates for their
+daggers and knives."]
+
+Farther down the river the natives, instead of regaling them with
+fish, placed before them a long, clean, and well-made trough full of
+berries, most of them resembling blackberries, though white in colour,
+and others similar to huckleberries. In this region the women were
+employed in beating and preparing the inner rind of the juniper bark,
+to which they gave the appearance of flax, and others were spinning
+with a distaff; again, others were weaving robes of this fibrous
+thread, intermixed with strips of sea-otter skin. The men were fishing
+on the river with drag nets between two canoes, thus intercepting the
+salmon coming up the river.
+
+At last, on Saturday, the 20th of July, 1793, they emerged from the
+Salmon River into an arm of the sea (probably near King Island). The
+tide was out, and had left a large space covered with seaweed. The
+surrounding hills were involved in fog.... The bay appeared to be some
+three miles in breadth, and on the coast the travellers saw a great
+number of sea otters.[13] At two in the afternoon the swell was so
+high, and the wind, which was against them, so boisterous, that they
+could not proceed along the seacoast in their leaky canoe. A young
+chief who had come with them as one of their guides, and who had been
+allowed to leave when the seacoast was reached, returned bearing a
+large porcupine on his back. He first cut the animal open and threw
+its entrails into the sea, then singed the skin and boiled it in
+separate pieces; nor did he go to rest till, with the assistance of
+two others who happened to be awake, every morsel of it had been
+devoured. This was fortunate, because their stock of provisions was
+reduced to twenty pounds' weight of pemmican, sixteen pounds of rice,
+and six pounds of flour amongst ten men, "in a leaky vessel, and on a
+barbarous coast".
+
+[Footnote 13: These _may_ have been small seals, but the sea otter
+(_Enhydris lutris_), now nearly extinct, was at one time found in
+numbers along the north-west American coast, from the Aleutian Islands
+and Alaska to Oregon. Owing to persecution it now leads an almost
+entirely aquatic life, resting at times on the masses of floating
+seaweed.]
+
+The rise and fall of the tide here was noted at fifteen feet in
+height. Mr. Mackay collected a quantity of small mussels, which were
+boiled and eaten by the two Scotchmen, but not by the Canadians, who
+were quite unacquainted with sea shellfish.
+
+Near Point Menzies, which had already been reached and named by
+Captain VANCOUVER in the spring of 1793 on his great voyage of
+discovery up the North American coast,[14] Alexander Mackenzie met a
+party of Amerindians, amongst whom was a man of insolent aspect, who,
+by means of signs and exclamations, made him understand that he and
+his friends had been fired at by a white man named Makuba (Vancouver),
+and that another white man, called "Bensins", had struck him on the
+back with the flat of his sword. This man more or less compelled
+Mackenzie to accompany him in the direction of his village, and on the
+way explained that "Makuba" had come there with his "big boat".
+Indeed, Mackenzie's party perceived the remains of sheds or buildings
+on the shore where Europeans had probably made a camp, and here they
+established themselves, taking up a position of defence, because the
+attitude of the natives was rather threatening.
+
+[Footnote 14: GEORGE VANCOUVER (born about 1758, and probably
+descended from Dutch or Flemish ancestors) was one of the great
+pioneers of the British Empire. His name is commemorated in
+Vancouver's Island, an important portion of British Columbia.
+Vancouver entered the navy when only thirteen, sailed with Captain
+Cook, and eventually was appointed to command a naval expedition sent
+out in 1791 to survey and take over from the Spaniards the north-west
+American coast north of Oregon. It is remarkable that he should only
+have missed Mackenzie's arrival at Point Menzies by about two months.
+With what amazed rejoicing would these two heroic explorers have
+greeted one another had they met on this remote point of the Pacific
+coast, the one coming overland (so to speak) from Quebec and the
+Atlantic, and the other all the way by sea from Falmouth via the Cape
+of Good Hope, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, and Hawaii.]
+
+At this camp there was a rock, and on this Alexander Mackenzie, mixing
+up some vermilion or red clay in melted grease, inscribed in large
+characters the following words: "Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by
+land, the twenty-second of July, one thousand seven hundred and
+ninety-three". He then shifted his camp to a place three miles to the
+north-east, below a precipice from which issued streams of fine water
+as cold as ice. And here he took careful observations with his
+astronomical and surveying instruments, in order to fix his position.
+Fortunately the day was one of bright sunshine. Otherwise, had there
+been a long persistence of cloud, he might have been obliged to leave
+the Pacific coast without being able to fix precisely the place where
+he had reached the sea.
+
+Then he yielded to the passionate desire of his people to withdraw
+inland from the possibly dangerous inhabitants of the coast, and
+returned with them to the encampment where the porcupine had been
+eaten. Here the guide made off into the woods. Mackenzie followed him,
+and thus reached a village from which two men issued armed with
+daggers and intending to attack him. While stopping to defend himself,
+many other people assembled, and amongst them he recognized the
+irritating person who incessantly repeated the names "Makuba" and
+"Benzins". However, this threatened danger was narrowly averted, and
+eventually they left the village with a supply of food; but also in a
+state of considerable irritation with--fleas! For some of the houses
+of these Pacific coast villages swarmed with fleas to such an extent
+that Mackenzie and his men were obliged to take to the water to rid
+themselves of these vermin, which swarmed also on the ground that was
+bare of grass.
+
+The return journey up the Salmon River was a series of bewildering
+vicissitudes. Sometimes Mackenzie and his party were received in the
+most threatening way by persons who had been warm friends on their
+downward journey, then seemingly inevitable war was transformed into
+peace, but guides deserted, or the Amerindians from across the Rocky
+Mountains attempted to mutiny. However, they struggled through all
+their difficulties, till at last they reached the place known as the
+Friendly Village, and were here fortunately received with great
+kindness, being once more entertained "with the most respectful
+hospitality". "In short, the chief behaved to us with so much
+attention and kindness that I did not withhold anything in my power to
+give which might afford him satisfaction.... I presented him with two
+yards of blue cloth, an axe, knives, and various other articles. He
+gave me in return a large shell which resembled the under shell of a
+Guernsey oyster, but was somewhat larger. Where they procure them I
+could not discover, but they cut and polish them for bracelets,
+ear-rings, and other personal ornaments...."
+
+The women of this place were employed in boiling sorrel and different
+kinds of berries in large square kettles made of cedar wood. This
+pottage, when it had attained a certain consistency, they took out
+with ladles, and poured it into frames about twelve inches square.
+These were then exposed to the sun, until their contents became so
+many dried cakes. This was their principal article of food, and
+probably of traffic. These people had also made portable chests of
+cedar, in which they packed these cakes, as well as their salmon, both
+dried and roasted. The only flesh they ate in addition to the salmon
+was that of the sea otter and the seal; except that one instance
+already mentioned of the young Indian who feasted on the flesh of the
+porcupine.
+
+"Their faces are round, with high cheekbones, and their complexion
+between olive and copper. They have small grey eyes with a tinge of
+red,... their hair is of a dark-brown colour." The men wore their hair
+long, and either kept it well combed and hanging loose over the
+shoulders, or plaited it and bedaubed it with brown earth so as to
+make it quite impervious to the comb. Those who adopted this fashion
+had to carry a bone bodkin about with them to ease the frequent
+irritation which arose from the excessive abundance of vermin in their
+hair.
+
+The women, on the other hand, usually wore their hair short. Mackenzie
+noticed that the infants had their heads enclosed with boards covered
+with leather, to press the skull into the shape of a wedge. The women
+wore a fringed apron, and over that a long robe made of skins or
+leather, either loose or tied round the middle with a girdle. Over
+these in wet weather was worn a cap in the shape of an inverted bowl
+or dish. The men also wore this cap, and in cold weather used the
+robe, but in warm weather went about in no clothing at all, except
+that their feet were protected with shoes made of dressed elks' skins.
+In wet weather, over their robe they wore a circular mat with an
+opening in the middle sufficiently large to admit the head. This,
+spreading over the shoulders, threw off the wet. As compared with the
+Indians of the Rocky Mountains and the great plains, the men and boys
+were very cleanly, being constantly in the water. The women, however,
+were dirty.
+
+At the end of July, 1793, Mackenzie left what he calls the Friendly
+Village, and prepared to return to the east across the Rocky
+Mountains, having distributed to each man about twenty pounds weight
+of smoked salmon, flour, and pemmican. The fatigue of ascending the
+precipices of the mountains was past description. When they arrived at
+a spot where water could be obtained, and a camp made, they were in
+such an extremity of weariness they could hardly crawl about to gather
+wood for the purpose of making a fire; but two hours afterwards the
+Amerindians of their party arrived and came to their assistance. Then
+when they were sitting round a blazing fire, and some of their fatigue
+had lessened, they could sit and talk of past dangers, and indulge in
+the delightful reflection that they were thus far advanced on their
+homeward journey. "Nor was it possible to be in this situation without
+contemplating the wonders of it. Such was the depth of the precipices
+below, and the height of the mountains above, with the rude and wild
+magnificence of the scenery around, that I shall not attempt to
+describe such an astonishing and awful combination of objects.... Even
+at this place, which is only, as it were, the first step towards
+gaining the summit of the mountains, the climate was very sensibly
+changed. The air that fanned the village which we left at noon, was
+mild and cheering; the grass was verdant, and the wild fruits ripe
+around it. But here the snow was not yet dissolved, the ground was
+still bound by the frost, the herbage had scarce begun to spring, and
+the crowberry bushes were just beginning to blossom."
+
+Eventually they found their canoe, and the property which they had
+left behind, in perfect safety. At this camp, where the canoe had been
+left behind, many natives arrived both from the upper and lower parts
+of the river, all of them dressed in beaver robes, which they were
+ready enough to sell for large knives. It struck Alexander Mackenzie
+as being very extraordinary that these people, who had left absolutely
+untouched the property stored at this place--when anyone passing by
+could have stolen it and never have been detected--should now be so
+ready to pilfer articles and utensils from the camp. So many small
+things had been picked up and taken away by them, when coming to sell
+their beaver robes, that he was obliged to take some action. So,
+before all these beaver-clad Amerindians had departed on their
+westward journey, he told the rearguard that he had noticed the
+thefts, and scarcely thought their relations who were guilty of
+stealing realized the awful mischief that would result from this
+dishonesty; that they were on their way now to the sea to procure
+large quantities of salmon from the rivers, but the salmon, which was
+absolutely necessary to their existence, came from the sea which
+belonged to the white men, and it only needed a message from the white
+men to the powers of nature to prevent the fish coming up from the sea
+into the rivers; and if this word were spoken they and their children
+might starve. He consequently advised them to hurry after their
+friends, and see that all the stolen articles were sent back. This
+plan succeeded. The stolen articles were restored, and then Mackenzie
+purchased from these people several large salmon, and his party
+enjoyed a delicious meal.
+
+Mackenzie declared that there were no bison to be found on the west
+side of the Rocky Mountains[15] (British Columbia), and no wolves.
+
+[Footnote 15: He was not quite accurate: there were a few "wood" bison
+in the north and east of British Columbia.]
+
+Resuming their journey up the Fraser River, they passed through the
+narrow gut between mountainous rocks, which on the outward journey had
+been a passage of some risk. But now the state of the water was such
+that, they got up without difficulty, and had more time to examine
+these extraordinary rocks, which were as perpendicular as a wall, and
+gave the traveller the idea of a succession of enormous Gothic
+cathedrals. With little difficulty they transported their canoe across
+the water parting to the Peace River.
+
+As they began to glide down this stream, homeward bound, they noticed
+at the entrance of a small tributary an object which proved to be four
+beaver skins hung up to attract their attention. These were the skins
+which had been given to Mackenzie as a present by a native as he
+travelled westwards. Not wishing to add to his loads, he had left the
+skins behind, saying he would call for them on his return. Mackenzie
+imagined, therefore, that, being under the necessity of leaving the
+river, this Indian had hung up the skins in the hope that they would
+attract the attention of the travellers on their return. "To reward
+his honesty, I left three times the value of the skins in trade goods
+in their place." As the Peace River carried them away from the great
+mountains, and the plains extended before their sight, they stopped to
+repair the canoe and to get in supplies of food from the herds of game
+that were visible. They began with a hearty meal of bison beef. "Every
+fear of future want was removed." Soon afterwards they killed an elk,
+the carcass of which weighed over two hundred and fifty pounds. "As we
+had taken a very hearty meal at one o'clock, it might naturally be
+supposed that we should not be very voracious at supper; nevertheless,
+a kettleful of elk flesh was boiled and eaten, and that vessel
+replenished with more meat and put on the fire. All that remained of
+the bones, &c, were placed after the Indian fashion round the fire to
+roast, and at ten the next morning the whole was consumed by ten
+persons and a large dog, who was allowed his share of the banquet. Nor
+did any inconvenience result from what may be considered as an
+inordinate indulgence."
+
+On the 24th of August, 1793, Mackenzie was back again at Fort
+Chipewayan, after an absence of eleven months, having been the first
+white man to cross the broad continent of North America from the
+Atlantic to the Pacific, north of Mexico.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Mackenzie's Successors
+
+
+The Spaniards of California had been aware in the middle of the
+eighteenth century that there was a big river entering the sea to the
+north of the savage country known as Oregon. The estuary of this river
+was reached in May, 1792, by an American sea captain of a whaling
+ship--ROBERT GRAY, of Boston. He crossed the bar, and named the great
+stream after his own ship, the _Columbia_. Five months afterwards
+(October, 1792) Lieutenant BROUGHTON, of the Vancouver expedition,
+entered the Columbia from the sea, explored it upstream for a hundred
+miles, and formally took possession of it for the King of Great
+Britain. The news of this discovery reached Alexander Mackenzie (no
+doubt after his return from his overland journey to the Pacific
+coast), and he at once jumped to the conclusion that the powerful
+stream he had discovered in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, and had
+partially followed on its way to the Pacific, must be the Columbia. As
+a matter of fact it was the river afterwards called Fraser.
+
+If you look at the map of British North America, and then at the map
+of Russian Asia--Siberia--you will notice a marked difference in the
+arrangement of the waterways. Those of the Canadian Dominion, on the
+whole, flow more eastwards and westwards, or at any rate radiate in
+all directions, so as to constitute the most wonderful system of
+natural canals possessed by any country or continent. On the contrary,
+the rivers of Siberia flow usually in somewhat parallel lines from
+south to north. Siberia also is far less well provided than British
+North America with an abundance of navigable rivers, streams, and
+great lakes. Therefore the traveller in pre-railway days wishing to
+cross Siberia from west to east or east to west was obliged to have
+recourse to wheeled traffic, to ride, or to walk. Consequently, until
+the beginning of the twentieth century, the "exploitation" (or turning
+to useful account) of Siberia was a far more difficult process than
+the development of North America, once the question of British
+_versus_ French or Spanish was settled. Siberia at one time was almost
+as rich in fur-bearing animals as British North America; yet so
+difficult was transport (and so severe were the rigours of the
+climate) that the Russians, once they reached the shores of the
+Pacific at the beginning of the eighteenth century, began to stretch
+out their influence to the opposite peninsula of Alaska mainly on
+account of the fur trade. For it was easier and less expensive to
+bring furs from Alaska round Cape Horn, or the Cape of Good Hope, to
+Europe than to convey them overland from eastern Siberia. Then, also,
+the Chinese market was becoming of importance to the fur trade.
+Already Mackenzie, at the end of the eighteenth century, is found
+considering whether a sea trade between China and a British port on
+the North Pacific coast could not be arranged so as to develop a
+profitable market among the mandarins and grandees of the Celestial
+Empire for a good proportion of the North-west Company's skins.
+
+[Illustration: Map of Part of the Coast Region of BRITISH COLUMBIA]
+
+Peter Pond, already referred to on p. 278, is said to have expressed
+his intention (in 1788) of going to treat with the Empress Catherine
+II for a Russian occupation of the Alaskan and Columbian coasts. For
+this reason, or the mere desire to have a proportion of this
+fur-producing country, the Emperor Paul, in 1799, created a Russian
+Chartered Company to occupy the Alaska and north Columbian coasts.
+Great Britain offered no objection--in spite of having acquired some
+rights here by an agreement with Spain--and that is why, when you look
+at the map of the vast Canadian Dominion, you find with surprise that
+it has been robbed (one might almost say) of at least half of its
+legitimate Pacific seaboard. The Russian Company was allowed to claim
+the north Columbian coast between Alaska proper and Queen Charlotte
+Islands.
+
+In 1867 the Russian Government sold all Alaska and the north Columbian
+coast to the United States, partly to annoy Great Britain, whom it had
+not forgiven for the Crimean War.
+
+You will have noticed that quite a number of United States citizens
+(mostly born British subjects in New England) had taken part in the
+north-west fur trade immediately after the British conquest of Canada
+disposed of French monopolies. There were Jonathan Carver and Peter
+Pond, for example; and a much more worthy person than the last
+named--Daniel W. Harmon, a New Englander, who entered the service of
+the North-west Company in 1800, and followed in Mackenzie's footsteps
+to the upper Fraser River and the vicinity of the Skeena. Simon Fraser
+also, whose tracing of the Fraser River from its upper waters to the
+Pacific coast we shall presently deal with, was a native of Vermont,
+though his father came from Scotland. The furs which began to
+penetrate into the United States by way of Detroit and Niagara, the
+rising scale of luxury in dress in the towns of the eastern seaboard
+of the United States, the voyages of American whalers up the west
+coast of North America (including the discovery of the Columbia River
+in 1792 by Captain Robert Gray), the purchase of Louisiana from the
+Emperor Napoleon in 1804--with the vague claim it gave to the coast
+line of Oregon on the Pacific: all these circumstances inspired
+far-sighted persons in the United States at the beginning of the
+nineteenth century with a wish to secure for their Government and
+commerce a share in the fur trade and in these wonderful new lands of
+the Pacific watershed. American ships (whaling ships) had already
+become accustomed to sail round Cape Horn and to visit the Oregon and
+Alaskan coasts. The American Government therefore, immediately after
+the Louisiana purchase, dispatched an American expedition under
+Captains Meriwether Lewis and Jonathan Clarke to travel up the
+Missouri River and so across the mountains to the coast of Oregon, a
+wonderful expedition, which they carried out with great success in two
+years (1804-6), reaching the lower Columbia River and following it
+down to the sea.
+
+Consequently, with all this in the air, it is not very surprising that
+the far-sighted John Jacob Astor, a wealthy German merchant of New
+York, should have conceived the idea of founding a great American
+fur-trading company and of establishing it at the mouth of the
+Columbia River.
+
+At the beginning of the nineteenth century he had entered into
+arrangements with an Anglo-Canadian Company (the Mackinaw), which
+worked the southernmost part of Canada, to fuse its enterprise with
+his, and thus founded the _South-west Company_, the name of which (at
+any rate in current speech) was afterwards changed into the Pacific
+Fur-trading Company. After attempting in vain to come to a working
+arrangement with the great North-west Company, he decided to act quite
+independently and to establish the headquarters of his new concern at
+the mouth of the Columbia River. Accordingly, the expedition was sent
+out in duplicate to the mouth of the Columbia River, one-half going a
+six-months' voyage round Cape Horn in a sailing ship, the _Tonquin_,
+and the other marching overland or canoeing on lakes and rivers in
+eighteen months from Montreal via the Mississippi and Missouri. These
+two parties together founded "Astoria", at the mouth of the Columbia.
+But most of Astor's employees were British subjects derived from men
+of the North-west and Mackinaw Companies; and when, in 1812, war
+broke out between the United States and Great Britain, a British war
+vessel came up the Pacific coast to Astoria and promptly turned it
+into "Fort George". Forthwith the North-west Company bought up the
+derelict property of Mr. Astor's Company from his not very honest
+British employees, and the few Americans in the concern retreated
+inland, and, after almost incredible sufferings from the attacks of
+unfriendly Indians, succeeded in reaching the Mississippi.
+
+
+[Illustration: THE KOOTENAY OR HEAD STREAM OF THE COLUMBIA RIVER]
+
+This Columbia River had in reality been discovered at its sources, and
+traced down to the sea, between 1807 and 1811 by DAVID THOMPSON (once
+a Blue-coat boy in London; from 1784 to 1792 in the service of the
+Hudson's Bay Company, and after that one of the most famous of the
+Nor'-westers). The upper course of this river and its northern
+affluents were annexed as British by David Thompson; the lower course
+did not at once become the political property of the United States,
+but was considered vaguely to be the joint property of both nations,
+till the Oregon settlement of 1846. By the treaty of 1792, the
+southern boundary of central Canada was agreed upon as being the 49th
+degree of north latitude, but only between the Lake of the Woods and
+the Rocky Mountains. The agreement of 1846 continued the 49th degree
+boundary to the shore of the Pacific opposite Vancouver Island.
+
+Prominent among the agents of the North-western Company who followed
+Sir Alexander Mackenzie as a pioneer towards the Pacific shores was
+ALEXANDER HENRY THE YOUNGER,[1] regarding whose journeys some extracts
+may be given.
+
+[Footnote 1: The nephew of the Alexander Henry already mentioned as an
+explorer between 1761 and 1775.]
+
+The first entry in his diary of 1799 is not particularly romantic, but
+shows some of the unexpected dangers attending the life of an
+adventurer in the far north-west. He had been riding through the
+Assiniboin country in the autumn of 1799, probably after one of the
+very indigestible meals which he describes here and there in his
+pages. Alone, and crossing an open plain swarming with wolves, he was
+seized suddenly with a violent colic, the pain of which was so
+terrible that he could not remain in the saddle. He dismounted,
+hobbled his horse, and threw himself on the grass, where he lay in
+agony for two hours, expecting every moment would be his last, till,
+quite exhausted, he fell asleep. He was awakened, however, by the
+howling of the wolves advancing to tear him to pieces; yet he was so
+weak that he was scarcely able to mount his horse, and then could only
+proceed at a slow walk, with the wolves snapping at his horse's heels.
+
+Near the site of the present city of Winnipeg, in the late summer of
+1800, he and his expedition were much troubled by swarms of water
+snakes. They were harmless but not pleasant in their familiarity, for
+they entered the tents and took refuge in the explorers' beds; and as
+they apparently came from their breeding places in Amerindian graves
+which covered the remains of people who had died of smallpox in a
+recent epidemic, they were additionally loathsome.
+
+Smallpox indeed played a very important part in the historical
+development of western North America. Prior to 1780 the Amerindian
+tribes between the upper Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, and
+between the Saskatchewans and the Missouri, were numerous and warlike.
+At first, about 1765, they received in very friendly fashion the
+pioneer British traders and French Canadians who attempted to resume
+the fur trade where it had been dropped by the French monopolists in
+1760. But fifteen years afterwards, enraged at the violence and
+wrongdoing of the British and Canadian traders, and maddened by strong
+drink, they were planning a universal massacre of the whites, when
+suddenly smallpox (introduced by the Spaniards into New Mexico) came
+on them as a scourge, which destroyed whole tribes, and depopulated
+much of western North America.
+
+Alexander Henry had many adventures with the bison of the plains. Here
+is one of them.
+
+"Just as I came up to him at full speed and prepared to fire, my horse
+suddenly stopped. The bull had turned about to face my horse, which
+was naturally afraid of buffaloes, and startled at such a frightful
+object; he leaped to one side to avoid the bull. As I was not prepared
+for this I was pitched over his head, and fell within a few yards of
+the bull's nose; but fortunately for me he paid no more attention to
+my horse than to me. The grass was long, and I lay quiet until a
+favourable opportunity offered as he presented his placotte. I
+discharged both barrels of my double gun at him; he turned and made
+one plunge toward me, but had not time to repeat it before he fell,
+with his nose not more than three paces off.... I had to return on
+foot as my horse had bolted."
+
+At this place--near the Red River (the season September)--the country
+swarmed with big game such as North America will never see any more:
+enormous numbers of bison, of wapiti or Canadian red deer, moose or
+elk, prong-buck, and of grizzly bears and black bears who followed the
+herds to attack them. The rivers swarmed with otters and beavers. The
+ground along the banks of the river was worn into a smooth, hard
+pavement by the hoofs of the thousands of buffaloes. Racoons, red
+foxes, wolves, and pumas frequented the bush country and the chumps of
+forest. A large white wolf, prowling rather imprudently, came within a
+few yards of Henry, and was shot dead. "We observed on the opposite
+beach no fewer than seven bears drinking all at the same time. Red
+deer were whistling in every direction, but our minds were not
+sufficiently at ease to enjoy our situation." Large flocks of swans
+(_Cygnus columbianus_) rose out of the Red River apparently in a state
+of alarm and confusion, possibly caused by the many herds of buffaloes
+rushing down to the river to drink. At night everything was quiet
+except the bellowing of buffaloes and the whistling of red deer. "I
+climbed up a tall oak at the entrance of the plain, from the top of
+which I had an extensive view of the country. Buffalo and red deer
+were everywhere in sight passing to and fro."
+
+But the prairie had its nuisances as well as its wonders of animal
+life. From the end of April to the end of July the woods and grass
+swarmed with ticks (_Ixodes_), which covered the clothes of the
+Europeans and entered their ears and there caused serious
+inflammations. They would in time get such a firm hold by the
+insertion of their heads into the skin that they could not be removed
+without pulling the body from the head, which caused a terrible
+itching lasting for months. If left alone they adhered to the flesh
+until they swelled to the size of a musket ball, when they fell off of
+themselves. In the summertime gadflies were exasperating in their
+attacks on men and cattle. Mosquitoes were a veritable plague, and
+midges also, between June and the end of September.
+
+Not the least of the terrors of life in the far north-west in those
+days was the vermin that collected in the houses or huts built for a
+winter sojourn. It is frequently mentioned, in the records of the
+pioneers, how the lodges or tents of the Amerindians swarmed with
+fleas and lice. Henry notes on the 19th of April, 1803: "The men began
+to demolish our dwelling houses, which were built of bad wood, and to
+build new ones of oak. The nests of mice we found, and the swarms of
+fleas hopping in every direction, were astonishing."
+
+Henry reached the Pacific coast in 1814, by way of the Kootenay,
+Spokane, and Columbia River route, which had been discovered by David
+Thompson. He describes well the forests of remarkable trees on this
+portion of the Pacific coast, opposite the south end of Vancouver
+Island: the crooked oaks loaded with mistletoe, the tall wild cherry
+trees, the hazels with trunks thicker than a man's thigh, the
+evergreen arbutus, the bracken fern, blackberries, and black
+raspberries; and the game in these glades of trees and fern: small
+Columbian _Mazama_ deer, large lynxes, bears, gluttons, wolves, foxes,
+racoons, and squirrels. Overhead soared huge Californian condors
+(_Pseudogryphus_).
+
+Henry was drowned in 1812 in the estuary of the Columbia River,
+through the capsizing of a boat.
+
+The question of the identity of the great river flowing to the Pacific
+from near the headwaters of the Peace--the river which Mackenzie had
+discovered and been forced to leave--was finally decided by SIMON
+FRASER, one of the most celebrated among the North-west Company's
+pioneers. Like Mackenzie, he believed this stream to be the upper
+Columbia.
+
+Accompanied by John Stuart and Jules Quesnel, he left the Fraser River
+at its junction with the Nechaco on May 22, 1807, and, keeping as near
+as he could to the course of the river, found himself in the country
+of the Atna tribe, Amerindians of a diminutive size but active
+appearance, from whom he obtained an invaluable guide and faithful
+interpreter, Little Fellow, but for whose bravery, wise advice, and
+clever diplomacy the journey must have ended in disaster or
+disappointment--a remark which might be made about nearly all the
+Amerindian guides of the pioneers.
+
+The Atna Indians were dressed in skins with the hair outside, and were
+armed with bows and arrows. They besmeared their bodies with fish oil
+and red earth, and painted their faces in different colours. Bison
+were quite unknown to them, being very seldom found in those latitudes
+on the western side of the Rocky Mountains. The country of the Atna
+Indians on the upper Fraser abounded in elk, wapiti, reindeer, bighorn
+sheep, mountain goats,[2] and beaver.
+
+[Footnote 2: This remarkable beast (_Oreamnus_) they called "Aspai",
+and wove from its white wool an excellent cloth for their clothing.]
+
+Here is a description by Fraser of some of the rapids in the upper
+part of the river named after him.
+
+"The channel contracts to about forty yards, and is enclosed by two
+precipices of immense height, which bending towards each other make it
+narrower above than below. The water which rolls down this
+extraordinary passage in tumultuous waves and with great velocity has
+a frightful appearance. However, it being impossible to carry canoes
+by land, all hands without hesitation embarked, as it were, _à corps
+perdu_ upon the mercy of this awful tide. Once engaged, the die was
+cast. Our great difficulty consisted in keeping the canoes in the
+middle of the stream, that is, clear of the precipice on the one side,
+and of the gulfs formed by the waves on the other. Thus, skimming
+along as fast as lightning, the crews, cool and determined, followed
+each other in awful silence, and when we arrived at the end we stood
+gazing at each other in silent gratification at our narrow escape from
+total destruction.... I scarcely ever saw anything so dreary and
+dangerous in any country (such precipices, mountains, and rapids), and
+I still seem to see, whichever way I turn my eyes, mountains upon
+mountains whose summits are covered with eternal snow."
+
+[Illustration: A HUNTER'S "SHACK" IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: AFTER A
+SUCCESSFUL SHOOT OF BLUE GROUSE]
+
+They had to take to these same mountains, the river being unnavigable.
+The Asketti Indians brought them different kinds of roots, especially
+wild onions boiled into a syrup, excellent dried salmon, and some
+berries. These Indians had visited the seacoast, and had seen ships of
+war come there with white men, "very well dressed, and very proud,
+for," continued the chief, getting up and clapping his two hands upon
+his hips, and then striding about the place with an air of
+importance, "this is the way they go". In this country of the Hakamaw
+and Asketti Indians, dogs were much in use for carrying purposes, and
+could draw from one hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds. They were
+considered by the French Canadians very good eating, though only the
+smaller kinds were eaten, the large dogs being of another race and
+having a rank taste. They also shaved these dogs in the summer time,
+and wove rugs from their hair. These rugs were striped in different
+colours, crossing at right angles, and resembling at a distance a
+Highland plaid.
+
+The tombs of the Indian villages on this western side of the Rocky
+Mountains were superior to anything that Fraser had ever seen amongst
+savages. They were about fifteen feet long, and of the form of a chest
+of drawers. Upon the boards and posts, beasts and birds were carved in
+a curious but crude manner, and pretty well proportioned. Returning to
+the river, when the worst of the rapids were passed, they descended it
+rapidly, helped by a strong current, and at length entered a lake
+where they saw seals, which showed that they had got near to the
+Pacific Ocean. They also beheld a round mountain, the now celebrated
+Mount Baker, which is visible from so much of the surrounding country
+of British Columbia and Vancouver Island. The trees were splendid,
+junipers thirty feet in circumference in their trunks and two or three
+hundred feet high. Mosquitoes, however, were in clouds. Nearer to the
+coast the Indians often appeared in the distance like white men, for
+the very literal reason that they had covered their skins with white
+paint. Their houses were built of cedar planks, and were six hundred
+and forty feet long by sixty feet broad, all under one roof, but of
+course separated into a great number of partitions for different
+families. On the outside the boards (as Mackenzie had noticed) were
+carved with figures of men, beasts, and birds as large as life. Simon
+Fraser, however, when he reached sea water, near the site of New
+Westminster, was greatly disappointed that any view of the main ocean
+should be obstructed by distant lands. He had believed all along that
+he was tracing the far-famed Columbia River to its entrance into the
+Pacific Ocean; and now that, instead of this, he had discovered an
+entirely new river, henceforth to be called after him but without so
+long a course as the Columbia, his vanity was hurt.
+
+The Amerindians of the sea coast, opposite Vancouver Island, showed
+hostility to Fraser's party, as they had done farther north to
+Mackenzie. The Canadian _voyageurs_ got alarmed, and told Fraser's
+assistant, John Stuart, that they had made up their minds to return by
+land across the Rocky Mountains. Fraser and the other officers of the
+expedition joined in arguing with them and recalling them to their
+senses. Finally each member of the party swore a solemn oath before
+Almighty God that they would sooner perish than forsake in distress
+any of the crew in the present voyage. After this ceremony was over
+all hands dressed in their best apparel, and each took charge of his
+own bundle. They therefore returned as much as possible by the Fraser
+River, and only took to the mountains when obliged by the rapids. They
+had to pass many difficult rocks, defiles, precipices, in which there
+was a beaten path made by the natives, and made possible by means of
+scaffolds, bridges, and ladders, so peculiarly constructed that it
+required no small degree of necessity, dexterity, and courage in
+strangers to undertake them. For instance, they had to ascend
+precipices by means of ladders composed of two long poles placed
+upright, with sticks tied crosswise with twigs; upon the end of these
+others were placed, and so on to any height; add to this that the
+ladders were often so slack that the smallest breeze put them in
+motion, swinging them against the rocks, while the steps leading from
+scaffold to scaffold were so narrow and irregular that they could
+scarcely be traced by the feet without the greatest care and
+circumspection; but the most perilous part was when another rock
+projected over the one they were clearing.
+
+The Hakamaw Indians certainly deserved Fraser's grateful remembrance
+for their able assistance throughout these alarming situations. The
+descents were, if possible, still more difficult; in these places the
+white men were under the necessity of trusting their property to the
+Indians, even the precious guns were handed from one Indian to
+another; yet they thought nothing of it, they went up and down these
+wild places with the same agility as sailors do on a ship. After
+escaping innumerable perils in the course of the day, the party
+encamped about sunset, being supplied by the natives with plenty of
+dried fish.
+
+Thus the main lines of the exploration of the great Canadian Dominion
+were completed. Alexander Mackenzie went to England in 1799 and
+received a knighthood for his remarkable achievements. On his return
+he first definitely created the New North-west or "X.Y." Company, and
+then brought about its fusion (after several years of bitter rivalry)
+with the old North-west Company; and it was this united and
+strengthened organization which, between 1804 and 1819, sent out so
+many bold pioneers to fill in the details of the map between the
+Columbia and Missouri on the south, and the Great Slave Lake and Liard
+River on the north. But during these years the energies of the
+Hudson's Bay Company were reviving under a strange personality--THOMAS
+DOUGLAS, EARL OF SELKIRK. Lord Selkirk conceived the idea of putting
+new life into the Hudson's Bay Company, reviving the monopolies of
+trading granted in its old charter, and turning its vague rights to
+land into the absolute ownership of the enormous area of North
+America north and west of the Canadian provinces. No regard of course
+was paid to any rights of the natives, who as a matter of fact were
+dying out rapidly from the effects of bad alcohol and epidemic
+diseases.
+
+His motive was to establish large colonies of stalwart Highlanders as
+the tenants of a Chartered Company. Alexander Mackenzie had already
+called the north-west country "New Caledonia". Lord Selkirk wished to
+make it so in its population.
+
+Already he had been instrumental in establishing a Scottish colony on
+Prince Edward's Island,[3] which, after some difficulties at the
+beginning, had soon begun to prosper. Two or three years later he came
+to Montreal, and there collected all the information he could obtain
+from the partners in the North-west Company regarding the prospects of
+trade and colonization in the far west. In the year 1811 he had
+managed to acquire the greater part of the shares in the Hudson's Bay
+Company, and, placing himself at its head, he sent out his first
+hundred Highlanders and Irish to form a feudatory colony in the Red
+River district (the modern Manitoba). He also dispatched an official
+to govern what might be called the Middle West on behalf of the
+Hudson's Bay Company. This person, acting under instructions, claimed
+the whole region beyond the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada as the
+private property of the Hudson's Bay Company, on the strength of their
+antiquated charter issued by Charles II. The agents of the North-west
+Company were warned (as also the two or three thousand French
+Canadians and half-breeds in their pay) that henceforth they must not
+cut wood, fish or hunt, build or cultivate, save by the permission and
+as the tenants of the Hudson's Bay Company.
+
+[Footnote 3: Prince Edward's Island is off the north coast of New
+Brunswick. It was named after Queen Victoria's father, the Duke of
+Kent.]
+
+It is not surprising that such an outrageous demand, when it was
+followed up by the use of armed force, soon provoked bloodshed and a
+state of civil war throughout the North-west Territories. Lord Selkirk
+himself took command on the Red River, with a small army of
+disciplined soldiers. At length, in 1817, the British Government
+intervened through the Governor-General of Canada, and in 1818 Lord
+Selkirk left North America disgusted, and two years afterwards died at
+Pau, in France, from an illness brought on by grief at the failure of
+his projects.
+
+Sir Alexander Mackenzie also died suddenly in 1820, in Scotland. For
+twelve years he had been member of parliament for Huntingdon, and
+since 1812 had been the determined opponent in England of Lord
+Selkirk's plans of forcible colonization. After his death, however, in
+1821, a sudden movement for reconciliation took place between the two
+Companies. Thenceforth the Hudson's Bay Company ruled over the vast
+regions of British North America, beyond Newfoundland, New Brunswick,
+Nova Scotia, and the two Canadian provinces. Under their government
+the work of geographical exploration went on apace. In 1834 one of
+their officers, J. M'Leod, discovered the Stikine River in northern
+British Columbia, and by 1848 J. Bell and Robert Campbell had revealed
+the Porcupine and Yukon Rivers. By the time Thomas Simpson, Warren
+Dease, and Dr. John Rae, on behalf of the Hudson's Bay Company; and
+Franklin, Back, Parry, Richardson, and M'Clintock, for the Imperial
+Government, had completed the explorations mentioned in Chapter VI,
+all the main features of Canadian geography were made known. The next
+series of pioneers were to be those of the mining industry--it was the
+discovery of gold in 1856 which created British Columbia; of
+agriculture--the wheat-growers of the Red River region made the
+province of Manitoba; of the steamboat; and above all the railway.
+Developments of science scarcely yet dreamt of will demand in further
+time their pioneers, and these will not come from abroad, but will
+assuredly be found in this splendid Canadian people, the descendants
+of the men or of the types of men I have attempted to describe.
+
+
+
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Pioneers in Canada, by Sir Harry Johnston</title>
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Pioneers in Canada, by Sir Harry Johnston,
+Illustrated by E. Wallcousins</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Pioneers in Canada</p>
+<p>Author: Sir Harry Johnston</p>
+<p>Release Date: July 23, 2004  [eBook #13003]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PIONEERS IN CANADA***</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Janet Kegg<br>
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team</h3>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="image-0001"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc01.jpg" width="282" height="450"
+alt="Type of Ship Sailed in by the English Or French
+Pioneers in the Sixteenth Century
+">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>TYPE OF SHIP SAILED IN BY THE ENGLISH OR FRENCH
+PIONEERS<br>
+IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY</h5>
+<hr>
+<a name="top"></a>
+<h1>
+    PIONEERS IN CANADA
+</h1>
+<br>
+<h2>
+    By SIR HARRY JOHNSTON
+</h2>
+<p class="note">
+   G.C.M.G., K.C.B.
+</p>
+<br>
+<p class="note">
+    <i>WITH EIGHT COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS<br> BY E. WALLCOUSINS</i>
+</p>
+<center>
+<img src="images/tp.jpg" width="130" height="150"
+alt="title page decoration">
+</center>
+<h5>1912</h5>
+<hr>
+<p class="note3">
+     <big><b>The Pioneer Library</b></big><br><br>
+
+     A standard series by Sir Harry<br>
+     Johnston. Tastefully bound.<br><br>
+
+     <b>Pioneers in Australasia</b>.<br>
+     <b>Pioneers in Canada</b>. <br>
+     <b>Pioneers in South Africa</b>. <br>
+     <b>Pioneers in West Africa</b>. <br>
+     <b>Pioneers in Tropical America</b>. <br>
+     <b>Pioneers in India</b>.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="2H_PREF"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    PREFACE
+</h2>
+<br>
+<p>
+    I have been asked to write a series of works which should deal with
+    "real adventures", in parts of the world either wild and uncontrolled
+    by any civilized government, or at any rate regions full of dangers,
+    of wonderful discoveries; in which the daring and heroism of white men
+    (and sometimes of white women) stood out clearly against backgrounds
+    of unfamiliar landscapes, peopled with strange nations, savage tribes,
+    dangerous beasts, or wonderful birds. These books would again and
+    again illustrate the first coming of the white race into regions
+    inhabited by people of a different type, with brown, black, or yellow
+    skins; how the European was received, and how he treated these races
+    of the soil which gradually came under his rule owing to his superior
+    knowledge, weapons, wealth, or powers of persuasion. The books were to
+    tell the plain truth, even if here and there they showed the white man
+    to have behaved badly, or if they revealed the fact that the American
+    Indian, the Negro, the Malay, the black Australian was sometimes cruel
+    and treacherous.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A request thus framed was almost equivalent to asking me to write
+    stories of those pioneers who founded the British Empire; in any case,
+    the first volumes of this series do relate the adventures of those who
+    created the greater part of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, by
+    their perilous explorations of unknown lands and waters. In many
+    instances the travellers were all unconscious of their destinies, of
+    the results which would arise from their actions. In some cases they
+    would have bitterly railed at Fate had they known that the result of
+    their splendid efforts was to be the enlargement of an empire under
+    the British flag. Perhaps if they could know by now that we are
+    striving under that flag to be just and generous to all types of men,
+    and not to use our empire solely for the benefit of English-speaking
+    men and women, the French who founded the Canadian nation, the Germans
+    and Dutch who helped to create British Africa, Malaysia, and
+    Australia, the Spaniards who preceded us in the West Indies, and the
+    Portuguese in West, Central, and East Africa, in Newfoundland and
+    Ceylon, might&mdash;if they have any consciousness or care for things in
+    this world&mdash;be not so sorry after all that we are reaping where they
+    sowed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is (as you will see) impossible to tell the tale of these early
+    days in the British Dominions beyond the Seas, without describing here
+    and there the adventures of men of enterprise and daring who were not
+    of our own nationality. The majority, nevertheless, were of British
+    stock; that is to say, they were English, Welsh, Scots, Irish, perhaps
+    here and there a Channel Islander and a Manxman; or Nova Scotians,
+    Canadians, and New Englanders. The bulk of them were good fellows, a
+    few were saints, a few were ruffians with redeeming features.
+    Sometimes they were common men who blundered into great discoveries
+    which will for ever preserve their names from perishing; occasionally
+    they were men of Fate, predestined, one might say, to change the
+    history of the world by their revelations of new peoples, new lands,
+    new rivers, new lakes, snow mountains, and gold mines. Here and there
+    is a martyr like Marquette, or Livingstone, or Gordon, dying for the
+    cause of a race not his own. And others again are mere boys, whose
+    adventures come to them because they are adventurous, and whose feats
+    of arms, escapes, perils, and successes are quite as wonderful as
+    those attributed to the juvenile heroes of Marryat, Stevenson, and the
+    author of <i>The Swiss Family Robinson</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have tried, in describing these adventures, to give my readers some
+    idea of the scenery, animals, and vegetation of the new lands through
+    which these pioneers passed on their great and small purposes; as well
+    as of the people, native to the soil, with whom they came in contact.
+    And in treating of these subjects I have thought it best to give the
+    scientific names of the plant or animal which was of importance in my
+    story, so that any of my readers who were really interested in natural
+    history could at once ascertain for themselves the exact type alluded
+    to, and, if they wished, look it up in a museum, a garden, or a
+    natural history book.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I hope this attempt at scientific accuracy will not frighten away
+    readers young and old; and, if you can have patience with the author,
+    you will, by reading this series of books on the great pioneers of
+    British West Africa, Canada, Malaysia, West Indies, South Africa, and
+    Australasia, get a clear idea of how the British Colonial Empire came
+    to be founded.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You will find that I have often tried to tell the story in the words
+    of the pioneers, but in these quotations I have adopted the modern
+    spelling, not only in my transcript of the English original or
+    translation, but also in the place and tribal names, so as not to
+    puzzle or delay the reader. Otherwise, if you were to look out some of
+    the geographical names of the old writers, you might not be able to
+    recognize them on the modern atlas. The pronunciation of this modern
+    geographical spelling is very simple and clear: the vowels are
+    pronounced <i>a</i> = ah, <i>e</i> = eh, <i>i</i> = ee, <i>o</i> = o, <i>ô</i> = oh,
+    <i>&#333;</i> = aw, <i>ö</i> = u in 'hurt', and <i>u</i> = oo, as in German, Italian, or
+    most other European languages; and the consonants as in English.
+</p>
+<p class="ar">
+    <big>H. H. J</big>OHNSTON.
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+
+
+<div style="height: 3em;"><br><br><br></div>
+
+<a name="contents"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+  <h3>CONTENTS</h3>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_PREF">Preface</a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_LIST">
+List of Illustrations
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_AUTH">
+List of the Chief Authorities
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0001">
+I. THE WHITE MAN'S DISCOVERY OF NORTH AMERICA
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0002">
+II. JACQUES CARTIER
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0003">
+III. ELIZABETHAN PIONEERS IN NORTH AMERICA
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0004">
+IV. CHAMPLAIN AND THE FOUNDATION OF CANADA
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0005">
+V. AFTER CHAMPLAIN: FROM MONTREAL TO THE MISSISSIPPI
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0006">
+VI. THE GEOGRAPHICAL CONDITIONS OF THE CANADIAN DOMINION
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0007">
+VII. THE AMERINDIANS AND ESKIMO:  THE ABORIGINES OF BRITISH NORTH AMERICA
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0008">
+VIII. THE HUDSON BAY EXPLORERS AND THE BRITISH CONQUEST OF ALL CANADA
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0009">
+IX. THE PIONEERS FROM MONTREAL:  ALEXANDER HENRY THE ELDER
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0010">
+X. SAMUEL HEARNE
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0011">
+XI. ALEXANDER MACKENZIE'S JOURNEYS
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0012">
+XII. MACKENZIE'S SUCCESSORS
+</a></p>
+
+<div style="height: 3em;"><br><br><br></div>
+
+
+<a name="2H_LIST"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<h3>
+    LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+</h3>
+<center><small>
+    COLOURED PLATES</small>
+</center>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0001">
+    Type of Ship sailed in by the English or French Pioneers in the
+    Sixteenth Century</a> <small><i>Frontispiece</i></small>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0003">
+    Icebergs and Polar Bears</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0005">
+    Indians hunting Bison</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0007">
+    Indians lying in wait for Moose</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0009">
+    Caribou swimming a River</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0011">
+    Great Auks, Gannets, Puffins, and Guillemots</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0013">
+    Scene on Canadian River: Wild Swans flying up, disturbed by Bear</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0016">
+    Big-horned Sheep of Rocky Mountains</a>
+</p>
+<br>
+<center>
+    <small>BLACK-AND-WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS</small>
+</center>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0002">
+    Jacques Cartier</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0004">
+    Samuel de Champlain and Alexander Henry the Elder</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0008">
+    An Amerindian Type of British Columbia</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0014">
+    Lake Louise, the Rocky Mountains</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0015">
+    Samuel Hearne and Alexander Mackenzie</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0017">
+    The Upper Waters of the Fraser River</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0019">
+    The Kootenay or Head Stream of the Columbia River</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0020">
+    A Hunter's "Shack" in British Columbia: After a successful Shoot of
+    Blue Grouse</a>
+</p>
+<br>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0006">
+    Map of Canada</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0012">
+    Map of Eastern Canada and Newfoundland</a>
+</p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#image-0018">
+    Map of Part of the Coast Region of British Columbia</a>
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr class="short">
+
+<a name="2H_AUTH"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    List of the Chief Authorities
+</h2>
+<p class="note2">
+    FROM WHOM THE PRINCIPAL FACTS AND INCIDENTS OF THIS BOOK HAVE BEEN
+    DERIVED, IN ADDITION TO THE AUTHOR'S OWN RESEARCHES AND EXPERIENCES,
+    AND INFORMATION SUPPLIED BY PROFESSOR R. RAMSAY WRIGHT, OF TORONTO
+    UNIVERSITY
+</p>
+<br>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>The Saint Lawrence Basin</b>. By Dr. S.E. DAWSON. London. 1905.
+    Lawrence &amp; Bullen.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>Relation Originale du Voyage de Jacques Cartier au Canada en
+    1534</b>; Documents inédits, &amp;c. Publiés par H. MICHELANT et A. RAME.
+    Paris. Librairie Tross. 1867.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>Voyage de Jacques Cartier au Canada en 1534</b>, &amp;c. Par H.
+    MICHELANT. Paris. 1865.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>Champlain's Voyages</b>: The Publications of the Prince Society.
+    Boston. 1878. Three volumes.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>Voyage of Verrazano</b>, &amp;c. By HENRY C. MURPHY. New York. 1875.
+    (Also the Essay on the Journeys of Verrazano, by Alessandro Bacchiani,
+    in the Bollettino della Societá Geografica Italiana. Rome. November,
+    1909.)
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>Volume IX of the Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of
+    Canada</b>. (For the History of Cape Breton and of the Beothiks of
+    Newfoundland.)
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>The Search for the Western Sea</b>. By Lawrence J. Burpee. London.
+    Alston Rivers. 1908.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New
+    France</b>, &amp;c. Edited by REUBEN GOLD THWAITES. Vol. LIX. Cleveland,
+    U.S.A. Burrows Bros. 1900.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>Travels and Explorations in Canada and the Indian Territories between
+    the years 1760 and 1776</b>. By ALEXANDER HENRY, Esq. New York. 1809.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>Voyages from Montreal on the River St. Lawrence through the Continent
+    of North America to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans, in the years 1789
+    and 1793</b>, &amp;c. &amp;c. By ALEXANDER MACKENZIE, Esq. London. 1801.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>A Journey from Prince of Wales's Fort in Hudson's Bay to the Northern
+    Ocean</b>, &amp;c. By SAMUEL HEARNE. London. 1795.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>Les Bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest</b>. By L.R. MASSON.
+    Quebec. 1890. Two volumes.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>New Light on the Early History of the Greater North-West</b>: The
+    Manuscript Journals of Alexander Henry, Jun., and of David Thompson.
+    Edited by ELLIOTT COUES. Three Volumes. New York. Harper. 1897.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>Sport and Travel in the Northland of Canada</b>. By DAVID T. HANBURY.
+    London. Edward Arnold. 1904.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>Henry Hudson the Navigator</b>, &amp;c. By G.M. ASHER. London. Hakluyt
+    Society, 1860.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher</b>. By Rear-Admiral RICHARD
+    COLLINSON. London. Hakluyt Society. 1867.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>The Voyages and Works of John Davis the Navigator</b>. By Admiral Sir
+    ALBERT HASTINGS MARKHAM. London. Hakluyt Society. 1880.
+</p>
+<p class="ref">
+    <b>The Voyages of William Baffin, 1612-1622</b>. By Sir CLEMENTS R.
+    MARKHAM. London. 1881.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2HCH0001"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER I
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    The White Man's Discovery of North America
+</h3>
+<p>
+    So far as our knowledge goes, it is almost a matter of certainty that
+    Man originated in the Old World&mdash;in Asia possibly. Long after this
+    wonderful event in the Earth's history, when the human species was
+    spread over a good deal of Asia, Europe, and Africa, migration to the
+    American continents began in attempts to find new feeding grounds and
+    unoccupied areas for hunting and fishing. How many thousands or
+    hundreds of thousands of years ago it was since the first men entered
+    America we do not yet know, any more than we can determine the route
+    by which they travelled from Asia. Curiously enough, the oldest traces
+    of man as yet discovered in the New World are not only in South
+    America, but in the south-eastern parts of South America. Although the
+    most obvious recent land connection between the Old and New Worlds is
+    the Aleutian chain of islands connecting Kamschatka with Alaska, the
+    ethnologist is occasionally led to think by certain evidence that
+    there may, both earlier and later, have existed another way of
+    reaching western America from south-eastern Asia through Pacific
+    archipelagoes and islets now sunk below the sea. In any case it seems
+    quite probable that men of Mongolian or Polynesian type reached
+    America on its western coasts long before the European came from the
+    north-east and east, and that they were helped on this long journey by
+    touching at islands since submerged by earthquake shocks or tidal
+    waves.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The aboriginal natives of North and South America seem to be of
+    entirely Asiatic origin; and such resemblances as there are between
+    the North-American Indians and the peoples of northern Europe do not
+    arise (we believe) from any ancient colonization of America from
+    western or northern Europe, but mainly from the fact that the
+    North-American Indians and the Eskimo (two distinct types of people)
+    are descended from the same human stocks as the ancient populations of
+    the northern part of Europe and Asia.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was&mdash;we think&mdash;from the far <i>north-west</i> of Europe that America was
+    first visited by the true White man, though there has been an ancient
+    immigration of imperfect "White" men (Ainu) from Kamschatka. Three or
+    four hundred years after the birth of Christ there were great race
+    movements in northern and central Europe, due to an increase of
+    population and insufficiency of food. Not only did these white
+    barbarians (though they were not as barbarous as we were led to think
+    by Greek and Roman literature) invade southern Europe, North Africa,
+    and Asia Minor, but from the fourth century of the Christian era
+    onwards they began to cross over to England and Scotland. At the same
+    time they took more complete possession of Scandinavia, driving north
+    before their advance the more primitive peoples like the Lapps and
+    Finns, who were allied to the stock from which arose both the Eskimo
+    and the Amerindian.<a name="1-1"></a><a href="#note-1-1"><small>[1]</small></a> All this time the Goths and Scandinavians
+    were either learning ideas of navigation from the Romans of the
+    Mediterranean or the Greeks of the Black Sea, or they were inventing
+    for themselves better ways of constructing ships; and although they
+    propelled them mainly by oars, they used masts and sails as well.<a name="1-2"></a><a href="#note-1-2"><small>[2]</small></a>
+    Having got over the fear of the sea sufficiently to reach the coasts
+    of England and Scotland, the Hebrides, Orkneys, and Shetlands, they
+    became still more venturesome in their voyages from Norway, until they
+    discovered the Faroe Archipelago (which tradition says they found
+    inhabited by wild sheep), and then the large island of Iceland, which
+    had, however, already been reached and settled by the northern Irish.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Iceland, though it lies so far to the north that it is partly within
+    the Arctic Circle, is, like Norway, Scotland, and Ireland, affected by
+    the Gulf Stream, so that considerable portions of it are quite
+    habitable. It is not almost entirely covered with ice, as Greenland
+    is; in fact, Iceland should be called Greenland (from the large extent
+    of its grassy pastures), and Greenland should be called Iceland.
+    Instead of this, however, the early Norwegian explorers called these
+    countries by the names they still bear.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Norse rovers from Norway and the Hebrides colonized Iceland from
+    the year 850; and about a hundred and thirty-six years afterwards, in
+    their venturesome journeys in search of new lands, they reached the
+    south-east and south-west coasts of Greenland. Owing to the glacial
+    conditions and elevated character of this vast continental island
+    (more than 500,000 sq. miles in area)&mdash;for the whole interior of
+    Greenland rises abruptly from the sea-coast to altitudes of from 5000
+    to 11,000 ft.&mdash;this discovery was of small use to the early Norwegians
+    or their Iceland colony. After it was governed by the kingdom of
+    Norway in the thirteenth century, the Norse colonization of south-west
+    Greenland faded away under the attacks of the Eskimo, <a name="p18"></a>until it ceased
+    completely in the fifteenth century. When Denmark united herself with
+    the kingdom of Norway in 1397, the Danish king became also the ruler
+    of Iceland. In the eighteenth century the Norwegian and Danish
+    settlements were re-established along the south-east and south-west
+    coasts of Greenland, mainly on account of the value of the whale,
+    seal, and cod fisheries in the seas around this enormous frozen
+    island; and all Greenland is now regarded as a Danish possession.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the adventurous Norsemen who first reached Greenland from Iceland
+    attempted to push their investigations farther to the south-west, in
+    the hope of discovering more habitable lands; and in this way it was
+    supposed that their voyages extended as far as Massachusetts and Rhode
+    Island, but in all probability they reached no farther than
+    Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. This portion of North America they
+    called "Vinland", more from the abundance of cranberries (<i>vinbær</i>) on
+    the open spaces than the few vines to be found in the woods of Nova
+    Scotia.<a name="1-3"></a><a href="#note-1-3"><small>[3]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    This brings us down to the year 1008. The Icelandic Norsemen then
+    ceased their investigations of the North-American Continent, and were
+    too ignorant to realize the value of their discoveries. Their colonies
+    on the coasts of Nova Scotia ("Vinland") and Newfoundland
+    ("Estotiland") were attacked probably by Eskimos, at any rate by a
+    short, thick-set, yellow-skinned ugly people whom the Norsemen called
+    "Skræling",<a name="1-4"></a><a href="#note-1-4"><small>[4]</small></a> who overcame the unfortunate settlers, murdered some,
+    and carried off others into the interior.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But about this period, when Europe was going through that dismal era,
+    the Dark Age which followed the downfall of the Roman Empire of the
+    west, various impulses were already directing the attention of
+    European adventurers to the Western Ocean, the Atlantic. One cause was
+    the increased hold of Roman and Greek Christianity over the peoples of
+    Europe. These Churches imposed fasts either for single days or for
+    continuous periods. When people fasted it meant that they were chiefly
+    denied any form of meat, and therefore must eat fish if they were not
+    content with oil, bread, or vegetables. So that there was an enormous
+    and increasing demand for fish, not only amongst those fortunate
+    people who lived by the seashore, and could get it fresh whenever they
+    liked, but among those who lived at a distance inland, and were still
+    required to fast when the Church so directed. Of course in many parts
+    of Europe they could get freshwater fish from the rivers or lakes. But
+    the supply was not equal to the demand; and fish sent up from the
+    seacoast soon went bad, so that the plan of salting and curing fish
+    was adopted. The Norsemen found it a paying business to fish
+    industriously in the seas round Iceland, Norway, Scotland, and
+    Ireland, salt and cure the fish, and then carry it to more southern
+    countries, where they exchanged it against wine, oil, clothing
+    materials, and other goods. This led to the Venetians (who had
+    absorbed so much of the carrying trade of the Mediterranean) sending
+    their ships through the Straits of Gibraltar into the northern seas
+    and trading with the Baltic for amber and salt fish. In the course of
+    this trade some Venetians, such as Antonio Zeno, found their way to
+    Norway and Iceland.<a name="1-5"></a><a href="#note-1-5"><small>[5]</small></a> It is thought that by this means Venice became
+    acquainted with the records of the Icelandic voyages to North
+    America, and that her explorers thus grew to entertain the idea of a
+    sea journey westward, or north-westward, of Britain, bringing mariners
+    to a New World represented by the far-eastern extension of Asia.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Christopher Columbus, the Genoese, conceived a similar idea, which
+    also may have owed something to the tradition of the Norsemen's
+    discovery of Vinland. But Columbus's theories were based on better
+    evidence, such as the discovery on the coasts of the Azores
+    archipelago, Madeira, and Portugal of strange seeds, tree trunks,
+    objects of human workmanship, and even (it is said) the bodies of
+    drowned savages&mdash;Amerindians&mdash;which had somehow drifted across, borne
+    by the current of the Gulf Stream, and escaping the notice of the
+    sharks.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Whilst Columbus was bestirring himself to find Asia across the
+    Atlantic, a sea pilot, JOHN CABOT (Zuan Cabota)&mdash;Genoese by birth, but
+    a naturalized subject of Venice&mdash;came to England and offered himself
+    to King Henry VII as a discoverer of new lands across the ocean. At
+    first he was employed at Copenhagen to settle fishery quarrels about
+    Iceland, and probably Cabota, or Cabot, visited Iceland in King
+    Henry's service, and there heard of the Icelandic colonies on the
+    other side of the Atlantic, only recently abandoned.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In 1496 King Henry VII provided money to cover some of the expense of
+    a voyage of discovery to search for the rumoured island across the
+    ocean. The people of Bristol were ordered to assist John Cabot, and by
+    them he was furnished with a small sailing ship, the <i>Matthew</i>, and a
+    crew of fifteen mariners. Cabot, with his two sons, Luis and Sancio,
+    sailed for Ireland and the unknown West in May, 1497, and, after a sea
+    voyage quite as wonderful as that of Columbus, reached the coast of
+    Cape Breton Island (or "the New Isle", as it was first named<a name="1-6"></a><a href="#note-1-6"><small>[6]</small></a>) on
+    June 24, 1497. They found "the land excellent, and the climate
+    temperate". The sea was so full of fish along these coasts that the
+    mariners opined (truly) that henceforth Bristol need not trouble about
+    the Iceland trade. Here along this "new isle" were the predestined
+    fisheries of Britain.<a name="1-7"></a><a href="#note-1-7"><small>[7]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    They encountered no inhabitants, though they found numerous traces of
+    their existence in the form of snares, notched trees, and bone netting
+    needles. John Cabot hoisted the English flag of St. George and the
+    Venetian standard of St. Mark; then&mdash;perhaps after coasting a little
+    along Nova Scotia&mdash;fearful that a longer stay might cause them to run
+    short of provisions, he turned the prow of the <i>Matthew</i> eastward, and
+    reached Bristol once more about August 6, and London on August 10,
+    1497, with his report to King Henry VII, who rewarded him with a
+    donation of £10. He was further granted a pension of £20 a year (which
+    he only drew for two years, probably because he died after returning
+    from a second voyage to the North-American coast), and he received a
+    renewal of his patent of discovery in February, 1498. In this patent
+    it is evidently inferred that King Henry VII assumed a sovereignty
+    over these distant regions because of John Cabot's hoisting of the
+    English flag on "the new Isle" (Cape Breton Island) in the preceding
+    year.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The new expedition of 1498 was a relatively important affair. The
+    king assisted to finance the ventures of the Bristol captains, and
+    five of his ships formed part of the little fleet. It is probable that
+    John Cabot was in command, and almost certain that his young son
+    Sebastian was a passenger, possibly an assistant pilot. The course
+    followed lay much farther to the north, and brought the little sailing
+    vessels amongst the icebergs, ice floes, polar bears, and stormy seas
+    of Greenland and Labrador. Commercially the voyage was a failure,
+    almost a disaster. The ships returned singly, and after a considerable
+    interval of time. Nevertheless, some of the king's loans were repaid
+    to him; and in 1501 a regular chartered company was formed (perhaps at
+    Bristol), with three Bristolians and three Portuguese as directors.
+    Henry VII not only gave a royal patent to this association, but lent
+    more money to enable it to explore and colonize these new lands across
+    the western sea.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There can be little doubt that between 1498 and 1505 these Bristol
+    ships, directed by Italian, English, and Portuguese pilots, first
+    revealed to the civilized world of western Europe the coasts of
+    Newfoundland, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Massachusetts, and
+    Delaware. They must have got as far south as the State of Delaware
+    (according to Sebastian Cabot, their southern limit was lat. 38°),
+    because in 1505 they were able to bring back parrots ("popyngays"), as
+    well as hawks and lynxes ("catts of the mountaigne"), for the
+    delectation of King Henry; and parrots even at that period could not
+    have been obtained from farther north than the latitude of New
+    York.<a name="1-8"></a><a href="#note-1-8"><small>[8]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    But after 1505 English interest in "the Newe founde launde" and the
+    "Newe Isle" languished; the exploration of North America was taken up
+    and carried farther by Portuguese, Bretons and Normans of France,
+    Italians, and Spaniards.<a name="1-9"></a><a href="#note-1-9"><small>[9]</small></a> It revived again under Henry VIII, owing
+    to the irresistible attraction of the Newfoundland fisheries and the
+    knowledge that the ships from France were returning every autumn with
+    great supplies of fish cured and salted; for an adequate supply of
+    salt fish was becoming a matter of great importance to the markets of
+    western Europe. In 1527 Henry VIII sent two ships under the command of
+    John Rut to explore the North-American coast, and Captain Rut seems
+    to have reached the Straits of Belle Isle between Newfoundland
+    and Labrador (then blocked with ice so that he took them for
+    a bay), and afterwards to have passed along the east coast of
+    Newfoundland&mdash;already much frequented by the Bretons, Normans, and
+    Portuguese&mdash;and to have stopped at the harbour of St. John's, thence
+    sailing as far south as Massachusetts.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Portuguese monarchy had begun to take possession of the Azores
+    archipelago from the year 1432. These islands were probably known to
+    the Phoenicians, and even to the Arabs of the Middle Ages; between the
+    fourteenth and fifteenth centuries they had been rediscovered by
+    Catalans, Genoese, Flemings, and Portuguese; and after 1444 the Azores
+    began to prove very useful to the sea adventurers of this wonderful
+    fifteenth century, as they became a shelter and a place of call for
+    fresh water and provisions almost in the middle of the Atlantic, 800
+    to 1000 miles due west of Portugal. Portuguese vessels sailed
+    northwards from the Azores in search of fishing grounds, and thus
+    reached Iceland, which they called Terra do Bacalhao.<a name="1-10"></a><a href="#note-1-10"><small>[10]</small></a> They may
+    even before Cabot have visited in an unrecorded fashion the wonderful
+    banks of Newfoundland&mdash;an immense area of shallow sea swarming with
+    codfish.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As soon as the news of the Cabot voyages reached the King of Portugal
+    he arranged to send an expedition of discovery to the far north-west,
+    perhaps to find a northern sea route to Eastern Asia. He gave the
+    command to Gaspar Corte-Real, a Portuguese noble connected through
+    family property with the Azores. Starting from the Azores in the
+    summer of 1500, Corte-Real discovered Newfoundland, and called it
+    "Terra Verde" from its dense woods of fir trees, which are now being
+    churned into wood pulp to make paper for British books and newspapers.
+    He then sailed along the coast of Labrador,<a name="1-11"></a><a href="#note-1-11"><small>[11]</small></a> and thence crossed
+    over to Greenland, the southern half of which he mapped with fair
+    accuracy. His records of this voyage take particular note of the great
+    icebergs off the coast of Greenland. His men were surprised to find
+    that sea water frozen becomes perfectly fresh&mdash;all the salt is left
+    out in the process. So that his two ships could supply themselves
+    with fresh water of the purest, by hacking ice from the masses
+    floating in these Greenland summer seas. The next year he started
+    again, but on a more westerly course. His two ships reached the coasts
+    of New Jersey and Massachusetts, and sailed north once more to
+    Labrador. They captured a number of Amerindian aborigines, but only
+    one of the two ships (with seven of these savages on board) reached
+    Portugal; Gaspar Corte-Real was never heard of again. His brother
+    Miguel went out in search of him, but he likewise disappeared without
+    a trace.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nevertheless these Portuguese expeditions to North America have left
+    ineffaceable traces in the geography of the Newfoundland coast, of
+    which (under the name of Terra Nova<a name="1-12"></a><a href="#note-1-12"><small>[12]</small></a>) the governorship was made
+    hereditary in the Corte-Real family. Cape Race for example&mdash;the most
+    prominent point of the island&mdash;is really the Portuguese <i>Cabo
+    Raso</i>&mdash;the bare or "shaved" cape&mdash;and this was by the Spaniards
+    regarded as the westernmost limit of Portuguese sovereignty in that
+    direction. For the Spaniards were by no means pleased at the intrusion
+    of other nations into a New World which they desired to monopolize
+    entirely for the Spanish Crown. They did not so much mind sharing it,
+    along the line agreed upon in the Treaty of Tordesillas, with the
+    Portuguese, but the ingress of the English and French infuriated them.
+    The Basque people of the north-east corner of Spain were a hardy
+    seafaring folk, especially bold in the pursuit of whales in the Bay of
+    Biscay, and eager to take a share in the salt-fish trade. This desire
+    took them in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to Ireland and
+    Iceland. They began to fish off the Newfoundland coasts perhaps as
+    early as 1525. About this time also the Emperor Charles V, King of
+    Spain, having through one great Portuguese sea captain&mdash;Magalhães
+    (Magellan)&mdash;discovered the passage from Atlantic to Pacific across
+    the extremity of South America, thought by employing another
+    Portuguese&mdash;Estevão Gomez&mdash;to find a similar sea route through North
+    America, which would prove a short cut from Europe to China. This was
+    the famous "North-west Passage" the search for which drew so many
+    great and brave adventurers into the Arctic sea of America between
+    1500 and 1853, to be revealed at last by our fellow countrymen, but to
+    prove useless to navigation on account of the enormous accumulation of
+    ice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Gomez left Corunna in the winter of 1524-5, and reached the
+    North-American coast somewhere about Florida. He probably only began
+    to investigate closely after he passed into the broad gulf of Maine,
+    between Cape Cod and Nova Scotia. Here he sighted from the sea the
+    lofty mountains of New Hampshire, and steered for the mouth of the
+    Penobscot River (which he named the River of Deer), a title which
+    sticks to the locality&mdash;in Deer Island&mdash;at the present day. But this
+    being no opening of a broad strait, he passed on into the Bay of Fundy
+    (from Portuguese word, <i>Fundo</i>, the bottom of a sack or passage),
+    explored its two terminal gulfs, then returned along the coast of Nova
+    Scotia,<a name="1-13"></a><a href="#note-1-13"><small>[13]</small></a> past Cape Sable, and so to the "gut" or Canal of Canso.
+    Gomez realized that Cape Breton was an island (we now know that it is
+    two islands separated by a narrow watercourse), but thought that Cabot
+    Strait was a great bay, and guessed nothing of the Gulf of St.
+    Lawrence, and the chance of securing for Spain the possession of this
+    mighty waterway into the heart of North America.
+</p>
+<p>
+    From Cape North he crossed over to the south coast of Newfoundland,
+    and followed this more or less till he came to Cape Race. Newfoundland
+    was a "very cold and savage land", and Gomez decided it was no use
+    prosecuting any farther his enquiry as to a water passage across North
+    America, because, if it existed, it must lie in latitudes of frozen
+    sea and be unnavigable.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At different places along the east coast of North America he kidnapped
+    natives, and eventually returned to Spain (via Florida and Cuba) with
+    a cargo of Amerindian slaves.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He had been preceded, by seven or eight months, in his explorations
+    along the same coast by GIOVANNI DA VERRAZANO, a native of Florence,
+    who as a navigator and explorer had visited the East, and had
+    associated himself a good deal with the shipowners of Dieppe. Ever
+    since the issue of Cabot's voyages was known&mdash;at any rate from
+    1504&mdash;ships from Brittany and Normandy had made their way to Cape
+    Breton Island and Newfoundland for the cod fisheries. In 1508 a Norman
+    named Aubert was sent out by Jean Ango&mdash;a great merchant of Dieppe of
+    that day&mdash;to found a colony in Newfoundland. Aubert failed to do this,
+    but he captured and brought away at least seven of the natives, no
+    doubt of the Beothik tribe, from Newfoundland to Rouen, with their
+    canoe, clothing, and weapons. A good many ships also went out from La
+    Rochelle on the west coast of France, and took part in the fishing off
+    the coast of Newfoundland: together with the ships of Brittany and
+    Dieppe there may have been a French fishing fleet of seventy to eighty
+    ships plying every summer season between France, Newfoundland, and
+    Cape Breton. So that when "John from Verrazano" offered his services
+    to Francis I to make discoveries across the ocean, which should become
+    possessions of the French Crown, he was quickly provided with the
+    requisite funds and ships.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Verrazano started on the 17th of January, 1524, for the coast of
+    North America, but I shall say little about his expedition here,
+    because it resulted chiefly in the discovery and mapping of what is
+    now the east coast of the United States. He reached as far as the
+    south coast of Newfoundland, it is true; he also gave the names of
+    Nova Gallia and Francesca to the coast regions of eastern North
+    America, and distinctly intended to take possession of these on behalf
+    of the French Crown. But his work in this direction did not lead
+    directly to the creation of the French colony of Canada, because, when
+    he returned from America, Francis I was at war with Spain, and could
+    pay no attention to Verrazano's projects. His voyage is worth
+    recording in the present volume only for these two reasons: he
+    certainly put it into the minds of French people that they might found
+    an empire in North America; and he inspired geographers for another
+    hundred years with the false idea that the great North American
+    Continent had a very narrow waist, like the Isthmus of Panama, and
+    that the Pacific Ocean covered the greater part of what is now called
+    the United States. This mistake arose from his looking across the
+    narrow belts or peninsulas of sand in North Carolina and Virginia, and
+    seeing vast stretches of open water to the west. These were found, a
+    hundred years afterwards, to be merely large shallow lagoons of sea
+    water, but Verrazano thought they were an extension of the Pacific
+    Ocean.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nevertheless, Verrazano's voyage developed into the French
+    colonization of Canada, just as Cabot drew the British to
+    Newfoundland, Columbus the Spaniards to Central and South America, and
+    Amerigo Vespucci showed the Portuguese the way to Brazil. The modern
+    nations of western Europe owe the inception of their great colonies in
+    America to four Italians.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short">
+
+<a name="note-1-1"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#1-1"><u>1</u></a> This is a convenient name for the race formerly called
+    "American Indian". They are not Indians (i.e. natives of India), and
+    they are not the only Americans, since there are now about 110,000,000
+    white Americans of European origin and 24,000,000 negroes and
+    negroids. The total approximate "Amerindian" or aboriginal population
+    of the New World at the present day is 16,000,000, of whom about
+    111,000 live in the Canadian Dominion, and 300,000 in the United
+    States, the remainder in Central and South America.
+</p>
+<a name="note-1-2"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#1-2">
+<u>2</u></a>  It is doubtful whether actual masts and sails were known
+    in America till the coming of Europeans, though the ancient Peruvians
+    are said to have used mat sails in their canoes. But the northern
+    Amerindians had got as far as placing bushes or branches of fir trees
+    upright in their canoes to catch the force of the wind.
+</p>
+<a name="note-1-3"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#1-3"><u>3</u></a> The grapes and vines so often alluded to by the early
+    explorers of North America ripened, according to the species, between
+    August and October. They belong to the same genus&mdash;<i>Vitis</i>&mdash;as that of
+    the grape vines of the Old World, but they were quite distinct in
+    species. Nowadays they are known as the Fox Grapes (<i>Vitis vulpina</i>),
+    the Frost Grape (<i>V. cordifolia</i>), the <i>V. aestivalis</i>, the <i>V.
+    labruska</i>, &amp;c. The fruit of the Fox Grape is dark purple, with a very
+    dusky skin and a musky flavour. The Frost Grape has a very small
+    berry, which is black or leaden-blue when covered with bloom. It is
+    very acid to the taste, but from all these grapes it is easy to make a
+    delicious, refreshing drink. Champlain, however, says that the wild
+    grapes were often quite large in size, and his men found them
+    delicious to eat.
+</p>
+<a name="note-1-4"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#1-4"><u>4</u></a>  Perhaps from the Eastern Eskimo national name <i>Karalit</i>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-1-5"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#1-5"><u>5</u></a> Antonio Zeno served as pilot to Earl Sinclair of the
+    Faeroe Islands and of Roslyn, a Norman-Scottish nobleman who owed
+    joint fealty to the kings of Norway and Scotland. Sinclair was so
+    impressed with the stories of a "Newland" beyond Greenland that he
+    sailed to find it about 1390, but only reached Greenland.
+</p>
+<a name="note-1-6"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#1-6"><u>6</u></a>  Cape Breton was not then, or for nearly two hundred years
+    afterwards, known to be an island. It was thought to be part of the
+    "island" (peninsula) of what we now call Nova Scotia, and the whole of
+    this region which advances so prominently into the Atlantic was
+    believed to be at first the great unknown "New Island" of Irish and
+    English legends&mdash;legends based on the Norse discoveries of the
+    eleventh century. Cape Breton was thus named by the Breton seaman who
+    came thither soon after the Cabot expeditions to fish for cod. This
+    large island is separated from Nova Scotia by the Gut of Canso, a
+    strait no broader than a river.
+</p>
+<a name="note-1-7"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#1-7"><u>7</u></a> Dr. S.E. DAWSON (<i>The St. Lawrence Basin</i>) says of this
+    voyage: "When the forest wilderness of Cape Breton listened to the
+    voices of Cabot's little company (of Bristol mariners) it was the
+    first faint whisper of the mighty flood of English speech which was
+    destined to overflow the continent to the shores of another
+    ocean...."
+</p>
+<a name="note-1-8"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#1-8"><u>8</u></a> Almost certainly this was <i>Conurus carolinensis</i>, a green
+    and orange parrakeet still found in the south-eastern States of North
+    America, but formerly met with as far north as New York and Boston.
+</p>
+<a name="note-1-9"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#1-9"><u>9</u></a>  The name <i>America</i> probably appears for the first time in
+    English print in the old play or masque the <i>Four Elements</i>, which was
+    published about 1518. In a review of the geography of the Earth, as
+    known at that period, a description is given of this vast New World
+    across the Ocean: "But these new landys found lately, been called
+    America, because only Americus did find them first". Americus was a
+    Florentine bank clerk&mdash;Amerigo Vespucci&mdash;at Seville who gave up the
+    counting-house for adventure, sailed with a Spanish captain to the
+    West Indies and the mainland of Venezuela (off which he notes that he
+    met an English sailing vessel, and this as early as 1499!), and then
+    joined the first exploring voyage of the Portuguese to Brazil. He
+    returned to Europe, and in a letter to a fellow countryman at Paris,
+    written in the late autumn of 1502, he claimed to have discovered a
+    New World across the Ocean. His clear statement about what was really
+    the South American Continent aroused so much enthusiasm in civilized
+    Europe that five years afterwards the New World was called after him
+    by a German printer (Walzmüller) at the little Alsatian University of
+    St. Dié. By 1518 the English writers and mariners were probably aware
+    that the discoveries of Cabot, Columbus, and the Portuguese indicated
+    the extension of "America" from the Arctic to the Antarctic, but not
+    till about 1553 did the scholars and adventurers of England show
+    themselves fully alive to the gigantic importance of this New World.
+    Between 1530 and 1553 their attention was distracted from geography
+    and over-sea adventure by the religious troubles of the Reformation.
+</p>
+<a name="note-1-10"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#1-10"><u>10</u></a>  <i>Bacalhao</i> in Portuguese (and a similar word in Spanish,
+    old French, and Italian) means dried, salted fish. It comes from a
+    Latin word meaning "a small stick", because the fish were split open
+    and held up flat to dry by means of a cross or framework of small
+    sticks, the Norse name "stokfiske" meant the same: stockfish or
+    stickfish.
+</p>
+<a name="note-1-11"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#1-11"><u>11</u></a>  <i>Labrador</i> (<i>Lavrador</i> in Portuguese) means a labourer,
+    a serf. The Portuguese are supposed to have brought some Red Indians
+    from this coast to be sold as slaves.
+</p>
+<a name="note-1-12"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#1-12"><u>12</u></a>  Corte-Real's name of Terra Verde ("Greenland") was soon
+    dropped in favour of the older English name "New Land" (Newfoundland,
+    Terra Nova). This was at once adopted by the French seamen as "Terre
+    Neuve".
+</p>
+<a name="note-1-13"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#1-13"><u>13</u></a>  The name Nova Scotia was not applied to this peninsula
+    until 1621, by the British Government. It was at first included with
+    New Brunswick under the Spanish name of Norumbega, and after 1603 was
+    called by the French "Acadie".
+<p class="return">[<a href="#contents">TABLE OF CONTENTS</a>]
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="2HCH0002"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER II
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    Jacques Cartier
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Verrazano and Gomez, and probably the English captain, John Rut, had
+    all sought for the opening of a strait of salt water&mdash;like Magellan's
+    Straits in the far south&mdash;which should lead them through the great
+    North-American continent to the regions of China and Japan. Yet in
+    some incomprehensible way they overlooked the two broad passages to
+    the north and south of Newfoundland&mdash;the Straits of Belle Isle and of
+    Cabot&mdash;which would at any rate lead them into the vast Gulf of St.
+    Lawrence, and thence to the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes; a
+    natural system of waterways connected each with the other and all with
+    the Mississippi and Missouri, the Arctic Ocean, and Hudson's Bay; nay,
+    more, with the North Pacific also; so that with a few "portages", or
+    carryings of canoes from one watershed to another, a traveller of any
+    enterprise, accompanied by a sturdy crew, can cross the broad
+    continent of North America at its broadest from sea to sea without
+    much walking.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Estevão Gomez noticed Cabot Straits between Cape Breton and
+    Newfoundland, but thought them only a very deep bay. John Rut and
+    others discerned the Straits of Belle Isle as a wide recess in the
+    coast rather than the mouth of a channel leading far inland. And yet,
+    after thirty years of Breton, English, and Portuguese fishing
+    operations in these waters, there must have been glimmerings of the
+    existence of the great Gulf of St. Lawrence behind Newfoundland: and
+    JACQUES CARTIER (or Quartier), who had probably made already one
+    voyage to Newfoundland (besides a visit to Brazil), suspected that
+    between Newfoundland and Labrador there lay the opening of the great
+    sea passage "leading to China". He proposed himself to Philippe de
+    Chabot, the Admiral of France, as the leader of a new French adventure
+    to find the North-west Passage, was accepted by King Francis, and at
+    the age of forty-three years set out, with two ships, from St. Malo in
+    Brittany, on April 20, 1534, ten years after Verrazano's voyage, and
+    reached the coast of Newfoundland after a voyage of only twenty days.
+    As he sailed northwards, past the deeply indented fiords and bays of
+    eastern Newfoundland (the shores of which were still hugged by the
+    winter ice), he and his men were much impressed with the incredible
+    numbers of the sea fowl settled for nesting purposes on the rocky
+    islands, especially on Funk Island.<a name="2-1"></a><a href="#note-2-1"><small>[1]</small></a> These birds were guillemots,
+    puffins, great auks,<a name="2-2"></a><a href="#note-2-2"><small>[2]</small></a> gannets (called by Cartier <i>margaulx</i>), and
+    probably gulls and eider duck. To his sailors&mdash;always hungry and
+    partly fed on salted provisions, as seamen were down to a few years
+    ago&mdash;this inexhaustible supply of fresh food was a source of great
+    enjoyment. They were indifferent, no doubt, to the fishy flavour of
+    the auks and the guillemots, and only noticed that they were
+    splendidly fat. Moreover, the birds attracted Polar bears "as large as
+    cows and as white as swans". The bears would swim off from the shore
+    to the islands (unless they could reach them by crossing the ice), and
+    the sailors occasionally killed the bears and ate their flesh, which
+    they compared in excellence and taste to veal.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Passing through the Straits of Belle Isle, Cartier's ships entered
+    the Gulf of St. Lawrence. They had previously visited the adjoining
+    coast of Labrador, and there had encountered their first "natives",
+    members of some Algonkin tribe from Canada, who had come north for
+    seal fishing (Cartier is clever enough to notice and describe their
+    birch-bark canoes). After examining the west coast of Newfoundland,
+    Cartier's ships sailed on past the Magdalen Islands (stopping every
+    now and then off some islet to collect supplies of sea birds, for the
+    rocky ground was covered with them as thickly as a meadow with
+    grass).<a name="2-3"></a><a href="#note-2-3"><small>[3]</small></a> He reached the north coast of Prince Edward Island, and
+    this lovely country received from him an enthusiastic description. The
+    pine trees, the junipers, yews, elms, poplars, ash, and willows, the
+    beeches and the maples, made the forest not only full of delicious and
+    stimulating odours, but lovely in its varied tints of green. In the
+    natural meadows and forest clearings there were red and white
+    currants, gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries, a vetch which
+    produced edible peas, and a grass with a grain like rye. The forest
+    abounded in pigeons, and the climate was pleasant and warm.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Later on he coasted New Brunswick, and paused for a time over Chaleur
+    Bay, hoping it might be the opening to the strait across the continent
+    of which he was in search; but finding it was not, he continued
+    northwards till he had almost rounded the Gaspé Peninsula, a course
+    which would have led him straight away into the wonderful discovery of
+    the St. Lawrence River, but that, being forced by bad weather into
+    Gaspé Bay, and perhaps hindered by fog, instead of entering the St.
+    Lawrence he sailed right across to Anticosti Island. After that,
+    being baffled by bad weather and doubtful as to his resources lasting
+    out, he decided to return to France through the Strait of Belle Isle.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So far he had failed to realize two of the most important things in
+    the geography of this region: the broad southern entrance into the
+    Gulf of St. Lawrence (subsequently called Cabot Strait), which
+    separates Newfoundland on the north from Cape Breton Island on the
+    south, and the broad entrance into the River St. Lawrence between
+    Anticosti Island and the Gaspé Peninsula.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yet, whilst staying in Gaspé Bay, he had a very important meeting with
+    Amerindian natives of the Huron-Iroquois stock, who had come down the
+    River St. Lawrence from the neighbourhood of Quebec, fishing for
+    mackerel. These bold, friendly people welcomed the French heartily,
+    greeting them with songs and dances. But when they saw Cartier erect a
+    great cross on the land at the entrance to Gaspé Bay (a cross bearing
+    a shield with the arms of France and the letters "Vive le Roi de
+    France"), they were ill at ease. It is certain that not one word could
+    be understood in language between the two parties, for there were as
+    yet no interpreters; but the Amerindians were probably shrewd enough
+    to perceive that Cartier was making some claim on the land, and they
+    explained by signs that they considered all this country belonged to
+    themselves. Nevertheless, Cartier persuaded two youths, the sons of
+    one of the chiefs, to go back with him to France on his ship, to learn
+    the French language, to see what France looked like, and to return
+    afterwards as interpreters. The boys, though they were practically
+    kidnapped at first, were soon reconciled to going, especially when
+    they were dressed in French clothes!
+</p>
+<a name="image-0002"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc02.jpg" width="268" height="425"
+alt="Jacques Cartier">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>JACQUES CARTIER</h5>
+<p>
+    When Cartier was on his way home he sailed in a north-easterly
+    direction in such a way as to overlook the broad channel between the
+    Gaspé Peninsula and Anticosti Island, but having rounded the
+    easternmost extremity of that large island, he coasted along its
+    northern shores until he caught sight of the opening of the Canadian
+    channel to the west. He believed then that he had discovered the
+    long-looked-for opening of the trans-continental passage, and sailed
+    for France with his wonderful news.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the 19th of May, 1535, Cartier started again from St. Malo with
+    three ships, the biggest of which was only 120 tons, while the others
+    were respectively 60 and 40 tons capacity. The crew consisted of about
+    112 persons, and in addition there were the two Indian youths who had
+    been kidnapped on the previous voyage, and were now returning as
+    interpreters. Instead, however, of reaching Newfoundland in twenty
+    days, he spent five weeks crossing the Atlantic before he reached his
+    rendezvous with the other ships at Blanc Sablon, on the south coast of
+    Labrador; for the easy access to the Gulf of St. Lawrence through
+    Cabot Strait (between Newfoundland and Cape Breton) was not yet
+    realized. Once past Anticosti Island, the two Huron interpreters began
+    to recognize the scenery.<a name="2-4"></a><a href="#note-2-4"><small>[4]</small></a> They now explained to Cartier that he had
+    entered the estuary of a vast river. This they said he had only to
+    pursue in ships and boats and he would reach "Canada" (which was the
+    name they gave to the district round about Quebec), and that beyond
+    "Canada" no man had ever been known to reach the end of this great
+    water; but, they added, it was fresh water, not salt, and this last
+    piece of information much disheartened Cartier, who feared that he had
+    not, after all, discovered the water route across North America to the
+    Pacific Ocean. He therefore turned about and once more searched the
+    opposite coast of Labrador most minutely, displaying, as he did so, a
+    seamanship which was little else than marvellous, for it is a very
+    dangerous coast, the seas are very stormy, and the look-out often
+    hampered by a sudden rising of dense fog; there are islands and rocks
+    (some of them almost hidden by the water) and sandbanks; but Cartier
+    made this survey of southern Labrador without an accident.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At this period, some three hundred and seventy-five years ago, the
+    northern coasts of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and of Anticosti Island
+    swarmed with huge walruses, which were described by Cartier as sea
+    horses that spent the night on land and the day in the water. They
+    have long since been exterminated by the English and French seamen and
+    settlers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At last Cartier set sail for the south-west, intending to explore this
+    wonderful river and to reach the kingdom of Canada. According to his
+    understanding of the Amerindian interpreters, the waters of the St.
+    Lawrence flowed through three great states: <i>Saguenay</i>, which was the
+    mountainous Gaspé Peninsula and the opposite coast; <i>Canada</i>, Quebec
+    and its neighbourhood; and <i>Hochelaga</i>, the region between Montreal
+    and Lake Ontario. At the mouth of the Saguenay River, where Tadoussac
+    is now situated, he encountered large numbers of white whales&mdash;the
+    Beluga. These are really huge porpoises, allied to the narwhals, but
+    without the narwhal's exaggerated tusk. When he reached the vicinity
+    of the modern Quebec,<a name="2-5"></a><a href="#note-2-5"><small>[5]</small></a> and his Amerindian interpreters found
+    themselves at their actual home (for they were far away from home on a
+    fishing expedition when he caught them in Gaspé Bay) there was great
+    rejoicing; for they were able to tell their relations of the wonderful
+    country to which they had been across the ocean. Cartier was delighted
+    with the surroundings of "Canada" (Quebec), near which at that time
+    was a large settlement (Stadacona) of Huron Indians under a chief
+    named Donnacona. He decided to lay up his ships here for the winter,
+    and to pursue the rest of his western explorations in his boats.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the Amerindians for some reason were not willing that he should go
+    any farther, and attempted to scare him from his projects by arranging
+    for three of their number to come down river in a canoe, dressed in
+    dogs' skins, with their faces blackened, and with bisons' horns
+    fastened to their heads. These devils pretended to take no notice of
+    the French, but to die suddenly as they reached the shore, while the
+    rest of the natives gave vent to howlings of despair and
+    consternation. The three devils were pretending to have brought a
+    message from a god to these Hurons of "Canada" that the country up
+    river (Hochelaga) was so full of ice and snow that it would be death
+    for anyone to go there.
+</p>
+<p>
+    However, this made little or no impression on Cartier; but he consented
+    to leave a proportion of his party behind with the chief Donnacona as
+    hostages, and then started up country in his boats with about seventy
+    picked officers and men. On the 2nd of October, 1535, they reached the
+    vicinity of the modern Montreal, the chief settlement of Hochelaga.
+    The Huron town at the foot of the hills was circular in outline,
+    surrounded by a stockade of three rows of upright tree trunks, which
+    rose to its highest point in the middle, where the timbers of the
+    inner and outward sides sloped to meet one another, the height of the
+    central row being about 8 feet above the ground. All round the inside
+    there was a platform or rampart on which were stored heavy stones to
+    be hurled at any enemy who should attempt to scale the fence. The town
+    was entered by only one doorway, and contained about fifty houses
+    surrounding an open space whereon the towns-people made their
+    bonfires. Each house was about 50 feet long by 12 to 15 feet wide.
+    They were roofed with bark, and usually had attics which were
+    storerooms for food. In the centre of each of these long houses there
+    was a fireplace where the cooking for the whole of the house
+    inhabitants was done. Each family had its own room, but each house
+    probably contained five families. Almost the only furniture, except
+    cooking pots, was mats on which the people sat and slept. The food of
+    the people consisted, besides fish and the flesh of beavers and deer,
+    of maize and beans. Cartier at once recognized the maize or Indian
+    corn as the same grain ("a large millet") as that which he had seen in
+    Brazil.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He gives a description of how they made the maize into bread (or
+    rather "dampers", "ashcakes"); but as this is not altogether clear, it
+    is better to combine it with Champlain's description, written a good
+    many years later, but still at a time when the Hurons were unaffected
+    by the white man's civilization. According to both Cartier and
+    Champlain, the women pounded the corn to meal in a wooden mortar, and
+    removed the bran by means of fans made of the bark of trees. From this
+    meal they made bread, sometimes mixing with the meal the beans
+    (<i>Phaseolus vulgaris</i>), which had been boiled and mashed. Or they
+    would boil both Indian corn and beans into a thick soup, adding to the
+    soup blueberries,<a name="2-6"></a><a href="#note-2-6"><small>[6]</small></a> dried raspberries, or pieces of deer's fat. The
+    meal derived from the corn and beans they would make into bread,
+    baking it in the ashes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Or they would take the pounded Indian corn without removing the bran,
+    and put two or three handfuls of it into an earthen pot full of water,
+    stirring it from time to time, when it boiled, so that it might not
+    adhere to the pot. To this was added a small quantity of fish, fresh
+    or dry, according to the season, to give a flavour to the <i>migane</i> or
+    porridge. When the dried fish was used the porridge smelt very badly
+    in the nostrils of Europeans, but worst of all when the porridge was
+    mixed with dried venison, which was sometimes nearly putrid! If fish
+    was put into this porridge it was boiled whole in the mealy water,
+    then taken out without any attempt to remove the fins, scales, or
+    entrails, and the whole of the boiled fish was pounded up and put back
+    into the porridge. Sometimes a great birch-bark "kettle" would be
+    filled with water, fish, and meat, and red-hot stones be dropped in
+    till it boiled. Then with a spoon they would collect from the surface
+    the fat and oil arising from the fish or meat. This they afterwards
+    mixed with the meal of roasted Indian corn, stirring it with this fat
+    till they had made a thick soup. Sometimes, however, they were content
+    to eat the young corn-cobs freshly roasted, which as a matter of fact
+    (with a little salt) is one of the most delicious things in the world.
+    Or they would take ears of Indian corn and bury them in wet mud,
+    leaving them thus for two or three months; then the cobs would be
+    removed and the rotted grain eaten with meat and fish, though it was
+    all muddy and smelt horribly. Cartier also noticed that these Huron
+    Indians had melons and pumpkins, and described their wampum or shell
+    money.<a name="2-7"></a><a href="#note-2-7"><small>[7]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    From the eminence on which the Huron city stood, Cartier obtained a
+    splendid view of rivers and mountains and magnificent forests, and
+    called the place then and there, in his Norman French, Mont Real, or
+    Royal Eminence, a name which it will probably bear for all time,
+    though the actual city of Montreal lies a few miles below.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Montreal was the limit of Cartier's explorations on this journey. He
+    returned thence to "Canada" or Stadacona, where his men built a fort
+    armed with artillery, and where his ships were anchored. Here he had
+    to stay from the middle of November, 1535, to the middle of April,
+    1536, his ships being shut in by the ice. The experiences of the
+    French during these five months were mostly unhappy. At first Cartier
+    gave himself up to the collecting of information. He noticed for the
+    first time the smoking of tobacco,<a name="2-8"></a><a href="#note-2-8"><small>[8]</small></a> and collected information about
+    the products and features of "Canada". The Indians told him of great
+    lakes in the far west, one of which was so vast that no man had seen
+    the end of it. They told him that anyone travelling up the Richelieu
+    River (as it was called sixty years later) would eventually reach a
+    land in the south where in the winter there was no ice or snow, and
+    where fruit and nut trees grew in abundance. Cartier thought that they
+    were talking to him of Florida, but their geographical information can
+    scarcely have stretched so far; they probably referred to the milder
+    regions of New Jersey and Virginia, which would be reached by
+    following southwards the valley of the Hudson and keeping to the
+    lowlands of the eastern United States.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As the winter set in with its customary Canadian severity the real
+    trouble of the French began. They did not suffer from the cold, but
+    they were dying of scurvy. This disease, from which the natives also
+    suffered to some extent, was due to their eating nothing but salt or
+    smoked provisions&mdash;forms of meat or fish. They lived, of course, shut
+    up in the fort, and Cartier's fixed idea was to keep the Hurons from
+    the knowledge of his misfortune, fearing lest, if they realized how
+    the garrison was reduced, they might treacherously attack and massacre
+    the rest; for in spite of the extravagant joy with which their arrival
+    had been greeted, the Amerindians&mdash;notably the two interpreters who
+    had been to France and returned&mdash;showed at intervals signs of disquiet
+    and a longing to be rid of these mysterious white men, whose coming
+    might involve the country in unknown misfortunes. In January and
+    February, also, Donnacona and these two interpreters and many of the
+    Huron men had been absent hunting in the forests, so that there was no
+    one among the Amerindians to whom the French could turn for
+    information regarding this strange disease. At last 25 out of the 112
+    who had left France were dead, and of the remainder only 10 men,
+    including Cartier, were not grievously ill. Those who were living
+    found it sometimes beyond their strength to bury the dead in the
+    frozen ground, and simply placed their bodies in deep snow. Once or
+    twice, when Cartier left the fort to go out to the ships, he met
+    Domagaya, one of the two interpreters, and found that he also was
+    suffering from this mysterious disease, though not nearly so badly as
+    the French people. On the body of one young man who died of scurvy
+    Cartier and his officers, shuddering, made investigations, opening the
+    corpse and examining the organs to try and find the cause of death.
+    This was on the afternoon of a day on which they had held a solemn
+    service before a statue erected to the Virgin Mary on the shore
+    opposite to the ships. All who were fit to walk went in procession
+    from the fort to the statue, singing penitential psalms and the Litany
+    and celebrating Mass.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Some days after this religious service Cartier met the interpreter,
+    Domagaya, and to his surprise found him perfectly well and strong. He
+    asked him for an explanation, and was told that the medicine which
+    cured this disease was made from the leaves and bark of a tree called
+    ameda.<a name="2-9"></a><a href="#note-2-9"><small>[9]</small></a> Cartier then ventured to say that one of his servants was
+    sick of this unknown disease, and Domagaya sent for two women, who
+    taught the French people how to make an extract from the balsam fir
+    for drinking, and how to apply the same liquid to the inflamed skin.
+    The effect on the crews was miraculous. In six days all the sick were
+    well and strong.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then came the sudden spring. Between April 15th and May 1st the ice on
+    the river was all melted, and on the 6th May, 1536, Cartier started
+    from the vicinity of Quebec to return to France. But before leaving he
+    had managed to kidnap Donnacona, the chief of the Huron settlement,
+    and six or seven other Amerindians, amongst them Tainyoanyi, one of
+    the two interpreters who had already been to France. He seized these
+    men, it appears, partly because he wanted hostages and had good reason
+    to fear that the Indians meditated a treacherous attack on his ships
+    before they could get away. He also wished for native witnesses at
+    Court, when he reached France, to testify to the truth of his
+    discoveries, and even more to convince the King of France that there
+    was great profit to be obtained from giving effect to Cartier's
+    explorations. The chief, Donnacona, was full of wonderful stories of
+    the Saguenay region, and of the great lakes to the northwards of
+    Quebec. Probably he was only alluding to the wealth of copper now
+    known to exist in northern Canada, but to Cartier and the other
+    Frenchmen it seemed as though he spoke of gold and silver, rubies, and
+    other precious stones.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Donnacona's people howled and wept when their chief was seized; but
+    Cartier obliged the chief to reassure them, and to say that the French
+    had promised to bring him back after he had paid a visit to their
+    great king, who would return him to his country with great presents.
+    As a matter of fact, not one of these Indians rapt away by Cartier
+    ever saw Canada again. But this was not the fault of Cartier, but of
+    the distractions of the times which turned away the thoughts of King
+    Francis I from American adventures. The Indians were well and kindly
+    treated in France, but all of them died there before Cartier left St.
+    Malo to return to Canada in 1541.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One advantage he derived from sailing away with these hostages was (no
+    doubt) that they could give him geographical information of importance
+    which materially shortened the return journey. For the first time he
+    made use of the broad strait between Anticosti Island and Gaspé
+    Peninsula, and, better still, entered the Atlantic, not by the
+    dangerous northern route through the straits of Belle Isle, but by
+    means of Cabot Strait, between Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island. Of
+    these discoveries he availed himself on his third and last voyage in
+    1541.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When in that year he once more anchored his ships near Quebec he found
+    the attitude of the Hurons changed. They enquired about their friends
+    and relations who had been carried off five years before, and although
+    they pretended to be reconciled to their fate when they heard (not
+    altogether truly) that one or two were dead, and the others had become
+    great lords in France and had married French women, they really felt a
+    disappointment so bitter and a hostility so great that Cartier guessed
+    their expressions of welcome to be false. However, he sent back to
+    France two of the ships under his command and beached the other three,
+    landed his stores, built two forts at Cap Rouge, above and below, and
+    then started off with a few of his men and two boats to revisit the
+    country of Hochelaga. Here he intended to examine the three rapids or
+    "saults"&mdash;interruptions to the navigation of the St. Lawrence&mdash;which
+    he had observed on his previous journey, and which were later named
+    the La Chine Rapids (in the belief that they were obstacles on the
+    river route to China). But these falls proved insuperable obstacles to
+    his boats, and he gave up any further idea of westward exploration,
+    returned to his forts and ships near Quebec, and there laid the
+    foundations of a fortified town, which he called Charlesbourg Royal.
+    Here he spent a very difficult winter, the Hurons in the neighbourhood
+    becoming increasingly hostile, and at last, when the spring came, as
+    he had received no relief from France, he took to his three ships,
+    abandoned Charlesbourg Royal (having probably to do some fighting
+    before he could get safely away) and thence sailed for France. Off the
+    Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland he met the other ships of the
+    expedition which was to have occupied Canada for France. These were
+    under the command of the Sieur de Roberval, a French nobleman, who had
+    really been made head of the whole enterprise, with Cartier as a
+    subordinate officer, but who, the year before, had allowed Cartier to
+    go off to Canada and prepare the way, promising to follow immediately.
+    The interview between Cartier and Roberval, near where the capital of
+    Newfoundland (St. John's) now stands, was a stormy one. Roberval
+    ordered Cartier to return at once to Charlesbourg and await his
+    arrival. However, in the middle of the night which followed this
+    interview, Cartier took advantage of a favourable wind and set sail
+    for France, arriving soon afterwards at St. Malo.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But Roberval arrived at Charlesbourg (going the roundabout way through
+    the straits of Belle Isle, for Cartier had told him nothing of the
+    convenient passage through Cabot Strait), and there spent the winter
+    of 1542-3, sending his ships back to France. This winter was one of
+    horrors. Roberval was a headstrong, passionate man, perfectly reckless
+    of human life. He maintained discipline by ferocious sentences,
+    putting many of his men in irons, whipping others cruelly, women as
+    well as men, and shooting those who seemed the most rebellious. Even
+    the Indians were moved to pity, and wept at the sight of the woes of
+    these unhappy French men and women under the control of a bloodthirsty
+    tyrant, and many of them dying of scurvy, or miserably weak from that
+    disease.<a name="2-10"></a><a href="#note-2-10"><small>[10]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    However, when the weather was warm again, in June, 1543, Roberval
+    started up the St. Lawrence River in boats to reach the wonderful
+    country of Saguenay. Apparently he met with little success, and, being
+    relieved by French ships in the late summer of 1543, he returned to
+    France.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Thus the splendid work achieved by Cartier seemed to have come to
+    nothing, for neither he nor Roberval revisited America. The French
+    settlement near Quebec was abandoned, so far as the officers of the
+    French king were concerned, and between 1545 and about 1583, if any
+    other Frenchman or European visited Canada it was some private
+    adventurer who traded with the natives in furs, or Basques from France
+    and Spain who frequented the waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence on
+    account of the abundance of whales, walruses, and seals. In fact, at
+    the close of the sixteenth century, the Spanish Basques had
+    established themselves on shore at Tadoussac and other places, and
+    seemed likely to colonize the country.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short">
+
+<a name="note-2-1"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#2-1"><u>1</u></a> Funk Island&mdash;called by Cartier "the Island of Birds"&mdash;is
+    only about 3 miles round, and 46 feet above the sea level. It is 3
+    miles distant from the coast.
+</p>
+<a name="note-2-2"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#2-2"><u>2</u></a> The Great Auk (<i>Alca impennis</i>), extinct since about 1844
+    in Europe and 1870 in Labrador, once had in ancient times a
+    geographical range from Massachusetts and Newfoundland to Iceland,
+    Ireland, Scotland, N.E. England, and Denmark. Perhaps nowhere was it
+    found so abundantly as on the coasts of Eastern Newfoundland and on
+    Funk Island hard by. The Great Auk was in such numbers on the
+    north-east coast of Newfoundland that the Amerindians of that country
+    and of southern Labrador used it as fuel in the winter time, its body
+    being very full of oil and burning with a splendid flame. The French
+    seamen called it <i>pingouin</i> ("penguin") from its fatness, and this
+    name was much later transferred to the real penguins of the southern
+    seas which are quite unrelated to the auks.
+</p>
+<a name="note-2-3"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#2-3"><u>3</u></a> On the shores of these islands they noticed "several
+    great beasts like oxen, which have two tusks in the mouth similar to
+    those of the elephant". These were walruses.
+</p>
+<a name="note-2-4"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#2-4"><u>4</u></a> Anticosti Island received from Cartier the name of "the
+    Island of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin", in consequence of his
+    having discovered it to be an island on the feast day of that name. It
+    did not receive its present title until the late seventeenth century.
+</p>
+<a name="note-2-5"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#2-5"><u>5</u></a> Then called "Canada". The word Quebec (pronounced
+    <i>Kebek</i>) means the narrow part of a river.
+</p>
+<a name="note-2-6"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#2-6"><u>6</u></a> The Canada Blueberry (<i>Vaccinium canadense</i>), called by
+    the French <i>bluës</i> or <i>bluëts</i>. These bluës were collected and dried
+    by the Amerindians, and made a sweet nutriment for eating in the
+    winter.
+</p>
+<a name="note-2-7"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#2-7"><u>7</u></a> Cartier, in Hakluyt's translation, is made to say (I
+    modernize the spelling): "They dig their grounds with certain pieces
+    of wood as big as half a sword, on which ground groweth their corn,
+    which they call 'offici'; it is as big as our small peason.... They
+    have also great store of musk melons, pompions, gourds, cucumbers,
+    peas, and beans of every colour, yet differing from ours."<br><br>
+
+    Wampum, or shell money (which recalls the shell money of the Pacific
+    Islands), consisted either of beads made from the interior parts of
+    sea shells or land shells, or of strings of perforated sea shells. The
+    most elaborate kind of wampum was that of the Amerindians of Canada
+    and the eastern United States, the shell beads of which were generally
+    white. The commoner wampum beads were black and violet. Wampum belts
+    were made which illustrated events, dates, treaties of peace, &amp;c, by a
+    rude symbolism (figures of men and animals, upright lines, &amp;c), and
+    these were worked neatly on string by employing different-coloured
+    beads.
+</p>
+<a name="note-2-8"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#2-8"><u>8</u></a> "There groweth also a certain kind of herb whereof in
+    summer they make a great provision for all the year, making great
+    account of it, and only men use it; and first they cause it to be
+    dried in the sun, then wear it about their necks wrapped in a little
+    beast's skin made like a bag, together with a hollow piece of stone or
+    wood like a pipe. Then when they please they make powder of it and put
+    it in one of the ends of the said cornet or pipe, and laying a coal of
+    fire upon it at the other end, suck so long that they fill their
+    bodies full of smoke, till that it cometh out of their mouth and
+    nostrils, even as out of the tunnel of a chimney. They say that this
+    doth keep them warm and in health: they never go without some of it
+    about them. We ourselves have tried the same smoke, and having put it
+    in our mouths, it seemed almost as hot as pepper." The foregoing is
+    one of the earliest descriptions of tobacco smoking in any European
+    language, the original words being in Cartier's Norman French.
+</p>
+<a name="note-2-9"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#2-9"><u>9</u></a> This tree was the balsam fir, <i>Abies balsamea</i>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-2-10"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#2-10"><u>10</u></a> A story was subsequently told of Roberval's stern
+    treatment which had a germ of truth in it, though it has since been
+    the foundation of many a romance. On the journey out from France it is
+    said that Roberval took with him his niece Marguerite, a high-born
+    lady, who was accompanied by an old companion or nurse. Marguerite was
+    travelling with her uncle because, unknown to him, she had a lover who
+    had sailed with him on this expedition and whom she hoped to marry. As
+    they crossed the Atlantic these facts leaked out, and Roberval
+    resolved to bide his time and punish his niece for her deception. As
+    they passed the coast of Southern Labrador Marguerite and her old
+    nurse were seized and put into a boat, Roberval ordering his sailors
+    to row them ashore to an island, and leave them to their fate. They
+    were given four guns with ammunition and a small supply of provisions.
+    But, as the boat was leaving the ship, Marguerite's lover threw
+    himself into the sea and swam to the island. Here, according to the
+    story which Marguerite is supposed to have told afterwards, they
+    endeavoured to live by killing the wild animals and eating their
+    flesh; but her lover-husband died, so also did her child soon after it
+    was born, and then the old nurse, and the unhappy Marguerite was left
+    alone with the wild beasts, especially the white Polar bears, who
+    thronged round her hut. Nevertheless she kept them at bay with her
+    arquebus, and managed somehow to support an existence, until after
+    nineteen months' isolation the ascending smoke of her fire was seen by
+    people on one of the many fishing vessels which, by this time,
+    frequented the coasts of Newfoundland. She was taken off the island
+    and restored to her home in France. The island to which this tradition
+    more especially relates is now called Grand Meccatina.
+</p>
+<p class="return">[<a href="#contents">TABLE OF CONTENTS</a>]
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="2HCH0003"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER III
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    Elizabethan Pioneers in North America
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Except that the ships of Bristol still no doubt continued to resort to
+    the banks of Newfoundland for fishing, and that even the captains of
+    these ships were occasionally elected admirals of the French, Basque,
+    Portuguese, and English fishing fleets during the summer, the English,
+    as a nation, took no part in claiming political dominion over North
+    America after the voyage of Captain John Rut in 1527. This was the
+    fault of Sebastian Cabot, the son of the man who founded British
+    America, and who had returned to England long afterwards as the Grand
+    Pilot appointed by Edward VI to further the discovery of a northern
+    sea passage to China. Through him the attention of adventurers for a
+    time was diverted from America to the "discovery" of Russia (as it has
+    been called). The efforts of Sebastion Cabot were directed towards the
+    revelation of a north-east passage by way of Arctic Russia to the
+    Pacific, rather than past Newfoundland and Labrador and across Arctic
+    America.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But as soon as Elizabeth came to the throne the sea adventurers of
+    Britain, freed from any subservience to Spanish wishes, developed
+    maritime intercourse between England, Morocco, and West Africa on the
+    one hand, and Tropical and North America on the other. Once more the
+    discovery of the North-west Passage across America to China came into
+    favour. MARTIN FROBISHER<a name="3-1"></a><a href="#note-3-1"><small>[1]</small></a> offered himself as a discoverer, and the
+    Earl of Warwick found the means which provided him with two small
+    sailing vessels of 25 and 20 tons each, besides a pinnace of 10
+    tons.<a name="3-2"></a><a href="#note-3-2"><small>[2]</small></a> Queen Elizabeth confined herself, in the way of
+    encouragement, to waving her lily hand from her palace of Greenwich as
+    these three little boats dropped down the Thames on the 8th of June,
+    1576. She also sent them "an honourable message", which no doubt
+    reached them at Tilbury.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the pinnace was soon swallowed up in the high seas; the seamen in
+    the vessel of 20 tons lost heart and turned their ship homewards.
+    Frobisher alone, in his 25-ton bark, sailed on and on across the
+    stormy Atlantic, past the south end of Greenland, and over the great
+    gulf that separates Greenland from Labrador. He missed the entrance to
+    Hudson's Bay, but reached a great "island" which he named Meta
+    Incognita<a name="3-3"></a><a href="#note-3-3"><small>[3]</small></a>. Here he gathered up stones and, as he believed,
+    minerals, besides capturing at least one Eskimo, and then returned.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One of his stones was declared by the refiners of London to contain
+    gold. There was at once&mdash;as we should say in modern slang&mdash;a boom for
+    these Arctic regions. Queen Elizabeth took part in it, and on the 27th
+    of May, 1577, a considerable fleet, under the command of Frobisher,
+    sailed past the Orkneys for the south end of Greenland. It did not
+    reach as far as Meta Incognita, but it brought back large heaps of
+    earth and pieces of rock, probably from northern Labrador, which
+    almost certainly contained mica schist, and were therefore believed
+    to be full of gold. The following year 1578, Frobisher started on his
+    third American voyage with a fleet of fifteen vessels, mainly financed
+    by Queen Elizabeth, and manned to a great extent by the sons of the
+    aristocracy, besides a hundred persons who were going out as
+    colonists. For this region of ice and snow which was believed to be a
+    mass of gold-bearing rocks! But the result was one of bitter
+    disappointment. The captains were bewildered by the immense icebergs,
+    "so vast that, as they melted, torrents poured from them in sparkling
+    waterfalls". One iceberg toppled over on to a ship and crushed it,
+    though most of the sailors were picked up in the sea and saved. In the
+    thick mists the greater part of the fleet blundered into Hudson's
+    Straits, yet did not realize that they had found a passage into the
+    heart of Canada. At last, disgusted with this land of bare rocks, ice,
+    and snow, they filled up the ships with cargoes of stones supposed to
+    contain gold, and straggled back to England. No gold was extracted,
+    however, from these cargoes, and much discouragement ensued.
+</p>
+<p>
+    SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT, one of the brilliant figures of Elizabeth's
+    reign&mdash;scholar, poet, courageous adventurer, and man of
+    chivalry&mdash;stimulated by the discoveries of Frobisher, obtained a
+    patent or charter in 1578, and, after several unsuccessful attempts,
+    led an expedition of small sailing ships to Newfoundland, where he
+    entered St. John's Bay, and in the presence of the Basque, Portuguese,
+    and Breton fishermen took formal possession of the country for Queen
+    Elizabeth, raising a pillar on which the arms of England were engraved
+    as a token. He then proceeded to grant lands to the fishermen to
+    reassure them, and loaded his ships with rocks brought from the
+    interior mountains and supposed to contain minerals. But in his
+    further explorations of the southern coast of Newfoundland one of the
+    ships was lost and nearly a hundred men intended as colonists were
+    drowned.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Gilbert then determined to return to England in his small frigate of
+    10 tons named the <i>Squirrel</i>. He was accompanied by a larger vessel,
+    the <i>Golden Hinde</i>, but refused to leave the men on the <i>Squirrel</i> to
+    their fate. Consequently, between the Azores and the north coast of
+    Spain, when the <i>Squirrel</i> was overwhelmed by the heavy seas, Sir
+    Humphrey Gilbert perished together with all on board.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In spite, however, of the disappointing results of Gilbert's attempt
+    to found a colony in Newfoundland, the importance of the cod fishery
+    and the ivory tusks and oil of the walruses drew ever more and more
+    ships from Bristol and Devonshire to the coasts of that great island
+    and to the Gulf of St. Lawrence beyond. In 1592 the English
+    adventurers got as far west as Anticosti Island (in a ship from
+    Bristol), and in 1597 there is the first record of English ships (from
+    London&mdash;the <i>Hopewell</i> and the <i>Chancewell</i>) sailing up the St.
+    Lawrence River, perhaps as far west as Quebec.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In 1602, stimulated by Sir Walter Raleigh,<a name="3-4"></a><a href="#note-3-4"><small>[4]</small></a> Bartholomew Gosnold
+    sailed direct to the coast of North America south of the Newfoundland
+    latitudes, and anchored his bark off the coast of Massachusetts on the
+    26th of March, 1602. Failing to find a good harbour here, he stood out
+    for the south and definitely discovered and named Cape Cod, not far
+    from the modern city of Boston. From Cape Cod he made his way to the
+    Elizabeth Islands in Buzzard's Bay, and here he built a storehouse and
+    fort, and may be said to have laid the foundations of the future
+    colony of New England. He brought back with him a cargo of sassafras
+    root, which was then much esteemed as a valuable medicine and a remedy
+    for almost all diseases.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Subsequent expeditions of English ships explored and mapped the coast
+    of Maine, and took on board Amerindians for exhibition in England.
+    Their adventures, together with those of the colonists farther south,
+    led to the creation of chartered companies, and to the great British
+    colonies of New England, New York, Virginia, the Carolinas, and
+    Georgia, which were to become in time the United States of America&mdash;a
+    vast field of adventure which we cannot follow farther in this book.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As regards Newfoundland, James I, in 1610, granted a patent to a
+    Bristol merchant for the foundation there of a colony, and although
+    this attempt, and another under Sir George Calvert (Lord Baltimore) in
+    1616, came almost to nothing through the attacks of the French and the
+    dislike of the crews of the fishing vessels to permanent settlers who
+    might interfere with the fishing industry, the English colonization of
+    Newfoundland to some extent caught hold, so that in 1650 there were
+    about two thousand colonists of English descent along the east and
+    south-east coasts of the island. But settlement was prohibited within
+    six miles of the shore, to please the fishermen, and this regulation
+    checked for more than two hundred years the colonization of
+    Newfoundland.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nova Scotia as a British colony also came into being as another result
+    of these adventurous British expeditions to North America in the reign
+    of James I. Under the name of Acadie this region had been declared to
+    be a portion of New France by De Monts and Champlain in 1604-14. But
+    the English colonists in 1614 drove the French out of the peninsula of
+    Nova Scotia on the plea that it was a part of the discoveries made by
+    the Cabots on behalf of the British Crown. In 1621 James I gave a
+    grant of all this territory to Sir William Alexander under the name of
+    Nova Scotia, and both Charles I and Cromwell encouraged settlement in
+    this beautiful region. When Charles II ceded it to France in 1667 the
+    English and Scottish colonists who were residing there, and the
+    English settlers of New England, refused to recognize the effects of
+    the Treaty of Bréda, and so harassed the French in the years which
+    followed that in 1713 Nova Scotia was, together with Newfoundland,
+    recognized as belonging to Great Britain. The French colonists were
+    allowed to remain, but during the course of the eighteenth century
+    they combined with the Amerindians (who liked the French and disliked
+    the British) and made the position of the British colonists so
+    precarious that they were finally expelled and obliged to transfer
+    themselves to Louisiana and Canada. This was the departure of the
+    Acadians so touchingly described by Longfellow.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The British had become tenacious of their rights over the east coast
+    of Newfoundland, because from the middle of the seventeenth century
+    onwards they were becoming increasingly interested in the whale
+    fisheries and the fur trade of the lands bordering on Hudson's Bay,
+    and would not tolerate any blocking of the sea route thither by the
+    French.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the explorations of Arctic America, Frobisher's expeditions had
+    been succeeded by those of JOHN DAVIS, who in the course of three
+    voyages, beginning in June, 1585, passed the entrance of Hudson's
+    Straits and reached a point as far north as 72° 41', a lofty granite
+    island, which he named Sanderson's Hope. He saw beyond him a great
+    sea, free, large, very salt, and blue, unobstructed by ice and of an
+    unsearchable depth, and believed that he had completely discovered the
+    eastern entrance of the North-West Passage.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0003"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc03.jpg" width="283" height="450"
+alt="Icebergs and Polar Bears">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>ICEBERGS AND POLAR BEARS</h5>
+<p>
+    HENRY HUDSON, the great English navigator, who had made two voyages
+    (1607-8) for the English-Moscovy Company to discover a north-east
+    passage to India, past Siberia, commanded a third experiment in 1609
+    at the expense of the Dutch East India Company. He was to discover the
+    North-West Passage. For this purpose he entered the river now named
+    the Hudson, but soon found it was only a river; though he returned to
+    Holland with such an encouraging account of the surrounding country
+    that the Dutch a little later on, founded on the banks of the Hudson
+    River their colony of New Amsterdam (afterwards the State of New
+    York). In 1610 Hudson accepted a British commission to sail beyond
+    where Davis and Frobisher had passed, and once more seek for the
+    north-west passage to China. Instead he found the way into Hudson's
+    Bay. Here his men, alarmed at the idea of being lost in these regions
+    of ice and snow, mutinied against him, placed him and those who were
+    faithful to him in a boat, and cast them off, themselves returning to
+    England with the news of his discovery. Hudson was never heard of
+    again, and, strange to say, the mutineers apparently received no
+    punishment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Between 1602 and 1668, English adventurers from London and Bristol,
+    notable amongst whom were WILLIAM BAFFIN, LUKE FOX, and CAPTAIN JAMES,
+    mapped the coasts of Hudson's Bay and Baffin's Bay and brought to the
+    notice of merchants in England the abundance of whales in these Arctic
+    waters, and of fur-bearing beasts and fur-trading Indians in the
+    region of Hudson's Bay.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This last point was most forcibly presented to Charles II and his
+    Government by a disappointed French Canadian, Pierre Esprit Radisson,
+    whose adventures will later on be described. Radisson, conceiving
+    himself to be badly treated by the French Governor of Canada, crossed
+    over to England with his brother-in-law, Chouart, and the two were
+    warmly taken up by Prince Rupert of Bavaria, the cousin of Charles II.
+    They were sent out by Prince Rupert in command of an expedition
+    financed by him and a number of London merchants, and in 1669 the New
+    England captain, Gillam, returned to England with Chouart and the
+    first cargo of furs from Hudson's Bay. This cargo so completely met
+    the expectations of those who had promoted the venture that it led in
+    1670 to the foundation of the Governor and Company of Adventurers of
+    England trading into Hudson's Bay, a company chartered by Charles II
+    and presided over by Prince Rupert, and an association which proved to
+    be the germ of British North America, of the vast three-quarters of
+    the present Dominion of Canada.
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="note-3-1"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#3-1"><u>1</u></a> The name was also spelt Furbusher, and in other ways. He
+    became Sir Martin Frobisher over the wars of the Armada, and died Lord
+    High Admiral of England in 1592.
+</p>
+<a name="note-3-2"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#3-2"><u>2</u></a> It may be of interest to set forth the kind of rations
+    shipped in those Elizabethan times for the food of the sailors.
+    According to Frobisher's accounts these consisted of salted beef, salt
+    pork, salt fish, biscuit, meal for making bread, dried peas, oatmeal,
+    rice, cheese, butter, beer, and wine, with brandy for emergencies. As
+    regards beer, the men were to have a ration of 1 gallon a day each.
+    Altogether it may be said that these rations were superior in
+    variety&mdash;and no doubt in quality&mdash;to the food given to seamen in the
+    British merchant marine in the nineteenth century.
+</p>
+<a name="note-3-3"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#3-3"><u>3</u></a> We now know Meta Incognita to be the southernmost
+    peninsula of the vast Baffin Island.
+</p>
+<a name="note-3-4"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#3-4"><u>4</u></a> In 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh, the half-brother of Sir
+    Humphrey Gilbert, financed an expedition to sail to the coast of North
+    America in a more southerly direction. In this way was founded the
+    (afterwards abandoned) colony of Roanoke, in North Carolina. It was to
+    this region that Queen Elizabeth applied the title of Virginia, which
+    some years afterwards was transferred to the first English colony on
+    the James River.
+</p>
+<p class="return">[<a href="#contents">TABLE OF CONTENTS</a>]
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="2HCH0004"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER IV
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    Champlain and the Foundation of Canada
+</h3>
+<p>
+    From the first voyage of Cartier onwards, Canada was called
+    intermittently New France, and its possibilities were not lost sight
+    of by a few intelligent Frenchmen on account of the fur trade. Amongst
+    these was Amyard de Chastes, at one time Governor of Dieppe, who got
+    into correspondence with the adventurers who had settled as fur
+    traders at Tadoussac, prominent amongst whom was Du Pont-Gravé. De
+    Chastes dispatched with Pont-Gravé a young man whose acquaintance he
+    had just made, SAMUEL CHAMPLAIN.<a name="4-1"></a><a href="#note-4-1"><small>[1]</small></a> This was the man who, more than
+    any other, created French Canada.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Champlain had had already a most adventurous life. He was born about
+    1567, at Brouage, in the Saintonge, opposite to the Island of Héron,
+    on the coast of western France. From his earliest years he had a
+    passion for the sea, but he also served as a soldier for six years.
+    His father had been a sea captain, and his uncle as an experienced
+    navigator was commissioned by the King of Spain to transport by sea to
+    that country the remainder of the Spanish soldiers who had been
+    serving in Brittany. The uncle took his nephew with him. Young
+    Champlain when in Spain managed to ingratiate himself so much with the
+    Spanish authorities that he was actually commissioned as a captain to
+    take a king's ship out to the West Indies. No sooner did he reach
+    Spanish America than he availed himself of the first chance to
+    explore it. For two years he travelled over Cuba, and above all
+    Mexico. He visited the narrowest part of Central America and conceived
+    the possibility of making a trans-oceanic canal across the Panama
+    isthmus.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When he got back to France he placed before Henry IV a report on
+    Spanish Central America, together with a project for making a canal at
+    Panama. Henry IV was so pleased with his work and enterprise that he
+    gave him a pension and the title of Geographer to the King. Shortly
+    afterwards he met Governor de Chastes at Dieppe, and was by him sent
+    out to Canada. The ship which carried Champlain, PONT-GRAVÉ,<a name="4-2"></a><a href="#note-4-2"><small>[2]</small></a> the
+    SIEUR DE MONTS,<a name="4-3"></a><a href="#note-4-3"><small>[3]</small></a> and other French adventurers (together with two
+    Amerindian interpreters whom Pont-Gravé had brought from Canada to
+    learn French) arrived at Tadoussac on May 24, 1603.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Champlain lost no time in commencing his explorations. Tadoussac was
+    at the mouth of an important river, called by the French the Saguenay,
+    a name which they also applied to the mysterious and wonderful country
+    through which it flowed in the far north; a country rich in copper and
+    possibly other precious metals. Champlain ascended the Saguenay River
+    for sixty miles as far as the rapids of Chicoutima. The Amerindians
+    whom he met here told him of Lake St. John, lying at a short distance
+    to the west, and that beyond this lake and the many streams which
+    entered it there lay a region of uplands strewn with other lakes and
+    pools; and farther away still began the sloping of the land to the
+    north till the traveller sighted a great arm of the salt sea, and
+    found himself amongst tribes (probably the Eskimo) who ate raw flesh,
+    and to the Indians appeared absolute savages.<a name="4-4"></a><a href="#note-4-4"><small>[4]</small></a> This was probably
+    the first allusion, recorded by a European, to the existence of
+    Hudson's Bay, that huge inlet of the sea, which is one of the leading
+    features in the geography of British North America.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Montagnais Indians round about Tadoussac received Champlain with
+    great protestations of friendship, and at the headquarters of their
+    principal chief or "Sagamore" celebrated this new friendship and
+    alliance with a feast in a very large hut. The banquet, as usual, was
+    preceded by a long address from the Sagamore in answer to the
+    description of France, given by one of the Indian interpreters. The
+    address was accompanied by the solemn smoking of tobacco, and at every
+    pause in this grave oration the natives present shouted with one
+    voice: "Ho! ho! ho!" The repast consisted of elk's meat (which struck
+    the Frenchmen as being like beef), also the flesh of bear, seal,
+    beaver, and wild fowl. There were eight or ten stone boilers or
+    cauldrons full of meats in the middle of the great hut, separated each
+    six feet from each other, and each one having its own fire. Every
+    native used a porringer or vessel made of birch bark. When the meat
+    was cooked a man in authority distributed it to each person. But
+    Champlain thought the Indians ate in a very filthy manner. When their
+    hands were covered with fat or grease they would rub them on their own
+    heads or on the hair of their dogs. Before the meat was cooked each
+    guest arose, took a dog, and hopped round the boilers from one end of
+    the great hut to the other. Arriving in front of the chief, the
+    Montagnais Indian feaster would throw his dog violently to the ground,
+    exclaiming: "Ho! ho! ho!" after which he returned to his place.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the close of the banquet every one danced, with the skulls of
+    their Iroquois enemies slung over their backs. As they danced they
+    slapped their knees with their hands, and shouted: "Ho! ho! ho!" till
+    they were out of breath.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The huts of these Indians were low and made like tents, being covered
+    with the bark of the birch tree. An opening about a foot of the top
+    was left uncovered to admit light and to allow the smoke to escape.
+    Though low, the huts were sometimes quite large, and would accommodate
+    ten families. These slept higgledy-piggledy on skins, with their dogs
+    amongst them. The dogs in appearance were something like what we know
+    as Eskimo dogs, and also rather resembled the Chinese chow, with broad
+    heads and rather short muzzles, prick ears, and a tail inclined to
+    curl over the back. "All these people have a very cheerful
+    disposition, laughing often, yet at the same time they are somewhat
+    phlegmatic. They talk very deliberately, as if desiring to make
+    themselves well understood, and, stopping suddenly, they reflect for a
+    long time, when they resume their discourse."
+</p>
+<p>
+    They were agile, well-proportioned people, who in the summertime went
+    about nearly naked, but in the winter were covered with good furs of
+    elk, otter, beaver, bear, seal, and deer. The colour of their skin was
+    usually a pale olive, but the women for some reason made themselves
+    much darker-skinned than the men by rubbing their bodies with pigments
+    which turned them to a dark brown. At times they suffered very much
+    from lack of food, being obliged then to frequent the shore of the
+    river or gulf to obtain shellfish. When pressed very hard by famine
+    they would eat their dogs (their only domestic animal) and even the
+    leather of the skins with which they clothed themselves. In the autumn
+    they were much given to fishing for eels, and they dried a good deal
+    of eel flesh, to last them through the winter. During the height of
+    the winter they hunted the beaver, and later on the elk. Though they
+    ate wild roots and fruits whenever they could obtain them, they do
+    not seem to have cultivated any grain or vegetables. In the early
+    spring they were sometimes dying of hunger, and looked so thin and
+    haggard that they were mere walking skeletons. They were then ready to
+    eat carrion that was putrid, so that it is little wonder that they
+    suffered much from scurvy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yet the rivers and the gulf abounded in fish, and as soon as the
+    waters were unlocked by the melting of the ice in April, the surviving
+    Indians rapidly grew fat and well, and of course the late summer and
+    the autumn brought them nuts (hickory and other kinds of walnut, and
+    hazel nuts), wild cherries, wild plums, raspberries, strawberries,
+    gooseberries, blackberries, currants,<a name="4-5"></a><a href="#note-4-5"><small>[5]</small></a> cranberries, and grapes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Champlain observed amongst them for the first time the far-famed
+    Amerindian snowshoes, which he compares very aptly for shape to a
+    racquet used in tennis.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Champlain next visited the site of Stadacona, but there was no longer
+    any settlement of Europeans at that place, nor were the native
+    Amerindians the descendants of the Hurons that had received Jacques
+    Cartier. For the first time the name Quebec (pronounced Kebek) is
+    applied to this point where the great River St. Lawrence narrows
+    before dividing to encircle the Isle of Orleans. In fact, Quebec meant
+    in the Algonkin speech a place where a river narrows; for a tribe of
+    the great Algonkin family, <i>the</i> Algonkins, allied to the tribes of
+    Maine and New Brunswick, had replaced the Hurons as the native
+    inhabitants of this region.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the shore of Quebec he noticed "diamonds" in some slate rocks&mdash;no
+    doubt quartz crystals. Proceeding on up the River St. Lawrence he
+    observed the extensive woods of fir and cypress (some kind of <i>Thuja</i>
+    or <i>Juniper</i>), the undergrowth of vines, "wild pears", hazel nuts,
+    cherries, red currants and green currants, and "certain little
+    radishes of the size of a small nut, resembling truffles in taste,
+    which are very good when roasted or boiled". As they advanced towards
+    the interior the country became increasingly mountainous on the south
+    (the green mountains of New Hampshire), and was more and more
+    beautiful&mdash;"the pleasantest land yet seen". Landing on the south bank
+    of the St. Lawrence, west of the entrance of the river of the Iroquois
+    (the Richelieu), he found magnificent forests, which, besides the
+    trees already mentioned, included oaks, chestnuts, maples, pines,
+    walnut-like nut trees,<a name="4-6"></a><a href="#note-4-6"><small>[6]</small></a> aspens, poplars, and beeches; with climbing
+    hops and vines, strawberries trailing over the ground, and raspberry
+    canes and currant bushes "growing in the thick grass". These splendid
+    woods on the islands and banks of the broad river were full of game:
+    elks,<a name="4-7"></a><a href="#note-4-7"><small>[7]</small></a> wapiti deer, Virginian deer, bears, porcupines, hares, foxes,
+    beavers, otters, and musk rats, besides many animals he could not
+    recognize.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At last his little expedition in "a skiff and canoe" had to draw into
+    the bank, warned by the noise that they were approaching a great fall
+    of water&mdash;the La Chine or St. Louis Rapids. Champlain wrote: "I saw,
+    to my astonishment, a torrent of water descending with an impetuosity
+    such as I have never before witnessed.... It descends as if in steps,
+    and at each descent there is a remarkable boiling, owing to the force
+    and swiftness with which the water traverses the fall, which is about
+    a league in length.... The territory on the side of the fall where we
+    went overland consists, so far as we saw it, of very open wood, where
+    one can go with his armour without much difficulty."
+</p>
+<p>
+    From the Algonkin Indians in the neighbourhood of these St. Louis
+    Rapids, and also from those living near Quebec, Champlain obtained a
+    good deal of geographical information to add to his own observations.
+    He was given an idea, more or less correct, of Lake Ontario, the Falls
+    of Niagara, Lake Erie and Lake Huron, and perhaps also of Lake
+    Superior, a sea so vast, said the Amerindians, that the sun set on its
+    horizon. This sheet of water, Champlain calculated, must be 1200 miles
+    distant to the west, and therefore identical with the "Mer du sud"
+    (Pacific Ocean), which all North-American explorers for three
+    centuries wished to reach.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After collecting much information about possible copper mines in the
+    regions north and south of the Lower St. Lawrence, and of silver<a name="4-8"></a><a href="#note-4-8"><small>[8]</small></a> in
+    New Brunswick or Nova Scotia, and a terrible story which he more than
+    half believed about a monster of prodigious size, the <i>Gougou</i>,<a name="4-9"></a><a href="#note-4-9"><small>[9]</small></a>
+    Champlain set sail for France at the end of August, 1603.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In April, 1604, Champlain accompanied the Sieur de Monts (who had
+    succeeded the dead Amyard de Chastes as head of a chartered
+    fur-trading association) in a fresh expedition to North America,
+    together with a hundred and twenty artisans and several noblemen.
+    They were to occupy the lands of "Cadie" (Acadia, Nova Scotia),
+    Canada, and other places in New France. De Monts thought Tadoussac and
+    Quebec too cold in wintertime, and preferred the sunnier east coast
+    regions. He aimed indeed at colonizing what is now New England.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the way to Nova Scotia, the expedition was nearly wrecked on Sable
+    Island, about one hundred and twenty miles south of Cape Breton
+    Island, and noticed there the large red cattle run wild from the bulls
+    and cows landed on Sable Island by the Portuguese some sixty years
+    earlier. (The Portuguese of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
+    deserved well of humanity for the generous way in which they left
+    cattle, goats, pigs, and rabbits to run wild on desert islands and
+    serve as provender for shipwrecked mariners like Robinson Crusoe.)
+    Champlain also speaks of the "fine large black foxes" which he and
+    other voyagers noticed on Sable Island. How they came there is a
+    mystery, unless the island had once been part of the mainland.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This same Sable Island had been the scene of an extraordinary
+    experiment at the end of the previous century. In 1598 the Marquis de
+    la Roche, given a commission to colonize New France, sailed in a small
+    ship for North America with sixty convicts from French prisons as
+    colonists. He landed them on Sable Island, and went away to look for
+    some good site for his colony. But then a storm arose, and his little
+    ship was literally blown back to France. The convicts, abandoned thus,
+    built themselves shelters out of the driftwood of wrecks; killed and
+    ate the cattle and caught fish. They made themselves warm clothes out
+    of the skins of the seals which frequented the island coast in
+    thousands. But these convicts quarrelled and fought among themselves
+    so fiercely that when at last a ship from Normandy came to take them
+    away, there were only twelve left&mdash;twelve shaggy men with long tangled
+    hair and beards; and, a legend says, in addition a Franciscan monk
+    who had been landed on the island with them as a kind of missionary or
+    chaplain, and who had been so heartbroken at their bloody quarrels and
+    horrible deeds that when the Norman ship arrived to take the castaways
+    back to France, the Franciscan refused to go with them, believing
+    himself to be dying and wishing to end his life undisturbed. So he was
+    left behind. But after the ship had sailed away he slowly mended, grew
+    well and strong, and cultivated eagerly his little garden. For food he
+    ate the whelks, mussels, and oysters that were so abundant on the
+    shore. Occasionally ships (then as now) were wrecked on Sable Island
+    in stormy weather, and the good monk ministered to the mariners who
+    reached the shore. Also he was visited, ever and again, by the Breton
+    fishing boats, which brought him supplies of necessaries and the bread
+    and wine for celebrating Mass. Long after his death his spirit was
+    thought to haunt the desolate island.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Champlain and his companions passed on from Sable Island to the
+    south-east coast of Nova Scotia, noticing as they landed here and
+    there the abundance of rabbits<a name="4-10"></a><a href="#note-4-10"><small>[10]</small></a> and sea birds, especially the Great
+    Auk, of which they killed numbers with sticks, cormorants (whose fishy
+    eggs they ate with enjoyment), puffins, guillemots, gulls, terns,
+    scissorbills, divers, ospreys, buzzards, and falcons; and no doubt the
+    typical American white-tailed sea eagles, ravens, ducks, geese,
+    curlews, herons, and cranes. Here and there they found the shore
+    "completely covered with sea wolves"&mdash;seals, of course, probably the
+    common seal and the grey seal. Of these they captured as many as they
+    wanted, for the seals, like most of the birds, were quite unafraid of
+    man.
+</p>
+<p>
+    They then explored the Bay of Fundy, and, after zig-zagging about,
+    decided to fix on the harbour of St. John's (New Brunswick) as the
+    site for their colony. The future capital of New France, therefore,
+    was begun on La Sainte Croix (Dochet) Island, near the mouth of the
+    wonderful tidal estuary of the Uigudi (Ouygoudy) River.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here they passed the winter, but suffered so badly from scurvy<a name="4-11"></a><a href="#note-4-11"><small>[11]</small></a>
+    that, when in the spring of 1605 Du Pont Gravé arrived from Brittany
+    with supplies, the remnant of the colony was removed to the opposite
+    coast of Nova Scotia to Port Royal (afterwards named by the English
+    Annapolis<a name="4-12"></a><a href="#note-4-12"><small>[12]</small></a>). The French seem to have fallen in love with this place
+    from the very first. Nevertheless here they suffered from scurvy
+    during the winter as elsewhere. Before moving over here, however,
+    Champlain, together with De Monts, had explored the west of New
+    England south of New Brunswick as far as Plymouth, just south of
+    Boston.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Off the coast of Maine (Richmond's Island) they encountered
+    agricultural Amerindians of a new tribe, the Penobskot probably, who
+    cultivated a form of rank narcotic tobacco (<i>Nicotiana rustica</i>),
+    which they called <i>Petun</i>. (A variety of this has produced the
+    handsome garden flower <i>Petunia</i>, whose Latin name is derived from
+    this native word Petun.) They also grew maize or Indian corn, planting
+    very carefully three or four seeds in little mounds three feet apart
+    one from the other, the soil in between being kept clear of weeds. The
+    American farmers of to-day cannot adopt any better method.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The islands round about Portland (Maine) were matted all over with
+    wild red currants, so that the eye could scarcely discern anything
+    else. Attracted by this fruit, clouds of wild pigeons had
+    assembled<a name="4-13"></a><a href="#note-4-13"><small>[13]</small></a>. They manifested hardly any fear of the French, who
+    captured large numbers of them in snares, or killed them with guns.
+    The natives of southern Maine fled with dismay on sighting the French
+    ships, for they had never before seen sailing vessels, but later on
+    they timidly approached the French ships in a canoe, then landed and
+    went through a wild dance on the shore to typify friendliness.
+    Champlain took with him some drawing paper and a pencil or crayon,
+    together with a quantity of knives and ship's biscuit. Landing alone,
+    he attracted the natives towards him by offering them biscuits, and
+    having gathered them round him (being of course as much unable to
+    understand their speech as they were French), he proceeded to ask
+    questions by means of certain drawings, chiefly the outlines of the
+    coast. The savages at once seized his idea, and taking up his pencil
+    drew on the paper an accurate outline of Massachusetts Bay, adding
+    also rivers and islands unknown to the French. They went on by further
+    intelligent signs to supply information. For instance, they placed six
+    pebbles at equal distances to intimate that Massachusetts Bay was
+    occupied by six tribes and governed by as many chiefs. By drawings of
+    growing maize and other plants they intimated that all these people
+    lived by agriculture.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Champlain thought Massachusetts (in his first voyage) a most
+    attractive region in the summer, what with the blue water of the
+    enclosed arms of the sea, the lofty forest trees, and the fields of
+    Indian corn and other crops.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When these French explorers reached the harbour of Boston, the islands
+    and mainland were swarming with the native population. The Amerindians
+    were intensely interested in the arrival of the first sailing vessel
+    they had ever seen. Although it was only a small barque, its size was
+    greater than any canoe known to them. As it seemed to spread huge
+    white wings and to glide silently through the water without the use of
+    paddles or oars, it filled them with surprise and admiration. They
+    manned all their canoes<a name="4-14"></a><a href="#note-4-14"><small>[14]</small></a> and came out in a flotilla to express
+    their honour and reverence for the wonderful white men. But when the
+    French took their leave, it was equally obvious that the natives
+    experienced a sense of relief, for they were disquieted as well as
+    filled with admiration at the arrival of these wonderful beings from
+    an unknown world.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Champlain describes the wigwams or native huts as being cone-shaped,
+    heavily thatched with reeds, with an opening at the top of the roof
+    for the smoke to escape. Inside the huts was a low bed raised a foot
+    from the ground and made of short posts driven into the ground, with a
+    surface made of boards split from trees. On these boards were laid
+    either the dressed skins of deer or bear, or thick mattresses made of
+    reeds or rushes. The beds were large enough for several people to lie
+    on. Champlain describes the huts as being full of fleas, and likewise
+    the persons of the nearly naked Indians, who carried these fleas out
+    with them into the fields when they were working, so that the
+    Frenchmen by stopping to talk to the natives became covered with
+    fleas to such an extent that they were obliged to change their
+    clothes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the fields were cultivated not only maize, but beans similar to the
+    beans grown by the natives of Brazil, vegetable marrows or pumpkins,
+    Jerusalem artichokes<a name="4-15"></a><a href="#note-4-15"><small>[15]</small></a>, radishes, and tobacco. The woods were filled
+    with oaks, walnut trees<a name="4-16"></a><a href="#note-4-16"><small>[16]</small></a>, and the red "cedar" of North America,
+    really a very large juniper, the foliage of which in the summertime
+    often assumes a reddish colour, together with the trunk. This
+    Virginian juniper or "red cedar" is now quite a common tree in
+    England. In warm weather it exhales a delicious aromatic scent.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All these natives of the Massachusetts coast were described by
+    Champlain as being almost naked in the summertime, wearing at most a
+    small piece of leather round the waist, and a short robe of spun hemp
+    which hung down over the shoulders. Their faces were painted red,
+    black and yellow. The men pulled out any hairs which might come on the
+    chin, and thus were beardless. They were armed with pikes, clubs,
+    bows, and arrows. The pikes were probably made of wood with the ends
+    hardened by being burnt to a point in the fire, and the arrow tips
+    were made of the sharp termination of the tail of the great
+    king-crab<a name="4-17"></a><a href="#note-4-17"><small>[17]</small></a>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These Massachusetts "Indians" described to Champlain a wonderful bird
+    which at some seasons of the year they caught in snares and ate. This
+    Champlain at once guessed was the wild turkey, now, of course, quite
+    extinct in that region. This wild turkey of the eastern half of North
+    America (including southern Canada) was quite a distinct form from the
+    Mexican bird, which last is the origin of our domestic turkey.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In July, 1606, as De Monts had not returned from France, and the
+    little colony at Port Royal was without supplies, they decided to
+    leave two Frenchmen in charge of the local chief of the Mikmak
+    Indians, and find their way along the coast to Cape Breton, where they
+    might get a fishing vessel to take them back to France. But after
+    travelling in an open boat&mdash;a chaloupe&mdash;round the coast of Nova Scotia
+    they met another small boat off Cape Sable, under the charge of the
+    secretary of De Monts, and learnt that Lieutenant-General DE
+    POUTRINCOURT<a name="4-18"></a><a href="#note-4-18"><small>[18]</small></a> (one of the great names amongst the pioneers of
+    Canada, and the man who had really chosen Port Royal for the French
+    headquarters at Nova Scotia) had already returned from France with
+    fresh supplies. Consequently, Champlain and his companions returned to
+    Port Royal, and all set to work with eagerness to develop the
+    settlement. Champlain relates in his book how he created vegetable
+    gardens, trout streams and ponds, and a reservoir of salt water for
+    sea fish; but he was soon off again on a fresh journey of exploration,
+    because De Monts was not satisfied with Nova Scotia on account of the
+    cold in winter. Accordingly Champlain examined the whole coast round
+    the Bay of Fundy, and down to Cape Cod, and the islands of Martha's
+    Vineyard and Nantucket. But in this region, already visited in past
+    times by French, Spanish, and English ships, they found the natives
+    treacherous and hostile. An unprovoked attack was made on the French
+    after they landed, and several of the seamen were killed with arrows.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the 24th of May, 1607, a small barque of six or seven tons burden
+    (fancy crossing the wide Atlantic from Brittany to Nova Scotia in a
+    ship of that size at the present day!) arrived outside Port Royal from
+    France, with an abrupt notification that De Monts' ten years' monopoly
+    and charter were <i>cancelled</i> by Henry IV, and that all the colony was
+    to be withdrawn and brought back to France. Henry IV took this action
+    simply because De Monts attempted to make his monopoly a real one,<a name="4-19"></a><a href="#note-4-19"><small>[19]</small></a>
+    and stop the ships of fur traders who were trading with the
+    Amerindians of Cape Breton without his licence. These fur traders of
+    Normandy then complained bitterly that because De Monts was a
+    Protestant he was allowed not only to have this monopoly, but to
+    endanger the spiritual welfare of the savages by spreading his false
+    doctrines! So King Henry IV, volatile and capricious, like most of the
+    French kings, cancelled a charter which had led to such heroic and
+    remarkable results.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The greater part of the little colony had to leave Port Royal and make
+    its way in small boats along the Nova Scotia coasts till they reached
+    Cape Breton Island. Here fishing vessels conveyed them back to
+    Brittany. It was in this boat journeying along the coast of Nova
+    Scotia that Champlain discovered Halifax Harbour, then called by the
+    Indian name of Shebuktu. As they passed along this coast with its many
+    islands, they feasted on ripe raspberries, which grew everywhere "in
+    the greatest possible quantity".
+</p>
+<p>
+    Poutrincourt, however, had succeeded in taking back with him samples
+    of the corn, wheat, rye, barley, and oats which had been so
+    successfully grown on the island of Sainte Croix and at Port Royal,
+    and also presented to that monarch five brent-geese<a name="4-20"></a><a href="#note-4-20"><small>[20]</small></a> which he had
+    reared up from eggs hatched under a hen. The king was so delighted at
+    these presents that he once more veered about and gave to De Monts the
+    monopoly of the fur trade for one more year, in order to enable him to
+    renew his colonies in New France.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Sieur de Monts was again appointed by Henry IV Lieutenant-General
+    in New France. The latter engaged Champlain as his lieutenant, and
+    also sent out Du Pont Gravé in command of the second vessel, as head
+    of the trading operations. This time, on the advice of Champlain, the
+    expedition made its way directly to the St. Lawrence River, stopping
+    first at Tadoussac, where Du Pont Gravé proceeded to take very strong
+    measures with the Basque seamen, who were infringing his monopoly by
+    trading with the natives in furs. Apparently they were still allowed
+    to continue their whale fishery.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Once more Champlain heard from the Montagnais Indians of the great
+    Salt Sea to the north of Saguenay, in other words, the southern
+    extension of Hudson's Bay; and in his book he notes that the English
+    in these latter years "had gone thither to find their way to China".
+    However, he kept his intent fixed on the establishment of a French
+    colony along the St. Lawrence, and may be said to have founded the
+    city of Quebec (the site of which was then covered with nut trees) on
+    the 4th of July, 1608. Then his enterprise was near being wrecked by a
+    base conspiracy got up between a surgeon and a number of French
+    artisans, who believed that by seizing and killing Champlain, and then
+    handing over the infant settlement to the Spanish <a name="p69"></a>Basques, they might
+    enable these traders and fishermen with their good strong ships to
+    overcome Du Pont Gravé, and seize the whole country. Naturally (they
+    believed) the Basques would reward the conspirators, who would thus at
+    a stroke become rich men. They none of them wished to go to France,
+    but would live here independent of outside interference. A
+    conspirator, however, revealed the plot to Champlain as he was
+    planting one of the little gardens which he started as soon as he had
+    been in a place a few days. He went about his business very
+    discreetly, arrested all the leading conspirators, gave them a fair
+    trial, had the ringleader executed by Pont Gravé, and sent three
+    others back to France. After this he settled down at Quebec for the
+    winter, taking care, however, in the month of October, to plant seeds
+    and vines for coming up in the spring.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the summer of 1609 Champlain, apparently with the idea of thus
+    exploring the country south of the St. Lawrence, decided to accompany
+    a party of Algonkins and Hurons from Georgian Bay and the
+    neighbourhood of Montreal, who were bent on attacking the Iroquois
+    confederacy in the Mohawk country at the headwaters of the Hudson
+    River. He was accompanied by two French soldiers&mdash;Des Marais and La
+    Routte&mdash;and by a few Montagnais Indians from Tadoussac.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Hurons<a name="4-21"></a><a href="#note-4-21"><small>[21]</small></a> were really of the same group (as regards language and
+    descent) as the Iroquois (Irokwá), but in those days held aloof from
+    the five other tribes who had formed a confederacy<a name="4-22"></a><a href="#note-4-22"><small>[22]</small></a> and alliance
+    under the name of <i>Ongwehonwe</i>&mdash;"Superior Men". The Iroquois
+    (Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Kayugas, and Senekas) dominated much of
+    what is now New York State, and from the mountain country of the
+    Adirondaks and Catskills descended on the St. Lawrence valley and the
+    shores of Lakes Ontario and Huron to rob and massacre.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The route into the enemy's country lay along the Richelieu River and
+    across Lake Champlain to its southern end, in sight of the majestic
+    snow-crowned Adirondak Mountains. On the way the allies stopped at an
+    island, held a kind of review, and explained their tactics to
+    Champlain. They set no sentries and kept no strict watch at night,
+    being too tired; but during the daytime the army advanced as follows:
+    The main body marched in the centre along the warpath; a portion of
+    the troops diverged on either side to hunt up food for the expedition;
+    and a third section was told off for "intelligence" work, namely, they
+    ran on ahead and roundabout to locate the enemy, looking out
+    especially along the rivers for marks or signals showing whether
+    friends or enemies had passed that way. These marks were devised by
+    the chiefs of the different tribes, and were duly communicated to the
+    war leaders of tribes in friendship or alliance, like our cipher
+    codes; and equally they were changed from time to time to baffle the
+    enemy. Neither hunters nor main body ever got in front of the advance
+    guard, lest they should give an alarm. Thus they travelled until they
+    got within two days or so of the enemies' headquarters; thenceforward
+    they only marched by night, and hid in the woods by day, making no
+    fires or noise, and subsisting only on cooked maize meal.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At intervals the soothsayers accompanying the army were consulted for
+    signs and omens; and when the war-chiefs decided on their plan of
+    campaign they summoned all the fighting men to a smooth place in a
+    wood, cut sticks a foot long (as many as there were warriors), and
+    each leader of a division "put the sticks in such order as seemed to
+    him best, indicating to his followers the rank and order they were to
+    observe in battle. The warriors watched carefully this proceeding,
+    observing attentively the outline which their chief had made with the
+    sticks. Then they would go away and set to placing themselves in such
+    order as the sticks were in. This manoeuvre they repeated several
+    times, and at all their encampments, without needing a sergeant to
+    maintain them in the proper order they were able to keep accurately
+    the positions assigned to them" (Champlain).
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Hurons who were accompanying Champlain frequently questioned him
+    as to his dreams, they themselves having a great belief in the value
+    of dreams as omens and indications of future events. One day, when
+    they were approaching the country of the Iroquois, Champlain actually
+    did have a dream. In this he imagined that he saw the Iroquois enemies
+    drowning in a lake near a mountain. Moved to pity in his dream he
+    wished to help them, but his savage allies insisted that they must be
+    allowed to die. When he awoke he told the Amerindians of his dream,
+    and they were greatly impressed, as they regarded it as a good omen.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Near the modern town of Ticonderoga the Hurons and Algonkins of
+    Georgian Bay and Ottawa met a party of Iroquois, probably of the
+    Mohawk tribe. The Iroquois had built rapidly a stockade in which to
+    retreat if things should go badly with them, but the battle at first
+    began in the old heroic style with as much ceremony as a French duel.
+    First the allies from the St. Lawrence asked the Iroquois what time it
+    would suit them to begin fighting the next day; then the latter
+    replied: "When the sun is well up, if you don't mind? We can see
+    better then to kill you all." Accordingly in the bright morning the
+    Hurons and Algonkins advanced against the circular stockade of the
+    Iroquois, and the Iroquois marched out to fight in great pomp, their
+    leaders wearing plumed headdresses. With this exception both parties
+    fought quite naked, and armed only with bows and arrows.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I marched twenty paces in advance of the rest" (wrote Champlain)
+    "till I was within about thirty paces of the Iroquois.... I rested my
+    musket against my cheek, and aimed directly at one of the three
+    chiefs. With the same shot two fell to the ground, and one of their
+    men was so wounded that he died some time afterwards. I had loaded my
+    musket with four balls. When they saw I had shot so favourably for
+    them, they (the Algonkins and Hurons) raised such loud cries that one
+    could not have heard it thunder.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Meantime the arrows flew on both sides. The Iroquois were greatly
+    astonished that two men had been so quickly killed, though they were
+    equipped with armour woven from copper thread and with wood, which was
+    proof against their arrows."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Whilst Champlain was loading to fire again one of his two companions
+    fired a shot from the woods, whereupon the Iroquois took to flight,
+    abandoning their camp and fort. As they fled they threw off their
+    armour of wooden boards and cotton cloth.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As to the way in which the Hurons tortured their Iroquois prisoners,
+    Champlain writes of one instance.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They commanded him (the prisoner) to sing, if he had courage, which
+    he did, but it was a very sad song." The Hurons kindled a fire, and
+    when it was well alight they each took a brand from the blaze, the end
+    of which was red-hot, and with this burnt the bodies of their
+    prisoners tied to stakes. Every now and then they stopped and threw
+    water over them to restore them from fainting. Then they tore out
+    their finger nails and applied fire to the extremities of the fingers.
+    After that they tore the scalps off their heads, and poured over the
+    raw and bleeding flesh a kind of hot gum. Then they pierced the arms
+    of the prisoners near the wrists, and drew up their sinews with sticks
+    inserted underneath, trying to tear them out by force, and, if
+    failing, cutting them. One poor wretch "uttered such terrible cries
+    that it excited my pity to see him treated in this manner, yet at
+    other times he showed such firmness that one would have said he
+    suffered scarcely any pain at all".
+</p>
+<p>
+    In this case Champlain, seeing that the man could not recover from his
+    injuries, drew apart and shot him dead, "thus putting an end to all
+    the tortures he would have suffered".
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the savage Hurons were not yet satisfied. They opened the corpse
+    and threw its entrails into the lake. Then they cut off head, arms,
+    and legs, and cut out the heart; this they minced up, and endeavoured
+    to force the other prisoners to eat it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    With those of his allies who were Montagnais Indians from Tadoussac,
+    Champlain returned to that place. As they neared the shore the
+    Montagnais women undressed themselves, jumped into the river, and swam
+    to the prows of the canoes, from which they took the heads of the
+    slain Iroquois. These they hung about their necks as if they had been
+    some costly chain, singing and dancing meanwhile.
+</p>
+<p>
+    However, in spite of these and other horrors, Champlain had "separated
+    from his Upper Canadian allies with loud protestations of mutual
+    friendship", promising to go again into their country and assist them
+    with continued "fraternal" relations.
+</p>
+<p>
+    From this expedition Champlain learned much regarding the geography of
+    eastern North America, and he brought back with him to France, to
+    present to King Henry IV, two scarlet tanagers&mdash;one of the commonest
+    and most beautiful birds of the eastern United States&mdash;a girdle of
+    porcupine quills made from the Canadian <a name="p74"></a>porcupine, and the head of a
+    gar-pike caught in Lake Champlain.<a name="4-23"></a><a href="#note-4-23"><small>[23]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    On Champlain's return from France in 1610 (he and other Frenchmen and
+    Englishmen of the time made surprisingly little fuss about crossing
+    the North Atlantic in small sailing vessels, in spite of the storms of
+    spring and autumn) he found the Iroquois question still agitating the
+    minds of the Algonkins, Montagnais, and Hurons. Representatives of
+    these tribes were ready to meet this great captain of the <i>Mistigosh</i>
+    or <i>Matigosh</i><a name="4-24"></a><a href="#note-4-24"><small>[24]</small></a> (as they called the French), and implored him to
+    keep his promise to take part in another attack on the dreaded enemy
+    of the Adirondak heights. Apparently the Iroquois (Mohawks) this time
+    had advanced to meet the attack, and were ensconced in a round
+    fortress of logs built near the Richelieu River.<a name="4-25"></a><a href="#note-4-25"><small>[25]</small></a> The Algonkins and
+    their allies on this expedition were armed with clubs, swords, and
+    shields, as well as bows and arrows. The swords of copper(?) were
+    really knife blades attached to long sticks like billhooks. Before the
+    barricade, as usual, both parties commenced the fight by hurling
+    insults at each other till they were out of breath, and shouting "till
+    one could not have heard it thunder". The circular log barricade,
+    however, would never have been taken by the Algonkins and their
+    allies but for the assistance of Champlain and three or four
+    Frenchmen, who with their musketry fire at short range paralysed the
+    Iroquois. Champlain and one other Frenchman were wounded with arrows
+    in the neck and arm, but not seriously. The victory of the allies was
+    followed by the usual torture of prisoners, which Champlain made a
+    slight&mdash;only slight&mdash;attempt to prevent.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But results far more serious arose from these two skirmishes with the
+    Iroquois in 1609 and 1610. The Confederacy of the Five Nations
+    (afterwards six) realized that they had been attacked unprovoked by
+    the dominant white men of the St. Lawrence, called by the Montagnais
+    <i>Mistigosh</i>, and by the Iroquois <i>Adoreset&#363;i</i> ("men of iron", from
+    their armour). They became the bitter enemies of the French, and
+    tendered help first to the Dutch to establish themselves in the valley
+    of the Hudson, and secondly to the English. In the great Colonial wars
+    of the early eighteenth century the Iroquois were invaluable allies to
+    the British forces, Colonial and Imperial, and counted for much in the
+    struggle which eventually cost France Nova Scotia, New Brunswick,
+    Maine, the two Canadas, and Louisiana. On the other hand, the French
+    alliance with the Hurons, Algonkins, and Montagnais, begun by this
+    brotherhood-in-arms with Champlain, secured for France and the French
+    such widespread liking among the tribes of Algonkin speech, and their
+    allies and friends, that the two Canadas and much of the Middle West,
+    together with Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois, became French in
+    sympathy without any war of conquest. When the French dominion over
+    North America fell, in 1759, with the capture of Quebec by Wolfe's
+    army, tribes of Amerindians went on fighting for five years afterwards
+    to uphold the banner and the rule of the beloved French king.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On Champlain's next visit to Canada, in 1610, he handed over to the
+    Algonkin Indians a French youth named Étienne Brulé (see p. <a href="#p88">88</a>), to
+    be taught the Algonkin language (the use of which was spread far and
+    wide over north-east America), and, further, sent a Huron youth to
+    France to be taught French. Between 1611 and 1616 he had explored much
+    of the country between Montreal (the foundations of which city he may
+    be said to have laid on May 29, 1611, for his stockaded camp is now in
+    the centre of it) and Lakes Huron and Ontario, especially along the
+    Ottawa River, that convenient short cut (as a water route) between the
+    St. Lawrence at Sault St. Louis (Montreal) and Lakes Huron and
+    Superior. With short portages you can get in canoes from Montreal to
+    the waters of Hudson Bay, or to Lake Winnipeg and the base of the
+    Rocky Mountains.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In exploring this "River of the Algonkins" (as he called it),
+    Champlain was nearly drowned between two rocks, and much hurt, from
+    over bravery and want of knowledge of how to deal with a canoe on
+    troubled water; but on June 4, 1613, he stood on the site of the
+    modern city of Ottawa&mdash;the capital of the vast Canadian Dominion&mdash;and
+    gazed at the marvellous Rideau or Curtain Fall, where the Rideau River
+    enters the Ottawa. But the air was resonant with the sound of falling
+    water. Three miles above the falls of the Gatineau and the Rideau, the
+    main Ottawa River descended with a roar and a whirl of white foam and
+    rainbow-tinted mist into the chasm called the Chaudière or Kettle. On
+    a later occasion he describes the way in which the Algonkins
+    propitiated the Spirit of the Chasm:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Continuing our way, we came to the Chaudière Falls, where the savages
+    carried out their customary ceremony. After transporting their canoes
+    to the foot of the fall they assemble in one spot, where one of them
+    takes up a collection on a wooden platter, into which each person puts
+    a bit of tobacco. The collection having been made, the plate is placed
+    in the midst of the troop, and all dance about it, singing after
+    their style. Then one of the captains makes an harangue, setting forth
+    that for a long time they have been accustomed to make this offering,
+    by which means they are ensured protection against their enemies, that
+    otherwise misfortune would befall them from the evil spirit. This
+    done, the maker of the harangue takes the plate and throws the tobacco
+    into the midst of the cauldron (the chasm of foaming water), whereupon
+    they all together raise a loud cry. These poor people are so
+    superstitious, that they would not believe it possible for them to
+    make a prosperous journey without observing this ceremony at this
+    place; for sometimes their enemies (Iroquois) await them at this
+    portage, not venturing to go any farther on account of the difficulty
+    of the journey. Consequently they are occasionally surprised and
+    killed by the Iroquois at this place (the south bank of the Ottawa)."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Above the Chaudière Champlain met the Algonkin chief, Tessouat, and
+    thus described the burial places of his tribe:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "On visiting the island I observed their cemeteries, and was struck
+    with wonder as I saw sepulchres of a shape like shrines, made of
+    pieces of wood fixed in the ground at a distance of about three feet
+    from each other, and intersecting at the upper end. On the
+    intersections above they place a large piece of wood, and in front
+    another upright piece on which is carved roughly, as would be
+    expected, the figure of the male or female interred. If it is a man,
+    they add a shield, a sword attached to a handle after their manner, a
+    mace, and bow and arrows. If it is a chief, there is a plume on his
+    head, and some other <i>matachia</i> or embellishment. If it is a child,
+    they give it a bow and arrow, if a woman or girl, a boiler, an earthen
+    vessel, a wooden spoon, and an oar. The entire sepulchre is six or
+    seven feet long at most, and four wide; others are smaller. They are
+    painted yellow and red, with various ornaments as neatly done as the
+    carving. The deceased is buried with his dress of beaver or other
+    skins which he wore when living, and they lay by his side all his
+    possessions, as hatchets, knives, boilers, and awls, so that these
+    things may serve him in the land whither he goes; for they believe in
+    the immortality of the soul, as I have elsewhere observed. These
+    carved sepulchres are only made for the warriors, for in respect to
+    others they add no more than in the case of women, who are considered
+    a useless class, accordingly but little is added in their case."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the summer of 1615 Champlain, returning from France, made his way
+    up the Ottawa River, and, by a short portage, to Lake Nipissing,
+    thence down French River to the waters of Lake Huron. On the banks of
+    the French River he met a detachment of the Ottawa tribe (of the
+    Algonkin family). These people he styled the <i>Cheveux Relevés</i>,
+    because the men's hair was gathered up and dressed more carefully and
+    becomingly on the top of the head than (he says) could at that time be
+    done by a hairdresser in France. This arrangement of the hair gave the
+    men a very handsome appearance, but here their toilet ended, for they
+    wore no clothes whatever (in the summertime), making up for this
+    simplicity by painting their faces in different colours, piercing
+    their ears and nostrils and decorating them with shell beads, and
+    tattooing their bodies and limbs with elaborate patterns.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These Ottawas carried a club, a long bow and arrows, and a round
+    shield of dressed leather, made (wrote Champlain) "from the skin of an
+    animal like the buffalo".<a name="4-26"></a><a href="#note-4-26"><small>[26]</small></a> The chief of the party explained many
+    things to the white man by drawing with a piece of charcoal on the
+    white bark of the birch tree. He gave him to understand that the
+    present occupation of his band of warriors was the gathering of
+    blueberries, which would be dried in the sun, and could then be
+    preserved for eating during the winter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    From French River, Champlain passed southwards to the homeland of the
+    Hurons, which lay to the east of what Champlain called "the Fresh
+    Water Sea" (Lake Huron). This country he describes in enthusiastic
+    terms. The Hurons, like the other Iroquois tribes (and unlike the
+    hunting races to the north of them), were agriculturists, and
+    cultivated pumpkins, sunflowers,<a name="4-27"></a><a href="#note-4-27"><small>[27]</small></a> beans and Indian corn.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Hurons persuaded Champlain to go with them to attack the Iroquois
+    tribe of the Senekas (Entuhónorons) on the south shores of Lake
+    Ontario. On the way thither he noticed the abundance of stags and
+    bears, and, near the lake, of cranes, white and purple-brown.<a name="4-28"></a><a href="#note-4-28"><small>[28]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the southern shores of the lake<a name="4-29"></a><a href="#note-4-29"><small>[29]</small></a> were large numbers <a name="p80"></a>of chestnut
+    trees, "whose fruit was still in the burr. The chestnuts are small but
+    of a good flavour." The southern country was covered with forests,
+    with very few clearings. After crossing the Oneida River the Hurons
+    captured eleven of the Senekas, four women, one girl, three boys, and
+    three men. The people had left the stockade in which their relations
+    were living to go and fish by the lake shore. One of the Huron
+    chiefs&mdash;the celebrated Iroquet, who had been so much associated with
+    Champlain from the time of his arrival&mdash;proceeded at once to cut off
+    the finger of one of these women prisoners. Whereupon Champlain,
+    firmer than in years gone by, interposed and reprimanded him, pointing
+    out that it was not the act of a warrior such as he declared himself
+    to be, to conduct himself with cruelty towards women "who had no
+    defence but their tears, so that one should treat them with humanity
+    on account of their helplessness and weakness". Champlain went on to
+    say that this act was base and brutal, and that if he committed any
+    more of such cruelties he, Champlain, "would have no heart to assist
+    or favour them in the war". To this Iroquet replied that their enemies
+    treated them in the same manner, but that since this was displeasing
+    to the Frenchmen he would not do anything more to women, but he would
+    not promise to refrain from torturing the men.
+</p>
+<p>
+    However, in the subsequent fighting which occurred when they reached
+    the six-sided stockade of the Senekas (a strong fortification which
+    faced a large pond on one side, and was surrounded by a moat
+    everywhere else except at the entrance), the Hurons and Algonkins
+    showed a great lack of discipline. Champlain and the few Frenchmen
+    with him, by using their arquebuses, drove the enemy back into the
+    fort, but not without having some of their Indian allies wounded or
+    killed. Champlain proposed to the Hurons that they should erect what
+    was styled in French a <i>cavalier</i>&mdash;a kind of box, with high, loopholed
+    sides, which was erected on a tall scaffolding of stout timbers. This
+    was to be carried by the Hurons to within a pike's length of the
+    stockade. Four French arquebusiers then scrambled up into the
+    <i>cavalier</i> and fired through the loopholes into the huts of the Seneka
+    town. Meantime the Hurons were to set fire, if possible, to the wooden
+    stockade. They managed the whole business so stupidly that the fire
+    produced no effect, the flames being blown in the opposite direction
+    to that which was desired. The brave Senekas threw water on to the
+    blazing sticks and put out the fire. Champlain was wounded by an arrow
+    in the leg and knee. The reinforcement of the five hundred Hurons
+    expected by the allies did not turn up. The Hurons with Champlain lost
+    heart, and insisted on retreating. Only the dread of the French
+    firearms prevented the retreat being converted into a complete
+    disaster. Whenever the Senekas came near enough to get speech with the
+    French they asked them "why they interfered with native quarrels".
+</p>
+<p>
+    Champlain being unable to walk, the Hurons made a kind of basket,
+    similar to that in which they carried their wounded. In this he was so
+    crowded into a heap, and bound and pinioned, that it was as impossible
+    for him to move "as it would be for an infant in his swaddling
+    clothes". This treatment caused him considerable pain after he had
+    been carried for some days; in fact he suffered agonies while fastened
+    in this way on to the back of a savage.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He was afterwards obliged to pass the winter of 1615-6 in the Huron
+    country. At that time it swarmed with game. Amongst birds, there were
+    swans, white cranes, brent-geese, ducks, teal, the redbreasted thrush
+    (which the Americans call "robin"), brown larks (<i>Anthus</i>), snipe, and
+    other birds too numerous to mention, which Champlain seems to have
+    brought down with his fowling-piece in sufficient quantities to feed
+    the whole party whilst waiting for the capture of deer on a large
+    scale.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Meanwhile, many of the Indians were catching fish, "trout and pike of
+    prodigious size". When they desired to secure a large number of deer,
+    they would make an enclosure in a fir forest in the form of the two
+    converging sides of a triangle, with an open base. The two sides of
+    these traps were made of great stakes of wood closely pressed
+    together, from 8 to 9 feet high; and each of the sides was 1000 yards
+    long. At the point of the triangle there was a little enclosure. The
+    Hurons were so expeditious in this work that in less than ten days
+    these long fences and the "pound" or enclosure at their convergence
+    were finished. They then started before daybreak and scattered
+    themselves in the woods at a considerable distance behind the
+    commencement of these fences, each man separated from his fellow by
+    about 80 yards. Every Huron carried two pieces of wood, one like a
+    drumstick and the other like a flat, resonant board. They struck the
+    flat piece of wood with the drumstick and it made a loud clanging
+    sound. The deer who swarmed in the forest, hearing this noise, fled
+    before the savages, who drove them steadily towards the converging
+    fences. As they closed up, the Hurons imitated very cleverly the
+    yapping of wolves. This frightened the deer still more, so that they
+    huddled at last into the final enclosure, where they were so tightly
+    packed that they were completely at the men's mercy. "I assure you,"
+    writes Champlain, "there is a singular pleasure in this chase, which
+    takes place every two days, and has been so successful that in
+    thirty-eight days one hundred and twenty deer were captured. These
+    were made good use of, the fat being kept for the winter to be used as
+    we do butter, and some of the flesh to be taken to their homes for
+    their festivities."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Champlain himself, in the winter of 1615, pursuing one day a
+    remarkable bird "which was the size of a hen, had a beak like a parrot
+    and was entirely yellow, except for a red head and blue wings, and
+    which had the flight of the partridge"&mdash;a bird I cannot
+    identify&mdash;lost his way in the woods. For two days he wandered in the
+    wilderness, sustaining himself by shooting birds and roasting them.
+    But at last he found his way back to a river which he recognized, and
+    reached the camp of the Hurons, who were extremely delighted at his
+    return. Had they not found him, or had he not come back of himself,
+    they told him that they could never again have visited the French for
+    fear of being held responsible for his death.
+</p>
+<p>
+    By the month of December of this year (1615) the rivers, lakes, and
+    ponds were all frozen. Hitherto, Champlain had had to walk when he
+    could not travel in a canoe, and carry a load of twenty pounds, while
+    the Indians carried a hundred pounds each. But now the water was
+    frozen the Hurons set to work and made their sledges. These were
+    constructed of two pieces of board, manufactured from the trunks of
+    trees by the patient use of a stone axe and by the application of
+    fire. These boards were about 6 inches wide, and 6 or 7 feet long,
+    curved upwards at the forward end and bound together by cross pieces.
+    The sides were bordered with strips of wood, which served as brackets
+    to which was fastened the strap that bound the baggage upon the
+    sledge. The load was dragged by a rope or strap of leather passing
+    round the breast of the Indian, and attached to the end of the sledge.
+    The sledge was so narrow that it could be drawn easily without
+    impediment wherever an Indian could thread his way over the snow
+    through the pathless forests.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The rest of the winter and early spring Champlain spent alone, or in
+    company with Father Joseph Le Caron (one of the Recollet
+    missionaries), visiting the Algonkin and Huron tribes in the region
+    east of Lake Huron. He has left this description of the modern country
+    of Simcoe, the home, three hundred years ago, of the long-vanished
+    Hurons<a name="4-30"></a><a href="#note-4-30"><small>[30]</small></a>; and gives us the following particulars of their home
+    life. The Huron country was a pleasant land, most of it cleared of
+    forest. It contained eighteen villages, six of which were enclosed and
+    fortified by palisades of wood in triple rows, bound together, on the
+    top of which were galleries provided with stores of stones, and
+    birch-bark buckets of water; the stones to throw at an enemy, and the
+    water to extinguish any fire which might be put to the palisades.
+    These eighteen villages contained about two thousand warriors, and
+    about thirty thousand people in all. The houses were in the shape of
+    tunnels, and were thatched with the bark of trees. Each lodge or house
+    would be about 120 feet long, more or less, and 36 feet wide, with a
+    10-foot passage-way through the middle from one end to the other. On
+    either side of the tunnel were placed benches 4 feet high, on which
+    the people slept in summer in order to avoid the annoyance of the
+    fleas which swarmed in these habitations. In winter time they slept on
+    the ground on mats near the fire. In the summer the cabins were filled
+    with stocks of wood to dry and be ready for burning in winter. At the
+    end of each of these long houses was a space in which the Indian corn
+    was preserved in great casks made of the bark of trees. Inside the
+    long houses pieces of wood were suspended from the roof, on to which
+    were fastened the clothes, provisions, and other things of the
+    inmates, to keep them from the attacks of the mice which swarmed in
+    these villages. Each hut might be inhabited by twenty-four families,
+    who would maintain twelve fires. The smoke, having no proper means of
+    egress except at either end of the long dwelling, and through the
+    chinks of the roof, so injured their eyes during the winter season
+    that many people lost their sight as they grew old.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Their life", writes Champlain, "is a miserable one in comparison
+    with our own, but they are happy amongst themselves, not having
+    experienced anything better, nor imagining that anything more
+    excellent could be found."
+</p>
+<p>
+    These Amerindians ordinarily ate two meals a day, and although
+    Champlain and his men fasted all through Lent, "in order to influence
+    them by our example", that was one of the practices they did <i>not</i>
+    copy from the French.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Hurons of this period painted their faces black and red, mixing
+    the colours with oil made from sunflower seed, or with bears' fat. The
+    hair was carefully combed and oiled, and sometimes dyed a reddish
+    colour; it might be worn long or short, or only on one side of the
+    head. The women usually dressed theirs in one long plait. Sometimes it
+    was done up into a knot at the back of the head, bound with eelskin.
+    The men were usually dressed in deerskin breeches, with gaiters of
+    soft leather. The shoes ("Moccasins") were made of the skin of deer,
+    bears, or beavers. In addition to this the men in cold weather wore a
+    great cloak. The edges of these cloaks would often be decorated with
+    bands of brown and red colour alternating with strips of a
+    whitish-blue, and ornamented with bands of porcupine quills. These,
+    which were originally white or grey in colour, had been previously
+    dyed a fine scarlet with colouring matter from the root of the
+    bed-straw (<i>Galium tinctorum</i>). The women were loaded with necklaces
+    of violet or white shell beads, bracelets, ear-rings, and great
+    strings of beads falling below the waist. Sometimes they would have
+    plates of leather studded with shell beads and hanging over the back.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0004"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc04.jpg" width="270" height="425"
+alt="Samuel de Champlain; Alexander Henry the Elder">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN and ALEXANDER HENRY THE ELDER</h5>
+<p>
+    In 1616 Champlain returned to France, but visited Quebec in 1617 and
+    1618. During the years spent at Quebec, which followed his
+    explorations of 1616, he was greatly impeded in his work of
+    consolidating Canada as a French colony by the religious strife
+    between the Catholics and Huguenots, and the narrow-minded greed of
+    the Chartered company of fur-trading merchants for whom he worked. But
+    in 1620 he came back to Canada as Lieutenant-Governor (bringing his
+    wife with him), and after attending to the settlement of a violent
+    commercial dispute between fur-trading companies he tried to compose
+    the quarrel between the Iroquois and the Algonkins, and brought about
+    a truce which lasted till 1627.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In 1628 came the first English attack on Canada. A French fleet was
+    defeated and captured in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and in the
+    following year Champlain, having been obliged to surrender Quebec (he
+    had only sixteen soldiers as a garrison, owing to lack of food),
+    voyaged to England more or less as a prisoner of state in the summer
+    of 1629. He found, on arriving there, that the cession of Quebec was
+    null and void, peace having been concluded between Britain and France
+    two months before the cession. Charles I remained true to his compact
+    with Louis XIII, and Quebec and Nova Scotia were restored to French
+    keeping. In 1633 Champlain returned to Canada as Governor, bringing
+    with him a considerable number of French colonists. <i>It is from 1633
+    that the real French colonization of Canada begins</i>: hitherto there
+    had been only one family of settlers in the fixed sense of the word;
+    the other Frenchmen were fur traders, soldiers, and missionaries. But
+    Champlain only lived two years after his triumphant return, and died
+    at Quebec on Christmas Day, 1635.
+</p>
+<p>
+    His character has been so well summed up by Dr. S.E. Dawson, in his
+    admirable book on the <i>Story of the St. Lawrence Basin</i>, that I cannot
+    do better than quote his words:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Champlain was as much at home in the brilliant court of France as in
+    a wigwam on a Canadian lake, as patient and politic with a wild band
+    of savages on Lake Huron as with a crowd of grasping traders in St.
+    Malo or Dieppe. Always calm, always unselfish, always depending on
+    God, in whom he believed and trusted, and thinking of France, which he
+    loved, this single-hearted man resolutely followed the path of his
+    duty under all circumstances; never looking for ease or asking for
+    profit, loved by the wild people of the forest, respected by the
+    courtiers of the king, and trusted by the close-fisted merchants of
+    the maritime cities of France."
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="note-4-1"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-1"><u>1</u></a> Afterwards the Sieur de Champlain. The title of <i>Sieur</i>
+    (from the Latin <i>Senior</i>) is the origin of the English "sir", and is
+    about equivalent to an English baronetcy.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-2"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-2"><u>2</u></a> Correctly written this was François Gravé, Sieur du
+    Pont.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-3"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-3"><u>3</u></a> The full name was Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts.
+    Including de Champlain and de Poutrincourt, who will be described
+    later, we have here the four great heroes who founded French Canada.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-4"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-4"><u>4</u></a> The real name for this remarkable people, the Eskimo, is,
+    in Alaska and Arctic North America, <i>Innuit</i>, and in Labrador and
+    Greenland, <i>Karalit</i>. Eskimo (in French, <i>Esquimaux</i>) is said to be a
+    corruption of the Montagnais-Indian word, Eskimantsik, meaning "eaters
+    of raw flesh".
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-5"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-5"><u>5</u></a> The wild currants so often mentioned by the early
+    explorers of Canada are often referred to as red, green, and blue. The
+    blue currants are really the black currant, now so familiar to our
+    kitchen gardens (<i>Ribes nigrum</i>). This, together with the red currant
+    (<i>Ribes rubrum</i>), grows throughout North America, Siberia, and eastern
+    Europe. The unripe fruit may have been the green currants alluded to
+    by Champlain, or these may have been the white variety of our gardens.
+    The two species of wild strawberry which figure so frequently in the
+    stories of these early explorers are <i>Fragaria vesca</i> and <i>F.
+    virginiana</i>. From the last-named is derived the cultivated strawberry
+    of Europe. The wild strawberries of North America were larger than
+    those of Europe. Champlain does not himself allude to gooseberries
+    (unless they are his <i>groseilles vertes</i>), but later travellers do.
+    Three or more kinds of gooseberry grow wild in Canada, but they are
+    different from the European species. The blueberry so often Mentioned
+    by Champlain (bluëts or bluës) was <i>Vaccinium canadense</i>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-6"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-6"><u>6</u></a> Of the genera <i>Juglans</i> and <i>Carya</i>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-7"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-7"><u>7</u></a> The huge deer of the genus <i>Alces</i>. Elk is the old
+    Scandinavian name. <i>Moose</i>, derived from the Kri language, is the
+    Canadian term, "Elk" being misapplied to the wapiti (red) deer.
+    Champlain calls the elk <i>orignac</i>, its name in Algonkin.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-8"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-8"><u>8</u></a> Or lead mixed with silver. The local natives used this
+    ore, which was white when beaten, for their arrowheads.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-9"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-9"><u>9</u></a> The Gougou dwelt on the small island of Miscon, to the
+    east of the Bay of Chaleurs. It had the form of a woman but was about
+    a hundred feet high. Its habit was to catch and devour men and women,
+    whom it first placed in a pocket capacious enough to hold a small
+    ship. Its roarings and hissings could be heard at times coming from
+    the island of Miscon, where the Gougou lay concealed. Even a
+    Frenchman, the Sieur Prévert, had heard these noises. Probably this
+    islet had a whirlpool communicating with a cavern into which fishermen
+    were sucked by the current.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-10"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-10"><u>10</u></a> There are no real rabbits in America. This was probably
+    the Polar Hare (<i>Lepus timidus glacialis</i>), or the common small
+    varying hare (<i>L. americanus</i>).
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-11"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-11"><u>11</u></a> How awful was this "mal de terre" or scurvy amongst the
+    French settlers may be seen from this description of Champlain: "There
+    were produced in the mouths of those who had it great pieces of
+    superfluous and drivelling flesh, which got the upper hand to such an
+    extent that scarcely anything but liquid could be taken. Their teeth
+    became very loose and could be pulled out with the fingers without its
+    causing them pain.... Afterwards a violent pain seized their arms and
+    legs, which remained swollen and very hard, all spotted as if with
+    fleabites; and they could not walk on account of the contraction of
+    the muscles.... They suffered intolerable pains in the loins, stomach,
+    and bowels, and had a very bad cough and short breath.... Out of
+    seventy-nine who composed our party, thirty-five died and twenty were
+    on the point of death (when spring began in May)."<br><br>
+
+    Scurvy is said to be a disease of the blood caused by a damp, cold,
+    and impure atmosphere combined with absence of vegetable food and a
+    diet of salted or semi-putrid meat or fish, such as was so often the
+    winter food of Amerindians and of the early French pioneers in Canada.
+    We have already noted Cartier's discovery of the balsam remedy.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-12"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-12"><u>12</u></a> From Queen Anne.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-13"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-13"><u>13</u></a> The pigeons referred to by Champlain were probably the
+    Passenger pigeon (<i>Ectopistes</i>) which at one time was extraordinarily
+    abundant in parts of North America, though it has now been nearly
+    killed out by man. It would arrive in flocks of millions on its
+    migratory journeys in search of food.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-14"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-14"><u>14</u></a> It is interesting to learn from his accurate notes that
+    in Massachusetts (and from thence southwards) there were no more bark
+    canoes, but that the canoes were "dug-outs"&mdash;trunks of tall trees
+    burnt and chipped till they were hollowed into a narrow vessel of
+    considerable length.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-15"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-15"><u>15</u></a> This tuber, which is a well-known and very useful
+    vegetable in England, comes from the root of a species of sunflower
+    (<i>Helianthus tuberosus</i>). It has nothing to do with the real
+    artichoke, which is a huge and gorgeous thistle, and it has equally
+    nothing to do with Jerusalem. The English people have always taken a
+    special delight in mispronouncing and corrupting words in order to
+    produce as much confusion as possible in their names for things.
+    Jerusalem is a corruption of <i>Girasole</i>, which is the Italian name
+    given to this sunflower with the edible roots, because its flower is
+    supposed always to turn towards the sun. The Jerusalem artichoke was
+    originally a native of North America.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-16"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-16"><u>16</u></a> These walnut trees were afterwards known in modern
+    American speech as hickories, butter-nuts, and pig-nuts, all of which
+    are allied to, but distinct from, the European walnut.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-17"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-17"><u>17</u></a> <i>Limulus polyphemus</i>. This extraordinary crustacean is
+    one of the oldest of living animals in its history, as it is closely
+    related to the Xiphosura and even the Trilobites of the Primary Epoch,
+    which existed millions of years ago. In a rough way it is a kind of
+    connecting link between the Crustacea, or crabs and lobsters, and the
+    Scorpions and spiders.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-18"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-18"><u>18</u></a> Jean de Biencourt, the Sieur de Poutrincourt and Baron
+    de Saint-Just, were his full titles.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-19"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-19"><u>19</u></a> You will observe that neither the French nor the English
+    sovereigns of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries went to much
+    personal expense over the creation of colonies. They simply gave a
+    charter or a monopoly, which cost them nothing, but which made other
+    people pay.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-20"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-20"><u>20</u></a> <i>Branta canadensis</i>, a handsome black-and-brown goose
+    with white markings, which the French pioneers in Canada styled
+    "outarde" or "bustard", and whose eggs were considered very good
+    eating.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-21"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-21"><u>21</u></a> Huron was a French name given to the westernmost group
+    of the Iroquois family (see p. <a href="#p159">159</a>). The Huron group included the
+    Waiandots, the Eries or Erigas, the Arendáronons, and the Atiwándoronk
+    or "neutral" nation. The French sometimes called all these Huron
+    tribes "the good Iroquois". Iroquois was probably pronounced "Irokwá",
+    and seems to have been derived from a word like Irokosia, the name of
+    the Adirondack mountain country.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-22"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-22"><u>22</u></a> The confederacy was founded about 1450 by the great
+    Hiawatha (of Longfellow's Poem), himself an Onondaga from south of
+    Lake Ontario, but backed by the Mohawks only, in the beginning of his
+    work.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-23"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-23"><u>23</u></a> Unconsciously, no doubt, he brought away with him to the
+    King of France one of the most remarkable freshwater fish living on
+    the North-American continent, for the gar-pike belongs, together with
+    the sturgeon and its allies, to an ancient type of fish the
+    representatives of which are found in rock formations as ancient as
+    those of the Secondary and Early Tertiary periods. Champlain may be
+    said to have discovered this remarkable gar-pike (<i>Lepidosteus
+    osseus</i>), which is covered with bony scales "so strong that a poniard
+    could not pierce them". The colour he describes as silver-grey. The
+    head has a snout two feet and a half long, and the jaws possess double
+    rows of sharp and dangerous teeth. These teeth were used by the
+    natives as lancets with which to bleed themselves when they suffered
+    from inflammation or headache. Champlain declares that the gar-pike
+    often captures and eats water birds. It would swim in and among rushes
+    or reeds and then raise its snout out of the water and keep perfectly
+    still. Birds would mistake this snout for the stump of a tree and
+    would attempt to alight on it; whereupon the fish would seize them by
+    the legs and pull them down under the water.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-24"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-24"><u>24</u></a> Spelt by Champlain with a "ch" instead of <i>sh</i>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-25"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-25"><u>25</u></a> Then called the Rivière des Iroquois.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-26"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-26"><u>26</u></a> This was the first intimation probably that any European
+    sent home for publication regarding the existence of the bison in
+    North America, though the Spanish explorers nearly a hundred years
+    before Champlain must have met with it in travelling through
+    Louisiana, Texas, and northern Mexico. The bison is not known ever to
+    have existed near Hudson Bay, or in Canada proper (basin of the St.
+    Lawrence). South of Canada it penetrated to Pennsylvania and the
+    Susquehanna River, but not farther eastward.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-27"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-27"><u>27</u></a> The Amerindians of the Lake regions made much use of the
+    sunflowers of the region (<i>Helianthus multiflorus</i>). Besides this
+    species of sunflower already mentioned, which furnishes tubers from
+    its roots (the "Jerusalem" artichoke) others were valued for their
+    seeds, and some or all of these are probably the originals of the
+    cultivated sunflower in European gardens. The largest of these was
+    called <i>Soleille</i> by the French Canadians. It grew in the cultivated
+    fields of the Amerindians to seven or eight feet in height, with an
+    enormous flower. The seeds were carefully collected and boiled. Their
+    oil was collected then from the water and was used to grease the hair.
+    This same Huron country (the Simcoe country of modern times) was
+    remarkable for its wild fruits. There was the Canada plum (<i>Prunus
+    americana</i>), the wild black cherry (<i>Prunus serotina</i>), the red
+    cherries (<i>P. pennsylvanica</i>), the choke cherry (<i>P. virginiana</i>),
+    wild apples (<i>Pyrus coronaria</i>), wild pears (a small berry-like pear
+    called "poire" by the French: <i>Pyrus canadensis</i>), and the may-apple
+    (<i>Podophyllum peltatum</i>). Champlain describes this may-apple as of the
+    form and colour of a small lemon with a similar taste, but having an
+    interior which is very good and almost like that of figs. The
+    may-apples grow on a plant which is two and a half feet high, with not
+    more than three or four leaves like those of the fig tree, and only
+    two fruits on each plant.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-28"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-28"><u>28</u></a> The cranes of Canada&mdash;so often alluded to by the French
+    explorers as "Grues"&mdash;are of two species, <i>Grus canadensis</i>, with its
+    plumage of a purple-grey, and <i>Grus americanus</i>, which is pure white
+    (see p. <a href="#p139">139</a>).
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-29"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-29"><u>29</u></a> Lakes Ontario and Huron were probably first actually
+    reached by Father Le Caron, a Recollett missionary who came out with
+    Champlain in 1615 (see p. <a href="#p90">90</a>), and by Étienne Brulé, Champlain's
+    interpreter.
+</p>
+<a name="note-4-30"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#4-30"><u>30</u></a> They were almost completely exterminated by the Iroquois
+    confederacy between thirty and forty years after Champlain's visit.
+</p>
+<p class="return">[<a href="#contents">TABLE OF CONTENTS</a>]
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="2HCH0005"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+<a name="p88"></a>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER V
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    After Champlain: from Montreal to the Mississippi
+</h3>
+<p>
+    A very remarkable series of further explorations were carried out as
+    the indirect result of Champlain's work. In 1610 he had allowed a
+    French boy of about eighteen years of age, named ÉTIENNE BRULÉ, to
+    volunteer to go away with the Algonkins, in order to learn their
+    language. Brulé was taken in hand by Iroquet,<a name="5-1"></a><a href="#note-5-1"><small>[1]</small></a> a chief of the
+    "Little Algonkins", whose people were then occupying the lands on
+    either side of the Ottawa River, including the site of the now great
+    city of Ottawa. After four years of roaming with the Indians, Brulé
+    was dispatched by Champlain with an escort of twelve Algonkins to the
+    headwaters of the Suskuehanna, far to the south of Lake Ontario, in
+    order to warn the Andastes<a name="5-2"></a><a href="#note-5-2"><small>[2]</small></a> tribe of military operations to be
+    undertaken by the allied French, Hurons, and Algonkins against the
+    Iroquois. This enabled Brulé to explore Lake Ontario and to descend
+    the River Suskuehanna as far south as Chesapeake Bay, a truly
+    extraordinary journey at the period. This region of northern Virginia
+    had just been surveyed by the English, and was soon to be the site of
+    the first English colony in North America.<a name="5-3"></a><a href="#note-5-3"><small>[3]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    In attempting to return to the valley of the St. Lawrence in 1616,
+    with his Andaste guides, Brulé lost his way, and to avoid starvation
+    surrendered himself to the Seneka Indians (the westernmost clan of the
+    Iroquois) against whom the recent warlike operations of the French
+    were being directed. Discovering his nationality, the Senekas decided
+    to torture him before burning him to death at the stake. As they tore
+    off his clothes they found that he was wearing an <i>Agnus Dei</i> medal
+    next his skin. Brulé told them to be careful, as it was a medicine of
+    great power which would certainly kill them. By a coincidence, at that
+    very moment a terrific thunderstorm burst from a sky which until
+    recently had been all sunshine. The Senekas were so scared by the
+    thunder and lightning that they believed Brulé to be a person of
+    supernatural powers. They therefore released him, strove to heal such
+    slight wounds as he had incurred, and carried him off to their
+    principal town, where he became a great favourite. After a while they
+    gave him guides to take him north into the country of the Hurons.
+</p>
+<p>
+    His further adventures led him to discover Lake Superior and the way
+    thither through the Sault Ste. Marie, and to reach a place probably
+    not far from the south coast of Hudson Bay, in which there was a
+    copper mine. Then he explored the Montagnais country north of Quebec,
+    and even at one time (in 1629) entered the service of the English, who
+    had captured Quebec and Tadoussac from the French. When the English
+    left this region Brulé travelled again to the west and joined the
+    Hurons once more.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <a name="p90"></a>His licentious conduct amongst his Indian friends seems to have
+    roused them to such a pitch of anger that in 1632 they murdered him,
+    then boiled and ate his body. But immediately afterwards misfortune
+    seemed to fall on the place. The Hurons were terrified at what they
+    had done, and thought they heard or saw in the sky the spirits of the
+    white relations of Brulé&mdash;some said the sister, some the
+    uncle&mdash;threatening their town (Toanche), which they soon afterwards
+    burnt and deserted.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In 1615 Champlain, returning from France, had brought out with him
+    friars of the Récollet order.<a name="5-4"></a><a href="#note-5-4"><small>[4]</small></a> These were the pioneer missionaries
+    of Canada, prominent amongst whom was FATHER LE CARON, and these
+    Récollets traversed the countries in the basin of the St. Lawrence
+    between Lake Huron and Cape Breton Island, preaching Christianity to
+    the Amerindians as well as ministering to the French colonists and fur
+    traders. One of these Récollet missionaries died of cold and hunger in
+    attempting to cross New Brunswick from the St. Lawrence to the Bay of
+    Fundy, and another&mdash;Nicholas Viel&mdash;was the first martyr in Canada in
+    the spread of Christianity, for when travelling down the Ottawa River
+    to Montreal he was thrown by the pagan Hurons (together with one of
+    his converts) into the waters of a rapid since christened Sault le
+    Récollet. Another Récollet, Father d'Aillon, prompted by Brulé,
+    explored the richly fertile, beautiful country known then as the
+    territory of the Neutral nation, that group of Huron-Iroquois
+    Amerindians who strove to keep aloof from the fierce struggles between
+    the Algonkins and Hurons on the one hand and the eastern Iroquois
+    clans on the other. This region, which lies between the Lakes
+    Ontario, Erie, and Huron, is the most attractive portion of western
+    Canada. Lying in the southernmost parts of the Dominion, and nearly
+    surrounded by sheets of open water, it has a far milder climate than
+    the rest of eastern Canada.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In 1626 the Jesuit order supplanted the Récollets, and commenced a
+    campaign both of Christian propaganda and of geographical exploration
+    which has scarcely finished in the Canada of to-day.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In 1627 the war between the Iroquois Confederacy and the Huron and
+    Algonkin tribes recommenced, and this, together with the British
+    capture of Quebec and other portions of Canada, put a stop for several
+    years to the work of exploration. This was not resumed on an advanced
+    scale till 1634, when Champlain, unable himself, from failing health,
+    to carry out his original commission of seeking a direct passage to
+    China and India across the North-American continent, dispatched a
+    Norman Frenchman named JEAN NICOLLET to find a way to the Western Sea.
+    Nicollet, as a very young man, had lived for years amongst the
+    Amerindian tribes, especially amongst the Nipissings near the lake of
+    that name. Being charged, amongst other things, with the task of
+    making peace between the Hurons and the tribes dwelling to the west of
+    the great lakes, Nicollet discovered Lake Michigan. He was so
+    convinced of the possibility of arriving at the Pacific Ocean, and
+    thence making his way to China, that in the luggage which he carried
+    in his birch-bark canoe was a dress of ceremony made of Chinese damask
+    silk embroidered richly with birds and flowers. He was on his way to
+    discover the Winnebago Indians, or "Men of the Sea", of whom Champlain
+    had heard from the Hurons, with whom they were at war. But the great
+    water from which they derived their name was not in this instance a
+    sea, but the Mississippi River. The Winnebago Indians were totally
+    distinct from the Algonkins or the Iroquois, and belonged to the
+    Dakota stock, from which the great Siou confederation<a name="5-5"></a><a href="#note-5-5"><small>[5]</small></a> was also
+    derived.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nicollet advanced to meet the Winnebagos clad in his Chinese robe and
+    with a pistol in each hand. As he drew near he discharged his pistols,
+    and the women and children fled in terror, for all believed him to be
+    a supernatural being, a spirit wielding thunder and lightning.
+    However, when they recovered from their terror the Winnebagos gave him
+    a hearty welcome, and got up such lavish feasts in his honour, that
+    one chief alone cooked 120 beavers at a single banquet.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nicollet certainly reached the water-parting between the systems
+    of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, and under that
+    name&mdash;Misi-sipi&mdash;"great water"&mdash;he heard through the Algonkin Indians
+    of a mighty river lying three days' journey westward from his last
+    camp. Winnebago (from which root is also derived the names of the
+    Lakes Winnipeg and Winnipegosis much farther to the north-west) meant
+    "salt" or "foul" water. Both terms might therefore be applied to the
+    sea, and also to the lakes and rivers which, in the minds of the
+    Amerindians, were equally vast in length or breadth.
+</p>
+<p>
+    From 1648 to 1653 the whole of the Canada known to the French settlers
+    and explorers was convulsed by the devastating warfare carried on by
+    the Iroquois, who during that period destroyed the greater part of the
+    Algonkin and Huron clans. The neutral nation of Lake Erie (the Erigas)
+    was scattered, and between the shores of Lakes Michigan and Huron and
+    Montreal the country was practically depopulated, except for the
+    handfuls of French settlers and traders who trembled behind their
+    fortifications. Then, to the relief and astonishment of the French,
+    one of the Iroquois clans&mdash;the Onondaga&mdash;proposed terms of peace,
+    probably because they had no more enemies to fight of their own
+    colour, and wished to trade with the French.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The fur trade of the Quebec province had attracted an increasing
+    number of French people (men bringing their wives) to such settlements
+    as Tadoussac and Three Rivers. Amongst these were the parents of
+    PIERRE ESPRIT RADISSON. This young man went hunting near Three Rivers
+    station and was captured in the woods by Mohawks (Iroquois) who
+    carried him off to one of their towns and intended to burn him alive.
+    Having bound him at a stake, they proceeded to tear out some of his
+    finger nails and shoot arrows at the less vital parts of his body. But
+    a Mohawk woman was looking on and was filled with pity at the
+    sufferings of this handsome boy. She announced her intention of
+    adopting him as a member of her family, and by sheer force of will she
+    compelled the men to release him. After staying for some time amongst
+    the Mohawks he escaped, but was again captured just as he was nearing
+    Three Rivers. Once more he was spared from torture at the intercession
+    of his adopted relations. He then made an even bolder bid for freedom,
+    and fled to the south, up the valley of the Richelieu and the Hudson,
+    and thus reached the most advanced inland post of Dutch America&mdash;then
+    called Orange, now Albany&mdash;on the Hudson River. From this point he was
+    conveyed to Holland, and from Holland he returned to Canada.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Soon after his return he joined two Jesuit fathers who were to visit a
+    mission station of the Jesuits amongst the Onondagas (Iroquois) on a
+    lakelet about thirty miles south-east of the present city of
+    Rochester. The Iroquois (whose language Radisson had learnt to speak)
+    received them with apparent friendliness, and there they passed the
+    winter. But in the spring Radisson found out that the Onondaga
+    Iroquois were intending to massacre the whole of the mission.
+    Instructed by him, the Jesuits pretended to have no suspicions of the
+    coming attack, but all the while they were secretly building canoes at
+    their fort. As soon as they were ready for flight, and the sun of
+    April had completely melted the ice in the River Oswego, the French
+    missionaries invited the Onondagas to a great feast, no doubt making
+    out that it was part of the Easter festivities sanctioned by the
+    Church. They pointed out to their guests that from religious motives
+    as well as those of politeness it was essential that the <i>whole</i> of
+    the food provided should be eaten, "nothing was to be left on the
+    plate". They set before their savage guests an enormous banquet of
+    maize puddings, roast pigs, roast ducks, game birds, and fish of many
+    kinds, even terrapins, or freshwater turtles. The Iroquois ate and ate
+    until even <i>their</i> appetites were satisfied. Then they began to cry
+    off; but the missionaries politely insisted, and even told them that
+    in failing to eat they were neglecting their religious duties. To help
+    them in this respect they played hymn and psalm tunes on musical
+    instruments. At last the Onondagas were gorged to repletion, and sank
+    into a stertorous slumber at sunset. Whilst they slept, the Jesuits,
+    their converts, and Radisson got into the already prepared canoes and
+    paddled quickly down the Oswego River far beyond pursuit.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Radisson next joined his brother-in-law, Medard Chouart, and after
+    narrowly escaping massacre by the Iroquois (once more on the warpath
+    along the Ottawa River) reached the northern part of Lake Huron, and
+    Green Bay on the north-west of Lake Michigan. From Green Bay they
+    travelled up the Fox River and across a portage to the Wisconsin,
+    which flows into the Mississippi. Down this river they sped, meeting
+    people of the great Siou confederation and Kri (Cree) Indians, these
+    last an Algonkin nation roaming in the summertime as far north as
+    Hudson's Bay, until at length they reached the actual waters of the
+    Mississippi, first of all white men. Returning then to Lake Michigan,
+    the shores of which seemed to them an earthly paradise with a climate
+    finer than Italy, they journeyed northwards into Lake Huron, and
+    thence north-westwards through the narrow passages of St. Mary's River
+    into Lake Superior. The southern coast of Lake Superior was followed
+    to its westernmost point, where they made a camp, and from which they
+    explored during the winter (in snowshoes) the Wisconsin country and
+    collected information regarding the Mississippi and its great western
+    affluent the Missouri. The Mississippi, they declared, led to Mexico,
+    while the other great forked river in the far west was a pathway,
+    perhaps, to the Southern Sea (Pacific).
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Jesuits, on the other hand, were convinced that Hudson's Bay (or
+    the "Bay of the North") was at no great distance from Lake Superior
+    (which was true) and that it must communicate to the north-west with
+    the Pacific Ocean or the sea that led to China.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In 1661, without the leave of the French Governor of Canada, who
+    wanted them to take two servants of his own with them and to give him
+    half the profits of the venture, Chouart and Radisson hurried away to
+    the west, picked up large bodies of natives who were returning to the
+    regions north of Lake Huron, with them fought their way through the
+    ambushed Iroquois, and once more navigated the waters of Lake
+    Superior. Once again they started for the Mississippi basin and
+    explored the country of Minnesota, coming thus into contact with
+    native tribes which lived on the flesh of the bison. In Minnesota they
+    met a second time the Kri or Kinistino Indians of north-central
+    Canada, and joined one of their camps in the spring of 1662, somewhere
+    to the west of Lake Superior. With Kri guides they started away to the
+    north and north-east, no doubt by way of the Lake of the Woods, the
+    English River, Lake St. Joseph, and the Albany River, thus reaching
+    the salt sea at James Bay, the southernmost extension of Hudson Bay.
+    Or they may have proceeded by an even shorter route, though with
+    longer portages for canoes, through Lake Nipigon to the Albany.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The summer of 1662 they passed on the islands and shores of James Bay
+    hunting "buffalo"<a name="5-6"></a><a href="#note-5-6"><small>[6]</small></a> with the Indians. Then, in 1663, travelling back
+    along the same route they had followed in the previous year, they
+    regained Lake Superior, and so passed by the north of Lake Huron to
+    the Ottawa River and the St. Lawrence. But on their return to Three
+    Rivers they were arrested by the French Governor, D'Avaugour, who
+    condemned them to imprisonment and severe fines. The courts of France
+    gave them no redress, and in their furious anger Chouart and Radisson
+    went over to the English, offered their services to England, and so
+    brought about the creation of the Hudson Bay Company.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Radisson's journey from England to Hudson Bay has been treated of in
+    an earlier chapter: it is preferable to follow out to its finish the
+    great, western impulse of the French, which led them to neglect for a
+    time the doings of the British on the east coast of North America and
+    in the sub-Arctic regions of Hudson Bay.
+</p>
+<p>
+    From 1660 onwards the Jesuit missionaries again took up vigorously
+    that work of Christianizing the Amerindians which had been so
+    completely checked by the frightful ravages of the Iroquois between
+    1648 and 1654.
+</p>
+<p>
+    By 1669 the Jesuits had three permanent stations in western Canada.
+    The first was the mission station at Sault Ste. Marie, the second was
+    the station of Ste. Esprit, on Lake Superior (not far from the modern
+    town of Ashland), and the third was the station of St. François Xavier
+    at the mouth of the Fox River, on Green Bay, Lake Michigan.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As regards some of the sufferings which these missionaries had to go
+    through when travelling across Canada in the winter, I quote the
+    following from <i>The Relations of the Jesuits</i> (p. 35):&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I [Father de Crépieul] set out on the 16th of January, 1674, from the
+    vicinity of Lake St. John, near the Saguenay River, with an Algonkin
+    captain and two Frenchmen. We started after Mass, and walked five long
+    leagues on snowshoes with much trouble, because the snow was soft and
+    made our snowshoes very heavy. At the end of five leagues, we found
+    ourselves on a lake four or five leagues long all frozen over, on
+    which the wind caused great quantities of snow to drift, obscuring the
+    air and preventing us from seeing where we are going. After walking
+    another league and a half with great difficulty our strength began to
+    fail. The wind, cold, and snow were so intolerable that they compelled
+    us to retrace our steps a little, to cut some branches of fir which
+    might in default of bark serve to build a cabin. After this we tried
+    to light a fire, but were unable to do so. We were thus reduced to a
+    most pitiful condition. The cold was beginning to seize us to an
+    extraordinary degree, the darkness was great, and the wind blew
+    fearfully. In order to keep ourselves from dying with cold, we resumed
+    our march on the lake in spite of our fatigue, without knowing whither
+    we were going, and all were greatly impeded with the wind and snow.
+    After walking a league and a half we had to succumb in spite of
+    ourselves and stop where we were. The danger we ran of dying from cold
+    caused me to remember the charitable Father de Noue, who in a similar
+    occasion was found dead in the snow, kneeling and with clasped
+    hands.... We therefore remained awake during the rest of the night....
+    On the following morning two Frenchmen arrived from Father Albanel's
+    cabin very opportunely, and kindled a great fire on the snow.... After
+    this we resumed our journey on the same lake, and at last reached the
+    spot where Father Albanel was.... A serious injury, caused by the fall
+    of a heavy load upon his loins, prevented him from moving, and still
+    more, from performing a missionary's duties."
+</p>
+<p>
+    One of the Jesuit fathers, Allouez, in founding the station of St.
+    François Xavier on Green Bay, Lake Michigan, had gained further
+    information about the wonderful Mississippi, which he called "Messi
+    Sipi". He also thoroughly explored Lake Nipigon, to the north of Lake
+    Superior. In 1669 two missionaries, named Dollier de Casson and
+    Galinée, started from the seminary of St. Sulpice (Montreal) to reach
+    the great tribes of the far west, supposed to be eager to learn of
+    Christianity and known to be much more tractable than the Iroquois.
+    These two missionaries, in their expedition of seven canoes and
+    twenty-one Amerindians, were accompanied by a remarkable young man
+    commonly known as La Salle, but whose real name was Robert
+    Cavalier.<a name="5-7"></a><a href="#note-5-7"><small>[7]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    Before leaving Lake Ontario, they actually passed the mouth of the
+    Niagara River and heard the falls, but had not sufficient curiosity to
+    leave their canoes and walk a short distance to see them. The
+    wonderful cascades of Niagara, where the St. Lawrence leaving Lake
+    Erie plunges 328 feet down into Lake Ontario (which is not much above
+    sea level), remained nearly undiscovered and undescribed until the
+    year 1678, when they were visited by Father Hennepin. Near the western
+    end of Lake Ontario the two Sulpician missionaries met another
+    Frenchman, Jolliet, who had come down to Lake Superior by way of the
+    Detroit passage, which is really the portion of the St. Lawrence
+    connecting Lake Huron with Lake Erie. Jolliet told the missionary de
+    Casson of a great tribe in the far west, the Pottawatomies, who had
+    asked for missionaries, and who were of Algonkin stock. La Salle, on
+    the other hand, was determined to make for the rumoured Ohio River,
+    which lay somewhere to the south-west of Lake Erie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The two Sulpicians wintered in "the earthly paradise" to the north of
+    Lake Erie, passing a delightful six months there in the amazing
+    abundance of game and fish. They then met with various disasters to
+    their canoes, and consequently gave up their western journey, passing
+    northwards through Detroit and Lake St. Clair into Lake Huron, and
+    thence to the Jesuit mission station of the Sault Ste. Marie. Here
+    they were received rather coldly, as being rivals in the mission field
+    and in exploration. They in their turn accused the Jesuits of thinking
+    mainly, if not entirely, of the foundation of French colonies, and
+    very little of evangelizing the natives.
+</p>
+<p>
+    JOLLIET, a Canadian by birth,<a name="5-8"></a><a href="#note-5-8"><small>[8]</small></a> was dispatched by the Viceroy of
+    Canada in 1672 to explore the far west. Two years&mdash;1670&mdash;previously
+    the French Government had for the first time adopted a really definite
+    policy about Canada, and had taken formal possession of the Lake
+    region and of all the territories lying between the lakes and the
+    Mississippi. A great assembly of Indians was held at Sault Ste. Marie,
+    near the east end of Lake Superior; and here a representative of the
+    French Government, accompanied by numerous missionaries and by
+    Jolliet, read a proclamation of the sovereignty of King Louis XIV of
+    France and Navarre. Below a tall cross was erected a great shield
+    bearing the arms of France. Father Allouez addressed the Indians in
+    the Algonkin language, and told them of the all-powerful Louis XIV,
+    who "had ten thousand commanders and captains, each as great as the
+    Governor of Quebec". He reminded them how the troops of this king had
+    beaten the unconquerable Iroquois, of how he possessed innumerable
+    soldiers and uncountable ships; that at times the ground of France
+    shook with the discharge of cannon, while the blaze of musketry was
+    like the lightning. He pictured the king covered with the blood of his
+    enemies and riding in the middle of his cavalry, and ordering so many
+    of his enemies to be slain that no account could be kept of the number
+    of their scalps, whilst their blood flowed in rivers. The Amerindians
+    being what they were, addicted to warfare, and only recognizing the
+    right of the strongest, it may be that this gospel of force was not
+    quite so shocking and unchristian as it reads to us nearly 250 years
+    afterwards, though it jars very much as coming from the lips of a
+    missionary of Christianity. However, it must be remembered that but
+    for the valour of the French soldiers in the awful period between 1648
+    and 1666 (when the Mohawks received a thorough and well-deserved
+    thrashing) many of the tribes addressed on this occasion by the Jesuit
+    missionaries would have been completely exterminated; the Iroquois
+    would have depopulated much of north-eastern America. It is obvious,
+    indeed, from our study of the conditions of life amongst the
+    Amerindians, that one reason why the New World was so poorly populated
+    at the time of its discovery by Europeans was the wars of
+    extermination between tribe and tribe; for America between the Arctic
+    regions and Tierra del Fuego is marvellously well supplied with
+    natural food products&mdash;game, fish, fruits, nuts, roots, and
+    grain&mdash;much more so than any area of similar extent in the Old World.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jolliet was to be accompanied on his westward expedition by Father
+    JACQUES MARQUETTE,<a name="5-9"></a><a href="#note-5-9"><small>[9]</small></a> a Jesuit missionary who had become well
+    acquainted with the tribes visiting Lake Superior, and had learnt the
+    Siou dialect of the Illinois people. On May 17, 1673, Jolliet and
+    Marquette started from the Straits of Michili-Makinak with only two
+    bark canoes and five Amerindians. They coasted along the north coast
+    of Lake Michigan, passed into Green Bay, and thence up the River Fox.
+    They were assisted by the Maskutins, or Fire Indians, and were given
+    Miami guides. Thence the natives assisted them to transport their
+    canoes and baggage over the very short distance that separates the
+    upper waters of the Fox River from the Wisconsin River, and down the
+    Wisconsin they glided till they reached the great Mississippi. The
+    Governor of Quebec, who had sent Jolliet on this mission, believed
+    that the Great River of the west would lead them to the Gulf of
+    California, which was then called the Vermilion Sea by the Spaniards,
+    because it resembled in shape and colour the Red Sea.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "On the 17th of June (1673)", writes Father Marquette, "we safely
+    entered the Mississippi with a joy that I cannot express. Its current
+    is slow and gentle, the width very unequal. On its banks there are
+    hardly any woods or mountains. The islands are most beautiful, and
+    they are covered with fine trees. We saw deer and cattle (bison),
+    geese, and swans. From time to time we came upon monstrous fish, one
+    of which struck our canoe with such violence that I thought it was a
+    great tree. On another occasion we saw on the water a monster with the
+    head of a tiger, a sharp nose like that of a wild cat, with whiskers
+    and straight erect ears. The head was grey, and the neck quite black
+    (possibly a lynx).... We found that turkeys had taken the place of
+    game, and the <i>pisikiou</i>, or wild cattle, that of the other animals."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Father Marquette, of course, by his wild cattle means the bison, of
+    which he proceeds to give an excellent description. He adds: "They are
+    very fierce, and not a year passes without their killing some savages.
+    When attacked, they catch a man on their horns if they can, toss him
+    in the air, throw him on the ground, then trample him under foot and
+    kill him. If a person fires at them from a distance with either a bow
+    or a gun, he must immediately after the shot throw himself down and
+    hide in the grass, for if they perceive him who has fired they run at
+    him and attack him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Soon after entering the Mississippi, Marquette noticed some rocks
+    which by their height and length inspired awe. "We saw upon one of
+    them two painted monsters which at first made us afraid, and upon
+    which the boldest savages dare not long rest their eyes. They are as
+    large as a calf; they have horns on their heads like those of deer, a
+    horrible look, red eyes, a beard like a tiger's, a face somewhat like
+    a man's, a body covered with scales, and so long a tail that it winds
+    all round the body and ends like that of a fish. Green, red, and black
+    are the three colours composing the picture. Moreover, these two
+    monsters are so well painted that we cannot believe that any savage is
+    their author, for good painters in France would find it difficult to
+    paint so well, and, besides, they are so high up on the rock that it
+    is difficult to reach that place conveniently to paint them."<a name="5-10"></a><a href="#note-5-10"><small>[10]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    As the Jolliet expedition paddled down the Mississippi&mdash;ever so easily
+    and swiftly&mdash;a marvellous panorama unfolded itself before the
+    Frenchmen's fascinated gaze. Immense herds of bison occasionally
+    appeared on the river banks, flocks of turkeys flew up from the glades
+    and roosted in the trees and on the river bank. Everywhere the natives
+    seemed friendly, and Father Marquette was usually able to communicate
+    with them through his knowledge of the Illinois Algonkin dialect,
+    which the Siou understood.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0005"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc05.jpg" width="450" height="284"
+alt="Indians Hunting Bison">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>INDIANS HUNTING BISON</h5>
+<p>
+    On their first meeting with the Mississippi Indians, the French
+    explorers were not only offered the natives' pipes to smoke in token
+    of peace, but an old man amongst the latter uttered these words to
+    Jolliet: "How beautiful the sun is, O Frenchman, when thou comest to
+    visit us. Our village awaits thee, and thou shalt enter all our cabins
+    in peace."... "There was a crowd of people," writes Marquette; "they
+    devoured us with their eyes, but nevertheless preserved profound
+    silence. We could, however, hear these words addressed to us from time
+    to time in a low voice: 'How good it is, my brothers, that you should
+    visit us'.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "... The council was followed by a great feast, consisting of four
+    dishes, which had to be partaken of in accordance with all their
+    fashions. The first course was a great wooden platter full of
+    sagamité, that is to say, meal of Indian corn boiled in water, and
+    seasoned with fat. The Master of the Ceremonies filled a spoon with
+    sagamité three or four times, and put it to my mouth as if I were a
+    little child. He did the same to Monsieur Jollyet. As a second course
+    he caused a second platter to be brought, on which were three fish. He
+    took some pieces of them, removed the bones therefrom, and, after
+    blowing upon them to cool them, he put them in our mouths as one would
+    give food to a bird. For the third course, they brought a large dog
+    that had just been killed, but, when they learned that we did not eat
+    this meat, they removed it from before us. Finally, the fourth course
+    was a piece of wild ox, the fattest morsels of which were placed in
+    our mouths.... We thus pushed forward and no longer saw so many
+    prairies, because both shores of the river are bordered with lofty
+    trees. The cotton wood, elm and bass wood are admirable for their
+    height and thickness. There are great numbers of wild cattle whom we
+    hear bellowing. We killed a little parroquet, with a red and yellow
+    head and green body.... We have got down to near the 33° of
+    latitude.... We heard from afar savages who were inciting one another
+    to attack us by their continual yelling. They were armed with bows and
+    arrows, hatchets, clubs, and shields.... Part of them embarked in
+    great wooden canoes, some to ascend, others to descend the river in
+    order to surround us on all sides.... Some young men threw themselves
+    into the water and seized my canoe, but the current compelled them to
+    return to land. One of them hurled his club, which passed over without
+    striking us. In vain I showed the calumet (pipe of peace), and made
+    them signs that we were not coming to war against them. The alarm
+    continued; they were already preparing to pierce us with arrows from
+    all sides when God suddenly touched the hearts of the old men who were
+    standing at the water's edge, who checked the ardour of their young
+    men.... Whereon we landed, not without fear on our part. First we had
+    to speak by signs, because none of them understood the six languages
+    which I spoke. At last we found an old man who could speak a little
+    Illinois. We informed them that we were going to the sea.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The next day was spent in feasting on Indian corn and dogs' flesh.
+    The people here had an abundance of Indian corn, which they sowed at
+    all seasons. They cook it in great earthen jars which are very well
+    made, and also have plates of baked earth. The men go naked and wear
+    their hair short; they pierce their noses, from which, as well as from
+    their ears, hang beads.... Their cabins are made of bark, and are long
+    and wide. They sleep at the two ends, which are raised two feet above
+    the ground. They know nothing of the beaver, and their wealth consists
+    in the skins of wild cattle. They never see snow in their country, and
+    recognize the winter only through the rains."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The expedition had passed the confluence of the Missouri and that of
+    the Ohio, and had finally reached the place where the Arkansas River
+    enters the Mississippi. Here the Frenchmen gathered from the natives
+    that the sea was only ten days distant, and this sea they knew (for
+    Jolliet was able to take astronomical observations and to make a rough
+    survey) could only be the Gulf of Mexico. Jolliet feared if he
+    prosecuted his journey any farther, he and his people would fall into
+    the hands of the Spaniards and be imprisoned, if not killed.
+    Therefore, at this point on the Lower Mississippi, the expedition
+    turned back. Its return journey was a weary business, for the current
+    was against the canoes as they were propelled northwards up the Great
+    River. But Jolliet learnt from the natives of a better homeward route,
+    that of following the Illinois River upstream until the expedition
+    came within a very short distance of Lake Michigan, near where Chicago
+    now stands. The canoes were carried over a low ridge of ground,
+    launched again in the Chicago River, and so passed into Lake Michigan.
+    (There is, in fact, at this point the remains of an ancient water
+    connection between Lake Michigan and the Illinois River, and a canal
+    now connects the two systems.) Jolliet, in describing this region,
+    realized that by cutting a canal through two miles of prairie it would
+    be possible to go "in a small ship" from Lake Erie or Lake Superior
+    "to Florida".
+</p>
+<p>
+    Father Marquette remained at his new mission on the Fox River (he died
+    two years afterwards on the shores of the Straits of Michili-makinak).
+    Jolliet, on returning by way of the Ottawa River to Quebec, was nearly
+    drowned in the La Chine Rapids (Montreal), and all his papers and maps
+    were lost. The natives with him also perished, but he struggled to
+    shore with difficulty, and went on his way to Quebec to report his
+    wonderful discoveries to the Governor, Frontenac. Fortunately Father
+    Marquette had also kept a journal and had made maps, and these
+    reaching the superior of his mission arrived in time to confirm
+    Jolliet's statements.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jolliet married at Quebec, and proceeded to explore and develop the
+    regions along the north coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, travelling
+    in this work as far as Hudson's Bay. He was given by the French
+    Government the Island of Anticosti as a reward for his achievements,
+    but the work and capital which he put into the development of this
+    long-neglected island came to nothing; for it was captured by the
+    English, and Jolliet died a poor man whilst attempting to explore the
+    coast of Labrador.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As to ROBERT CAVALIER DE LA SALLE, he had, after all, discovered the
+    Ohio, and had descended that river as far as the site of the present
+    town of Louisville. Then he interested the Governor (Frontenac) of
+    Canada in his enterprises. A fort, called Fort Frontenac, was built at
+    what is now Kingston, at the point where the St. Lawrence leaves Lake
+    Ontario. La Salle returned to France, and obtained the grant of the
+    lordship of this fort and the surrounding country on conditions of
+    maintaining the whole cost of the establishment, and making a
+    settlement of colonists. Another visit to France in 1677-8 secured him
+    further support and capital, and he returned from France with a
+    companion, Henry de Tonty.
+</p>
+<p>
+    La Salle, with de Tonty, started from Fort Frontenac in September,
+    1678, so intensely anxious to commence his discoveries that he
+    disregarded the difficulties of the winter season. On his way to
+    Niagara he paid a visit to the Iroquois to conciliate them, and
+    cleverly got from them permission to build a vessel on Lake Erie and
+    also to erect a blacksmith's forge, near where Niagara now stands. The
+    blacksmith's forge grew rapidly into a fort before the Indians were
+    aware of what was being done. By August, 1679, he had built and
+    launched (in spite of extraordinary calamities and misfortunes) on the
+    Upper Niagara River the first sailing boat which ever appeared on the
+    four great upper lakes of the St. Lawrence basin.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In this ship he sailed through Lake Erie and past Detroit into Lake
+    Huron, and thence to Green Bay (Lake Michigan), stopping at intervals
+    amongst the canoes of the amazed natives, who for the first time heard
+    the sound of cannon, for he had armed his vessel with guns. At Green
+    Bay he collected a large quantity of furs, which had been obtained in
+    trade by the men he had sent on in advance. He loaded up his sailing
+    boat, the <i>Griffon</i>, and sent her on a voyage back to the east to
+    transport this splendid load of furs to the merchants with whom he had
+    become deeply indebted. Unhappily the <i>Griffon</i> foundered in a storm
+    on Lake Michigan, and was never heard of again. Meantime La Salle,
+    with de Tonty and Father HENNEPIN, the discoverer of Niagara, had
+    travelled in canoes to the south-east end of Lake Michigan, had passed
+    up the Joseph River, and thence by portage into the Kankaki, which
+    flows into the Illinois. This river he descended till he stopped near
+    the site of the modern Peoria. Below this place he built a fort&mdash;for
+    it was winter time&mdash;and although the natives were not very friendly he
+    collected enough information from them to satisfy himself that he
+    could easily pass down the Illinois to the Mississippi.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He sent one of the Frenchmen, Michel Accault, together with Father
+    Hennepin, to explore the Illinois down to the Mississippi; de Tonty he
+    placed in charge of the fort with a small garrison; and then himself,
+    on the last day of February, 1680, started to walk overland from Lake
+    Michigan to Detroit. Eventually, by means of a canoe, which he
+    constructed himself, he regained Fort Frontenac and Montreal. When he
+    returned to Fort Crèvecoeur, on the Illinois River,<a name="5-11"></a><a href="#note-5-11"><small>[11]</small></a> it was to meet
+    with the signs of a horrible disaster. The Iroquois in his absence had
+    descended on the place with a great war party. They had massacred the
+    Illinois people dwelling in a big settlement near the fort, and the
+    remains of their mutilated bodies were scattered all over the place.
+    Their town had been burnt; the fort was empty and abandoned. There
+    were no traces of the Frenchmen, however, amongst the skulls and
+    skeletons lying around him; for the skulls retained sufficient hair to
+    show that they belonged to Amerindians. Nevertheless, he deposited his
+    new stock of goods and most of his men in the ruins of the Fort
+    Crèvecoeur, and descended the River Illinois to the Mississippi. But
+    he was obliged to turn back. On the west bank of the river were the
+    scared Illinois Indians, on the east the raging Iroquois. Whenever La
+    Salle could safely visit a deserted camp he would examine the remains
+    of the tortured men tied to stakes to see if amongst them there was a
+    Frenchman.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But de Tonty was not dead. After incredible adventures he had escaped
+    the raids of the Iroquois and had reached the Straits of
+    Michili-makinak, between Lakes Michigan and Huron, and there met La
+    Salle, who was once more on his way to Montreal.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Again de La Salle and de Tonty, in the winter of 1681, returned to the
+    south end of Lake Michigan, and made their way over the snow to the
+    Illinois River. On the 6th February, 1682, they left the junction of
+    the Illinois and the Mississippi to trace that great river to its
+    outlet in the sea. La Salle reached the delta on the 6th April, 1682,
+    having on the way taken possession of the country in the name of the
+    King of France. Accault and Father Hennepin had meantime paddled up
+    the Northern Mississippi as far as its junction with the Wisconsin. At
+    this place their party was surrounded and captured by a large band of
+    Siou warriors.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Frenchmen were at first in danger of being killed, as the Sious
+    refused to smoke with them the pipe of peace. But being much less
+    bloodthirsty than the Iroquois, they soon calmed down and treated
+    their captives with a certain rough friendliness. All their goods were
+    taken from them, even the vestments worn by Father Hennepin. But they
+    were well supplied with food such as the country produced&mdash;bison,
+    beef, fish, wild turkeys, and the grain of the wild rice, which made
+    such excellent flour. They were gradually conveyed by the Siou<a name="5-12"></a><a href="#note-5-12"><small>[12]</small></a> to
+    a large settlement of that tribe on the shore of Mille Lacs, a sheet
+    of water not far distant from the westernmost extremity of Lake
+    Superior. Whilst staying at this Siou town Hennepin conversed with
+    Indians from the far north and north-west, and from what they told him
+    came to the conclusion that there was no continuous waterway or
+    "Strait of Anian" across the North-American continent, but that
+    the land extended to the north-west till it finally joined the
+    north-eastern part of Asia&mdash;a guess that was not very far wrong. But
+    he also surmised that there were rivers in the far west which led to
+    an ocean&mdash;the Pacific&mdash;across which ships might go to Japan and China
+    without passing to the southward of the Equator.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Whilst moving up and down the northern Mississippi, bison-hunting with
+    the Indians, the Frenchmen were met near the site of St. Paul by one
+    of the great French pioneers of the seventeenth century, the Sieur
+    DANIEL DE GREYSOLON DU L'HUT. This remarkable man, who was an officer
+    of the French army, had already planted the French arms at the
+    Amerindian settlement of Mille Lacs in 1679, and had established
+    himself as a powerful authority at the west end of Lake Superior. He
+    had also summoned a great council of Amerindian tribes&mdash;the Siou from
+    the Upper Mississippi, the Assiniboins from the Lake of the Woods
+    (between Lake Superior and Lake Winnipeg), and the Kri Indians from
+    Lake Nipigon. He had further discovered, in 1679, the water route of
+    the St. Croix River from near Lake Superior to the Mississippi.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Du L'Hut soon persuaded the Siou to let his fellow countrymen return
+    with him to Lake Superior. Accault remained behind with the Siou,
+    delighted with their wild, roving life, and no doubt married an Indian
+    wife and became the father of some of those bold half-breeds who
+    played such a great part in the subsequent history of innermost
+    Canada. But Father Hennepin returned to Montreal, and made his way
+    eventually to France, where he fell into great disgrace and was
+    unfrocked. He had richly merited this treatment, for after he heard of
+    the death of La Salle he impudently claimed the discovery of the whole
+    course of the Mississippi River for himself, and for a long time was
+    believed. He will certainly go down in history as the man who
+    discovered and described Niagara Falls (in 1678), and he also assisted
+    greatly to clear up the geography of the time by the information he
+    collected from the Amerindians as to the vast extent of the
+    North-American continent; but he was a boastful, unscrupulous man.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Du L'Hut, who came to the rescue of Accault and Hennepin, was of noble
+    family, and a member of the king's bodyguard. He decided, however, to
+    seek his fortune in Canada, and obtained a commission as captain. It
+    was his cousin, Henri de Tonty, who had accompanied La Salle. After
+    returning to France to fight in the wars then going on, he came back
+    to Canada with a younger brother, Claude. He had in him the spirit of
+    great adventurers, and longed to visit the unknown countries of the
+    upper Mississippi. In the early part of these journeys he rescued his
+    fellow countrymen from the keeping of the Sious in the manner
+    described. After that he spent <i>thirty</i> years travelling and trading
+    about North America, from the northern Mississippi into what we
+    should now call Manitoba, and from the vicinity of Lake Winnipeg to
+    Hudson Bay. He brought the great Amerindian nation of the Dakotas into
+    direct relations with the French. He was absolutely fearless, and in
+    no period of Canadian history has France been more splendidly
+    represented in the personality of any of her officers than she was by
+    Daniel de Greysolon du L'Hut. His was a tiresome name for English
+    scribes and speakers. It was therefore written by them "Duluth" and
+    pronounced D&#259;l&#259;th (instead of "Dülüt"). It is the name given to
+    the township near the southernmost extremity of Lake Superior.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the journeys of du L'Hut came to an end&mdash;he died at Montreal in
+    1710&mdash;and after the era of great French explorations in North America
+    drew to a close, the French power was beginning to be eclipsed by that
+    of the British, who were building up the foundations of a colony on
+    the shores of Hudson's Bay, and were taking steps to acquire
+    Newfoundland and to colonize New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nevertheless, in 1720, the King of France, or rather the regent acting
+    for the king, decided that a serious attempt must be made to discover
+    the Western Sea, or Pacific Ocean, from the French posts which had
+    been established in what is now known as Manitoba. The French had
+    already discovered the Missouri, and had heard from several Indian
+    tribes that it was possible to cross the Rocky Mountains and descend
+    by other rivers to the waters of a great ocean, the coasts of which
+    were visited by Spaniards. Several expeditions were sent out, more or
+    less under the control of Jesuits, but did not accomplish much.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The really great discoveries which link the "Great North-West" for all
+    time in history with France and French names were initiated by PIERRE
+    GAULTIER DE LA VÉRENDRYE, who was born in 1685 at the town of Three
+    Rivers, in Lower Canada, where his father was Governor. He entered
+    the army at the age of twelve, and took part in the French campaigns
+    in Flanders, winning the rank of lieutenant at the battle of
+    Malplaquet, where he received nine wounds and was left for dead on the
+    field. He then returned to Canada, not having the necessary means with
+    which to support the position of a lieutenant; and then, as France
+    seemed to have entered upon a period of protracted peace, he
+    determined to become an explorer. In 1728, when he was commandant of
+    the trading post of Nipigon, to the north of Lake Superior, he heard
+    from an Indian that there was a great lake beyond Lake Superior, out
+    of which flowed a river towards the west, which ultimately led to a
+    great salt lake where the water ebbed and flowed. As a matter of fact,
+    these stories simply referred to Lake Winnipeg, but the importance of
+    them lay in the fact that they acted as a powerful incentive to La
+    Vérendrye to push his explorations westwards, and perhaps discover a
+    route to the Pacific Ocean.<a name="5-13"></a><a href="#note-5-13"><small>[13]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    La Vérendrye afterwards went to Quebec, where he discussed his plans
+    for Western exploration with the Governor of New France, the Marquis
+    de Beauharnais, who was a distant connection of the Beauharnais family
+    from which sprang the first husband of the Empress Joséphine, the
+    grandfather of Napoleon III.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This Governor entered into his scheme with enthusiasm, though he could
+    obtain little or no money from the ministers of Louis XVI. But a way
+    out of the difficulty was found by the Governor giving La Vérendrye
+    the monopoly of the fur trade in the far North-West.<a name="5-14"></a><a href="#note-5-14"><small>[14]</small></a> This
+    monopoly enabled La Vérendrye to obtain the funds for his expenditure
+    from the merchants of Montreal, and in the summer of 1731 he started
+    out on his explorations, accompanied by three of his sons, his nephew,
+    fifty soldiers and French Canadian canoe men, and a Jesuit missionary.
+    For a guide they had the Indian, Oshagash, who had first told La
+    Vérendrye of the western river and the salt water. After many delays,
+    necessitated by the need for trading in furs to satisfy the merchants
+    of Montreal, La Vérendrye and his expedition skated on snowshoes down
+    the ice of the Winnipeg River and reached the shores of Lake Winnipeg.
+    They were probably the first white men to arrive there. La Vérendrye
+    established forts and posts along his route from Lake Nipigon, but his
+    expedition had not been a commercial success. There was a deficit of
+    £1700 between the amount realized in furs and the cost of the
+    equipment and wages of the French and French Canadians. De Beauharnais
+    made a fresh appeal to the French Court; he urged that the expenditure
+    to convey La Vérendrye's expedition to the Pacific Ocean would not be
+    a large one&mdash;perhaps only £1500.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the French Court was obdurate; it would not furnish a penny. Thus
+    La Vérendrye, in all probability, was prevented from forestalling the
+    British explorers of sixty and seventy years later, besides the
+    expeditions of Captain Cook and Captain Vancouver, which secured for
+    Great Britain a foothold on the Pacific seaboard of British Columbia.
+</p>
+<p>
+    La Vérendrye in his fort on Lake Winnipeg was in a desperate position.
+    He made a hasty journey back to Montreal and even Quebec, to beat up
+    funds and to pacify the capitalists of his fur-trading monopoly. He
+    painted in glowing colours the prospects of cutting off the trade of
+    the Hudson's Bay Company and the building up of an immense commerce in
+    valuable furs, and these men agreed once again to furnish the funds
+    for the extension of the expedition. On his return he took back with
+    him his youngest son, Louis, a boy of eighteen. Whilst he had been
+    absent from Fort St. Charles (a post which he had built on the Lake of
+    the Woods, in communication by water with the Winnipeg River), on Lake
+    Winnipeg, that place was visited by a party of Siou Indians. They
+    found the fort occupied in the absence of the French by a number of
+    Kri or "Knistino" Indians in French service. These Kris were
+    frightened at the arrival of the Sious and fired guns at them. "Who
+    fired on us?" demanded these haughty Indians from Dakota, and the Kris
+    replied, "The French". Then the Sious withdrew, but vowed to be
+    completely revenged on the treacherous white man.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When La Vérendrye reached Fort St. Charles its little garrison was
+    almost at the point of starvation. He had travelled himself ahead of
+    his party, and the immense stock of supplies and provisions he was
+    bringing up country were a long way behind him when he reached the
+    fort. He therefore sent back his son Jean, together with the most
+    active of his Canadian voyageurs and the Jesuit missionary, in order
+    that they might meet the heavily laden canoes and hurry them up
+    country as fast as possible. But this party was met by the Sious on
+    Rainy River, who massacred them to a man. They were afterwards found
+    lying in a circle on the beach, decapitated and mutilated. The heads
+    of most of them were wrapped ironically in beaver skins, and La
+    Vérendrye's son, Jean, was horribly cut and slashed, and his
+    mutilated, naked body decorated with garters and bracelets of
+    porcupine quills.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Meantime, during his absence in Lower Canada, two of his sons in
+    charge of Fort Maurepas, on Lake Winnipeg, had been very active. They
+    had discovered the great size of this lake, and also the entrance of
+    the Red River on the south. They then proceeded to explore both the
+    Red River and its western tributary the Assiniboin. On the Assiniboin
+    was afterwards built the post of Fort La Reine, and from this place in
+    1738 La Vérendrye started with two of his sons, several other
+    Frenchmen, a few Canadian voyageurs, and twenty-five Assiniboin
+    Indians. Leaving the Assiniboin River, they crossed the North Dakota
+    prairies on foot. Owing to the timidity of his Indian guides, La
+    Vérendrye was not led direct to the Missouri River, the "Great River
+    of the West", but along a zigzag route which permitted his guides to
+    reinforce their numbers at Assiniboin villages, and every now and then
+    join in a bison hunt. All the party were on foot, horses not then
+    having reached the Assiniboin tribe. But on the 28th of November,
+    1738, they drew near to the Missouri and were met by a chief of the
+    great Mandan tribe, who was accompanied by thirty of his warriors, and
+    who presented La Vérendrye with young maize cobs and leaves of native
+    tobacco, these being regarded as emblems of peace and friendship.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Mandan tribe differed materially in its habits and customs from
+    the Indians to the north, who supported themselves mainly, if not
+    entirely, by hunting, who cared very little for agriculture, and moved
+    continually like nomads over great stretches of country, living
+    chiefly in tents or temporary villages. The Mandans, on the other
+    hand, were a people who practised agriculture, and had permanent and
+    well-constructed towns. In fact, their civilization and demeanour made
+    such an impression on the Assiniboin and other northern tribes that
+    they had been considered a sort of "white people", somewhat akin to
+    Europeans, and La Vérendrye was a little disappointed to find them
+    only Amerindians in race and colour.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The six hundred Assiniboins who had gathered about La Vérendrye's
+    expedition proved to be a great trouble to him, as they were
+    constantly picking quarrels with the Mandans, who were very dishonest.
+    Accordingly, La Vérendrye arranged with the Mandans to frighten them
+    away by pretending that the Siou Indians were on the warpath. The six
+    hundred Assiniboins bolted, but took with them La Vérendrye's
+    interpreter, so that he was henceforth obliged to communicate with the
+    Mandans by means of signs and gestures. This and other reasons decided
+    him to return&mdash;even though it was the depth of winter, to Fort La
+    Reine, but not before he had given the head chief of the Mandans a
+    flag and a leaden plate which (unknown to the Mandans) meant taking
+    possession of their country in the name of the French king.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The journey back to Fort La Reine, over the plains of the Assiniboin,
+    was a terrible experience. The party had to travel in the teeth of an
+    almost unceasing north-east wind which was freezingly cold. Night
+    after night they were obliged to dig deep holes in the snow for their
+    sleeping places. La Vérendrye nearly died of agonizing pain and
+    fatigue during this journey, and was a long time recovering from its
+    effects.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As they continued to receive friendly messages from the Mandans,
+    inviting them to make further discoveries, LA VÉRENDRYE'S sons, PIERRE
+    and FRANCOIS, set out in the spring of 1742, and, after some checks
+    and disappointments, managed with a single Mandan guide to reach Broad
+    Lands on the Little Missouri River, where they noticed the earths of
+    different colours, blue, green, red, black, white, and yellow, which
+    are so characteristic of this region. They reached the village of the
+    Crow Indians, passed through a portion of the friendly tribe, the
+    Cheyennes (the name was probably pronounced Shian) and got into the
+    country which was constantly being ravaged by the Snake Indians, or
+    Shoshones. Here, on the 1st of January, 1743, when the mists of
+    morning cleared away, they saw upon the horizon the outline of huge
+    mountains. As they travelled westwards or south-westwards, day after
+    day, the jagged blue wall resolved itself into towering snow-capped
+    peaks, glittering in the sun and provoking the appellation of "the
+    Mountains of Bright Stones", a name probably given to the Rocky
+    Mountains by the Amerindians, but used in all the earlier French and
+    English maps until the end of the eighteenth century.<a name="5-15"></a><a href="#note-5-15"><small>[15]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the 12th of January they reached the very foot of the mountains,
+    the slopes of which they saw were thickly covered with magnificent
+    forests of pine and fir&mdash;forests, that have since suffered to an
+    appalling extent from annual bush fires, which so far the United
+    States Government seems unable to check. Here they were to meet with a
+    bitter disappointment. They were travelling with a very large war
+    party of the Bow Indians for the purpose, if need be, of attacking and
+    routing the Shoshones; but a Shoshone camp at the base of the
+    mountains was found to be deserted, and the Bow Indians jumped to the
+    conclusion that the Shoshones had turned back through the forest
+    unseen, and were now making with all speed for the principal war camp
+    of the Bow Indians, where they would massacre the women and children.
+    They would listen to no remonstrances from the two Frenchmen, who
+    perforce had also to travel back, either alone or with the Bow
+    Indians, in the direction of their war camp, where the idea of a
+    Shoshone attack was found to be baseless. Eventually, the two La
+    Vérendrye brothers were obliged to make their way to the Missouri
+    River, and abandon any idea of finding a way to the Western Ocean
+    across the Rocky Mountains.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The French pioneers had already heard of the Spaniards in California,
+    and the possibility of getting into touch with them. They had now
+    discovered, first of all Europeans, the Rocky Mountains&mdash;that great
+    snowy range of North America which extends from Robson Peak on the
+    eastern borders of British Columbia to Baldy Peak in New Mexico.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Afterwards the La Vérendryes directed their attention more to the
+    opportunities of reaching the Far West through the streams that flowed
+    into the system of Lake Winnipeg, and in this way discovered, in or
+    about 1743, the great River Saskatchewan. This river La Vérendrye's
+    sons followed up till they reached the junction between the North and
+    the South Rivers, and then they probably learnt a good deal more of
+    the Southern Saskatchewan, on which they may have built one or two
+    posts. La Vérendrye himself thought that this would prove to be the
+    best route by which the French could reach the Western Sea.
+</p>
+<p>
+    By this time the French Government was becoming alive to the
+    importance of these discoveries, and it conferred a decoration on La
+    Vérendrye, and allowed him to hope that he might be furnished with
+    means for further exploration. But he died soon afterwards, at the
+    close of 1749, and after his death his sons were treated with gross
+    ingratitude and neglect. The self-seeking Governor of New France
+    endeavoured to secure the fur trade for his own friends, and sent an
+    officer with a terribly long name&mdash;Captain Jacques Répentigny Le
+    Gardeur de Saint Pierre&mdash;to continue the exploration towards the
+    Pacific. From 1750 to 1763 the French occupation of this region of the
+    two Saskatchewan Rivers was extended till in all probability the
+    French got within sight of the northern Rocky Mountains in the
+    vicinity of Calgary. Then came the English conquest of Canada to stop
+    all further enterprise in this direction, and the story was next to be
+    taken up by English, Scottish, and Canadian explorers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It will be men with English and Scottish names, mainly, who will
+    henceforth complete the work begun and established so magnificently by
+    Cartier, Brulé, Nicollet, Jolliet, La Salle, du L'Hut, and La
+    Vérendrye, though the French Canadians will also play a notable part,
+    together with "Americans", from New England.
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="note-5-1"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-1"><u>1</u></a> Mentioned on p. <a href="#p80">80</a>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-5-2"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-2"><u>2</u></a> The Andastes were akin to the Iroquois, but did not
+    belong to their confederacy; they lived in Pennsylvania.
+</p>
+<a name="note-5-3"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-3"><u>3</u></a> The inaccurate statement has frequently been written
+    about Newfoundland being "the first British American colony".
+    Newfoundland was reached by the ship in which John Cabot sailed on his
+    1497 voyage of discovery, and a few years afterwards its shores were
+    sought by the English in common with the French and the Portuguese,
+    and later on the Spaniards and Basques, for the cod fishery. But no
+    definite British settlement, such as subsequently grew into an actual
+    colony, was founded in Newfoundland until the year 1624; the island
+    was not recognized as definitely British till 1713, and no governor
+    was appointed till 1728. The first permanent English colonial
+    settlement in America was founded at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607; and
+    in the Bermudas and Barbados (West Indies) soon afterwards.
+</p>
+<a name="note-5-4"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-4"><u>4</u></a> The Récollet (properly Recollect) friars were a strict
+    branch of the Franciscan order that were sometimes called the
+    Observantines. They were also known as "Recollects" (pronounced in
+    French <i>récollet</i>) because they were required to be constantly keeping
+    guard over their thoughts. This development of the Franciscan order of
+    preaching missionary friars was originally a Spanish one, founded
+    early in the sixteenth century, and becoming well established in the
+    Spanish Netherlands. Many of them were Flemings or Walloons.
+</p>
+<a name="note-5-5"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-5"><u>5</u></a> See p. <a href="#p160">160</a>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-5-6"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-6"><u>6</u></a> More probably musk oxen.
+</p>
+<a name="note-5-7"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-7"><u>7</u></a> La Salle was the name of his property in France.
+</p>
+<a name="note-5-8"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-8"><u>8</u></a> Born at Quebec in 1645.
+</p>
+<a name="note-5-9"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-9"><u>9</u></a> Father Jacques Marquette was born in the province of
+    Champagne, eastern France. He came to Canada when he was twenty-nine
+    years old, having already been prepared by the Jesuits for priesthood
+    and missionary work since his seventeenth year. He spent nine years in
+    Canada, and died at the age of thirty-eight. He has left an enduring
+    memory for goodness, courage, and purity of life.
+</p>
+<a name="note-5-10"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-10"><u>10</u></a> These remarkable rock pictures were situated immediately
+    above the present city of Alton, Illinois. In 1812 they still remained
+    in a good state of preservation, but the thoughtless Americans had
+    gradually destroyed them by 1867 in quarrying the rock for building
+    stone.
+</p>
+<a name="note-5-11"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-11"><u>11</u></a> He had named this place "Heartbreak" because when
+    building it he had learnt of the loss of his sailing ship <i>Griffon</i>,
+    with the splendid supply of furs which was to have paid off his debts,
+    with all his reserve supplies and his men. This was not the limit of
+    his troubles; for, after the overland journey of appalling hardships
+    through a country of melting ice, flood, swamp, and hostile
+    Iroquois&mdash;the Iroquois being furious with La Salle for having
+    outwitted them in the building of this fort, and seeking him
+    everywhere to destroy him&mdash;when he got to Montreal it was only to
+    learn that a ship, coming from France with further supplies for his
+    great journey had been wrecked at the mouth of the St. Lawrence!
+</p>
+<a name="note-5-12"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-12"><u>12</u></a> The real name of the Siou, as far as we can arrive at it
+    through the records of the French pioneers, was Issati or Naduessiu.
+</p>
+<a name="note-5-13"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-13"><u>13</u></a> The water of Lake Winnipeg&mdash;whatever it may be now&mdash;was
+    frequently stated by Amerindians in earlier days to be "stinking
+    water", or salt, brackish water, disagreeable to drink, and this lake
+    exhibits a curious phenomenon of a regular rise and fall, reminding
+    the observer of a tide, a phenomenon by no means confined to Lake
+    Winnipeg, but occurring on sheets of water of much smaller extent.
+</p>
+<a name="note-5-14"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-14"><u>14</u></a> What we should call to-day a "concession".
+</p>
+<a name="note-5-15"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#5-15"><u>15</u></a> The term Rocky Mountains was probably first officially
+    applied by the American expedition, under Lewis and Clarke, sent out
+    by the United States Government in 1804 to take possession of the
+    coast of Oregon, but it was used twenty or thirty years earlier by
+    British explorers of Western Canada.
+</p>
+<p class="return">[<a href="#contents">TABLE OF CONTENTS</a>]
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="2HCH0006"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER VI
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    The Geographical Conditions of the Canadian Dominion
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Before we continue to follow the adventures of the pioneers of British
+    North America, I think&mdash;even if it seems wearisome and discursive&mdash;my
+    readers would better understand this story if I placed before them a
+    general description of what is now the Dominion of Canada, more
+    particularly as it was seen and discovered by the earliest European
+    explorers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The most prominent feature on the east, and that which was nearest to
+    Europe, was the large island of NEWFOUNDLAND, 42,000 square miles in
+    extent, that is to say, nearly as large as England without Wales. It
+    seems to bar the way of the direct sea access by the Gulf of St.
+    Lawrence to the very heart of North America; and, until the Straits of
+    Belle Isle and of Cabot were discovered, did certainly arrest the
+    voyages of the earliest pioneers. Newfoundland, as you can see on the
+    map, has been cut into and carved by the forces of nature until it has
+    a most fantastic outline. Long peninsulas of hills alternate with
+    deep, narrow gulfs, and about the south-east and east coasts there are
+    innumerable islets, most of which in the days of the early discoverers
+    were the haunt of millions of sea birds who resorted there for
+    breeding purposes. The heart of Newfoundland, so to speak, is an
+    elevated country with hills and mountains rising to a little over 2000
+    feet. A great deal of the country is, or was, dense forests, chiefly
+    consisting of fir trees. As numerous almost as the sea birds were the
+    seals and walruses which frequented the Newfoundland coasts. Inland
+    there were very large numbers of reindeer, generally styled nowadays
+    by the French-Canadian name of <i>Caribou</i><a name="6-1"></a><a href="#note-6-1"><small>[1]</small></a>. Besides reindeer there
+    were wolves, apparently of a smaller size than those of the mainland.
+    There were also lynxes and foxes, besides polar bears, martens,
+    squirrels, &amp;c. The human inhabitants of Newfoundland, whom I shall
+    describe in the next chapter, were known subsequently by the name of
+    Beothuk, or Beothik, a nickname of no particular meaning. They had
+    evidently been separated for many centuries from contact with the
+    Amerindians of the mainland, though they may have been visited
+    occasionally on the north by the Eskimo. They had in fact been so long
+    separated from the other Amerindians of North America that they were
+    strikingly different from them in their habits, customs, and language.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The climate of Newfoundland is not nearly so cold as that of the
+    mainland, nor so hot in summer, but it is spoilt at times by fogs and
+    sea mists which conceal the landscape for days together. In the
+    wintertime, and quite late in the spring, quantities of ice hang about
+    the shores of the islands, and when the warm weather comes, these
+    accumulations of ice slip away into the Atlantic in the form of
+    icebergs and are most dangerous to shipping.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To the south-east of Newfoundland the sea is very shallow for hundreds
+    of miles, the remains no doubt of a great extension of North America
+    in the direction of Europe which had sunk below the surface ages ago.
+    In this shallow water&mdash;the "Banks" of Newfoundland&mdash;fish, especially
+    codfish, swarmed in millions, and still continue to swarm with little,
+    if any, diminution from the constant toll of the fishing fleets.
+    Another creature found in great abundance on these coasts is the true
+    lobster,<a name="6-2"></a><a href="#note-6-2"><small>[2]</small></a> which filled as important a part in the diet of the
+    Beothuk natives, before the European occupation, as the salmon did in
+    the dietary of the British Columbian tribes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The next most striking feature in the geography of Eastern North
+    America is NOVA SCOTIA. AS you look at it on the map this province
+    seems to be a long peninsula connected with the mainland by the narrow
+    isthmus of Chignecto; but its northernmost portion&mdash;Cape
+    Breton&mdash;really consists of two big and two little islands, only
+    separated from Nova Scotia by a very narrow strait&mdash;the Gut of Canso.
+    On the north of Nova Scotia lies the large Prince Edward Island, and
+    north of this again the small group of the Magdalen Islands,
+    discovered by Cartier, the resort of herds of immense walruses at one
+    time. Due west of Nova Scotia the country, first flat (like Nova
+    Scotia itself) and at one time covered with magnificent forests, rises
+    into a very hilly region which culminates on the north in the Shikshok
+    Mountains of the Gaspé Peninsula (nearly 4000 feet in height) and the
+    White Mountains (over 6000 feet) and the Adirondak Mountains (over
+    5000 feet). The White, the Green, and the Adirondak Mountains lie just
+    within the limits of the United States.
+</p>
+<p>
+    North of the Gaspé Peninsula, in the great Gulf of St. Lawrence, is
+    Anticosti Island, which rises on the south in a series of terraces
+    until it reaches an altitude of about 2000 feet. This island, which is
+    well wooded, was said to have swarmed with reindeer at one time, and
+    perhaps other forms of deer also, and to have possessed grizzly bears
+    which fed on the deer, besides Polar bears visiting it in the winter.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0006"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<a href="images/map06-large.jpg"> <img src="images/map06-small.jpg" width="606" height="400" alt="Map of Canada"></a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="ar"> [<a href="images/map06-large.jpg"><small>LARGER MAP</small></a>]</p>
+
+<p>
+    Newfoundland is separated from the mainland of LABRADOR on the north
+    by the Strait of Belle Isle, and from Cape Breton Island on the south
+    by Cabot Strait. Labrador is an immense region on the continent, where
+    the coast (except for the deep inlet of Melville Lake) soon rises into
+    an elevated plateau 2000 feet in height, which is strewn with almost
+    uncountable lakes, out of which rivers flow north, south, east, and
+    west. On the north-east corner of Labrador there are mountains from
+    3000 to 4000 feet, overlooking the sea. The whole of this vast
+    Labrador or Ungava Peninsula, which is bounded on the south by the
+    River and Gulf of St. Lawrence, and on the north by Hudson's Bay and
+    Hudson's Straits, is an inhospitable land, at no time with much
+    population.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The winter of Labrador is long and severe; one would need to have
+    blood like brandy, a skin of brass, and an eye of glass not to suffer
+    from the rigours of a Labrador winter. In the summer the frequent fogs
+    render the air damp, and the constant breezes from the immense fields
+    of ice floating in the gulf keep the land very cool, and make any
+    alteration in the winter dress almost unnecessary" (James M'Kenzie).
+    Labrador and the lands farther north on the continent of North America
+    are separated from Greenland on the east by the broad straits&mdash;a great
+    branch of the Atlantic&mdash;named after Davis and Baffin, who first
+    explored them. Passing up Davis Strait, along the coast of Labrador to
+    beyond 60° N. lat., the voyager comes to Hudson's Straits, which, if
+    followed up first to the northwards and then to the south-west, would
+    lead him into the great expanse of Hudson's Bay, one of the most
+    important features in the geography of North America.
+</p>
+<p>
+    HUDSON'S BAY, which is a great inland sea with an area of about
+    315,000 square miles, has a southern loop or extension called James
+    Bay, the shores of which are not at a very great distance either from
+    Lake Superior to the south-west, or from the source of the River
+    Saguenay on the south. The Saguenay flows into the Lower St. Lawrence
+    River. It is therefore not surprising that as soon as the French began
+    to settle in Lower Canada they heard of a vast northern inland sea of
+    salt water&mdash;Hudson's Bay. But the people who discovered and surveyed
+    Hudson's Bay during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth
+    centuries were always on the search for a passage out of its waters
+    into the Arctic Sea, which would enable them to get right round
+    America into the Pacific Ocean.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In Arctic North America Nature really seems to have been preparing
+    during millions of years a grim joke with which to baffle exploring
+    humanity! It is easy enough to pass from Davis Straits into Hudson's
+    Bay, but to get out of Hudson's Bay in the direction of the Arctic
+    Ocean is like getting out of a very cleverly arranged maze. There are
+    innumerable false exits, which have disappointed one Arctic explorer
+    after another. When they had discovered that Hudson's Bay to the south
+    was only like a great bottle, and had no outlet, they explored its
+    northern waters; and when they found Chesterfield Inlet on the
+    north-west, which leads into Baker Lake, they thought perhaps here was
+    the passage through into the Arctic Sea. But no; that was no good. To
+    the north of Chesterfield Inlet was a broad channel called Roe's
+    Welcome, which led into Wager Bay and through frozen straits into
+    Fox's Channel, and this again into Ross Bay. Here only a very narrow
+    isthmus separates Hudson's Bay from the Arctic Sea; but still it is an
+    isthmus of solid land. Turning to the north-east and north there are
+    the broad waters of Fox's Channel leading into Fox's Basin; but the
+    north-west corner of this inland sea was so blocked with ice and
+    islands that it was not until the year 1822 that the <i>real</i> northern
+    outlet of Hudson's Bay was discovered by Captain EDWARD PARRY to be
+    the narrow Fury and Hecla Straits (the discovery was not completed
+    until 1839 <a name="p125"></a>by the Hudson's Bay Company's explorers T. SIMPSON and W.
+    DEASE).
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here you have found the way out into the Gulf of Boothia, which
+    communicates in the north with Barrow Strait and Baffin's Bay. But
+    across the supposed peninsula of Boothia there were discovered, in
+    1847, by Dr. JOHN RAE (also an officer of the Hudson's Bay Company)
+    the narrow Bellot Straits, which lead into Franklin Straits and so
+    into M'Clintock Channel and the Arctic Ocean. After this you might
+    theoretically (if the ice permitted it) sail or steam your ship
+    through Victoria Straits and Coronation Gulf till you got into
+    Beaufort Sea (part of the open Arctic Ocean), or, by turning round
+    Prince Albert Land, pass through the Prince of Wales' Straits or
+    M'Clure Straits into the same Beaufort Sea.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The North-West Passage across the Arctic extremity of North America,
+    therefore, <i>did</i> exist after all, and the directest route would be up
+    Davis Straits, through Hudson's Straits into Fox's Basin, then through
+    the Fury and Hecla Straits into the Gulf of Boothia, then through the
+    Bellot Straits and Franklin Straits (past Victorialand and Kemp
+    Peninsula) and out through the Dolphin and Union Straits into the
+    Arctic Ocean, and so on round the north coast of Alaska, past Bering's
+    Straits into Bering Sea and the Pacific. But of course the
+    accumulations of ice completely block continuous navigation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The huge jagged island of BAFFIN'S LAND differs from much of Arctic
+    America in that it has high land rising into mountains. This is so
+    completely covered with ice that it is of little interest under
+    present circumstances to the world of civilization, though the large
+    herds of musk oxen which it once supported were of much use to Arctic
+    explorers as a food supply in winter. The coasts are inhabited by a
+    few thousand Eskimo, and Davis Straits and Baffin's Bay possess a
+    certain amount of commercial importance owing to the whale fisheries
+    which are carried on there by the British, the Danes, the Americans,
+    and the Eskimo. In fact the importance of these whale fisheries have
+    of late made the Americans of the United States a little inclined to
+    challenge the British possession of these great Arctic islands. North
+    Devon, North Somerset, Prince of Wales' Land, Melville Island, Banks
+    Land, Prince Albert Land, &amp;c. &amp;c, are names of other great Arctic
+    islands completely within the grip of the ice. The nature of their
+    interior is almost unknown. They are at present of use to no form of
+    man unless it be to a few wandering Eskimo, who come to their coasts
+    in the summer to kill seals.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The great NORTH-WEST TERRITORIES of the Canadian Dominion extend from
+    the American frontier of Alaska (which is the 141° of W. long.) to the
+    Ungava Peninsula, which abuts on Labrador. Where this vast region
+    slopes to the Arctic Ocean and Hudson's Bay it is rather low and flat,
+    except between Alaska and the Mackenzie River, and between the
+    Mackenzie and the watershed of Hudson's Bay. The principal river
+    system in the far North-West is that of the great Mackenzie River,
+    which flows into the Arctic Ocean (Beaufort Sea) through an immense
+    delta, and is one of the longest rivers in the world. The southernmost
+    sources of the Mackenzie (such as the Peace River and the Athabaska
+    River) rise in the Rocky Mountains to the east of British Columbia.
+    These waters are stored for a time in Lake Athabaska, and then under
+    the name of Slave River flow northwards into the Great Slave Lake, and
+    out of this, under the name of Mackenzie River, into Beaufort Sea,
+    through an immense delta. The Great Bear Lake is also a feeder of the
+    Mackenzie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Two other Arctic rivers at one time thought to be of great importance
+    as means of communication with the Arctic Ocean, are the Great Fish
+    River, which flows into Elliot Bay, and the Coppermine River, which
+    enters Coronation Gulf. The other northward-flowing rivers (passing
+    through innumerable lakes and lakelets) enter Hudson's Bay.
+</p>
+<p>
+    West of the great Mackenzie River rises the northernmost extension of
+    the Rocky Mountains. All this easternmost part of Alaska, which is
+    under British control, is a region of great elevation, something like
+    parts of Central Asia. The streams which rise here unite in the great
+    Yukon River, and this has its outlet in Bering's Sea. Some points of
+    the great mountains within the limits of British territory in this
+    direction reach to nearly 20,000 feet (Mount Logan).
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the climate of the northern parts of the Canadian Dominion differs
+    very greatly in the west as compared to the east. For instance, the
+    northern parts of Labrador are cruelly Arctic, hopelessly frozen,
+    though they are in the same latitude as St. Petersburg (the capital of
+    European Russia) and as the splendidly forested northern parts of
+    British Columbia. Eastern Labrador is a region in which explorers have
+    frequently perished from cold and starvation. Although in the lofty
+    parts of the Yukon country (three hundred and fifty miles north of
+    treeless Labrador) the winter is intensely cold, and the ground is
+    frozen for a considerable depth downwards, all the year round, there
+    are still great forests; and a white and Amerindian population find it
+    possible to live there all the year round, while animal life is
+    extremely abundant. On the other hand, a good deal of the territory
+    between Mackenzie River and Hudson's Bay is almost uninhabitable,
+    except during the summertime, owing to the depth of the snow and the
+    bare rocky nature of the ground.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The treeless area north of Lake Athabaska (the "barren lands" of the
+    Canadian Dominion) seems to consist of nothing but slabs of rock and
+    loose stones. Yet this region is far from being without vegetation.
+    The rock is often covered with a thin or thick sod of lichen
+    <a name="p128"></a>("reindeer moss", in some districts three feet deep) intermixed with
+    the roots of the wishakapakka herb (<i>Ledum palustre</i>, from which
+    Labrador tea is made), of cranberries, gooseberries, heather (with
+    white bell flowers), and a dwarf birch. This last, in sheltered places
+    where a little vegetable soil has been formed, grows into a low
+    scrubby bush. As to the gooseberries&mdash;here and farther south&mdash;Hearne
+    describes them as "thriving best on the stony or rocky ground, open
+    and much exposed to the sun". They spread along the ground like vines.
+    The small red fruit is always most plentiful and fine on the under
+    side of the branches, probably owing to the reflected heat of the
+    stones. In the bleaker places a hard, black, crumply lichen&mdash;the
+    "Tripe de roche" of the French Canadians (<i>Gyrophoreus</i>) grows on the
+    rocks and stones, and is of great service to the Amerindians, as it
+    furnishes them with a temporary subsistence when no animal food can be
+    procured. This lichen, when boiled, turns to a gummy consistence
+    something like sago. Hearne describes it as being remarkably good when
+    used to thicken broth; but some other pioneers complained that it made
+    them and their Indians seriously ill. Another lichen, "reindeer moss"
+    (<i>Cladina</i>), is also eaten by men as well as deer. The <i>muskegs</i>, or
+    bogs and marshes, produce in the summertime a very rapid growth of
+    grass (as well as breeding swarms of mosquitoes!), and thus furnish
+    food for the geese and swans which throng them between June and
+    October.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the summertime all these northern territories of Canada&mdash;from the
+    basin of Lake Winnipeg, with its white pelicans, to the Arctic
+    circle&mdash;swarm with birds, wild swans, geese, ducks, plovers, grouse,
+    cranes, eagles, owls of several kinds&mdash;especially the great snowy
+    eagle-owl&mdash;red-breasted thrushes, black and white snow-buntings,
+    scarlet grosbeaks (the female green and grey), crested jays, and
+    ravens "of a beautiful glossy black, richly tinged with purple", but
+    smaller in size than those of Europe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This is also the country for bears. Some grizzlies still linger here.
+    Their range at one time extended to near the Arctic circle. In
+    Alaska (British as well as United States) there is an enormous
+    chocolate-coloured bear, the biggest in the world. The Polar bear,
+    usually creamy white along the seacoast, is stated to range inland
+    during the summer over the "barren grounds", and to develop either a
+    permanent local variety or a seasonal change of coat, which is
+    greyish-brown or blue-grey.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The black bear in northern Canada is said to give birth at times to
+    cubs which are cinnamon-brown in colour.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In the early summer the black bears swim up and down the northern
+    rivers with their mouths open, swallowing the immense number of water
+    insects which have come into being at that season." Hearne goes on to
+    state that bears which have subsisted on this food for some days, when
+    cut open emit a stench that is intolerable, and which taints their
+    flesh to a sickening degree. The insects on which they feed are mostly
+    of two kinds: one a sort of grasshopper with a hard black skin, and
+    the other a soft, brown, sluggish fly. "This last is the most
+    numerous. In some of the lakes such quantities are forced into the
+    bays when the wind blows hard, that they are pressed together in dead
+    multitudes and remain a great nuisance. I have several times, in my
+    inland voyages from York Fort (Hudson's Bay), found it scarcely
+    possible to land in some of those bays for the intolerable stench of
+    those insects, which in some places were lying in putrid masses to the
+    depth of two or three feet." It is more than probable that the bears
+    occasionally feed on these dead insects. After the middle of July,
+    when they take to a diet of berries, they are excellent eating, and
+    continue to be so to the end of the winter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Arctic foxes of this region when young are sooty black all over,
+    and gradually change to a light ash-grey in colour, with a dark,
+    almost blue, tint on the head, legs, and back. In winter they usually
+    become white all over, with or without a black tip to the tail; but it
+    is recorded by some travellers that not all the foxes of the <i>Canis
+    lagopus</i> species turn white; some keep their dark-grey colour all the
+    year round. The common fox (<i>C. vulpes fulvus</i>) in Northern Canada is
+    sometimes black, with white-tipped hairs. Wolves in these far northern
+    regions do not seem to have been so abundant as farther south.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The deer tribe are represented (north of the Athabaska region) by the
+    reindeer and the elk (called by the Canadians "Moose"). The wapiti or
+    red deer (for which the common Amerindian name in the north was
+    <i>Waskesiu</i>) seldom ranged farther north than the vicinity of Lake
+    Winnipeg. The reindeer of the "barren ground" sub-species extended to
+    the Arctic seacoast, and were at one time especially abundant in
+    Labrador. Here they were so tame, down to a hundred years ago, that
+    fishermen were often known to shoot many of them from the windows of
+    their huts near the seashore. This type (<i>Rangifer tarandus arcticus</i>)
+    might possibly be domesticated; not so the larger and much wilder
+    Caribou woodland reindeer of the more southern and western parts of
+    the Dominion, which dislikes the neighbourhood of man. The elk or
+    moose, east of the Rocky Mountains, was not found northward of about
+    50° to 55°; but west of that range extended over all British Columbia
+    and Alaska, in which latter country it grows to a giant size and
+    develops enormous antlers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hearne says of the elk in northern Canada: "In summer, when they
+    frequent the margins of rivers and lakes, they are often killed by the
+    Indians in the water while they are crossing rivers or swimming from
+    the mainland to islands, &amp;c. When pursued in this manner, they are
+    the most inoffensive of all animals, never making any resistance; and
+    the young ones are so simple that I remember to have seen an Indian
+    paddle his canoe up to one of them and take it by the poll without the
+    least opposition; the poor, harmless animal seeming at the same time
+    as contented alongside the canoe as if swimming by the side of its
+    dam, and looking up in our faces with the same fearless innocence that
+    a house lamb would; making use of its fore foot almost every instant
+    to clear its eyes of mosquitoes, which at that time were remarkably
+    numerous.... The moose are also the easiest to tame and domesticate of
+    any of the deer kind. I have repeatedly seen them at Churchill as tame
+    as sheep, and even more so; for they would follow their keeper any
+    distance from home, and at his call return with him without the least
+    trouble, or ever offering to deviate from the path."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The most northern range of the elk would seem to be the region round
+    Lake Athabaska.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The musk ox (<i>Ovibos</i>) is perhaps the most remarkable beast of Arctic
+    Canada.<a name="6-3"></a><a href="#note-6-3"><small>[3]</small></a> Samuel Hearne is my principal source for the following
+    notes as to its habits and appearance: The number of bulls is very few
+    in proportion to the cows, for it is rare to see more than two or
+    three full-grown bulls with the largest herd; and from the number of
+    the males that are found dead, the Indians are of opinion that they
+    kill each other in contending for the females. In the rutting season
+    they are so jealous of the cows that they run at either man or beast
+    who offers to approach them, and have been observed to run and bellow
+    even at ravens and other large birds which chanced to alight near
+    them. They delight in the most stony and mountainous parts of the
+    "barren ground", but are seldom found at any great distance from the
+    woods. Though they are a beast of great magnitude, and apparently of a
+    very unwieldy inactive structure, yet they climb the rocks with ease
+    and agility, and are nearly as surefooted as a goat. Like it, too,
+    they will feed on anything; and though they seem fondest of grass, yet
+    in winter, when grass cannot be had in sufficient quantity, they will
+    eat moss or any other herbage they can find, as also the tops of
+    willows and the tender branches of the pine tree.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The musk ox, when full grown, is as large as the generality of
+    English black cattle; but their legs, though thick, are not so long,
+    nor is their tail longer than that of a bear; and, like the tail of
+    that animal, it always bends downward and inward, so that it is
+    entirely hid by the long hair of the rump and hind quarters. The hunch
+    on their shoulders is not large, being little more in proportion than
+    that of a deer. Their hair is in some parts very long, particularly on
+    the belly, sides, and hind quarters; but the longest hair about them,
+    particularly the bulls, is under the throat, extending from the chin
+    to the lower part of the chest between the fore legs. It there hangs
+    down like a horse's mane inverted, and is fully as long, which gives
+    the animal a most formidable appearance. It is of the hair from this
+    part that the Eskimo make their mosquito wigs (face screens or masks).
+    In winter the musk oxen are provided with a thick fine wool or fur
+    that grows at the root of the long hair, and shields them from the
+    intense cold to which they are exposed during that season; but as the
+    summer advances this fur loosens from the skin, and by frequently
+    rolling themselves on the ground it works out to the end of the hair,
+    and in time drops off, leaving little for their summer clothing except
+    the long hair. This season is so short in these high latitudes, that
+    the new fleece begins to appear almost as soon as the old one drops
+    off, so that by the time the cold becomes severe they are again
+    provided with a winter dress."
+</p>
+<p>
+    According to Hearne, the flesh of the musk ox does not resemble that
+    of the bison, but is more like the meat of the moose or wapiti. The
+    fat is of a clear white, "slightly tinged with a light azure". The
+    calves and young heifers are good eating, but the flesh of the bulls
+    both smells and tastes so strongly of musk as to be very disagreeable;
+    "even the knife that cuts the flesh of an old bull will smell so
+    strongly of musk that nothing but scouring the blade quite bright can
+    remove it, and the handle will retain the scent for a long time".
+</p>
+<p>
+    Bisons of the "wood" variety are (or were) found far up the heights of
+    the Rocky Mountains and in the regions south-west of the Great Slave
+    Lake. These "wood buffaloes" delight in mountain valleys, and never
+    resort to the plains. And higher than anything, of course, range the
+    great white mountain goat-antelopes (<i>Oreamnus montanus</i>) from
+    northern Alaska to the Columbia River.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The north and the north-west were, of course, pre-eminently the great
+    fur-trading regions, though all parts of the vast Dominion have at one
+    time or another yielded furs for commerce with the white man. The
+    principal fur-bearing smaller mammals of the north and north-west were
+    wolves, foxes, lynxes, gluttons (wolverene), otters, martens (sables)
+    and black fishing martens, mink (a kind of polecat), ermine-stoats,
+    weasels, polar hares (<i>Lepus timidus</i>), beavers, musquash, lemming,
+    gopher or pouched ground-squirrels, and the common red squirrel of
+    North America. The grey squirrel and striped chipmunk are only found
+    in southern Canada.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The musquash (<i>Fiber zibethicus</i>) is such a characteristic animal of
+    northern Canada that it is worth while to give Hearne's description of
+    it (I would mention it is really a huge <i>vole</i>, and no relation of the
+    beaver):&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The musk rat or musquash builds a dwelling near the banks of ponds or
+    swamps to shelter it from the bitter cold of the winter, but never on
+    land, always on the ice, as soon as it is firm enough, taking care to
+    keep a hole open to admit it to dive for its food, which chiefly
+    consists of the roots of grass or arums. It sometimes happens in very
+    cold winters that the holes communicating with their dwellings under
+    the water are so blocked by ice that they cannot break through them.
+    When this is the case, and they have no provisions left in the house,
+    they begin to eat one another. At last there may be only one rat left
+    out of a whole lodge. They occasionally eat fish, but in general feed
+    very cleanly, and when fat are good eating. They are easily tamed and
+    soon grow fond of their owner. They are very cleanly and playful, and
+    'smell exceedingly pleasant of musk', but their resemblance to the rat
+    is so great that few are partial to them, though of course they are
+    much larger in size, and have webbed hind feet and a flat scaly tail.
+    In Canadian regions farther south the musquash no longer builds on the
+    ice, but in swamps, where it raises heaps of mud like islands in the
+    surrounding water. On the top of these mounds they build their nests,
+    and on the top of the musquash nest, or 'lodge', wild geese frequently
+    lay their eggs and bring forth their young brood without any fear of
+    being molested by foxes."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The YUKON territories of the Dominion, and above all the State of
+    BRITISH COLUMBIA, constitute a very distinct region from the rest of
+    British North America, not only in their tribes of Amerindians but in
+    their fauna, flora, and climate. British Columbia is one of the most
+    beautiful and richly endowed countries in the world. Here, in spite
+    of northern latitudes, the warm airs coming up from the Pacific Ocean
+    act somewhat in the same way as the Gulf Stream on north-west Europe,
+    and favour the growth of magnificent forests.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All this north-western part of British Columbia is very mountainous,
+    and the rocks are rich in minerals, especially gold in the Fraser and
+    Columbia Rivers, far north in the upper valley of the Yukon, and
+    copper and coal in Vancouver Island.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The rainfall in British Columbia is considerable, and the
+    flora&mdash;trees, plants, ferns&mdash;richer than anywhere else in North
+    America, with many resemblances to the trees and plants of Japan and
+    northern China. In British Columbia more than in any other part of the
+    world are found the noblest developments of the pines, firs, and
+    junipers (<i>Coniferæ</i>).
+</p>
+<p>
+    The coast rivers swarm with salmon, and perhaps because of the
+    abundance of sea fish close in shore there have been developed in the
+    course of ages those remarkable aquatic mammals, the sea lions or fur
+    seals (<i>Otaria</i>), whose relationship to the true seals is a very
+    distant one. On the Alaskan coasts and islands is <i>Otaria ursina</i>, the
+    creature which provides the sealskin fur of commerce. There is also
+    the much larger sea lion (<i>Otaria stelleri</i>), on the coasts of British
+    Columbia and Vancouver Island. Alexander Henry, jun., gives some
+    interesting facts about this remarkable beast.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The natives at Oak Point, during the time Mr. Keith was there, killed
+    five very large sea lions by spearing them at night. Two canoes being
+    lashed together, they approach very softly, and throw their spears,
+    which are fastened by a long, strong cord, with a barb so fixed in a
+    socket that, when it strikes the animal and pierces the flesh, it is
+    detached from the shaft of the spear, but remains fastened to the
+    cord. This is instantly made fast between the canoes; the animal
+    dives and swims down river, dragging the canoes with such velocity
+    that they may be in danger of filling, and require great skill in
+    steering. In this manner they are carried down some miles before the
+    animal becomes exhausted with loss of blood, makes for the shore, and
+    lies on the beach, where they dispatch it and cut it up. The price of
+    a sea lion among the natives is one slave and an assortment of other
+    articles. Mr. Keith bought the flesh of one of these animals, and we
+    had some roasted; it resembles bear's meat. The hair is like that of a
+    horse, in summer of a chestnut colour. The natives, and also the
+    Russians, are particularly fond of marine animals, such as whales,
+    &amp;c.; they drink the oil like milk."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Another notable water beast of the British Columbia coast was the sea
+    otter (<i>Enhydris</i>), described on p. <a href="#p305">305</a>. Such an immense value was set
+    on its fur that it is now nearly extinct within British limits.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The huge chocolate-coloured bear of the Yukon valley has already been
+    mentioned; also the very large, blackish-brown wild dog (<i>Canis
+    pambasileus</i>), which from one or two passages in the writings of
+    Canadian pioneers may also be found as far south as the British
+    Columbian Rocky Mountains. In the Yukon country the elk (which was
+    formerly very common in British Columbia) grows to gigantic
+    proportions with longer and larger antlers than elsewhere. In the
+    forested mountains of British Columbia (as well as farther north) are
+    the wood bison, the white mountain goat, grizzly bears, black bears,
+    two kinds of lynx, the wapiti red deer, and the large bighorn sheep.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These (<i>Ovis montana</i>) sheep are of a grey or leaden colour; the rump
+    and the inner side of the legs are white; the hoofs black, about one
+    inch long. "The hair is rather soft, and at the roots is mixed with
+    exceedingly fine white wool, which seems to grow only in certain
+    patches. The neck is relatively much thicker than that of other
+    animals of the same size; the legs and hoofs are also strongly built,
+    like the neck." The horns of the female are comparatively small,
+    flat, and have only a small bend backward; they are of a
+    dirty-yellowish white, marked with closely connected annulations to
+    the very tip. The legs are brown, as are also the ends of the hairs
+    about the neck; the hoofs are black. "A ewe will weigh about 100 lb.
+    when in full flesh, with only the entrails taken out. The head bears
+    every resemblance to that of our European sheep." The colour of the
+    males is nearly the same as that of the females, only rather browner;
+    they are much larger and more strongly built, with a pair of enormous
+    horns, which incline backward. As they grow they bend downward, and in
+    the course of time form a complete curve and project forward. At the
+    root the horns are nearly three inches square, the flat sides
+    opposite; they are marked with closely connected ridges and end in a
+    tapering flat point.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the horns grow to a great length, forming a complete curve, the
+    tips project on both sides of the head so as to prevent the ram from
+    feeding. This, with their great weight, causes the sheep to dwindle to
+    a mere skeleton and die. The bighorn sheep feed much in the caverns of
+    the Rocky Mountains, eating a kind of moss and grass growing on the
+    floors of these caves, and also a peculiar soft, sweet-tasting "clay",
+    of which the natives also are fond.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The southern part of British Columbia contains the mule deer of
+    western North America (<i>Mazama macrotis</i>), and a very strange rodent,
+    the sewellel or mountain beaver (<i>Haplodon</i>), a creature distantly
+    allied to squirrels, marmots, and beavers, but restricted in its
+    distribution to a few parts of California, Oregon, and British
+    Columbia. Amongst the birds noteworthy in the landscape are the
+    white-headed sea eagles and Californian condors (<i>Pseudogryphus
+    californianus</i>). Humming-birds range through British Columbia and
+    Vancouver Island between mid-April and October.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the regions about the upper Kootenay River (Eastern British
+    Columbia), before the railway was constructed, there were wild horses,
+    descended, no doubt, from those which had escaped from the Spaniards
+    in New Mexico and California. They went in large herds, and in the
+    winter when the snow was deep the natives would try to catch them by
+    running them down with relays of fresh horses, or driving them up the
+    mountains into the deepest snow or some narrow pass. A noose would
+    then be thrown about the exhausted animal, which would be instantly
+    mounted by an Indian and broken immediately to the saddle. Some of
+    these wild horses were exceedingly swift, well-proportioned, and
+    handsome in shape, but they seldom proved as docile as those born in
+    captivity. When in a wild condition they would snort so loudly through
+    the nostrils on descrying an enemy that they could be heard at a
+    distance of five hundred yards.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba&mdash;the MIDDLE
+    WEST&mdash;represent mainly the great prairie region of the Canadian
+    Dominion. Nearly all the streams here flow from the eastern side of
+    the Rocky Mountains and direct their course to the basin of Lake
+    Winnipeg and to Hudson's Bay. A few turn south-west to the Missouri
+    and Mississippi. The landscapes here remind one more of the middle
+    part of the United States. The climate is severe in winter but very
+    warm and dry in summer. In the extreme south, within the basin of the
+    upper Missouri, the "prickly pear" (<i>Opuntia</i>) cactus grows in
+    sheltered places, and suggests affinities with distant Colorado and
+    California.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These great plains and river courses of the middle West were, until
+    about fifty years ago, one of the world's great natural parks or
+    zoological gardens. Large numbers of wapiti deer, of the smaller
+    Virginian deer,<a name="6-4"></a><a href="#note-6-4"><small>[4]</small></a> and of the <a name="p139"></a>prongbuck "antelope"<a name="6-5"></a> <a href="#note-6-5"><small>[5]</small></a> thronged the
+    grassy flats, and elk browsed on the foliage of the thickets along the
+    river banks. Grizzly bears and black bears,<a name="6-6"></a><a href="#note-6-6"><small>[6]</small></a> large grey wolves, the
+    small coyote wolf, the pretty little kit fox and large red fox preyed
+    on these herbivores, as did also pumas and lynxes. Marmots and prairie
+    hares (<i>Lepus campestris</i>)&mdash;often called rabbits by the pioneers, who
+    also named the marmots "wood-chucks"&mdash;frolicked in the herbage, and
+    formed the principal prey of the numerous rattlesnakes. By the shores
+    of streams and lakes stood rows of stately cranes: the whooping crane,
+    of large size, pure white, with black quill feathers, the crown of the
+    head crimson scarlet and the long legs black; and the purple-brown
+    crane, somewhat smaller in size. On hot, calm days in the region of
+    Lake Winnipeg the cranes soar to an amazing height, flying in circles,
+    till by degrees they are almost out of sight. Yet their loud note
+    sounds so distinct and near that the spectator might fancy they were
+    close to him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The air at this season is full of great birds&mdash;eagles, buzzards,
+    hawks, and falcons&mdash;soaring in circles to look out for prey among the
+    flocks of wild swans, white geese, bernicle geese and brent geese,
+    duck and teal, which cover the backwaters and the marshes and shallow
+    lagoons. Turkey buzzards, coming up from the south, act as scavengers
+    during the summer months. Immense flocks of passenger pigeons,
+    buntings, grosbeaks, attack the ripening fruits and the wild rice of
+    the swamps. Grouse in uncountable numbers inhabit the drier tablelands
+    and open moors.<a name="6-7"></a><a href="#note-6-7"><small>[7]</small></a>
+</p>
+<a name="image-0007"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc07.jpg" width="281" height="450"
+alt="Indians Lying in Wait for Moose">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>INDIANS LYING IN WAIT FOR MOOSE</h5>
+<p>
+    But&mdash;a hundred years ago and more&mdash;the dominant features in the
+    fauna of the Middle West was the bison. Between the Athabaska and
+    Saskatchewan Rivers on the north, the Rocky Mountains on the west, and
+    Lake Superior on the east the bison passed backwards and forwards over
+    the great plains and prairies in millions, when white explorers first
+    penetrated these lands. They moved in herds which concealed the ground
+    from sight for miles. Here are some word pictures selected from the
+    writings of the pioneers between 1770 and 1810:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The buffaloes chiefly delight in wide open plains, which in those
+    parts produce very long coarse grass, or rather a kind of small flags
+    and rushes, upon which they feed; but when pursued they always take to
+    the woods. They are of such an amazing strength, that when they fly
+    through the woods from a pursuer, they frequently brush down trees as
+    thick as a man's arm; and be the snow ever so deep, such is their
+    strength and agility, that they are enabled to plunge through it
+    faster than the swiftest Indian can run in snowshoes. To this I have
+    been an eyewitness many times, and once had the vanity to think that I
+    could have kept pace with them; but though I was at that time
+    celebrated for being particularly fleet of foot in snowshoes, I soon
+    found that I was no match for the buffaloes, notwithstanding they were
+    then plunging through such deep snow, that their bellies made a
+    trench in it as large as if many sacks had been hauled through it. Of
+    all the large beasts in those parts the buffalo is easiest to kill,
+    and the moose are the most difficult; neither are the (red) deer very
+    easy to come at, except in windy weather: indeed it requires much
+    practice and a great deal of patience to slay any of them, as they
+    will by no means suffer a direct approach, unless the hunter be
+    entirely sheltered by woods or willows.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The flesh of the buffalo is exceedingly good eating, and so entirely
+    free from any disagreeable smell or taste, that it resembles beef as
+    nearly as possible."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The spots of wood along the Park River are ravaged by buffaloes
+    (bison); none but the large trees are standing, the bark of which is
+    rubbed perfectly smooth, and heaps of hair and wool lie at the bottom
+    of the trees ... and even the grass is not permitted to grow.... The
+    ground is trampled more by these cattle than about the gate of a
+    farmyard."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The Kris informed me they had seen a calf as white as snow in a herd
+    of buffalo. White buffalo are very scarce. They are of inestimable
+    value among the nations of the Missouri.... There were also some of a
+    dirty-grey colour, but these are very rare."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I brought home two buffalo calves alive; they no sooner lost sight of
+    the herd than they followed my horse like dogs, directly into the
+    fort. On chasing a herd at this season the calves follow it until they
+    are fatigued, when they throw themselves down in high grass and lie
+    still, hiding their heads if possible. But seeing only a man and his
+    horse they remain quiet and allow themselves to be taken. Having been
+    a little handled, they follow like dogs."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the spring, when the ice melted, innumerable buffaloes were killed
+    through attempting to cross the rivers on the melting ice. They would
+    drift by an observer (such as Alexander Henry, jun.) in entire herds
+    of drowned corpses. Vast numbers perished. They formed one continuous
+    line on the current for two days and two nights.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "By this time the river was crowded with them, swimming across,
+    bellowing and grunting terribly. The bulls really looked fierce; all
+    had their tails up, and each appeared eager to land first. The scene
+    would have struck terror to one unaccustomed to such innumerable
+    herds. From out in the plains, as far as the eye could reach, to the
+    middle of the river, they were rushing toward us, and soon began to
+    land about ten yards off. I shot one dead on the spot, my ball having
+    broken his neck; my hunter and guide only wounded theirs. This
+    discharge suddenly halted those on the south side, and turned those
+    that were still in the water."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the autumn:&mdash;"Plains burned in every direction and blind buffalo
+    seen every moment wandering about. The poor beasts have all the hair
+    singed off; even the skin in many places is shrivelled up and terribly
+    burned, and their eyes are swollen and closed fast. It was really
+    pitiful to see them staggering about, sometimes running afoul of a
+    large stone, at other times tumbling down hill and falling into creeks
+    not yet frozen over. In one spot we found a whole herd lying dead."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Throughout British North America, from the Yukon to Newfoundland, and
+    from Labrador to Vancouver's Island, the rivers and freshwater lakes
+    swarm with fish, and fish that in most cases is exceedingly good to
+    eat. Salmon are most strikingly abundant in the rivers of British
+    Columbia and Newfoundland, but they also ascend most of the rivers
+    flowing into the Atlantic and Hudson's Bay. In the great lakes of
+    Canada and of the middle west there are trout and white fish
+    (<i>Coregonus</i>), pike, bass, chub, barbel, and five species of sturgeon.
+    In the rivers and lakes of the far north-west is found the blackfish
+    (<i>Dallia</i>).
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hearne writes of Lake Athabasca that it swarms with fish, such as
+    pike, trout, perch, barbel, and other kinds not easily identified.
+    Apparently there is also a form of gar-pike found here (see p. <a href="#p74">74</a>);
+    this is described as having scales of a very large and stiff kind, and
+    being a beautiful bright silver in colour. The size of these gar-pike
+    range from two feet to four feet in length. Their flesh was delicately
+    white and soft, but so foul and rank in taste that even the Indians
+    would not eat it. The trout in Lake Athabaska seem to have been
+    enormous, weighing from 35 to 40 pounds, while pike were of about the
+    same weight.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Amerindian tribes and the early European explorers lived mainly on
+    fish, which was a palatable and easily obtained food. Yet it must be
+    admitted that they had a splendid array of large and small game from
+    which to take their toll.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nor was the whole Dominion, from west to east and up to the Arctic
+    zone, wanting in wild vegetable produce fit for man's consumption. The
+    sugar maple (<i>Acer saccharinum</i>) and its ally the <i>Negundo</i> maple
+    provided a delicious syrup; the bark of certain poplars and the bast
+    of the sugar pine were chewed for their well-flavoured sweetness; the
+    wild rice of the marshes will be further described in the next
+    chapter. The wild fruits included delicious strawberries, cherries,
+    gooseberries, currants, black currants, grapes (in the south only),
+    blackberries of many kinds, whortleberries, cranberries, pears of the
+    service tree (<i>Pyrus canadensis</i><a name="6-8"></a><a href="#note-6-8"><small>[8]</small></a>), and raspberries of various
+    types&mdash;red, yellow, and black. Southern Canada and Nova Scotia
+    contained various nut trees of the walnut order (hickories,
+    butter-nuts, &amp;c.), and hazel nuts were found everywhere except in the
+    north.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We have left undescribed what is still politically the most important
+    part of the whole of British North America&mdash;UPPER and LOWER CANADA.
+    These regions lie within the basin of the great St. Lawrence River,
+    beyond all doubt the most important waterway of North America, more
+    important even than the Mississippi. The main origin of the St.
+    Lawrence in the west is Lake Superior, the largest sea of fresh water
+    in the world, which is connected with Lake Nipigon on the north. The
+    waters of Lake Superior are carried over the Sault Ste. Marie rapids
+    into Lake Huron and find a huge backwater in Lake Michigan.<a name="6-9"></a><a href="#note-6-9"><small>[9]</small></a> Out of
+    Lake Huron again they flow past Detroit into Lake Erie. From Duluth,
+    at the westernmost extremity of Lake Superior, to Buffalo, on the
+    easternmost point of Lake Erie, including all Lake Michigan and Lake
+    Huron, with its bays and channels, a steamer can pass with just the
+    one difficulty (easily surmounted) of the rapids at Sault Ste. Marie
+    between Lake Superior and Lake Huron. But after you have left Lake
+    Erie on the east you find yourself in the Niagara River, which at the
+    Niagara Falls plunges several hundred feet downwards into Lake
+    Ontario. From Lake Ontario to the sea along the St. Lawrence there is
+    uninterrupted navigation, though there are rapids that require careful
+    steering both with steamers and boats. Quebec marks the place where
+    the St. Lawrence River suddenly broadens from a river into a tidal
+    gulf of brackish or salt water. Ocean steamers from all over the world
+    can come (except during the height of the winter, when the water
+    freezes) to Quebec. But for the ice in wintertime Quebec would be
+    <i>the</i> great sea-port of eastern Canada.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If pitiless rock is commonly understood by an 'iron-bound shore',
+    then the coasts of the River St. Lawrence along the northern side of
+    the Gulf may truly be so styled, as nothing scarcely is to be seen
+    for hundreds of leagues but bare rocky mountains, capes and cliffs in
+    various shapes and figures, some of which are dotted with a few spruce
+    firs, while others present their bald pates deprived of covering by
+    the unmerciful hand of time." (James M'Kenzie).
+</p>
+<p>
+    The winters of the Quebec province are extremely cold, but the summer
+    and autumn are warm and sunny. The best winter climate, possibly, in
+    all Canada (though not as good as that of Vancouver Island, British
+    Columbia) is to be found in the small peninsula region, on the shores
+    of Lakes Erie and Huron, between Toronto and Detroit. This is the
+    district which the Jesuit missionaries described as "an earthly
+    paradise" even during the winter-time.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The following extracts, mostly from the journals of Alex. Henry, jun.,
+    give a good idea of the difference in climate and temperature between
+    the western and the central parts of the Canadian Dominion.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The late spring of northern Canada (Lake Nipigon, 50° N. lat.):&mdash;About
+    May 15, the tops of the poplars begin to appear green, with fresh
+    buds; the hills are changing their hue from a dry straw colour to a
+    delightful verdure, and fragrant odours greet us.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Early in March, 1800, in the Assiniboin country (Manitoba, about 29°
+    N. lat.) the snow was entirely gone, for this winter had been an
+    abnormally mild one for central Canada. The birds soon realized the
+    openness of the season, for, on the 7th of March, turkey-buzzards
+    began to arrive from the south, and cormorants, ducks, swans, and
+    other spring birds; indeed, by the 24th of March not only had the snow
+    quite melted, but the meadows had grown so dry with the hot sun that
+    some accidents set them on fire. By April the 11th the weather had
+    become excessively hot, and immense flocks of the traveller-pigeon
+    (<i>Ectopistes</i>) flew northwards over the country."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In somewhat similar latitudes (50°) the spring bursts on the Pacific
+    coast region of British Columbia towards the end of February. "The
+    tall raspberry bushes were in blossom with a beautiful red flower,
+    which appeared more forward than the leaf (<i>Rubus spectabilis</i>). The
+    elder had sprouts an inch long, the alder was also beginning to
+    sprout, and willows were budding."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Although nowhere in Upper and Lower Canada (or in the maritime
+    provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia) are the forests so
+    splendid as in parts of British Columbia, yet nevertheless when this
+    region was first discovered the magnificence of its woodlands greatly
+    impressed even the explorers of the sixteenth and seventeenth
+    centuries, who were not as much given to praise of landscape beauty as
+    are we of later times. These Canadian forests include oaks, elms,
+    pines and firs, chestnuts and beeches, birch trees and sycamores,
+    maples and poplars, willows, alders, and hazelnuts (these last
+    sometimes growing into tall trees with thick trunks). The trees and
+    low-growing plants are partly like those of the north-eastern United
+    States, and partly resemble those of northern and central Europe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nowadays, owing to two centuries of incessant killing, the beasts and
+    birds of Upper and Lower Canada are not nearly so abundant as they
+    were a hundred years ago. When Canada proper was first discovered, the
+    wapiti red deer was still found in the basin of the St. Lawrence; it
+    has long since been extinct. There are, however, still lingering,
+    reindeer in the north, and elk in the forests of the east. There are
+    also Virginian deer (<i>Mazama</i>), but there is no bison (and, so far as
+    we know, never has been). There is no prongbuck, and many other
+    creatures characteristic of the United States and British Columbia are
+    not found in Upper and Lower Canada or in the maritime provinces. The
+    tree porcupine (<i>Erethizon dorsatus</i>), which the Canadians call
+    "Urson", or "Little Bear" is found still in the well-wooded regions
+    of eastern and southern Canada, as well as in British Columbia and
+    Alaska. In southern Canada there is the wood hare (<i>Lepus
+    sylvaticus</i>), and in the east and north the varying hare (<i>L.
+    americanus</i>) which turns white in winter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Perhaps the most characteristic animal of this region was and is still
+    the beaver, though the beaver is found all over British North America
+    as far north as the Saskatchewan province and westwards into British
+    Columbia.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is curious that the Indians of central Canada had a belief
+    (recorded by French and English pioneers) that occasionally in the
+    dusk, or at night, they have seen an enormously large beaver in the
+    water, so large that at first sight they have taken it for a moose.
+    Travellers who have related this have surmised that the Indian perhaps
+    saw a bear swimming, or a female moose, and in the dim light mistook
+    it for a giant beaver. But as we know that there were once giant
+    beavers (<i>Trogontherium</i>) as large as a bear, existing in England, it
+    is just possible there may have been a gigantic type of beaver
+    lingering in Canada before the opening up of the country by Europeans.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The beaver of North America is a very similar animal to the beaver
+    which used to exist wild in Wales, England, France, Germany, and
+    central Europe, and which still lingers in some parts of the Rhine
+    valley, Poland, Russia, and Siberia; but the American form is
+    classified as a separate species&mdash;<i>Castor canadensis</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Beavers were sometimes exterminated or diminished in numbers by an
+    epidemic disease, which, according to JAMES TANNER<a name="6-10"></a><a href="#note-6-10"><small>[10]</small></a>, destroyed vast
+    quantities of them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I found them dead or dying in the water, on the ice, and on the land;
+    sometimes I found one that, having cut a tree half down, had died at
+    its roots; sometimes one who had drawn a stick of timber halfway to
+    his lodge was lying dead by his burthen. Many of them which I opened
+    were red and bloody about the heart. Those in large rivers and running
+    water suffered less; almost all of those that lived in ponds and
+    stagnant water, died. Since that year the beaver have never been so
+    plentiful in the country of Red River and Hudson's Bay as they used
+    formerly to be."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The great attraction which Canada offered to France and England as a
+    field of adventure lay in its wonderful supply of furs. The beaver
+    skins were perhaps the commonest article of export, and were generally
+    regarded as a unit of value, such as a shilling might be. Other skins
+    were valued at "so many beavers," or the smaller ones at half or a
+    quarter of a beaver each. Besides beaver skins, which were used for
+    making hats, as well as capes and coats, the following furs and skins
+    were formerly, or are still, exported from Canada. "Buffalo"
+    robes&mdash;the carefully rubbed-down hides of the bison, rendered, by
+    shaving and rubbing, so thin and supple that they could be easily
+    folded; reindeer and musk-ox skins treated in the same way; marten or
+    sable skins; mink (a kind of polecat); ermine (the white winter dress
+    of the stoat); the fishing marten, or pekan; otter skins; black bear
+    and white polar bear skins; raccoon, muskwash, squirrel, suslik, and
+    marmot skins, and the soft white fur of the polar hare; the white
+    skins of the Arctic fox, the skins of the blue fox, black fox, and red
+    fox;<a name="6-11"></a><a href="#note-6-11"><small>[11]</small></a> wolf skins, and the furs of the wolverene or glutton, and of
+    the skunk&mdash;a handsome black-and-white creature of the weasel family,
+    which emits a most disgusting smell from a gland in its body. (The
+    skunk only comes from the south-central parts of the Canadian
+    Dominion). At one time a good many swans' skins were exported for the
+    sake of the down between the feathers, also the skins of grebes.
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<p>
+    A general fact that must not be forgotten in studying the adventures
+    of the pioneers of Canada was the means which Nature and savage man
+    had provided or invented for quickly traversing in all directions this
+    enormous area of nearly half North America. These means consisted (1)
+    of the distribution of salt and fresh water in such a way that by
+    means of ocean-sailing ships explorers coming from the east could
+    enter through straits and bays of the sea into the heart of Canada;
+    and (2) the facility, on quitting the seashore, of passing up
+    navigable rivers in boats or canoes into big lakes, and from these
+    lakes into other rivers leading to other lakes. Moreover, the
+    different river systems approached so closely to one another that even
+    the Amerindians and the Eskimo, long before the white man, had
+    realized that they had only to pick up their light canoes and carry
+    them a few miles, to launch them on fresh waters which might provide
+    hundreds or even thousands of miles of continuous travel. These are
+    the celebrated "portages" of Canadian history, from the French word
+    <i>porter</i>, to carry, transport. Sometimes the portages were made still
+    easier for loaded canoes by a road being cleared through the scrub and
+    over the rocks, and wooden rollers placed across it. Strong men could
+    then easily haul a loaded canoe over these wooden rollers until it
+    could be launched again in the water. Often these portages were made
+    to circumvent dangerous rapids or waterfalls. The Indians and the
+    French Canadians soon learnt how to steer canoes down rushes of
+    water&mdash;rapids&mdash;which we should think very dangerous on an English
+    river; but of course many of the rivers were obstructed <a name="p150"></a>at intervals
+    by descents of water which no canoe could traverse up or down, and in
+    these cases a path was cut from one smooth part of the river to
+    another, and the canoe carried or hauled overland.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In this way the great French and British explorers found it possible
+    to travel by water from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean across a
+    width of land of something like 2500 miles. The only serious walking
+    that had to be done was the crossing somewhere or other of the Rocky
+    Mountains, where the streams, of course, were far too precipitate in
+    descent to be navigable. In the hot, dusty plains of Assiniboia and
+    the upper Missouri region the Amerindians had introduced horses,
+    obtained indirectly from Spanish Mexico, and these were of great
+    service to the white pioneers, especially in their pursuit of the
+    bison.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So much for the summer season, when the rivers were full and
+    overflowing, and the ground consisted of bare rock, sand, or soil
+    covered with vegetation; the abundance of navigable streams and the
+    suitability of the country to horses rendered very little walking
+    necessary for those who wished to traverse the Canadian Dominion from
+    end to end.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the winter changed these conditions, the rivers became coated with
+    thick ice, and the ground was covered, except in steep places, with an
+    unvarying mantle of snow. Yet transport became just as easy as in the
+    summertime, though perhaps a trifle more fatiguing. Men and women put
+    on snowshoes shaped like tennis rackets, and flew over the hard snow
+    quicker than a canoe could travel, dragging after them small sledges
+    on which their luggage was packed; or, if they had not much luggage,
+    carrying it slung round the shoulders and scurrying away on their
+    snowshoes even swifter for the weight they carried; or they travelled
+    over the smooth ice of the rivers and lakes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Winter travellers, however, were sometimes troubled with a disorder
+    known as the snowshoe evil. This arose from the placing of an unusual
+    strain on the tendons of the leg, occasioned by the weight of the
+    snowshoe. It often resulted in severe inflammation of the lower leg.
+    The local remedy was a drastic one: it was to place a piece of lighted
+    touchwood on the most inflamed part, and to leave it there till the
+    flesh was burnt to the nerve!
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the north and the regions round Hudson's Bay, and also in the far
+    west&mdash;British Columbia and Alaska&mdash;there were dogs, more or less of
+    the Eskimo breed, trained by Eskimo or by Amerindians to drag the
+    sledges. In the months of December and January it is true that the
+    daylight in Arctic Canada (north of Lake Athapaska) became so short
+    that the sun at its greatest altitude only appeared for two or three
+    hours a short distance above the horizon. But there were
+    compensations. The brilliancy of the Aurora Borealis, even without the
+    assistance of the moon and the stars, made some amends for that
+    deficiency, for it was frequently so light all night that travellers
+    could see to read a very small print (Samuel Hearne). The importance
+    of these "Northern lights" must not be overlooked in forming an
+    opinion on the habitability of the far north in the "dark" winter
+    months. The display was frequent and brilliant.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Athapaskan Indians called this phenomenon <i>Edthin</i>, that is to
+    say, "reindeer". When the Aurora Borealis was particularly bright in
+    the sky they would say that deer were plentiful in that part of the
+    heavens. Their fancy in this respect was not quite so silly as one
+    might think. They had learnt from experience that the Aurora Borealis
+    was in some way connected with electricity, and experience had equally
+    shown them that the skin of the reindeer, if briskly stroked by the
+    hand on a dark night, would emit as many electric sparks as the back
+    of a cat. On the other hand, the Amerindians in the southern and more
+    temperate regions thought the Aurora Borealis was a vast concourse of
+    "spirits of the happy day" dancing in the clouds.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Thus there were no climatic reasons why, both in summer and in winter,
+    immense distances should not be quickly covered in Canada between the
+    Rocky Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean. This is how a mere hundred of
+    white pioneers opened up Canada to the knowledge of the civilized
+    world far quicker than the same area could have been discovered in
+    Africa or Asia. Sometimes, for about a month, between the melting of
+    the snow and ice and the steady flowing of the rivers in the late
+    spring, or between the uncertain autumn of November and the confirmed
+    winter of December, there might be an interval of a few weeks in which
+    journeys had to be made on foot under conditions of great hardship,
+    through mud, swamp, and over sharp stones or slippery rocks.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The plains are covered with water from the melting of the snow so
+    suddenly, and our men suffer much, as they are continually on the
+    march, looking after Indians in every creek and little river. The
+    water is commonly knee deep, in some places up to the middle, and in
+    the morning is usually covered with ice, which makes it tedious and
+    even dangerous travelling. Some of our men lose the use of their legs
+    while still in the prime of life", wrote one eighteenth-century
+    pioneer, in the Canadian spring.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Severe as were the winter conditions of climate, the explorers were
+    just as willing to travel through the winter as the summer, because in
+    the winter they were spared the awful plague of mosquitoes and midges
+    which still renders summer and early-autumn travel throughout the
+    whole of Canada, from the United States borders on the south to the
+    Arctic Ocean on the north, a severe trial, and even an unbearable
+    degree of physical suffering.
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="note-6-1"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#6-1"><u>1</u></a> The first Frenchmen visiting North America, and seeing
+    the caribou without their horns, thought they were a kind of wild ass.
+    The reindeer of Newfoundland is a sub-species peculiar to this
+    island.
+</p>
+<a name="note-6-2"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#6-2"><u>2</u></a> <i>Homarus americanus</i>. The lobster of Newfoundland and the
+    coasts of North-east America is closely related to the common lobster
+    of British waters. These true lobsters resemble the freshwater
+    crayfish in having their foremost pair of legs modified into large,
+    unequal-sized claws. The European rock-lobster of the Mediterranean
+    and French coasts (the <i>langouste</i> of the French) has no large claws.
+</p>
+<a name="note-6-3"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#6-3"><u>3</u></a> The musk ox, which is not an ox, but a creature about
+    midway in structure and affinities between cattle on the one hand and
+    sheep and goats on the other, is a large beast comparatively, being
+    the size of a small ox, but appearing very much larger than it is on
+    account of the extremely thick coat of hair and wool. Both sexes have
+    horns, and the horns, after meeting in the middle and making more or
+    less of a boss over the forehead, droop down at the sides of the
+    cheeks and then turn up with sharp points. The musk ox once ranged
+    right across the northern world, from England and Scandinavia, through
+    Germany, Russia, and Siberia, to Alaska and North America. Many
+    thousands of years ago, during one of the Glacial periods, it
+    inhabited southern England. At the present day it is extinct
+    everywhere, excepting in the eastern parts of Arctic America, not
+    going west of the Mackenzie River nor south of Labrador. It is also
+    found in Greenland.
+</p>
+<a name="note-6-4"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#6-4"><u>4</u></a> <i>Mazama americana</i>, similar to, but quite distinct from,
+    the larger mule deer of British Columbia.
+</p>
+<a name="note-6-5"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#6-5"><u>5</u></a> The prongbuck (<i>Antilocapra americana</i>) is not a true
+    antelope, though in outward appearance it resembles a large gazelle.
+    It was called "cabri" by the French Canadians.
+</p>
+<a name="note-6-6"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#6-6"><u>6</u></a> "Bears make prodigious ravages in the brush and willows;
+    the plum trees, and every tree that bears fruit share the same fate.
+    The tops of the oaks are also very roughly handled, broken, and torn
+    down, to get the acorns. The havoc they commit is astonishing...."
+    &mdash;Alex. Henry, jun.
+</p>
+<a name="note-6-7"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#6-7"><u>7</u></a> Nowhere in the world are there so many kinds of grouse as
+    in North America. In the more northern regions are several species of
+    ptarmigan or snow partridges (<i>Lagopus</i>), which turn white in winter,
+    and the spruce partridges (<i>Canachites</i>); in the more genial climate
+    of the great plains of eastern Canada and in the Far West the ruffled
+    grouse and hazel grouse (<i>Bonasa</i>), the sage cocks (<i>Centrocercus</i>),
+    the prairie hens (<i>Tympanuchus</i>), and the blue or pine grouse
+    (<i>Dendrapagus</i>).<br><br>
+
+    "To snare grouse requires no other process than making a few little
+    hedges across a creek, or a few short hedges projecting at right
+    angles from the side of an island of willows, which those birds are
+    found to frequent. Several openings must be left in each hedge, to
+    admit the birds to pass through, and in each of them a snare must be
+    set; so that when the grouse are hopping along the edge of the willows
+    to feed, which is their usual custom, some of them soon get into the
+    snares, where they are confined till they are taken out. I have caught
+    from three to ten grouse in a day by this simple contrivance, which
+    requires no further attendance than going round them night and
+    morning" (Hearne).
+</p>
+<a name="note-6-8"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#6-8"><u>8</u></a> Sometimes called <i>Amelanchier canadensis</i>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-6-9"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#6-9"><u>9</u></a> The south shore of Lake Superior, the whole of Lake
+    Michigan, the west shore of Lake Huron, and the south coasts of Lake
+    Erie and Lake Ontario are within the territories of the United
+    States.
+</p>
+<a name="note-6-10"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#6-10"><u>10</u></a>  A remarkable eighteenth-century pioneer who joined the
+    Indians when a boy and lived as one of them.
+</p>
+<a name="note-6-11"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#6-11"><u>11</u></a> The blue fox is the Arctic fox (<i>Canis lagopus</i>) in its
+    summer dress; the black fox is a beautiful variety or sub-species of
+    the common fox (<i>C. vulpes</i>); so also is the red or "cross" fox. There
+    is also common throughout the Canadian Dominion the pretty little kit
+    fox (<i>Canis velox</i>).
+</p>
+<p class="return">[<a href="#contents">TABLE OF CONTENTS</a>]
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="2HCH0007"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER VII
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    The Amerindians and Eskimo: the Aborigines of British North America
+</h3>
+<p>
+    I have already attempted to describe in the first chapter the ancient
+    peopling of America from north-eastern Asia, but it might be useful if
+    I gave here some description of the Eskimo and Amerindian tribes of
+    the Canadian Dominion at the time of its gradual discovery by
+    Europeans, especially during the great explorations of the eighteenth
+    and early nineteenth centuries.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is evident that the ESKIMO&mdash;who are quite distinct from the
+    Amerindians in physical type, language, customs, and industries&mdash;have
+    been for thousands of years the only inhabitants of Arctic America.
+    When the Norsemen came to the New World they seem to have met with
+    Eskimo as far south as New England, but in more recent times the
+    Eskimo have only been found inhabiting the extreme north and
+    north-east: in Greenland, on the Labrador coast, on Baffin's Land, and
+    along the Arctic coast of the North-American continent, between the
+    Coppermine River and the westernmost extremity of Alaska, as well as
+    on the opposite islands and promontories of Asia.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Their name for themselves as a people is usually "Innuit" (in
+    Greenland, "Karalit"). Eskimo is a corruption of <i>Eskimantsik</i>, a
+    northern Algonkin word meaning "eaters of raw flesh". Although their
+    geographical range extends over a distance of about three thousand
+    five hundred miles&mdash;from north-easternmost Asia to the east coast of
+    Greenland&mdash;the difference in their dialects is little more than that
+    between French and Italian; whereas the difference between the speech
+    of one Amerindian tribe and another&mdash;even where they belong to the
+    same language group&mdash;is very great&mdash;not less than that between German
+    and Latin, or English and French, or even between Russian and
+    Hindustani. This fact&mdash;of the widespread Eskimo language&mdash;makes some
+    authorities suppose that the presence of the Eskimo in Arctic America
+    cannot be such a very ancient event as, from other evidence, one might
+    believe. Perhaps the bold travelling habits of the Eskimo&mdash;which makes
+    them range over vast distances of ice and snow when hunting seals,
+    walruses, whales, musk ox, or reindeer&mdash;enables them to keep in touch
+    with their far-away relations.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The canoes or <i>kayaks</i> in which they travel (first described by the
+    Norsemen in the tenth century) are made out of the hide of the seal or
+    walrus. The leather is stretched over a framework constructed from
+    driftwood or whales' bones. There is a hole in the middle for the man
+    or woman to insert their legs. This hole they fill up with their
+    bodies. If the canoe capsizes, the Eskimo cannot fall out, but bobs up
+    immediately. He and the canoe are really "one-and-indivisible" when he
+    is navigating the seas and lakes, plying deftly a large paddle.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In regard to food they were certainly not particular or squeamish.
+    They loved best of all whales' blubber, or to drink the fishy-tasting
+    oil from bodies of whales, seals, or walruses. Besides the meat of
+    Polar bears and of any fur animals they could catch, or the musky beef
+    of the musk ox, they devoured eagerly sea birds' eggs, Iceland moss,
+    and even the parasitic insects of their own heads and bodies! Hearne
+    relates that they will eat with a relish whole handfuls of maggots
+    that have been produced in meat by the eggs of the bluebottle fly! On
+    the other hand, they held cannibalism in horror, whereas for two-two's
+    their Amerindian neighbours on the west and south would eat human
+    flesh without repugnance.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Eskimo, though occasionally tall, are as a rule stumpy and
+    thickset, with very small hands and feet, broad faces, and projecting
+    cheekbones, a narrow nose without the aquiline bridge of the
+    Amerindian, slanting narrow eyes, and long heads containing large
+    well-developed brains. In disposition the Eskimo are nearly always
+    merry, affectionate to one another, honest, and modest. Modern
+    travellers in the Arctic regions give them invariably a high
+    character; but Frobisher, Davis, and the explorers of the sixteenth
+    and seventeenth centuries accused them of treachery and an inclination
+    to steal. Iron in any shape or form they could hardly resist taking.
+    Moreover, if they are the same people as the Skraellings of the Norse
+    traditions they must have been of a fiercer disposition a thousand
+    years ago.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Amerindians who inhabited (more or less) the rest of the Canadian
+    Dominion, and the whole remainder of the New World, differed in
+    physical appearance from the Eskimo mainly in being taller and better
+    proportioned, with shorter and rounder heads, larger, fuller eyes, a
+    bigger nose, and a handsomer personal appearance. The skin colour, as
+    a rule, was darker and browner than the greyish- or pinkish-yellow of
+    the Eskimo.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The various human types that went to form the Amerindian race (beside
+    the Eskimo element in them) seem to have entered north-west America
+    from Asia, and first to have peopled the Pacific slopes of the Rocky
+    Mountains, after which they wandered farther and farther south till
+    they got into a warmer climate. Then they crossed the Rocky Mountains
+    and peopled the centre and east of what is now the United States. As
+    they pushed their way north up the valleys of the great rivers, they
+    no doubt killed, mingled with, or pushed back the Eskimo. At last
+    their northernmost extensions reached to the Mackenzie River, the
+    vicinity of Hudson's Bay, Labrador, and Newfoundland. But in all the
+    middle, west, and <a name="p156"></a>even east of Canada they seem to have been
+    <i>relatively recent arrivals</i>,<a name="7-1"></a><a href="#note-7-1"><small>[1]</small></a> not to have inhabited the country for
+    a great many centuries before the white man came, and all their
+    recorded and legendary movements in North America have been from the
+    south-west towards the north-east (after they had got across the Rocky
+    Mountains). The few cultivated plants they had, such as maize (Indian
+    corn), tobacco, and pumpkins, they brought with them or received from
+    the south.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The only domestic animal possessed by either Eskimo or Amerindian was
+    the dog. We are most of us by now familiar with the type of the Eskimo
+    dog&mdash;a large, wolf-like animal with prick ears and a bushy tail curled
+    over its back. In this carriage of the tail the Eskimo and most other
+    true dogs differ from wolves, with whom the tail droops between the
+    hind quarters. But there is a small wild American wolf&mdash;the
+    coyote&mdash;which carries its tail more upright, like that of the true
+    dog; and the coyote seems indeed an intermediate form between the wolf
+    and the original wild dog. Most of the domestic dogs of the
+    Amerindians<a name="7-2"></a><a href="#note-7-2"><small>[2]</small></a> (as distinguished from those of the Eskimo) seem to
+    have been derived from the coyote or small wolf of central North
+    America.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the Pacific coast there were other types of domestic dog,
+    resembling greatly breeds that are found in eastern Asia and the
+    Pacific islands. Some of these were naked, and others grew silky hair,
+    which was woven by the natives into cloth (see p. <a href="#p323">323</a>). The Eskimo dog
+    almost certainly has been derived from northern Asia, and is closely
+    related to the well-known Chinese breed&mdash;the chow dog&mdash;and the
+    domestic breeds of ancient Europe. Even the commonest type of house
+    dog in the Roman Empire was very much like an Eskimo or a chow in
+    appearance. There is a true wild dog, however, in the Yukon province
+    of the Canadian Dominion and in Alaska&mdash;<i>Canis pambasileus</i>&mdash;a dark,
+    blackish-brown in colour. This may have been a parent of the Eskimo
+    dog, but it is also doubtless closely allied to the original (extinct)
+    wild dog of northern Asia, from which the chow and many other breeds
+    are directly descended. The Eskimo never under ordinary circumstances
+    ate their dogs; on the other hand, the Amerindians were fond of dog's
+    flesh, and in some tribes simply bred dogs for the table.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Europeans first reached America all these Amerindian tribes, and
+    also the Eskimo, were still, for all practical purposes, in the Stone
+    Age. Those who lived in the north had discovered the use of copper and
+    had shaped for themselves knives and spear blades out of copper, but
+    not even this metal was in use to any great extent, and for the most
+    part they relied, down to the end of the eighteenth century, for their
+    implements and weapons, on polished and sharpened stones, on deer's
+    antlers, buffalo horns, sticks, sharp shells, beavers' incisor
+    teeth,<a name="7-3"></a><a href="#note-7-3"><small>[3]</small></a> the claws or spines of crustaceans, flints, and suchlike
+    substances&mdash;in short, they were leading the same life and using almost
+    exactly the same tools as the long-since-vanished hunter races of
+    Europe of five thousand to one hundred thousand years ago&mdash;the people
+    who pursued the mammoth, the bison, the Irish "elk", and the other
+    great beasts of prehistoric Europe. Indeed, North America represented
+    to some extent, as late as a hundred years ago, what Europe must have
+    looked like in the days of palæolithic Man.
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<p>
+    The AMERINDIANS of the Canadian Dominion (when the country first
+    became known to Europeans) belonged to the following groups and
+    tribes. The order of enumeration begins in the east and proceeds
+    westwards. I have already mentioned the peculiar <i>Beothiks</i> of
+    Newfoundland.<a name="7-4"></a><a href="#note-7-4"><small>[4]</small></a> In Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick,
+    and the Gaspé Peninsula there were the <i>Mikmak</i> Indians belonging to
+    the widespread ALGONKIN family or stock. West and south of the
+    Mikmaks, in New Brunswick and along the borders of New England, were
+    other tribes of the Algonkin group: the Etchemins, Abenakis,
+    Tarratines, Penobscots, <i>Mohikans</i>, and Adirondacks. North of these,
+    in the eastern part of the Quebec province, on either side of the Gulf
+    of St. Lawrence, were the <i>Montagnais</i>. This name, though it looks
+    like a French word meaning "mountaineers", was also spellt Montagnet,
+    and in various other ways, showing that it was originally a native
+    name, pronounced Montanyé. The Montagnais in various clans extended
+    northwards across Labrador until they touched the Eskimo, with whom
+    they constantly fought. The interior of Labrador was inhabited by
+    another Algonkin tribe, the <i>Naskwapi</i>, living in a state of rude
+    <a name="p159"></a>savagery. The <i>Algonkins</i> proper, whose tribe gave their name to the
+    whole stock because the French first became acquainted with them as a
+    type, dwelt in the vicinity of Montreal, Lake Ontario, and the valley
+    of the St. Lawrence. In upper Canada, about the great lakes and the
+    St. Lawrence valley, were the Chippeways, or <i>Ojibwés</i>, and the
+    Ottawas. West and north of Lake Michigan were the Miamis, the
+    Potawátomis, and the Fox Indians (the Saks or Sawkis). Between Lake
+    Winnipeg and Lake Superior were the <i>Cheyennes</i> (Shians); between
+    North and South Saskatchewan, the <i>Blackfeet</i> or Siksika Indians
+    (sections of which were also called Bloods, Paigans, Piegans, &amp;c).
+    North of Lake Winnipeg, as far as Lake Athabaska, and almost from the
+    Rocky Mountains to the shores of Hudson's Bay, were the widespread
+    tribe of the <i>Kris</i>, or <i>Knistino</i>.<a name="7-5"></a><a href="#note-7-5"><small>[5]</small></a> The Gros Ventres or Big
+    Bellies&mdash;properly called <i>Atsina</i>&mdash;inhabited the southern part of the
+    middle west, between the Saskatchewan and the Missouri basins; and the
+    Monsoni or Maskegon were found in eastern Rupert Land.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All the above-enumerated tribes, except the Beothik indigenes of
+    Newfoundland, belong to the great and widespread ALGONKIN group.
+    (Algonkin is a word derived from the "Algommequin" of Champlain.) In
+    the valley of the St. Lawrence the French first encountered those
+    Indians whom they called <i>Huron</i>. This was a French word meaning
+    "crested", because these people wore their hair in a great crest over
+    the top and back of the head, which reminded the French of the
+    appearance of a wild boar (<i>Hure</i>). The real name of the Hurons, who
+    dwelt at a later date between Lakes Huron, Erie, Ontario, and the
+    neighbourhood of Montreal, was <i>Waiandot</i> (Wyandot); but they went
+    under a variety of other names, according to the clans, such as the
+    Eries and the Atiwándoran or Neutral Nation. They were also called the
+    "Good" <a name="p160"></a>Iroquois, to distinguish them from the six other nations, the
+    IROQUOIS proper of the French Canadians, who signalized themselves by
+    fiendish and frightful warfare against the French and the various
+    tribes of Algonkin Indians. The Hurons and the rest of the six tribes
+    grouped under the name of IROQUOIS <a name="7-6"></a><a href="#note-7-6"><small>[6]</small></a> were of the same stock
+    originally, forming a separate group like that of the Algonkins,
+    though they are supposed to be related distantly to the Dakota or
+    Siou. Amongst the "Six Nations" or tribes banded together in warfare
+    and policy were the celebrated "Mohawks" who dwelt on the southern
+    borders of the St. Lawrence basin and near Lake Champlain. As the
+    others of the six nations (including the Senekas and Onondagas)
+    inhabited the eastern United States, well outside the limits of
+    Canada, they need not be referred to here.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Between the South Saskatchewan, the Rocky Mountains, and Lake
+    Superior, nearly outside the limits of the Canadian Dominion, was the
+    great DAKOTA, or Siou group,<a name="7-7"></a><a href="#note-7-7"><small>[7]</small></a> divided into the distinct tribe of
+    <i>Assiniboin</i> or "Stone" Indians (because they used hot stones in
+    cooking), the "Crows" or Absaroka, the Hidatsa or Minitari (also
+    called Big Bellies, like the quite distinct Atsina of the Algonkin
+    family), the Menómini (the most north-eastern amongst the Siouan
+    tribes, and the first met with by the British and French Canadians
+    south-west of Lake Superior), the Winnebagos on the southern borders
+    of Manitoba, the Yanktons or Yanktonnais, the "<i>Santi Siou</i>"
+    proper&mdash;generally calling themselves <i>Dakota</i> or Mdewakanton&mdash;and the
+    "Tétons" along the northern Dakota frontier and into the Rocky
+    Mountains&mdash;also known as <i>Blackfeet</i>, Sans Arcs ("without bows"),
+    "Two-kettles", "Brulés" or "Burnt" Indians, &amp;c.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Next must be mentioned the very important and widespread ATHAPASKAN or
+    Déné (Tinné) group, named after Lake Athapaska (or Athabaska), because
+    that sheet of water became a great rallying place for these northern
+    tribes. The Athapaskan group of Indians indeed represents the
+    "Northern Indians" of the Hudson's Bay Company's reports and
+    explorers. They drew a great distinction between the Northern Indians
+    (the Athapaskan tribes) and the Southern Indians, which included all
+    the other Amerindian groups dwelling to the south of the Athapaskan
+    domain. But although nowadays so much associated with the far north
+    and north-west of America, the Athabaskan group evidently came from a
+    region much farther south, and has been cut in half by other tribal
+    movements, wars, and migrations; for the Athapaskan family also
+    includes the Apaches and the Navaho of the south-western portions of
+    the United States and the adjoining territories of Mexico. The
+    northern and southern divisions of the Athapaskan group are separated
+    by something like twelve hundred miles. The following are the
+    principal tribes into which the Northern ATHAPASKAN group was divided
+    at the time of the first explorations of the north-west. There were
+    the <i>Chippewayan</i> Indians<a name="7-8"></a><a href="#note-7-8"><small>[8]</small></a> round about Lake Athapaska, and the
+    Caribou Eaters or Ethen-eldeli between Lake Athapaska and Reindeer
+    Lake. The "<i>Slaves</i>", or Slave Indians of the Great Slave Lake and the
+    upper Mackenzie River; the Beaver and Sarsi Indians (known also as the
+    Tsékehn), about the Peace River and the northern part of Alberta
+    province; and the <i>Yellow Knives</i>, or Totsan-ottine (so called from
+    their being found with light-coloured copper knives when first
+    discovered by Europeans), north-east of the Great Slave Lake and along
+    the Coppermine River: the <i>Dogribs</i> between the Great Slave Lake and
+    Great Bear Lake, perhaps (except in Alaska) the most northern
+    extension of the Amerindian type towards the Arctic regions. West of
+    the Dogribs dwelt&mdash;and still dwell&mdash;the interesting tribe of <i>Hare</i>
+    Indians, or Kawcho-Tinné. They extend northwards to the Anderson
+    River, on the verge of the Arctic Ocean. West of the lower Mackenzie
+    River, and stretching thence to the Porcupine or Yukon Rivers, are the
+    Squinting Indians ("Loucheux", or Kuchin), who in former times were
+    met with much farther to the south-east than at the present day.
+    Finally, there are the Nahani Indians, who have penetrated through the
+    Rocky Mountains to the Stikine River, reaching thus quite close to the
+    Pacific Ocean. This penetration northwards of groups of Athapaskan
+    Indians into districts inhabited for the most part by Amerindian
+    tribes differing widely in language and customs from all those <i>east</i>
+    of the Rocky Mountains, explains the way in which stories of the great
+    western sea&mdash;the Pacific&mdash;reached, by means of trading intercourse,
+    those Amerindian tribes of the middle-west and upper Canada, and so
+    stirred up the French and English explorers of the seventeenth and
+    eighteenth centuries to make the marvellous journeys which are
+    recounted in this book.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>West</i> of the Rocky Mountains, in British Columbia and Vancouver
+    Island (besides southern Alaska), the Amerindian tribes form the
+    N&#363;tka-Columbian group, which is markedly distinct from the
+    Amerindians <i>east</i> of the Rocky Mountains, from whom they differ
+    <i>widely</i> in language, type, and culture. They are divided into quite a
+    large number of small separate groups&mdash;the Wakashan or <i>N&#363;tkas</i> of
+    Vancouver Island and south-western British Columbia, the Shahaptian or
+    "Nez percés" Indians of the Columbia basin, and the Chin&#363;ks of
+    the lower Columbia River, the <i>Salishan</i> or "Flathead" group
+    (including the Atn&#257;s) of the Fraser and Thompson Rivers and central
+    British Columbia; and the <i>Haida</i> Indians of Queen Charlotte's Islands
+    and the north-west coast of British Columbia. It must be remembered
+    that these different groups are only based on the relationships of
+    their component tribes in language or dialect, and do not always imply
+    that the tribes belonging to them had the same customs and
+    dispositions; but they were generally able to communicate with one
+    another in speech, whereas if they met the Indians of another group
+    the language might be so totally different that they could only
+    communicate by means of signs.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0008"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc08.jpg" width="274" height="425"
+alt="An Amerindian Type of British Columbia">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>AN AMERINDIAN TYPE OF BRITISH COLUMBIA</h5>
+<p>
+    Sign and gesture language<a name="7-9"></a><a href="#note-7-9"><small>[9]</small></a> was extraordinarily developed amongst all
+    the Amerindian races from the Arctic Ocean to the Antarctic. Not only
+    that, but they were quick to understand the purpose of pictures. They
+    could draw maps in the sand to explain the geography of their country,
+    and Europeans could often make them understand what they required by
+    rough drawings. They themselves related many events by means of a
+    picture language&mdash;the beginning of hieroglyphics; and in the
+    south-eastern parts of Canada, as in the United States, these signs or
+    pictographs were recorded in bead-shell work&mdash;the celebrated "wampum".
+</p>
+<p>
+    All these tribes, of course, varied very much in personal appearance,
+    though not in disposition. The vanished <a name="p164"></a>Beothiks of Newfoundland are
+    described as having been a good-looking tall people, with large black
+    eyes and a skin so light, when washed free from dirt or paint, that
+    the Portuguese compared them to gipsies; and the writer of Fabian's
+    <i>Chronicle</i>, who saw two of them (brought back by Cabot) at Henry
+    VII's Court, in 1499, took them for Englishmen when they were dressed
+    in English clothes. It was these people&mdash;subsequently killed out by
+    the British settlers on Newfoundland&mdash;who originated the term "Red
+    Indians", or, in French, <i>Peaux Rouges</i>, because their skins, like
+    those of so many other Amerindians, were painted with red ochre.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Many of the British Columbian peoples made themselves artificially
+    ugly by flattening the sides of the head. To press the skull whilst it
+    was soft, they squeezed the heads of their children between boards;
+    others, such as the warlike tribes of the upper Missouri, had a
+    passion for submitting themselves to mutilation by the medicine man of
+    the clan, in order to please the sun god. Such would submit to large
+    strips being cut from the flesh of their shoulders, arms, or legs, or
+    having their cheeks slashed. The result, of course, was to leave their
+    limbs and features horribly scarred when they healed up. In some
+    tribes, however, a young man could not obtain&mdash;or retain&mdash;a wife
+    unless he had shown his bravery by submitting to this mutilation.
+    Women often cut off one or more joints of their fingers to show their
+    grief for the death of children.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In some tribes, especially of the far north-west and of the Rocky
+    Mountains, the personal habits of men and women, or of the women only,
+    were so filthy, and their dislike to bathing so pronounced, that they
+    became objects of loathing to white men; in other tribes personal
+    cleanliness was highly esteemed, especially on the seacoast of British
+    Columbia or along the banks of the great rivers. Usually the men were
+    better looking and better developed than the women&mdash;for one reason,
+    because they were better fed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here is a description by PETER GRANT&mdash;a pioneer of the North-West
+    Company&mdash;of the Ojibwé Indians dwelling near the east end of Lake
+    Superior at the beginning of the nineteenth century:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Their complexion is a whitish cast of copper colour, their hair
+    black, long, straight, and of a very strong texture. The young men
+    allow several locks of the hair to fall down over the face, ornamented
+    with ribbons, silver brooches, &amp;c. They gather up another lock from
+    behind the head into a small clump, and wrap it up with very thin
+    plates of silver, in which they fix the tail feathers of the eagle or
+    any other favourite bird with the wearing of which they have
+    distinguished themselves in war. They are very careful with their
+    hair, anointing it with bears' oil, which gives it a smooth and glossy
+    appearance. The teeth are of a beautiful ivory white, the cheeks
+    rather high and prominent, the eyes black and lively. Their
+    countenances are generally pleasant, and they might often be called
+    handsome. The ears are pierced in infancy, and the lobe is extended to
+    an unnatural size by suspending lead or any other heavy metal from the
+    outer rim, which in time brings them down near the shoulder. The nose
+    ornaments hang down half an inch, and nearly touch the upper lip.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The men are bold, manly, and graceful in their gait, always carrying
+    their bodies erect and easy. On the other hand, the women, by walking
+    with the toes of their feet turned inwards, have a disagreeable and
+    lame appearance. The men are specially fond of painting their faces
+    and bodies with vermilion, white and blue clay, charcoal or soot mixed
+    with a little grease or water. With this colour they daub the body,
+    legs, and thighs in bars and patches, and take the greatest pains
+    about painting the face, usually with red and black. Their skins are
+    generally tattooed <a name="p166"></a>with figures representing the sun, stars, eagles,
+    serpents, &amp;c, especially objects which have appeared to them in their
+    dreams. The women's faces are much less painted, usually a spot of red
+    on each cheek and a circle of red round the roots of the hair or
+    eyes."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here is a summary of what Alexander Henry, sen., wrote of the <i>Kri</i> or
+    <i>Knistino</i> Indians of Lake Athabaska about 1770:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The men in general tattoo their bodies and arms very much. The women
+    confine this ornamentation to the chin, having three perpendicular
+    lines from the middle of the chin to the lip, and one or more running
+    on each side, nearly parallel with the corner of the mouth. Their
+    dress consists of leather; that of the men is a pair of leggings,
+    reaching up to the hip and fastened to the girdle. Between the legs is
+    passed a strip of woollen stuff, but when this cannot be procured they
+    use a piece of dressed leather about nine inches broad and four feet
+    long, whose ends are drawn through the girdle and hang down before and
+    behind about a foot.... The shirt is of soft dressed leather, either
+    from the prong-buck or young red deer, close about the neck and
+    hanging to the middle of the thigh; the sleeves are of the same, loose
+    and open under the arms to the elbows, but thence to the wrist sewed
+    tight. The cap is commonly a piece of leather, or skin with the hair
+    on, shaped to fit the head, and tied under the chin; the top is
+    usually decorated with feathers or other ornament. Shoes are made of
+    buffalo (bison) hide, dressed in the hair, and mittens of the same.
+    Over the whole a buffalo robe is thrown, which serves as covering day
+    and night.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Such is their common dress, but on particular occasions they appear
+    to greater advantage, having their cap, shirt, leggings, and shoes
+    perfectly clean and white, trimmed with porcupine quills and other
+    ingenious work of their women, who are supposed to be the most skilful
+    hands in the country at decorations of this kind. The women's dress
+    consists of the same materials as the men's. Their leggings do not
+    reach above the knee, and are gathered below that joint; their shoes
+    always lack decoration. The shift or body garment reaches down to the
+    calf, where it is generally fringed and trimmed with quillwork; the
+    upper part is fastened over the shoulders by strips of leather; a flap
+    or cape hangs down about a foot before and behind, and is ornamented
+    with quillwork and fringe. This covering is quite loose, but tied
+    around the waist with a belt of stiff parchment fastened on the side,
+    where also some ornaments are suspended. The sleeves are detached from
+    the body garment; from the wrist to the elbow they are sewed, but
+    thence to the shoulder they are open underneath and drawn up to the
+    neck, where they are fastened across the breast and back.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Their ornaments are two or three coils of brass wire twisted around
+    the rim of each ear, in which incisions are made for that purpose;
+    blue beads, brass rings, quillwork, and fringe occasionally answer.
+    Vermilion (a red clay) is much used by the women to paint the face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Their hair is generally parted on the crown and fastened behind each
+    ear in large knots, from which are suspended bunches of blue beads or
+    other ingenious work of their own. The men adjust their hair in
+    various forms; some have it parted on top and tied in a tail on each
+    side, while others make one long <i>queue</i> which hangs down behind, and
+    around which is twisted a strip of otter skin or dressed buffalo
+    entrails. This tail is frequently increased in thickness and length by
+    adding false hair, but others allow it to flow loose naturally. Combs
+    are seldom used by the men, and they never smear the hair with grease,
+    but red earth is sometimes put upon it. White earth daubed over the
+    hair generally denotes mourning. The young men sometimes have a bunch
+    of hair on the crown, about the size of a small teacup, and nearly in
+    the shape of that vessel upside down, to which they fasten various
+    ornaments of feathers, quillwork, ermine tails, &amp;c. Red and white
+    earth and charcoal are much used in their toilets; with the former
+    they usually daub their robes and other garments, some red and others
+    white. The women comb their hair and use grease on it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Slave Indians (a tribe of the Athapaskan family) tattooed their
+    cheeks with charcoal inserted under the skin, also daubed their
+    bodies, robes, and garments profusely with red earth (generally
+    called, in the text of travellers, vermilion), but they had another
+    favourite pigment, procured from the regions on the west of the Rocky
+    Mountains, some kind of graphite, like the lead of lead pencils. With
+    this they marked their faces in black lead after red earth has been
+    applied, and thus gave themselves a ghastly and savage appearance.
+    Their dress consists of a leather shirt trimmed with human hair and
+    porcupine-quill work, and leggings of leather. Their shoes and caps
+    were made of bison leather, with the hair outside. Their necklaces
+    were strings of grizzly-bear claws, and a "buffalo" robe was thrown
+    over all occasionally. Some of them occasionally had quite light
+    skins&mdash;when free of dirt or paint&mdash;and grey eyes, and their hair,
+    instead of being black, was greyish-brown. These last features (grey
+    eyes and brown hair) characterized many individuals among the northern
+    British-Columbian tribes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Naskwapis of inland Labrador&mdash;allied in speech to the Kris and the
+    Montagnais, but in blood to the Eskimo&mdash;are described as above the
+    middle size in height, slender, and long-legged, their cheeks being
+    very prominent, eyes black, nose rather flat, mouth large, lips thick,
+    teeth white, hair rough and black, and the complexion a yellowish
+    "frog" colour. They were dressed in elaborate and warm garments made
+    of reindeer skin. The ordinary covering for the head of the men was
+    the skin of a bear's head. "Thus accoutred, with the addition of a
+    bow and quiver, a stone axe, and a bone knife, a Naskwapi man
+    possessed no small degree of pride and self-importance" (James
+    M'Kenzie).
+</p>
+<p>
+    The handsomest tribes of Amerindians encountered by the Canadian
+    pioneers seem to have been the Ojibwés of Lake Superior, the Iroquois
+    south of the St. Lawrence, and the Mandans of the upper Missouri.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Until well on in the nineteenth century none of the Canadian
+    Amerindians were particular about wearing clothes if the weather was
+    hot. The men, especially, were either quite oblivious of what was
+    seemly in clothing (except perhaps the Iroquois) or thought it
+    necessary to go naked into battle, or to remove all clothing before
+    taking part in religious ceremonies.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is commonly supposed that the Red Man was a rather glum person,
+    seldom seen to smile and averse to showing any emotion. That is not
+    the impression one derives from the many pen portraits of Amerindians
+    in the journals of the great pioneers. Here, on the contrary, you see
+    the natives laughing, smiling, kissing eagerly their wives and
+    children after an absence, displaying exuberant and cordial friendship
+    towards the white man who treated them well, having love quarrels and
+    fits of raging jealousy, moods of deep remorse after a fight, touching
+    devotion to their comrades or chiefs, and above all to their children.
+    They are most emotional, indeed, and, apart from this chapter you will
+    find frequent descriptions of how they wept at times over the
+    remembrance of their dead relations and friends.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hearne remarked, in 1772, that when two parties of Athapaska Indians
+    met, the ceremonies which passed between them were very formal. They
+    would advance within twenty or thirty yards of each other, make a full
+    halt, and then sit or lie down on the ground, not speaking for some
+    minutes. At length one of them, generally an elderly man, broke
+    silence by acquainting the other party with every misfortune that had
+    befallen him and his companions from the last time they had seen or
+    heard of each other, including all deaths and other calamities which
+    had happened to any other Indians during the same period. When he
+    finished, another orator, belonging to the other party, related in
+    like manner all the bad news that had come to <i>his</i> knowledge. If
+    these orations contained any news that in the least affected either
+    party, it would not be long before some of them began to sigh and sob,
+    and soon after to break out into a loud cry, which was generally
+    accompanied by most of the grown persons of both sexes; and sometimes
+    it was common to hear them all&mdash;men, women, and children&mdash;joining in
+    one universal howl. When the first transports of grief had subsided,
+    they advanced by degrees, and both parties mixed with each other, the
+    men with the men, the women with the women. They then passed round
+    tobacco pipes very freely, and the conversation became general. They
+    had now nothing but good news left to tell, and in less than half an
+    hour probably nothing but smiles and cheerfulness would be seen on
+    every face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One direction in which the Amerindians did not shine was in their
+    treatment of women. This perhaps was worse than in other uncivilized
+    races. Woman was very badly used, except perhaps for the first year of
+    courtship and marriage. Courtship began by the young man throwing
+    sticks at the girl<a name="7-10"></a><a href="#note-7-10"><small>[10]</small></a> who pleased his fancy, and if she responded he
+    asked her in marriage. But not long after she had become a mother she
+    sank into the position of a household drudge and beast of burden. For
+    example, amongst the Beaver Indians, an Athapaskan tribe of the <a name="p171"></a>far
+    north-west, it is related by Alexander Mackenzie that the women are
+    permanently crippled and injured in physique by the hardships they
+    have to undergo. "Having few dogs for transport in that country, the
+    women alone perform that labour which is allotted to beasts of burden
+    in other countries. It is not uncommon whilst the men carry nothing
+    but a gun, that their wives and daughters follow with such weighty
+    burdens that if they lay them down they cannot replace them; nor will
+    the men deign to perform the service of hoisting them on to their
+    backs. So that during their journeys they are frequently obliged to
+    lean against a tree for a small degree of temporary relief. When they
+    arrive at the place which their tyrants have chosen for their
+    encampment, they arrange the tent in a few minutes by forming a curve
+    of poles meeting at the top and expanding into a circle of twelve or
+    fifteen feet in diameter at the bottom, covered with dressed skins of
+    the moose sewn together. During these preparations the men sit down
+    quietly to the enjoyment of their pipes, if they happen to have any
+    tobacco."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Among the Ojibwé and Huron Indians of the Great Lakes the men
+    sometimes obliged their wives to bring up and nourish young bears
+    instead of their own children, so that the bears might eventually be
+    fattened for eating. If food was scarce, the women went without before
+    even the male slaves of the tribe were unprovided with food. Women
+    might never eat in the society of males, not even if these males were
+    slaves or prisoners of war. If food was very scarce, the husband as
+    likely as not killed and ate a wife; perhaps did this before slaying
+    and eating a valuable dog. (On the other hand, Mackenzie instances the
+    case of a woman among the Slave Indians who, in a winter of great
+    scarcity, managed to kill and devour her husband and several
+    relations.) So terrible was the ill-treatment of the women in some
+    tribes that these wretched beings sometimes committed suicide to end
+    their tortures. Even in this, however, they were not let off lightly,
+    for the Siou men invented as a tenet of their religion the saying that
+    "Women who hang themselves are the most miserable of all wretches in
+    the other world".
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the other hand, the kind treatment of children by fathers as well
+    as mothers is an "Indian" trait commented on by writer after writer.
+    Here is a typical description by Alexander Henry the Elder, concerning
+    the children of the Ojibwé tribe:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "As soon as the boys begin to run about, they are provided with bows
+    and arrows, and acquire, as it were 'by instinct', an astonishing
+    dexterity in shooting birds, squirrels, butterflies, &amp;c. Hunting in
+    miniature may be justly said to comprise the whole of their education
+    and childish diversion. Such as excel in this kind of exercise are
+    sure of being particularly distinguished by their parents, and seldom
+    punished for any misbehaviour, but, on the contrary, indulged in every
+    degree of excess and caprice. I have often seen grown-up boys of this
+    description, when punished for some serious fault, strike their father
+    and spit in his face, calling him 'bad dog', or 'old woman', and,
+    sometimes, carrying their insolence so far as to threaten to stab or
+    shoot him, and, what is rather singular, these too-indulgent parents
+    seem to encourage such unnatural liberties, and even glory in such
+    conduct from their favourite children. I heard them boast of having
+    sons who promised at an early age to inherit such bold and independent
+    sentiments.... Children of nine or ten years of age not only enjoy
+    the confidence of the men, but are generally considered as companions
+    and very deliberately join in their conversations."
+</p>
+<p>
+    When death overtook anybody the grief of the female relations was
+    carried to great excess. They not only cut their hair, cried and
+    howled, but they would sometimes, with the utmost deliberation,
+    employ some sharp instrument to separate the nail from the finger and
+    then force back the flesh beyond the first joint, which they
+    immediately amputated. "Many of the old women have so often repeated
+    this ceremony that they have not a complete finger remaining on either
+    hand" (Mackenzie).
+</p>
+<a name="image-0009"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc09.jpg" width="281" height="450"
+alt="Caribou Swimming a River">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>CARIBOU SWIMMING A RIVER</h5>
+<p>
+    The Amerindians of North America were religious and superstitious, and
+    had a firm faith in a world of spiritual agencies within or outside
+    the material world around us. Most of them believed in the existence
+    of "fairies",&mdash;woodland, earth, mountain, or water spirits&mdash;whom they
+    declared they could see from time to time in human semblance. Or such
+    spirit or demi-god might assume for a time or permanently the form of
+    an animal. To all such spirits of earth, air, and water, or to the
+    sacred animals they inhabited, sacrifices would be offered and prayers
+    made. Great importance was attributed to dreams and visions. They
+    accustomed themselves to make long fasts, so that they might become
+    light-headed and see visions, or hear spirit voices in a trance. To
+    prepare their minds for this state they would go four or five days
+    without food, and even abstain from drinking.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Undoubtedly their "medicine men" developed great mesmeric powers, and
+    this force, combined with rather clumsy juggling and ventriloquism,
+    enabled them to perform a semblance of "miracles". The Iroquois
+    offered much opposition to Christianity, thinking it would tame their
+    warriors too quickly and affect their national independence; but by
+    the greater part of the Amerindians the message of the Gospel brought
+    by the French priests was eagerly received, and the converts became
+    many and most sincere. Their reverence for the missionaries and belief
+    in them was increased when they saw how effectually they were able to
+    protect them from too-rapacious white adventurers, fierce soldiers,
+    and unscrupulous traders.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Miamis of Lake Michigan held the symbol of the cross in great
+    respect. A young Frenchman who was trading with them got into a
+    passion and drew his sword to avenge himself for a theft committed on
+    his goods. The Miama chieftain, to appease him, showed him the cross,
+    which was planted in the ground at the end of his lodge, and said to
+    him: "Behold the tree of the Black Gown; he teaches us to pray and not
+    to lose our temper,"&mdash;of course, referring to the missionary in the
+    black gown who had been amongst them. Before the cross was planted
+    here these Miamis kept in their houses one or more bogies, to which
+    they appealed in times of distress or sickness. One of these was the
+    skull of the bison with its horns. Another was the skin of the bear
+    raised on a pole in the middle of the hut and retaining the head,
+    which was usually painted green. The women sometimes died of terror
+    from the stories told them by the men about these idols, and the
+    Jesuits did a great deal of good by getting them abolished in many
+    places.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Supreme Being of the Eskimos was a goddess rather than a god: a
+    mother of all things who lived under the sea. On the other hand, most
+    of the Amerindian tribes believed in one great God of the Sky&mdash;Manito,
+    as He was called by the peoples of Algonkin stock, Nainubushan by the
+    Siou and their kindred. This Being was usually kindly disposed towards
+    man; but they also (in most cases) believed in a <i>bad</i> Manito, who was
+    responsible for most of the harm in the world. But sometimes the Great
+    Manito was capricious, or apparently made many mistakes which he had
+    afterwards to rectify. Thus the Siou tribes of Assiniboia believed
+    that the Supreme Being (whom they called Eth-tom-é) first created
+    mankind and all living things, and then, through some oversight or
+    mistake, caused a great flood to cover the earth's surface. So in a
+    hurry he was obliged to make a very large canoe of twigs and
+    branches, and into this he put a pair of every kind of bird and beast,
+    besides a family of human beings, who were thus saved from drowning,
+    and began the world afresh when the waters subsided. This legend was
+    something like the story of Noah's ark, but seems in some form or
+    another to have existed in the mind of all the North-American peoples
+    before the arrival of Christian missionaries. Much the same story was
+    told by the Ojibwés about the Great Hare-God, Nainiboju.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Siou and the Ojibwé (and other tribes also) believed that after
+    death the soul lay for a time in a trance, and then found itself
+    floating towards a River which must be crossed. Beyond the River lay
+    the Happy Hunting Grounds, the Elysian fields; but to oppose the weary
+    soul anxious to reach this paradise there ramped on the other side a
+    huge, flaming-red bison bull, if it had been ordained by the Great
+    Spirit that the soul's time was not yet come, this red bison pushed it
+    back, and the soul was obliged to re-enter the body, which then awoke
+    from its trance or swoon and resumed its worldly activities.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Suicide was regarded as the most heinous of crimes. Any man killing
+    himself deliberately, fell into the river of the ghost world and was
+    never heard of again, while women who hanged themselves "were regarded
+    as the most miserable of all wretches in the other world".
+</p>
+<p>
+    Their belief in spirits&mdash;even ancestral spirits&mdash;taking up an abode in
+    the bodies of beasts, birds, or reptiles, or even in plants or stones,
+    caused them to view with respect of a superstitious kind many natural
+    objects. Some one thing&mdash;a beast, bird, reptile, fish, plant, or
+    strange stone had been fixed on as the abode of his tutelary spirit by
+    some father of a family. The family grew into a clan, and the clan to
+    a tribe, and the object sacred in the eyes of its father and founder
+    became its "totem", crest, or symbol. As a rule, whatever thing was
+    the <i>totem</i> of the individual or the clan was held sacred in their
+    eyes, and, if it was an animal, was not killed, or, if killed, not
+    eaten. Many of the northern Indians would refrain from killing the
+    wolf or the glutton, or if they did so, or did it by accident, they
+    would refuse to skin the animal. The elder people amongst the
+    Athapaskan Indians, in Hearne's day, would reprove the young folk for
+    "speaking disrespectfully" of different beasts and birds.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Their ideas of medicine and surgery were much mixed up with a belief
+    in magic and in the mysterious powers of their "medicine men". This
+    person, who might be of either sex, certainly knew a few simple
+    medicines to be made from herbs or decoctions of bark, but for the
+    most part he attempted to cure the sick or injured by blowing lustily
+    on the part affected or, more wisely, by massage. A universal cure,
+    however, for all fevers and mild ailments was sweating. Sweating huts
+    were built in nearly every settlement. They were covered over in a way
+    to exclude air as much as possible. The inside was heated with red-hot
+    stones and glowing embers, on to which from time to time water was
+    poured to fill the place with steam. The Amerindians not only went
+    through these Turkish baths to cure small ailments but also with the
+    idea of clearing the intelligence and as a fitting preliminary to
+    negotiations&mdash;for peace, or alliance, or even for courtship. In many
+    tribes if a young "brave" arrived with proposals of marriage for a
+    man's daughter he was invited to enter the sweating house with her
+    father, and discuss the bargain calmly over perspiration and the
+    tobacco pipe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tobacco smoking indeed was almost a religious ceremony, as well as a
+    remedy for certain maladies or states of mind. The "pipe of peace" has
+    become proverbial. Nevertheless tobacco was still unknown in the
+    eighteenth century to many of the Pacific-coast and far-north-west
+    tribes, as to the primitive Eskimo. It was not a very old practice in
+    the Canadian Dominion when Europeans first arrived there, though it
+    appeared to be one of the most characteristic actions of these
+    red-skinned savages in the astonished eyes of the first pioneers. They
+    used pipes for smoking, however, long before tobacco came among them,
+    certain berries taking the place of tobacco.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Amerindians of the southern parts of Canada and British Columbia
+    were more or less settled peoples of towns or villages, of fixed homes
+    to which they returned at all seasons of the year, however far afield
+    they might range for warfare, trade, or hunting. But the more northern
+    tribes were nomads: people shifting their abode from place to place in
+    pursuit of game or trade. Unlike the people of the south and west
+    (though these only grew potatoes) they were not agriculturists: the
+    only vegetable element in their food was the wild rice of the marshes,
+    the sweet-tasting layer between the bark and the wood of certain
+    trees, and the fruits or fungi of the forest or the lichen growing on
+    the rocks. Though these people might in summertime build some hasty
+    wigwam of boughs and moss, their ordinary dwelling place was a tent.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Wood Indians, or Opimitish Ininiwak, of the Athapaskan group
+    (writes Alexander Henry, sen.) had no fixed villages; and their lodges
+    or huts were so rudely fashioned as to afford them very inadequate
+    protection against the weather. The greater part of their year was
+    spent in travelling from place to place in search of food. The animal
+    on which they chiefly depended was the <i>hare</i>&mdash;a most prominent animal
+    in Amerindian economy and tradition. This they took in springes. From
+    its skin they made coverings with much ingenuity, cutting it into
+    narrow strips and weaving this into the shape of a blanket, which was
+    of a very warm and agreeable quality.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Naskwapi Algonkins of inland Labrador were savages that led a
+    wandering life through the bare, flat parts of that country,
+    subsisting chiefly upon flesh, and clothing themselves with the skin
+    of the caribou, which they caught in pitfalls or shot with the bow
+    and arrow. "Very few sights, I believe, can be more distressing to the
+    feelings of humanity than a Labrador savage, surrounded by his wife
+    and five or six small children, half-famished with cold and hunger in
+    a hole dug out of the snow and screened from the inclemency of the
+    weather by the branches of the trees. Their whole furniture is a
+    kettle hung over the fire, not for the purpose of cooking victuals,
+    but for melting snow" (James M'Kenzie).
+</p>
+<p>
+    A description of the tents of the Kris or Knistino (Algonkins of the
+    Athabaska region), written by Alexander Henry, sen., applies with very
+    little difference to all the other tribes dwelling to the east of the
+    Rocky Mountains.<a name="7-11"></a><a href="#note-7-11"><small>[11]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    These tents were of dressed leather, erected with poles, generally
+    seventeen in number, of which two were tied together about three feet
+    from the top. The first two poles being erected and set apart at the
+    base, the others were placed against them in a slanting position,
+    meeting at the top, so that they all formed nearly a circle, which was
+    then covered with the leather. This consisted of ten to fifteen
+    dressed skins of the bison, moose, or red deer, well sewed together
+    and nicely cut to fit the conical figure of the poles, with an opening
+    above, to let out smoke and admit the light. From this opening down to
+    the door the two edges of the tent were brought close together and
+    well secured with wooden pegs about six inches long, leaving for the
+    door an oval aperture about two feet wide and three feet high, below
+    which the edges were secured with similar pegs. This small entrance
+    did well enough for the natives, who would be brought up to it from
+    infancy, but a European might be puzzled to get through, as a piece of
+    hide stretched upon a frame of the same shape as the door, but
+    somewhat larger, hung outside, and must be first raised by the hand of
+    the incomer.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Such tents were usually spacious, measuring twenty feet in diameter.
+    The fire was always made in the centre, around which the occupants
+    generally placed a range of stones to prevent the ashes from
+    scattering and to keep the fire compact. New tents were perfectly
+    white; some of them were painted with red and black figures. These
+    devices were generally derived from the dreams of the Amerindians,
+    being some mythical monster or other hideous animal, whose description
+    had been handed down from their ancestors. A large camp of such tents,
+    pitched regularly on a level plain, had a fine effect at a distance,
+    especially when numerous bands of horses were seen feeding in all
+    directions.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The "lodges" or long houses made of poles, fir branches, moss, &amp;c.,
+    wherein, among the Iroquois, Algonkin, and Siou peoples, several
+    families made a common habitation, are described here and there in the
+    course of the narrative. The houses of the coast tribes of British
+    Columbia were bigger, more elaborate, and permanent, and in this
+    region the natives had acquired some idea of carpentry, and had learnt
+    to make planks of wood by splitting with wedges or hewing with adzes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One of these British Columbian houses was measured, and found to be
+    seventy feet long by twenty-five feet wide; the entrance in the gable
+    end was cut through a plank five and a half feet wide, and nearly
+    oval. A board suspended on the outside answered for a door; on the
+    other side of the broad plank was rudely carved a large painted figure
+    of a man, between whose legs was the passage. But other houses on the
+    Pacific coast, visited by Cook or Vancouver, are said to have been
+    large enough to accommodate seven hundred people. These houses of the
+    Pacific coast region were exceedingly filthy, sturgeon and salmon
+    being strewn about in every direction. The men inhabiting them were
+    often disgusting in their behaviour, while the women are declared to
+    have been "devoid of shame or decency".
+</p>
+<p>
+    According to Mackenzie, such habitations swarmed with fleas, and even
+    the ground round about them "was alive with this vermin". The
+    Alexander Henrys, both uncle and nephew, complain of the flea plague
+    (partly due to the multitude of dogs) in every Indian village or
+    encampment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The domestic implements of the Amerindians were few. Pottery seems to
+    have been unknown amongst the northern tribes to the east and north of
+    the Mississippi valley, but earthen jars and vessels were made by the
+    Dakota-Siou group in the valley of the Mississippi. Amongst these
+    agricultural Indians the hoe was made of a buffalo's blade bone
+    fastened to a crooked wooden handle. The Ojibwés manufactured chisels
+    out of beavers' teeth. The Eskimo and some of the neighbouring
+    Amerindian tribes used oblong "kettles" of stone&mdash;simply great blocks
+    of stone chipped, rubbed, and hollowed out into receptacles, with
+    handles at both ends. (It is suggested that they borrowed the idea of
+    these stone vessels for cooking from the early Norse settlers of
+    Greenland; see p. <a href="#p18">18</a>.)
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Amerindians of the regions west of the Rocky Mountains made
+    kettles or cooking vessels out of blocks of "cedar" (<i>Juniper</i>) wood;
+    east of the Rocky Mountains the birch-bark kettle was universal. Of
+    course these vessels of wood or bark could not be placed on the fire
+    or embers to heat or boil the contents, as was possible with the
+    "kettles" of stone or the cooking pots of clay. So the people using
+    them heated the water in which the food or the soup was boiled by
+    making stones red-hot in the fire and then dropping them into the
+    birch-bark or cedar-wood tubs. Many of the northern Indians got into
+    the way of eating their food raw because of the difficulty of making a
+    fire away from home.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In regard to food, neither Amerindian nor Eskimo was squeamish. They
+    were almost omnivorous, and specially delighted in putrid or noisome
+    substances from which a European would turn in loathing, and from the
+    eating of which he might conceivably die.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was only in the extreme south of Canada or in British Columbia
+    (potatoes only) that any agriculture was carried on and that the
+    natives had maize, pumpkins, and pease to add to their dietary; but
+    (as compared to the temperate regions of Europe and Asia) Nature was
+    generous in providing wild fruits and grain without trouble of
+    husbandry. The fruits and nuts have been enumerated elsewhere, but a
+    description might be given here of the "wild oats" (<i>Avena fatua</i>) and
+    the "wild rice" of the regions of central Canada and the middle west.
+    The wild oats made a rough kind of porridge, but were not so important
+    and so nourishing as the wild rice which is so often mentioned in the
+    stories of the pioneers, who liked this wild grain as much as the
+    Indians did.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This wild rice (<i>Zizania aquatica</i>) grew naturally in small rivers and
+    swampy places. The stems were hollow, jointed at intervals, and the
+    grain appeared at the extremity of the stalk. By the month of June
+    they had grown two feet above the surface of the shallow water, and
+    were ripe for harvesting in September. At this period the Amerindians
+    passed in canoes through the water-fields of wild rice, shaking the
+    ears into the canoes as they swept by. The grain fell out easily when
+    ripe, but in order to clean it from the husk it was dried over a slow
+    fire on a wooden grating. After being winnowed it was pounded to flour
+    in a mortar, or else boiled like rice, and seasoned with fat. "It had
+    a most delicate taste", wrote Alexander Henry the Elder.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Fish was perhaps the staple of Amerindian diet, because in scarcely
+    any part of the Canadian Dominion is a lake, river, or brook far away.
+    In the region of the Great Lakes fish were caught in large quantities
+    in October, and exposed to the weather to be frozen at nighttime. They
+    were then stored away in this congealed state, and lasted good&mdash;more
+    or less&mdash;till the following April.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Pemmican&mdash;that early form of potted meat so familiar to the readers of
+    Red-Indian romances&mdash;was made of the lean meat of the bison. The
+    strips of meat were dried in the sun, and afterwards pounded in a
+    mortar and mixed with an equal quantity of bison fat. Fish "pemmican"
+    was sun-dried fish ground to powder.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A favourite dish among the northern Indians was blood mixed with the
+    half-digested food found in the stomach of a deer, boiled up with a
+    sufficient quantity of water to make it of the consistency of pease
+    porridge. Some scraps of fat or tender flesh were shredded small and
+    boiled with it. To render this dish more palatable they had a method
+    of mixing the blood with the contents of the stomach in the paunch
+    itself, and hanging it up in the heat and smoke of the fire for
+    several days&mdash;in other words, the Scotch haggis. The kidneys of both
+    moose and buffalo were usually eaten <i>raw</i> by the southern Indians,
+    for no sooner was one of those beasts killed than the hunter ripped up
+    its belly, snatched out the kidneys, and ate them warm, before the
+    animal was quite dead. They also at times put their mouths to the
+    wound the ball or the arrow had made, and sucked the blood; this, they
+    said, quenched thirst, and was very nourishing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The favourite drink of the Ojibwé Indians in the wintertime was hot
+    broth poured over a dishful of pure snow.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Amerindians of the Nipigon country (north of Lake Superior) and
+    the Ojibwés and Kris often relapsed into cannibalism when hard up for
+    food. Indeed some of them became so addicted to this practice that
+    they simply went about stalking their fellow Indians with as much
+    industry as if they were hunting animals. "These prowling ogres caused
+    such terror that to sight the track of one of them was sufficient to
+    make twenty families decamp in all the speed of their terror"
+    (Alexander Henry). It was deemed useless to attempt any resistance
+    when these monsters were coming to kill and eat. The people would even
+    make them presents of clothes and provisions to allow them and their
+    children to live. There were women cannibals as well as men (see p.
+    <a href="#p171">171</a>).
+</p>
+<p>
+    As the greater part of their food came from the chase, and their only
+    articles of commerce likewise, they devoted themselves more entirely
+    to hunting and fishing than to any other pursuit. The women did most
+    of the fishing (and all the skin-curing for the fur market and for
+    their own dress), while the men pursued with weapons the beasts of the
+    chase, trapped them in pitfalls or snares, or drove them into "pounds"
+    (excavated enclosures).
+</p>
+<p>
+    Illustrating the wonderful sagacity of the Amerindians as game
+    trackers, Alexander Henry the Elder tells the following story in the
+    autumn of 1799:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We had not gone far from the house before we fell upon the fresh
+    tracks of some red deer (wapiti), and soon after discovered the herd
+    in a thicket of willows and poplars; we both fired, and the deer
+    disappeared in different directions. We pursued them, but to no
+    purpose, as the country was unfavourable. We then returned to the spot
+    where we had fired, as the Indian suspected that we had wounded some
+    of them. We searched to see if we could find any blood; on my part, I
+    could find tracks, but no blood. The Indian soon called out, and I
+    went to him, but could see no blood, nor any sign that an animal had
+    been wounded. However, he pointed out the track of a large buck among
+    the many others, and told me that from the manner in which this buck
+    had started off he was certain the animal had been wounded. As the
+    ground was beaten in every direction by animals, it was only after a
+    tedious search that we found where the buck had struck off. But no
+    blood was seen until, passing through a thicket of willows, he
+    observed a drop upon a leaf, and next a little more. He then began to
+    examine more strictly, to find out in what part of the body the
+    animal had been wounded; and, judging by the height and other signs,
+    he told me the wound must have been somewhere between the shoulder and
+    neck. We advanced about a mile, but saw nothing of the deer, and no
+    more blood. I was for giving up the chase; but he assured me the wound
+    was mortal, and that if the animal should lie down he could not rise
+    again. We proceeded two miles farther, when, coming out upon a small
+    open space, he told me the animal was at no great distance, and very
+    probably in this meadow. We accordingly advanced a few yards, and
+    there we found the deer lying at the last gasp. The wound was exactly
+    as I had been told. The sagacity of the Saulteurs [Ojibwés] in tracing
+    big wood animals is astonishing. I have frequently witnessed
+    occurrences of this nature; the bend of a leaf or blade of grass is
+    enough to show the hunter the direction the game has taken. Their
+    ability is of equally great service to war parties, when they discover
+    the footsteps of their enemies."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Assiniboin Indians (a branch of the Sious) down to about fifty
+    years ago captured the bison of the plains in hundreds at a time by
+    driving them into large excavated areas below the level of the ground.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Alexander Henry, jun., gives the following description of this
+    procedure in 1810:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The pounds are of different dimensions, according to the number of
+    tents in one camp. The common size is from sixty to one hundred paces
+    or yards in circumference, and about five feet in height. Trees are
+    cut down, laid upon one another, and interwoven with branches and
+    green twigs; small openings are left to admit the dogs to feed upon
+    the carcasses of the (old) bulls, which are generally left as useless.
+    This enclosure is commonly made between two hummocks, on the declivity
+    or at the foot of rising ground. The entrance is about ten paces wide,
+    and always fronts the plains. On each side of this entrance commences
+    a thick range of fascines, the two ranges spreading asunder as they
+    extend to the distance of one hundred yards, beyond which openings are
+    left at intervals; but the fascines soon become more thinly planted,
+    and continue to spread apart to the right and left until each range
+    has been extended about three hundred yards from the pound. The labour
+    is then diminished by only placing at intervals three or four cross
+    sticks, in imitation of a dog or other animal (sometimes called 'dead
+    men'); these extend on the plain for about two miles, and double rows
+    of them are planted in several other directions to a still greater
+    distance. Young men are usually sent out to collect and bring in the
+    buffalo&mdash;a tedious task, which requires great patience, for the herd
+    must be started by slow degrees. This is done by setting fire to dung
+    or grass. Three young men will bring in a herd of several hundred from
+    a great distance. When the wind is aft it is most favourable, as they
+    can then direct the buffalo with great ease. Having come in sight of
+    the ranges, they generally drive the herd faster, until it begins to
+    enter the ranges, where a swift-footed person has been stationed with
+    a buffalo robe over his head, to imitate that animal; but sometimes a
+    horse performs this business. When he sees buffaloes approaching he
+    moves slowly toward the pound until they appear to follow him; then he
+    sets off at full speed, imitating a buffalo as well as he can, with
+    the herd after him. The young men in the rear now discover themselves,
+    and drive the herd on with all possible speed. There is always a
+    sentinel on some elevated spot to notify the camp when the buffalo
+    appear; and this intelligence is no sooner given than every man,
+    woman, and child runs to the ranges that lead to the pound to prevent
+    the buffalo from taking a wrong direction. Then they lie down between
+    the fascines and cross sticks, and, if the buffalo attempt to break
+    through, the people wave their robes, which causes the herd to keep
+    on, or turn to the opposite <a name="p186"></a>side, where other persons do the same.
+    When the buffalo have been thus directed to the entrance of the pound,
+    the Indian who leads them rushes into it and out at the other side,
+    either by jumping over the enclosure or creeping through an opening
+    left for that purpose. The buffalo tumble in pell-mell at his heels,
+    almost exhausted, but keep moving around the enclosure from east to
+    west, and never in a direction against the sun. What appeared
+    extraordinary to me on those occasions was that, when word was given
+    to the camp of the near approach of the buffalo, the dogs would skulk
+    away from the pound and not approach until the herd entered. Many
+    buffaloes break their legs and some their necks in jumping into the
+    pound, as the descent is generally six or eight feet, and stumps are
+    left standing there. The buffalo being caught, the men assembled at
+    the enclosure, armed with bows and arrows; every arrow has a
+    particular mark of the owner, and they are let fly until the whole
+    herd is killed. Then the men enter the pound, and each claims his own;
+    but commonly there is what they term the master of the pound, who
+    divides the animals and gives each tent an equal share, reserving
+    nothing for himself. But in the end he is always the best provided
+    for; everyone is obliged to send him a certain portion, as it is in
+    his tent that the numerous ceremonies relating to the pound are
+    observed. There the young men are always welcome to feast and smoke,
+    and no women are allowed to enter, as that tent is set apart for the
+    affairs of the pound. Horses are sometimes used to collect and bring
+    in buffalo, but this method is less effectual than the other; besides,
+    it frightens the herds and soon causes them to withdraw to a great
+    distance. When horses are used the buffalo are absolutely driven into
+    the pound, but when the other method is pursued they are in a manner
+    enticed to their destruction."
+</p>
+<p>
+    A somewhat similar method was adopted by the northern Kris and
+    Athapascans for the capture of reindeer.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As regards means of transport, the use of dogs as draught animals was
+    by no means confined to the Eskimo: they were used in wintertime to
+    draw sledges over the snow or ice by nearly all the northern Indian
+    tribes, and by the people of the Rocky Mountains and Pacific coast.
+    After the Amerindians of the prairies and plains received horses
+    (indirectly through the Spaniards of Mexico)<a name="7-12"></a><a href="#note-7-12"><small>[12]</small></a> they sometimes
+    employed the smaller and poorer kind of ponies as pack animals; but
+    for the most part throughout the summer season of the Canadian
+    Dominion&mdash;from May to October&mdash;transport and travel by canoe was the
+    favourite method.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There were four very well marked types of canoe or boat in British
+    North America. There was the already-described Eskimo <i>kayak</i>, made of
+    leather stretched over a framework of wood or bone; the Amerindians of
+    the Dominion, south of the Eskimo and east of the Rocky Mountains,
+    used the familiar "birch-bark" canoe;<a name="7-13"></a><a href="#note-7-13"><small>[13]</small></a> the peoples of the Pacific
+    coast belt possessed something more like a boat, made out of a
+    hollowed tree trunk and built up with planks; and the tribes of the
+    Upper Mississippi used round coracles. Here are descriptions of all
+    three kinds of Amerindian canoe from the pens of eighteenth-century
+    pioneers: The birch-bark canoe used on the Great Lakes was about
+    thirty-three feet long by four and a half feet broad, and formed of
+    the smooth rind or bark of the birch tree fastened outside a wooden
+    framework. It was lined with small splints of juniper cedar, and the
+    vessel was further strengthened with ribs of the same wood, of which
+    the two ends were fastened to the gunwales. Several bars rather than
+    seats were laid across the canoe from gunwale to gunwale, the small
+    roots of the spruce fir afforded the fibre with which the bark was
+    sewn or stitched, and the gum of the pine tree supplied the place of
+    tar and oakum. Bark, some spare fibre, and gum were always carried in
+    each canoe for repairs, which were constantly necessary (one
+    continually reads in the diaries of the pioneers of "stopping to gum
+    the canoe"). The canoes were propelled with paddles, and occasionally
+    a sail.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The aborigines of Newfoundland&mdash;the Beothiks&mdash;are said to have known
+    the birch-bark canoe, framework canoe, but to have employed
+    "dug-outs"&mdash;hollowed tree trunks. The canoes of the Mandans of the
+    upper Missouri basin were like coracles, of circular form, made of a
+    framework of bent willow branches over which was stretched a raw
+    bison-hide with the hair inside. This was sewn tightly round the
+    willow rim. In lieu of a paddle they use a pole about five feet long,
+    split at one end to admit a piece of board about two feet long and
+    half a foot broad, which was lashed to the pole and so formed a kind
+    of cross. There was but one for each canoe. The paddler of this
+    coracle made directly for the opposite shore; every stroke he gave
+    turned his "dish" almost entirely round; to recover his position and
+    go on his intended route, he must give a stroke on the other side,
+    which brought him up again; and so on till he got over, not without
+    drifting down sometimes nearly a mile.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Alexander Henry, jun., thus describes a canoe of the Clatsop people on
+    the Lower Columbia (Pacific coast, opposite Vancouver Island): "This
+    was a war canoe&mdash;the first of the kind I had seen. She was about
+    thirty-six feet long and wide in proportion, the stem rising upright
+    about six feet, on top of which was a figure of some imaginary monster
+    of uncouth sculpture, having the head of a carnivorous animal with
+    large erect ears but no body, clinging by arms and legs to the upper
+    end of the canoe, and grinning horribly. The ears were painted green,
+    the other parts red and black. The stern also rose about five feet in
+    height, but had no figure carved on it. On each side of both stem and
+    stern broad strips of wood rose about four feet, having holes cut in
+    them to shoot arrows through. She had a high sprit-sail made of
+    handkerchiefs and pieces of gunny-cloth or jute, forming irregular
+    stripes, I am told these Indians commonly have pieces of squared
+    timber, not unlike a three-inch plank, high and broad, perforated to
+    shoot arrows through; this is fixed on the bow of the war canoe to
+    serve as bulwarks in battle."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Canoe voyages were mainly embarked on for trading; but in all
+    probability before the coming of the European there was little trading
+    done between one tribe and another, except in the region <i>west</i> of the
+    Rocky Mountains, in which&mdash;especially to the north&mdash;the Amerindians
+    were so different in their habits and customs from those dwelling east
+    of the mountains as to suggest that they must very occasionally have
+    been in touch with some world outside America, such as Hawaii,
+    Kamschatka, or Japan. In these Pacific coastlands they used a white
+    seashell as a currency and a medium of exchange. So also did the
+    Iroquois people and the southern Algonkin tribes, in the form of
+    "wampum". The principal articles of barter were skins of fur animals,
+    porcupine quills, dogs, slaves, and women.
+</p>
+<p>
+    First Hunting (to supply food), then Trading in the products of the
+    chase, and lastly War were the main subjects which occupied the
+    Amerindian's thoughts before the middle of the nineteenth century.
+    They usually went to war to turn other tribes out of profitable
+    hunting grounds or productive fisheries; or because they wanted slaves
+    or more wives; or because a chief or a medicine man had a dream; or
+    because some other notability felt he had given way too much to tears
+    over some personal or public sorrow, and must show his manliness by
+    killing the people of another tribe. In their wars they knew no mercy
+    when their blood was up, and frequently perpetrated frightful
+    cruelties for the sheer pleasure of seeing human suffering. Yet these
+    devilish moods would alternate with fits of sentimentality. A man or a
+    woman would suddenly take a war prisoner, or a person who was wounded
+    or half-tortured to death, under their protection, and a short time
+    afterwards the whole war party would be greeting this rescued wretch
+    (usually a man&mdash;they were far more pitiless towards women) as brother,
+    son, or friend, and even become quite maudlin over a scratch or a
+    bruise; whereas an hour or so before they were on the point of
+    disembowelling, or of driving splinters up the nails and setting them
+    on fire. In warfare they often gave way to cannibalism.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Though extremely fond of singing&mdash;they sang when they were merry; when
+    they thought they were going to die; when they were victorious in
+    hunting, love, or war; when they were defeated; when they were
+    paddling a canoe or sewing a moccasin&mdash;they had but a poor range of
+    musical instruments. Most of the tribes used flutes made out of the
+    wing bones of cranes or out of reeds, and some had small trumpets of
+    wood, bark, or buffalo horn. The Pacific coast Indians made gongs or
+    "xylophones" out of blocks or slabs of resonant wood.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here is a specimen of Amerindian singing. It is the song which
+    accompanied the famous Calumet dance in celebration of the peacemaking
+    qualities of tobacco-smoking. It was taken down by the Jesuit
+    missionaries in the seventeenth century from the Ilinwa (Illinois)
+    Algonkin Indians of the middle west, and its notation reminds one of
+    Japanese music.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0010"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/music.jpg" width="450" height="685"
+alt="The Calumet Or Tobacco-pipe Dance">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="block">
+     Ninahani, &amp;c, ongo; ninahani, &amp;c, hoho; ninahani, &amp;c.,<br>
+     Kawa bannoge atchicha Koge ake aw&#257;;<br>
+     Banoge atchicha shagobe hé hé hé! Mintingo mitade<br>
+     Pini pini hé! Atchicha lé machi mi nam ba miktande,<br>
+     Miktande pini pini hé!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dancing was little else than posturing and jumping in masks&mdash;usually
+    made to look like the head of a wild beast. But the men were usually
+    very athletic. Wrestling competitions were almost universal,
+    especially as a means of winning a wife. The conqueror in a wrestling
+    match took the wife or wives of the defeated man. Their running powers
+    for endurance and speed became justly celebrated.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Their principal and most inveterate game is that of the hoop," writes
+    Alexander Henry, sen., "which proves as ruinous to them as the platter
+    does to the Saulteurs (Ojibwé)." This game was played in the following
+    manner. A hoop was made about two feet in diameter, nearly covered
+    with dressed leather, and trimmed with quillwork, feathers, bits of
+    metal, and other trinkets, on which were certain particular marks. Two
+    persons played at the same time, by rolling the hoop and accompanying
+    it, one on each side; when it was about to fall, each gently threw one
+    arrow in such a manner that the hoop might fall upon it, and according
+    to that mark on the hoop which rested on the arrows they reckoned the
+    game. They also played another game by holding some article in one
+    hand, or putting it into one of two shoes, the other hand or shoe
+    being empty. They had another game which required forty to fifty small
+    sticks, as thick as a goose quill and about a foot long; these were
+    all shuffled together and then divided into two bunches, and according
+    to the even or odd numbers of sticks in the bunch chosen, the players
+    lost or won.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A favourite game amongst the Ojibwé is described as "the hurdle",
+    which is another name for the Canadian national game of La Crosse.
+    When about to play, the men, of all ages, would strip themselves
+    almost naked, but dress their hair in great style, put ornaments on
+    their arms, and belts round their waists, and paint their faces and
+    bodies in the most elaborate style. Each man was provided with "a
+    hurdle", an instrument made of a small stick of wood about three feet
+    long, bent at the end to a small circle, in which a loose piece of
+    network is fixed, forming a cavity big enough to receive a leather
+    ball about the size of a man's fist. Everything being prepared, a
+    level plain about half a mile long was chosen, with proper barriers or
+    goals at each end. Having previously formed into two equal parts, they
+    assembled in the very middle of the field, and the game began by
+    throwing up the ball perpendicularly in the air, when instantly both
+    parties (writes an eyewitness) "formed a singular group of naked men,
+    painted in different colours and in the most comical attitudes
+    imaginable, holding their rackets elevated in the air to catch the
+    ball". Whoever was so fortunate as to catch it in his net ran with it
+    to the barrier with all his might, supported by his party; whilst the
+    opponents were pursuing and endeavouring to knock the ball out of the
+    net. He who succeeded in doing so ran in the same manner towards the
+    opposite barrier, and was, of course, pursued in his turn. If in
+    danger of being overtaken, he might throw it with his hurdle towards
+    any of his associates who happened to be nearer the barrier than
+    himself. They had a particular knack of throwing it a great distance
+    in this manner, so that the best runners had not always the advantage;
+    and, by a peculiar way of working their hands and arms while running,
+    the ball never dropped out of their "hurdle".
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The best of three heats wins the game, and, besides the honour
+    acquired on such occasions, a considerable prize is adjudged to the
+    victors. The vanquished, however, generally challenge their
+    adversaries to renew the game the next day, which is seldom refused.
+    The game then becomes more important, as the honour of the whole
+    village is at stake, and it is carried on with redoubled impetuosity,
+    every object which might impede them in their career is knocked down
+    and trodden under foot without mercy, and before the game is decided,
+    it is a common thing to see numbers sprawling on the ground with
+    wounded legs and broken heads, yet this never creates any disputes or
+    ill-will after the play is decided" (Alexander Henry, sen.).
+</p>
+<p>
+    It has been computed that in the middle of the eighteenth century the
+    Amerindian population of the vast territories now known as the
+    Dominion of Canada numbered about 300,000. It now stands at an
+    approximate 110,000. The chief diminution has taken place in
+    Newfoundland, Lower and Upper Canada, New Brunswick, Assiniboia, and
+    British Columbia. There may even have been an increase in the north
+    and north-west. The first great blow to the Amerindians of these
+    regions was the smallpox epidemic of 1780. The next was the effect of
+    the strong drink<a name="7-14"></a><a href="#note-7-14"><small>[14]</small></a> introduced by the agents of the Hudson's Bay and,
+    still more, the two North-west Companies. Phthisis or pulmonary
+    consumption also seems to have been introduced from Europe (though
+    Hearne thought that the Northern Indians had it before the white man
+    came). In fact, before the European invaded America neither Eskimo nor
+    Amerindian seem to have had many diseases. They suffered from ulcers,
+    scurvy, digestive troubles, rheumatism, headache, bronchitis, and
+    heart complaints, but from few, if any, "germ" diseases.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Some of the agents of the North-west Company apologize in their
+    writings for the amount of rum that was circulated among the
+    Amerindians at the orders of that company to stimulate trade, by
+    saying that it was seven parts water. Nevertheless it excited them to
+    madness, as the following extracts show. These are mostly taken from
+    the journals of Alexander Henry the Younger, but they are typical of
+    what was recorded by many other writers who describe the far interior
+    of British North America between 1775 and 1835.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "To see a house full of drunken Indians, consisting of men, women, and
+    children, is a most unpleasant sight; for, in that condition, they
+    often wrangle, pull each other by the hair, and fight. At times, ten
+    or twelve of both sexes may be seen fighting each other promiscuously,
+    until at last they all fall on the floor, one upon another, some
+    spilling rum out of a small kettle or dish which they hold in their
+    hands, while others are throwing up what they have just drunk. To
+    add to this uproar, a number of children, some on their mothers'
+    shoulders, and others running about and taking hold of their clothes,
+    are constantly bawling, the elder ones, through fear that their
+    parents may be stabbed, or that some other misfortune may befal them
+    in the fray. These shrieks of the children form a very unpleasant
+    chorus to the brutal noise kept up by their drunken parents."
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<p>
+    "In a drinking match at the Hills yesterday, Gros Bras (Thick Arms) in
+    a fit of jealousy stabbed Aupusoi to death with a hand-dague (dagger);
+    the first stroke opened his left side, the second his belly, and the
+    third his breast; he never stirred, although he had a knife in his
+    belt, and died instantly. Soon after this Aupusoi's brother, a boy
+    about ten years of age, took the deceased's gun, loaded it with two
+    balls, and approached Gros Bras's tent. Putting the muzzle of the gun
+    through the door the boy fired the two balls into his breast and
+    killed him dead, just as he was reproaching his wife for her affection
+    for Aupusoi, and boasting of the revenge he had taken. The little
+    fellow ran into the woods and hid. Little Shell (Petite Coquille)
+    found the old woman, Aupusoi's mother, in her tent; he instantly
+    stabbed her. Ondainoiache then came in, took the knife, and gave her a
+    second stab. Little Shell, in his turn taking the knife, gave a third
+    blow. In this manner did these two rascals continue to murder the old
+    woman, as long as there was any life in her. The boy escaped into
+    Langlois' house, and was kept hid until they were all sober. Next
+    morning a hole was dug in the ground, and all three were buried
+    together. This affair kept the Indians from hunting, as Gros Bras was
+    nearly related to the principal hunters."
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<p>
+    "Grand' Gueule stabbed Perdrix Blanche with a knife in six places.
+    Perdrix Blanche fighting with his wife, fell in the fire and almost
+    roasted, but had strength enough left notwithstanding his wounds to
+    bite her nose off."
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<p>
+    "In the first drinking match a murder was committed in an Assiniboine
+    tent, but fortunately it was done by an Ojibwé. L'Hiver stabbed
+    Mishewashence to the heart three times, and killed him instantly. The
+    wife and children cried out, and some of my people ran to the tent
+    just as L'Hiver came out with the bloody knife in his hand, expecting
+    we would lay hold of him. The first person he met was William Henry,
+    whom he attempted to stab in the breast; but Henry avoided the stroke,
+    and returned the compliment with a blow of his cudgel on the fellow's
+    head. This staggered him; but instantly recovering he made another
+    attempt to stab Henry. Foiled in this design, and observing several
+    coming out of the fort, he took to his heels and ran into the woods
+    like a deer. I chased him with some of my people, but he was too fleet
+    for us. We buried the murdered man, who left a widow and five
+    helpless orphans, having no relations on this river. The behaviour of
+    two of the youngest was really piteous while we were burying the body;
+    they called upon their deceased father not to leave them, but to
+    return to the tent, and tried to prevent the men from covering the
+    corpse with earth, screaming in a terrible manner; the mother was
+    obliged to take them away."
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<p>
+    "Men and women have been drinking a match for three days and nights,
+    during which it has been drink, fight&mdash;drink, fight&mdash;drink, and fight
+    again&mdash;guns, axes, and knives being their weapons&mdash;very disagreeable."
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<p>
+    "Mithanasconce was so troublesome (in drink) that we were obliged to
+    tie him with ropes to prevent his doing mischief. He was stabbed in
+    the back in three different places about a month ago. His wounds were
+    still open, and had an ugly appearance; in his struggling to get loose
+    they burst out afresh and bled a great deal. We had much trouble to
+    stop the blood, as the fellow was insensible to pain or danger; his
+    only aim was to bite us. We had some narrow escapes, until we secured
+    his mouth, and then he fell asleep."
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<p>
+    "Some Red Lake Indians having traded here for liquor which they took
+    to their camp, quarrelled amongst themselves. One jumped on another
+    and bit his nose off. It was some time before the piece could be
+    found; but, at last, by tumbling and tossing the straw about, it was
+    recovered, stuck on, and bandaged, as best the drunken people could,
+    in hopes it would grow again" (Alexander Henry, jun.).
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<p>
+    As regards drunkenness, several authors among the early explorers
+    declared that the French Canadian voyageurs were more disagreeable
+    when drunk even than the Amerindians, for their quarrels were noisier
+    and more deadly. "Indeed I had rather have fifty drunken Indians in
+    the fort than sixty-five drunken Canadians", writes Alexander Henry in
+    1810. And yet the extracts I have given from his journal show that it
+    would be hard to beat the Amerindians for disagreeable ferocity when
+    intoxicated.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Henry, summing up his experiences before leaving for the Pacific coast
+    in 1811, writes these remarks in his diary:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What a different set of people they would be, were there not a drop
+    of liquor in the country! If a murder is committed among the Saulteurs
+    (Ojibwés), it is always in a drinking match. We may truly say that
+    liquor is the root of all evil in the north-west. Great bawling and
+    lamentation went on, and I was troubled most of the night for liquor
+    to wash away grief."
+</p>
+<p>
+    As a rule, the treatment of the Amerindians by the British and French
+    settlers was good, except the thrusting of alcohol on them. But in
+    Newfoundland a great crime was perpetrated. Between the middle of the
+    seventeenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries the British
+    fishermen and settlers on the coasts of Newfoundland had <i>destroyed</i>
+    the native population of Beothik Indians.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Before the English arrived on the coasts of Newfoundland the Beothiks
+    lived an ideal life for savages. They were well clothed with beasts'
+    skins, and in the winter these were supplemented by heavy fur robes.
+    Countless herds of reindeer roamed through the interior, passing from
+    north to south in the autumn and returning in the spring. Vast flocks
+    of willow grouse (like ptarmigan) were everywhere to be met with; the
+    many lakes were covered with geese, swans, and ducks. The woods were
+    full of pigeons; the salmon swarmed up the rivers to <a name="p199"></a>breed; the sea
+    round the coasts was&mdash;except in the wintertime&mdash;the richest fishery in
+    the world. They caught lobsters in the rock pools, and speared or
+    clubbed seals and great walruses for their flesh and oil. An
+    occasional whale provided them with oil, blubber, and meat. The Great
+    Auk&mdash;which could not fly&mdash;swarmed in millions on the cliffs and
+    islets. So abundant was this bird, and so fat, that its body was
+    sometimes used as fuel, or as a lamp. In the summertime their fish and
+    flesh diet could be varied by the innumerable berries growing
+    wild&mdash;strawberries, raspberries, currants, cranberries, and
+    whortleberries. The <i>capillaire</i> plant yielded a lusciously sweet,
+    sugary substance.<a name="7-15"></a><a href="#note-7-15"><small>[15]</small></a>
+</p>
+<a name="image-0011"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc11.jpg" width="283" height="450"
+alt="Great Auks, Gannets, Puffins, and Guillemots">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>GREAT AUKS, GANNETS, PUFFINS, AND GUILLEMOTS</h5>
+<p>
+    The Beothiks were a tall, good-looking people, with large black eyes
+    and a light-coloured skin. The early French and Biscayan seamen, who
+    resorted to the coasts of Newfoundland for the whale fisheries,
+    reported these "Red Indians" to be "an ingenious and tractable people,
+    if well used, who were ready to help the white men with great labour
+    and patience in the killing, cutting-up, and boiling of whales, and
+    the making of train oil, without other expectation of reward than a
+    little bread or some such small hire".
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yet from the beginning of the seventeenth century the Beothiks&mdash;then
+    about four thousand in number&mdash;were ill-treated by the European
+    fishermen who frequented the Newfoundland coasts. They soon greatly
+    decreased in numbers, and became very shy of white men. The French,
+    when they occupied the south coast of Newfoundland, brought over
+    Mikmak Indians to chase and kill the Beothiks or "Red" Indians. The
+    Eskimo attacked them from Labrador. Finally, when Newfoundland became
+    British in the eighteenth century, the English fishermen settlers and
+    fur hunters attacked and slew the harmless Beothiks with a wanton
+    ferocity (described by horror-struck officers of the British navy)
+    which is as bad as anything attributed to the Spaniards in Cuba and
+    Hispaniola. By about 1830 they were all extinct. As late as 1823 the
+    following anecdote is recorded of two English settlers whose names are
+    hidden behind the initials C and A. "When near Badger Bay they fell in
+    with an Indian man and woman, who approached, apparently soliciting
+    food. The man was first killed, and the woman, who was afterwards
+    found to be his daughter, in despair remained calmly to be fired at,
+    when she was also shot through the chest and immediately expired. This
+    was told Mr. Cormack by the man who did the deed." Even English women
+    in the late eighteenth century were celebrated for their skill "in
+    shooting Red Indians and seals".
+</p>
+<p>
+    "For a period of nearly two hundred years this barbarity had
+    continued, and it was considered meritorious to shoot a Red Indian.
+    'To go to look for Indians' came to be as much a phrase as to look for
+    partridges (ptarmigan). They were harassed from post to post, from
+    island to island; their hunting and fishing stations were
+    unscrupulously seized by the invading English. They were shot down
+    without the least provocation, or captured to be exposed as
+    curiosities to the rabble at the fairs of the western towns of
+    Christian England at twopence a piece."<a name="7-16"></a><a href="#note-7-16"><small>[16]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    Too late&mdash;when the worry and anxiety of the Napoleonic wars were
+    over&mdash;the British Government sent a commission of naval officers to
+    enquire into the treatment of the Beothiks by the settlers. One woman
+    alone remained, as a frightened semi-captive, to be consoled and
+    soothed. There are Indians in the south of Newfoundland at the present
+    day, but they are Mikmaks who come over from the adjoining regions of
+    Cape Breton and Nova Scotia. So tender, indeed, is the modern
+    government of the island towards these (out of compunction for the
+    past) that they are allowed to kill the reindeer and other wild
+    animals without the licence which is exacted from white people, and so
+    are actually injuring Newfoundland's resources!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Since the great Dominion of Canada was brought into existence in 1871
+    as a unified, responsible government, the treatment of the remaining
+    Amerindian natives of British North America has been admirable; and
+    splendid work has been done in reclaiming them to a wholesome
+    civilization by the Moravian, Roman Catholic, and Church of England
+    missionaries.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note-7-1"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-1"><u>1</u></a> There may have been an earlier race inhabiting north-east
+    America which was killed out or driven away by the last Glacial
+    period.
+</p>
+<a name="note-7-2"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-2"><u>2</u></a> "The dogs of the Northern Indians are of various sizes
+    and colours, but all of them have a foxy or wolf-like appearance,
+    sharp noses, bushy tails, and sharp ears standing erect." (Samuel
+    Hearne).<br><br>
+
+    Hearne also remarks that the northern Indians had a superstitious
+    reverence and liking for the wolf. They would frequently go to the
+    mouth of the burrows where the female wolves lived with their young,
+    take out the puppies and play with them, and even paint the faces of
+    the young wolves with vermilion or red ochre.<br><br>
+
+    When first observed by Europeans the unhappy Beothiks (of
+    Newfoundland) had apparently no domestic dogs, only "tame wolves",
+    whom they distinguished from the wild wolves by marking their ears.
+    They were made more angry by the European seamen attacking and killing
+    the wolves than by anything else they did. Apparently some kind of
+    alliance had been struck up between the Beothiks&mdash;a nation of
+    hunters&mdash;and the wolf packs which followed in their tracks; and the
+    Newfoundland wolves were on the way to becoming domesticated "dogs".
+    Later on it was realized that the island <i>did</i> produce a special
+    breed&mdash;the celebrated Newfoundland dog&mdash;the original type of which was
+    much smaller than the modern type, nearly or entirely black in colour,
+    with a sharper muzzle and less pendulous ears. But its feet were as
+    strongly webbed and its habits as aquatic as those of the
+    "Newfoundland" of the modern breed. Some people have noticed the
+    resemblance between the farmers' dogs in Norway and the Newfoundland
+    type, and have thought that the latter may not be altogether of wolf
+    extraction, but be descended from the dogs brought from Norway and
+    Iceland by the Norse adventurers who visited Newfoundland in the tenth
+    and eleventh centuries.
+</p>
+
+
+<a name="note-7-3"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-3"><u>3</u></a> Of which they made very serviceable chisels.
+</p>
+<a name="note-7-4"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-4"><u>4</u></a> See also pp. <a href="#p156">156</a>, <a href="#p164">164</a>, <a href="#p186">186</a>, and <a href="#p199">199</a>. In this list I have
+    put in italics the names of the tribes more important in history, and
+    in capitals the principal group names.
+</p>
+<a name="note-7-5"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-5"><u>5</u></a> Kinistino, Kiristineaux, Kilistino; called "Crees" or
+    "Kris" for short.
+</p>
+<a name="note-7-6"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-6"><u>6</u></a> "Iroquois" was a name invented by Champlain (see p. <a href="#p69">69</a>).
+    Apparently this confederation called themselves <i>Hodenosauni</i>. The
+    termination "ois" in all French-American names is pronounced
+    "wa"&mdash;Irokwá.
+</p>
+<a name="note-7-7"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-7"><u>7</u></a> The far-famed term <i>Siou</i> is said to have been an
+    abbreviation of one of the original French names for this type of
+    Amerindian, <i>Nadouessiou</i>. In early books they are often called the
+    Nadouessies.
+</p>
+<a name="note-7-8"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-8"><u>8</u></a> These northern Indians are described by Hearne as having
+    very low foreheads, small eyes, high cheekbones, Roman noses, broad
+    cheeks, and long, broad chins. Their skins were soft, smooth and
+    polished, somewhat copper-coloured, and inclining towards a dingy
+    brown. The hair of the head was black, strong, and straight. They were
+    not in general above middle size, though well proportioned.
+</p>
+<a name="note-7-9"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-9"><u>9</u></a> "It is surprising how dexterous all these natives of the
+    plains are in communicating their ideas by signs. They hold
+    conferences for several hours, upon different subjects, during the
+    whole of which time not a single word is pronounced upon either side,
+    and still they appear to comprehend each other perfectly well. This
+    mode of communication is natural to them; their gestures are made with
+    the greatest ease, and they never seem to be at a loss for a sign to
+    express their meaning" (Alex. Henry the Younger, 1800). But it should
+    also be noted that during the last hundred years the peoples belonging
+    to the N&#363;tka-Columbian group have developed a trade language which
+    they use in common. This is a mixture of Chin&#363;k, English, French,
+    Chinese, and Hawaaian.
+</p>
+<a name="note-7-10"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-10"><u>10</u></a> The manner of courtship among the Ojibwés seemed to
+    Peter Grant not only singular, but rude. "The lover begins his first
+    addresses by gently pelting his mistress with bits of clay, snowballs,
+    small sticks, or anything he may happen to have in his hand. If she
+    returns the compliment, he is encouraged to continue the farce, and
+    repeat it for a considerable time, after which more direct proposals
+    of marriage are made by word of mouth."
+</p>
+<a name="note-7-11"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-11"><u>11</u></a> See also p. <a href="#p249">249</a>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-7-12"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-12"><u>12</u></a> See p. <a href="#p150">150</a>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-7-13"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-13"><u>13</u></a> In the far north-west, on the rivers of the Pacific
+    slope, the natives used spruce-fir bark instead of birch.
+</p>
+<a name="note-7-14"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-14"><u>14</u></a> Before the white man came to <i>North</i> America the natives
+    had no form of intoxicating drink.
+</p>
+<a name="note-7-15"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-15"><u>15</u></a> This was the Moxie plum or creeping snowberry
+    (<i>Chiogenes hispidula</i>).
+</p>
+<a name="note-7-16"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#7-16"><u>16</u></a> These are the remarks of an English chaplain in the
+    island, quoted by the Rev. George Patterson, who contributed a most
+    interesting article on the vanished Beothiks of Newfoundland to the
+    Royal Society of Canada in 1891.
+</p>
+<p class="return">[<a href="#contents">TABLE OF CONTENTS</a>]
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="2HCH0008"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER VIII
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    The Hudson Bay Explorers and the British Conquest of all Canada
+</h3>
+<p>
+    In a general way the discovery of the main features of the vast
+    Canadian Dominion may be thus apportioned amongst the different
+    European nations. First came the British, led by an Italian pilot.
+    They discovered Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland.
+    Then came the Portuguese, who discovered the north-east of
+    Newfoundland and the coast of Labrador, while a French expedition
+    under an Italian captain reached to Nova Scotia and southern
+    Newfoundland. A Spanish expedition under a Portuguese leader shortly
+    afterwards reached the coast of New Brunswick. After that the French
+    from Brittany, Normandy, and the west coast of France laid bare the
+    <i>west</i> coast of Newfoundland, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the River St.
+    Lawrence, and the Great Lakes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sir Francis Drake led the way in the exploration of the north-west
+    coast of North America. He reached, in 1579, as far north on that side
+    as the country of Oregon, which he christened New Albion. This action
+    stirred up the Spaniards, who explored the coast of California, and in
+    1591-2 sent an Ionian Island pilot, Apostolos Valeriano (commonly
+    called Juan de Fuca), in charge of an expedition to discover the
+    imagined Straits of Anian. He gave strength to this idea of a
+    continuous water route across temperate North America by entering (in
+    1592) the straits, since called Juan de Fuca, between Vancouver Island
+    and the modern State of Washington, and passing thence into the
+    Straits of Georgia, which bear a striking resemblance in their
+    features to the Straits of Magellan.
+</p>
+<p>
+    French explorers and adventurers, as we have seen, penetrated from the
+    basin of the St. Lawrence to the north and west until they touched the
+    southern extension of Hudson Bay (James's Bay), discovered Lake
+    Winnipeg and the Saskatchewan Rivers, the upper Missouri and the whole
+    course of the Mississippi, and finally recorded the existence of the
+    Rocky Mountains.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Parallel with these movements the British discovered the broad belt of
+    sea between Greenland and North America and the whole area of Hudson
+    Bay. After the French had ceased to reign in North America, the
+    British were to reveal the great rivers flowing into the Arctic Ocean,
+    the coasts and islands of the Arctic Ocean, the Yukon River, and the
+    coasts and islands of British Columbia and Alaska.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The first Europeans, however, to reach Alaska were Russians led by
+    Vitus Bering, a great Danish sea captain in the Russian service.
+    Bering was born in 1680 at Horsens, in the province of Aarhuus, E.
+    Denmark, and entered the service of Peter the Great, who was desirous
+    of knowing where Asia terminated and America began. Bering discovered
+    the straits which bear his name in 1728, and in 1741 was wrecked and
+    died on Bering's Island. Captain James Cook, the British discoverer of
+    Australia and of so many Pacific islands, completed the work of Bering
+    in 1788 in charting the north-west American coast right into the
+    Arctic Ocean.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It has already been related in Chapter III how the Hudson's Bay
+    Chartered Company came to be founded. Soon after their first pioneers
+    were established, in 1670, at Fort Nelson, on the west coast of Hudson
+    Bay, near where York Factory now stands, there was born&mdash;or brought
+    out from England as an infant&mdash;a little boy named Henry Kellsey, who
+    as a child took a great fancy to the Amerindians who came to trade at
+    Fort Nelson. As he played with them, and they returned his affection,
+    he learnt their language, and&mdash;for some inconceivable reason&mdash;this
+    gave great offence to the stupid governor of the fort (indeed, when
+    Kellsey as a grown man, some years afterwards, compiled a vocabulary
+    of the Kri language for the use of traders, the Hudson's Bay Company
+    ordered it to be suppressed). Stupid Governor Geyer not only objected
+    to Kellsey picking up the Kri language, but punished him most severely
+    for that and for his boyish tricks and jokes; so much so, that
+    Kellsey, when he was about ten years old, ran away with the returning
+    Indians, some of whom had grown very fond of him whilst they stayed at
+    Fort Nelson.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Six years afterwards an Indian brought to the governor of the fort a
+    letter written by Kellsey in charcoal on a piece of white birch bark.
+    In this he asked the governor's pardon for running away, and his
+    permission to return to the fort. As a kind reply was sent, Kellsey
+    appeared not long afterwards grown into a young man, accompanied by an
+    Indian wife and attended by a party of Indians. He was dressed exactly
+    like them, but differed from them in the respect which he showed to
+    his native wife. She attempted to accompany her husband into the
+    factory or place of business, and the governor stopped her; but
+    Kellsey at once told him in English that he would not enter himself if
+    his wife was not suffered to go with him, and so the governor
+    relented. After this Kellsey (who must then have been about seventeen)
+    seems to have regularly enrolled himself in 1688 in the service of the
+    Company, and he was employed as a kind of commercial traveller who
+    made long journeys to the north-west to beat up a fur trade for the
+    Company and induce tribes of Indians to make long journeys every
+    summer to the Company's factory with the skins they had secured
+    between the autumn and the spring. In this way Kellsey penetrated
+    into the country of the Assiniboines, and he finally reached a more
+    distant tribe or nation called by the long name of Néwátamipoet.<a name="8-1"></a><a href="#note-8-1"><small>[1]</small></a>
+    Kellsey first of all made for Split Lake, up the Nelson River, and
+    thence paddled westwards in his canoe for a distance of 71 miles. Here
+    he abandoned the canoe, and, for what he estimated as 316 miles, he
+    tramped through a wooded country, first covered with fir and pine
+    trees, and farther on with poplar and birch. Apparently he then
+    reached a river flowing into Reindeer Lake. In a general way his steps
+    must have taken him in the direction of Lake Athapaska.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the way he had much trouble with the Assiniboin Indians and Kris,
+    with whom he had caught up, and with whom he was to travel in the
+    direction of these mysterious Néwátamipoets. The last-named tribe, who
+    were probably of the Athapaskan group, had killed, a few months
+    previously, three of the Kri women, and the Kri Indians who belonged
+    to Kellsey's party were bent, above all things, on attacking the
+    Néwátamipoets and punishing them for this outrage. Kellsey only wished
+    to open up peaceful relations with them and create a great trade in
+    furs with the Hudson's Bay Company, so he kept pleading with the
+    Indians not to go to war with the Néwátamipoets. On this journey,
+    however, one of the Kri Indians fell ill and died. The next day the
+    body was burnt with much ceremony&mdash;first the flesh, and then the
+    bones&mdash;and after this funeral the companions of the dead man began to
+    reason as to the cause of his death, and suddenly blamed Kellsey.
+    Kellsey had obstructed them from their purpose of avenging their slain
+    women, therefore the gods of the tribe were angry and claimed this
+    victim in the man who had died. Kellsey was very near being sent to
+    the other world to complete the sacrifice; but he arranged for "a
+    feast of tobacco"&mdash;in other words, a calm deliberation and the smoking
+    of the pipe of peace. He explained to the angry Indians that his
+    Company had not supplied him with guns and ammunition with which to go
+    to war, but to induce them to embark on the fur trade and to kill wild
+    animals for their skins. If, instead of this, they went to war, or
+    injured him, they need never again go down to Fort Nelson for any
+    further trade or supplies. Four days afterwards, however, the
+    attention of the whole party was concentrated on bison.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Bison could now be seen in abundance. Kellsey was already acquainted
+    with the musk ox, which he had seen in the colder regions near to
+    Hudson Bay; but the bison seemed to him quite different, with horns
+    growing like those of an English ox, black and short. In the middle of
+    September he reached the country of the Néwátamipoets, and presented
+    to their chief, on behalf of the Hudson's Bay Company, a present of
+    clothes, knives, awls, tobacco, and a gun, gunpowder, and shot. On
+    this journey Kellsey encountered the grizzly bear, a more common
+    denizen of the western regions of North America. According to his own
+    account, he and one of the Indians with him were attacked by two
+    grizzly bears and obliged to climb into the branches of trees. The
+    bears followed them; but Kellsey fired and killed one, and later on
+    the other also. For this feat he was greatly reverenced by the
+    Indians, and received the name of Mistopashish, or "little giant".
+    Kellsey afterwards rose to be governor of York Fort, on the west coast
+    of Hudson Bay.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The next great explorer ranging westward from Hudson Bay was Anthony
+    Hendry.<a name="8-2"></a><a href="#note-8-2"><small>[2]</small></a> Anthony Hendry left York factory in 1754, with a company of
+    Kri Indians, to make a great journey of exploration to the west, and
+    with the deliberate intention of wintering with the natives and not
+    returning for that purpose to Hudson Bay. By means of canoe travel and
+    portages he reached Oxford Lake. From here he gained Moose Lake, and
+    soon afterwards "the broad waters of the Saskatchewan&mdash;the first
+    Englishman to see this great river of the western plains".<a name="8-3"></a><a href="#note-8-3"><small>[3]</small></a>
+    Twenty-two miles upstream from the point where it reached the
+    Saskatchewan he came to a French fort which had only been standing for
+    a year, and which represented probably the farthest advance northwards
+    of the French Canadians.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0012"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<a href="images/map12-large.jpg"> <img src="images/map12-small.jpg" width="610" height="400"
+alt="Map of Eastern Canada and Newfoundland"></a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="ar">  [<a href="images/map12-large.jpg"><small>LARGER MAP</small></a>]</p>
+
+<p>
+    The situation was a rather delicate one, for the Hudson's Bay Company
+    was a thorn in the side of French Canada. However, in this
+    year&mdash;1754&mdash;the two nations were not actually at war, and the two
+    Frenchmen in charge of the fort received him "in a very genteel
+    manner", and invited him into their home, where he readily accepted
+    their hospitality. At first they spoke of detaining him till the
+    commandant of the fort returned, but abandoned this idea after
+    reflection, and Hendry continued his journey up the Saskatchewan. He
+    then left the river and marched on foot over the plains which separate
+    the North and the South Saskatchewan Rivers. The South Saskatchewan
+    was found to be a high stream covered with birch, poplar, elder, and2
+    fir. He and his Indian guides were searching for the horse-riding
+    Blackfeet Indians.<a name="8-4"></a><a href="#note-8-4"><small>[4]</small></a> All the Amerindians known to the Hudson's Bay
+    Company hitherto travelled on foot, using snowshoes in the winter; but
+    vague rumours had reached the Company that in the far south-west there
+    were great nations of Indians which did all their hunting on
+    horseback.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hendry had now found them, and he also met a small tribe of
+    Assiniboins&mdash;the Mekesue or Eagle Indians&mdash;who differed from the
+    surrounding tribes by going about, at any rate in the summertime,
+    absolutely naked. Here, too, between the two Saskatchewans, they saw
+    herds of bison on the plains grazing like English cattle. But they
+    also found elk (moose), wapiti or red deer, hares, grouse, geese, and
+    ducks. He records in his journal: "I went with the young men
+    a-buffalo-hunting, all armed with bows and arrows; killed several;
+    fine sport. We beat them about, lodging twenty arrows in one beast. So
+    expert were the natives that they will take the arrows out of the
+    buffalo when they are foaming and raging with pain and tearing up the
+    ground with their feet and horns until they fall down." The
+    Amerindians killed far more of these splendid beasts than they could
+    eat, and from these carcasses they merely took the tongues and a few
+    choice pieces, leaving the remainder to the wolves and the grizzly
+    bears.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At last they arrived at the temporary village of the Blackfeet. Two
+    hundred tents or <i>tipis</i> were pitched in two parallel rows, and down
+    this avenue marched Anthony Hendry, gazed at silently by many
+    Blackfeet Indians until he reached the large house or lodge of their
+    great chief, at the end of the avenue of tents. This lodge was large
+    enough to contain fifty persons. The chief received him seated on the
+    sacred skin of a white buffalo. The pipe of peace was then produced
+    and passed round in silence, each person taking a ceremonial puff.
+    Boiled bison beef was then brought to the guests in baskets made of
+    willow branches. Hendry told the great chief of the Blackfeet that he
+    had been sent by the great leader of the white men at Hudson Bay to
+    invite the Blackfeet Indians to come to these eastern waters in the
+    summertime, and bring with them beaver and wolf skins, for which they
+    would get, in return, guns, ammunition, cloth, beads, and other trade
+    goods. But this chief, though he listened patiently, pointed out that
+    this fort on Hudson Bay was situated at a very great distance, that
+    his men only knew how to ride horses, and not how to paddle canoes.
+    Moreover, they could not live without bison beef, and disliked fish.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After leaving the headquarters of the Blackfeet, Hendry rambled over
+    the beautiful country of fir woods and pine woods until he must have
+    got within sight of the Rocky Mountains, though these are not
+    mentioned in his journal. Then, after passing the winter (which did
+    not begin as regards cold weather till the 2nd of December, and was
+    over at the end of March) he returned to the French fort on the
+    Saskatchewan, where he was received by the Commandant, de La Corne,
+    with great kindness and hospitality. These Frenchmen, he found, were
+    able to speak in great perfection several Indian languages; they were
+    well dressed, and courtly in manners, and led a civilized life in
+    these distant wilds. They had excellent trade goods and were sincerely
+    liked by the Indians, but for some reason or other they lacked
+    Brazilian tobacco, which seems to have been a commodity much in favour
+    amongst the Indians. With this the Hudson's Bay Company were kept well
+    supplied, and that alone enabled them in any degree to compete with
+    the French. But in ten years more this French fort would be abandoned
+    owing to the cession of Canada to Britain.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The British, in fact, all through the first half of the eighteenth
+    century, by their superiority in sea power, were steadily strangling
+    the French empire in North America. Acadia, or Nova Scotia, and New
+    Brunswick had been, as we have seen, recognized as British in 1713,
+    and Newfoundland, also, subject to certain conditions, giving France
+    the exclusive right to fish on the <i>western</i> and <i>northern</i> coasts of
+    Newfoundland. The result was that when "New France", or Canada and
+    Louisiana combined, was at its greatest extent of conquered and
+    administered territory, France held but a very limited seacoast from
+    which to approach it&mdash;just the mouth of the Mississippi, and a little
+    bit of Alabama on the south and Cape Breton Island on the east. Cape
+    Breton Island was commanded by the immensely strong fortress of
+    Louisburg, and the possession of this place gave the French some
+    security in entering the Gulf of St. Lawrence through Cabot Straits.
+    But Louisburg was captured by the British colonists of New England
+    (United States) in 1745; and although it was given back to France
+    again, it was reoccupied in 1758, and served as a basis for the
+    armaments which were directed against Quebec in 1759, and which
+    resulted at the close of that year in the surrender of that important
+    city. In 1763 all Canada was ceded to the British, and Louisiana
+    (which had become the western barrier of the about-to-be-born United
+    States) was ceded to Spain; the French flag flew no more on the
+    Continent of North America, save in the two little islands of St.
+    Pierre and Miquelon adjoining Newfoundland, wherein it still remains
+    as a reminder of the splendid achievements of Frenchmen in America.
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="note-8-1"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#8-1"><u>1</u></a> Spelt in the documents of the Hudson's Bay Company,
+    Naywatame-poet.
+</p>
+<a name="note-8-2"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#8-2"><u>2</u></a> The young or old reader of this and other books dealing
+    with the exploration of the Canadian Dominion will be indeed puzzled
+    between the various Hendrys and Henrys. The last-named was a prolific
+    stock, from which several notable explorers and servants of the
+    fur-trading companies were drawn. In this book a careful distinction
+    must be made between the <i>Anthony</i> Hendrey or Hendey, who commenced
+    his exploration of the west in 1754; the unrelated <i>Alexander</i> Henry
+    the Elder, who journeyed between 1761 and 1776; and the nephew of the
+    last-named, Alexander Henry the Younger, whose pioneering explorations
+    occurred between 1799 and 1814.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note-8-3"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#8-3"><u>3</u></a> <i>The Search for the Western Sea</i>, by Lawrence J. Burpee.
+</p>
+<a name="note-8-4"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#8-4"><u>4</u></a> See p. <a href="#p159">159</a>.
+</p>
+<p class="return">[<a href="#contents">TABLE OF CONTENTS</a>]
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="2HCH0009"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER IX
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    The Pioneers from Montreal: Alexander Henry the Elder
+</h3>
+<p>
+    After 1763, when the two provinces of Canada were definitely ceded to
+    Great Britain, the exploring energies of the Hudson's Bay Fur-trading
+    Company revived. But before this rather sluggish organization could
+    take full advantage of the cessation of French opposition, independent
+    British pioneers were on their way to explore the vast north-west and
+    west, soon carrying their marvellous journeys beyond the utmost limits
+    reached by La Vérendrye and his sons. Eventually these pioneers, who
+    had Montreal for their base and who wisely associated themselves in
+    business and exploration with French Canadians, founded in 1784 a
+    great trading association known as the North-west Trading Company. A
+    few years later certain Scottish pioneers brought a rival exploration
+    and trading corporation into existence and called it the "X.Y.
+    Company". In 1804 these rival Montreal fur-trading associations were
+    fused into a new North-west Trading Company. Between this and the old
+    Hudson's Bay Company an intensely bitter rivalry and enmity&mdash;almost at
+    times a state of war&mdash;arose, and continued until 1821, when the
+    North-west Company and that of Hudson's Bay amalgamated. It is
+    necessary that these dry details should be understood in order that
+    the reader may comprehend the motives and reasons which prompted the
+    journeys which are about to be described.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jonathan Carver, of Boston, U.S.A., was perhaps the pioneer of all
+    the British traders into the far west of Canada, beyond Lake Superior,
+    after Canada had been handed over to the British.<a name="9-1"></a><a href="#note-9-1"><small>[1]</small></a> In 1766-7 he
+    reached the Mississippi at its junction with the St. Peter or
+    Minnesota River, and journeyed up it to the land of the Dakota. Thomas
+    Currie, of Montreal, in 1770 travelled as far as Cedar Lake,<a name="9-2"></a><a href="#note-9-2"><small>[2]</small></a> where
+    there had been established the French post of Fort Bourbon. He was
+    succeeded the next year by James Finlay, who extended his explorations
+    to the Saskatchewan, whither he was followed by Alexander Henry the
+    Elder in 1775.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Alexander Henry (styled The Elder to distinguish him from his famous
+    nephew of the same name) was a native of New Jersey (U.S.A.), where he
+    was born in 1739. His parents were well-to-do people of the middle
+    class who are believed to have emigrated at the beginning of the
+    eighteenth century from the West of England, and to have been related
+    to Matthew Henry, the Bible commentator. Their son, Alexander,
+    received a good education, and after some commercial apprenticeship at
+    Albany (New York) came to Quebec when Canada was occupied by the
+    British in 1760; at which period he was about twenty-one years old. He
+    was in such a hurry to try a trading adventure in the country of the
+    great lakes that he ventured into central Canada before it was
+    sufficiently calmed down and reconciled to British rule. The
+    hostility, curiously enough, manifested itself much more among the
+    Amerindians than the settlers of French blood. These white men had not
+    been so well treated by the arrogant French officers and officials as
+    much to mind the change to the greater freedom of British government.
+    But the Indian chiefs and people loved the French, largely owing to
+    the goodness and solicitude of the missionaries.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The hostility of the Indians", wrote Henry in his journal, travelling
+    along the coast of Lake Huron, "was exclusively against the English.
+    Between them and my Canadian attendants, there appeared the most
+    cordial goodwill. This circumstance suggested one means of escape, of
+    which, by the advice of my friend, Campion, I resolved to attempt
+    availing myself; namely, that of putting on the dress usually worn by
+    such of the Canadians as pursue the trade into which I had entered,
+    and assimilating myself, as much as I was able, to their appearance
+    and manners. To this end I laid aside my English clothes and covered
+    myself only with a cloth passed about the middle; a shirt, hanging
+    loose; a 'molton', or blanket coat, and a large, red worsted cap. The
+    next thing was to smear my face and hands with dirt and grease; and,
+    this done, I took the place of one of my men, and, when the Indians
+    approached, used the paddle with as much skill as I possessed. I had
+    the satisfaction to find, that my disguise enabled me to pass several
+    canoes without attracting the smallest notice."
+</p>
+<p>
+    When he reached Fort Michili-makinak<a name="9-3"></a><a href="#note-9-3"><small>[3]</small></a> he wrote: "At two o'clock in
+    the afternoon, the Chipeways came to my house, about sixty in number,
+    and headed by Minaváváná, their chief. They walked in single file,
+    each with his tomahawk in one hand and scalping knife in the other.
+    Their bodies were naked from the waist upward, except in a few
+    examples, where blankets were thrown loosely over the shoulders. Their
+    faces were painted with charcoal, worked up with grease; their bodies,
+    with white clay, in patterns of various fancies. Some had feathers
+    thrust through their noses, and their heads decorated with the
+    same.... It is unnecessary to dwell on the sensations with which I
+    beheld the approach of this uncouth, if not frightful assemblage.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The chief entered first, and the rest followed without noise. On
+    receiving a sign from the former, the latter seated themselves on the
+    floor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Minaváváná appeared to be about fifty years of age. He was six feet
+    in height, and had, in his countenance, an indescribable mixture of
+    good and evil.... Looking steadfastly at me, where I sat in ceremony,
+    with an interpreter on either hand and several Canadians behind me, he
+    entered at the same time into conversation with Campion, enquiring how
+    long it was since I left Montreal, and observing that the English, as
+    it would seem, were brave men, and not afraid of death, since they
+    dared to come, as I had done, fearlessly among their enemies."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Indians now gravely smoked their pipes, whilst Henry inwardly
+    endured tortures of suspense. At length, the pipes being finished, a
+    long pause of silence followed. Then Minaváváná, taking a few strings
+    of wampum in his hand, began a long speech, of which it is only
+    necessary to give a few extracts:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Englishman, it is to you that I speak, and I demand your attention!
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Englishman, although you have conquered the French, you have not yet
+    conquered us! We are not your slaves. These lakes, these woods and
+    mountains, were left to us by our ancestors. They are our inheritance,
+    and we will part with them to none. Your nation supposes that we, like
+    the white people, cannot live without bread&mdash;and pork&mdash;and beef! But,
+    you ought to know, that He, the Great Spirit and Master of Life, has
+    provided food for us in these spacious lakes, and on these woody
+    mountains.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Englishman, our father, the King of France, employed our young men to
+    make war upon your nation. In this warfare many of them have been
+    killed, and it is our custom to retaliate, until such time as the
+    spirits of the slain are satisfied. But the spirits of the slain are
+    to be satisfied in either of two ways. The first is by the spilling of
+    the blood of the nation by which they fell; the other by covering the
+    bodies of the dead, and thus allaying the resentment of their
+    relations. This is done by making presents.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Englishman, your king has never sent us any presents, nor entered
+    into any treaty with us, wherefore he and we are still at war; and,
+    until he does these things, we must consider that we have no other
+    father, nor friend, among the white men, than the King of France; but,
+    for you, we have taken into consideration, that you have ventured your
+    life among us in the expectation that we should not molest you. You do
+    not come armed with an intention to make war; you come in peace, to
+    trade with us, and supply us with necessaries, of which we are in
+    want. We shall regard you, therefore, as a brother, and you may sleep
+    tranquilly, without fear of the Chipeways.... As a token of our
+    friendship, we present you with this pipe to smoke."
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Minaváváná had finished his harangue, an Indian presented Henry
+    with a pipe, the which, after he had drawn smoke through it three
+    times, was carried back to the chief, and after him to every person in
+    the room. This ceremony ended, the chief arose, and gave the
+    Englishman his hand, in which he was followed by all the rest.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the Sault Ste Marie, on the river connecting Lake Superior and
+    Huron, Henry spent part of the spring of 1763-4, and engaged with a
+    few French Canadians and Indians in making maple sugar, the season for
+    which&mdash;April&mdash;was now at hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A temporary house for eight persons was built in a convenient part of
+    the maple woods, distant about three miles from the fort. The men
+    then gathered the bark of white birch trees, and made out of it
+    vessels to hold the sap which was to flow from the incisions they cut
+    in the bark of the maple trees. Into these cuts they introduced wooden
+    spouts or ducts, and under them were placed the birch-bark vessels.
+    When these were filled, the sweet liquid was poured into larger
+    buckets, and the buckets were emptied into bags of elkskin containing
+    perhaps a hundred gallons. Boilers (probably of metal, introduced by
+    the French) were next set up in the camp over fires kept burning day
+    and night, and the maple sap thus boiled became, by concentration,
+    maple sugar.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The women attended to all the business of sugar manufacture, while the
+    men cut wood and went out hunting and fishing to secure food for the
+    community; though, as a matter of fact, sugar and syrup were their
+    main sustenance during all this absence from home. "I have known
+    Indians", wrote Henry, "to live for a time wholly on maple sugar and
+    syrup and become fat." The sap of the maple had certain medicinal
+    qualities which were exceedingly good for persons who had previously
+    been eating little else than meat and fish, so that the three weeks of
+    sugar-boiling in Canada was, no doubt, a splendid assistance to the
+    health of the natives. On this particular occasion described by Henry,
+    the party returned, after three weeks' absence, to the Sault Ste Marie
+    with 1600 lb. of maple sugar, and 36 gallons of syrup.<a name="9-4"></a><a href="#note-9-4"><small>[4]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    Henry returned in the summer of 1763 to Fort Michili-makinak. The
+    place was then held by a British garrison under Major Etherington.
+    Shortly after Henry's arrival, an Ojibwé chief named Wáwátam came
+    often to his lodgings, and, taking a great fancy to the Englishman,
+    asked leave to become his blood brother. He was about forty-five
+    years of age, and of an excellent character amongst his nation. He
+    warned Henry that he, Wáwátam, had had bad dreams during the winter,
+    in which he had been disturbed "by the noises of evil birds", and gave
+    him other roundabout warnings that the Indians of different tribes
+    were going to attack the British garrison at Michili-Makinak, and
+    endeavour to destroy all the English in Upper Canada. Henry did not
+    pay over much attention to this warning, because "the Indian manner of
+    speech is so extravagantly figurative".
+</p>
+<p>
+    The King's birthday was celebrated with, no doubt, somewhat tipsy
+    rejoicings in the summer of 1763. The Ojibwé Indians outside the fort
+    pretended they were going to have a great game of La Crosse with the
+    S&#257;ki or "Fox" Indians. This game was got up to find a pretext for
+    entering the fort and taking the British officers and garrison at a
+    disadvantage. Some of the officers and soldiers, suspecting nothing in
+    the way of danger, were outside the fort by the waterside. However,
+    the sport commenced, and suddenly the ball was struck over the pickets
+    of the fort. At once the Ojibwés, pretending great ardour in their
+    game, came leaping, struggling and shouting over the defences into the
+    fort as though "in the unrestrained pursuit of a rude, athletic
+    exercise". Once inside the fortifications, they attacked the
+    unsuspicious and unarmed soldiers and officers, of whom they killed
+    seventy out of ninety.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Henry had not gone with the others, but had stayed in his room writing
+    letters. Suddenly he heard the Indian warcry and a noise of general
+    confusion. Looking out of his window he saw a crowd of Indians inside
+    the fort furiously cutting down and scalping every Englishman they
+    could reach. Meantime, the French Canadian inhabitants of the fort
+    looked on calmly, neither intervening to stop the Indians, nor
+    suffering any injury from them. Realizing that all his fellow
+    countrymen were practically destroyed, Henry endeavoured to hide
+    himself. He entered the house of his next-door neighbour, a Frenchman,
+    and found the whole family at the windows gazing at the scene of blood
+    before them. He implored this Frenchman to put him into some place of
+    safety until the massacre was over. The latter merely shrugged his
+    shoulders and intimated that he could do nothing for him; but a Pani
+    Indian woman, a slave of this Frenchman, beckoned to Henry to follow
+    her, and hid him in a garret. Then the Indians burst into the house
+    and asked the Frenchman if he had got any Englishmen concealed, the
+    latter returned an evasive answer, telling them to search for
+    themselves. Henry hid himself under a heap of birch-bark vessels,
+    which were used in maple-sugar manufacture. The door was unlocked, the
+    four Indians dashed in, their bodies covered with blood, and armed
+    with tomahawks. The hidden man thought that the throbbing of his heart
+    must make a noise loud enough to betray him. The Indians searched the
+    garret, and one of them approached Henry so closely as almost to touch
+    him; yet he remained undiscovered, possibly owing to the dark colour
+    of his clothes and the dim light in the room. Then the Indians, after
+    describing to the Frenchman how many they had killed and scalped,
+    returned downstairs, and the door was locked behind them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the next day the Indians insisted on a further search, and,
+    regarding every attempt at concealment as vain, Henry, by a desperate
+    resolve, rose from his bed and presented himself in full view to the
+    Indians as they entered the room. They were all in a state of
+    intoxication and entirely naked. One of them, upwards of six feet in
+    height, had all his face and body covered with charcoal and grease,
+    but with a large white ring encircling each of his eyes. This man,
+    walking up to Henry, seized him with one hand by the collar of his
+    coat, and in the other held up a large carving knife, making a feint
+    as if to plunge it into his breast, his eyes meanwhile fixed
+    steadfastly on those of the Englishman. At length, after some seconds
+    of the most anxious suspense, he dropped Henry's arm, saying: "I won't
+    kill you," adding that he had often fought in war with the English and
+    brought away many scalps, but that on a certain occasion he had lost a
+    brother whose name was Musinigon, and that he would adopt Henry in his
+    place.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One would like the story to have stopped here at this happy turn of
+    events, but Wenniway (as this saviour of Henry was called) entertained
+    a very fickle regard for his adopted brother, and, though he once or
+    twice intervened, subsequently took no great pains to see that his
+    life was spared. However, for the time being he was reprieved, and
+    regarded Wenniway as his "master". Nevertheless, he was soon haled out
+    of the house by another Indian, apparently coming with Wenniway's
+    authority. This man ordered him to undress, and then took away all his
+    clothes, giving him such dirty rags or strips of leather as he
+    possessed himself. He frankly owned that his motive for stripping him
+    was that, as he wished afterwards to kill him, Henry's clothes might
+    not be stained with blood! With the intention of assassinating him, in
+    fact, he dragged Henry along to a region of bushes and sandhills, and
+    then produced a knife and attempted to execute his purpose. But with
+    the rage and strength of absolute despair Henry wrenched himself free,
+    pushed his would-be murderer on one side, and ran for his life towards
+    the fort.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here Wenniway rather indifferently helped him to take refuge in the
+    house of the Frenchman in which he had formerly hidden, but the same
+    night he was roused from sleep and ordered to come below, where to his
+    surprise he found himself in the presence of three of the British
+    officers who had formerly commanded in this fort, and who were now
+    prisoners of the Ojibwés. The Indian chiefs for the time being had
+    handed these men over to the surveillance of the French Canadians,
+    together with the seventeen surviving English soldiers and traders.
+    Henry, like the others, was almost without clothes. The French
+    Canadian in whose house he had taken refuge refused to give him as
+    much as a blanket, but another Canadian, less indifferent to the
+    sufferings of a fellow white man, did give him a blanket, but for
+    which he would certainly have perished from cold.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The next day he and the other English prisoners were embarked in
+    canoes and taken away to Lake Michigan. On reaching the mouth of that
+    lake, at the Beaver Islands, the Ojibwé canoes, on account of the fog,
+    were obliged to approach the lands of the Ottawa Indians. These last
+    suddenly seized the canoes as they entered shallow water, and
+    professed great indignation at the capture of Fort Michili-Makinak and
+    the slaughter of the Englishmen. They declared their intention of
+    saving the survivors, and charged the Ojibwés with being about to kill
+    and eat them. By the Ottawa Indians, therefore, the twenty Englishmen
+    were carried back again and deposited in Fort Michili-Makinak, which
+    was now taken possession of by the Ottawas. The English were still
+    held as prisoners. After hearing all the Ojibwés had to say, and
+    receiving from them large presents, the Ottawas finally decided to
+    restore their English prisoners to the Ojibwés, who consequently took
+    them away with ropes tied round their necks, and put them into an
+    Indian habitation. Here, as they were starving, they were offered
+    loaves of bread, but with the horrible accompaniment of seeing the
+    slices cut with knives still covered with the blood of the murdered
+    English. The Ojibwés moistened this blood on the knife blades with
+    their spittle, and rubbed it on the slices of bread, offering this
+    food then to their prisoners, so that they might force them to eat the
+    blood of their countrymen.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The next morning, however, there appeared before Ménéhewéhná, the
+    great war chief of the Ojibwés, Henry's friend and adopted brother,
+    Wáwátam. This man made an earnest speech to the council of Ojibwé
+    chiefs and braves, in which he pleaded hard for the Englishman's life,
+    at the same time tendering from out of his own goods a considerable
+    ransom. After much pipe-smoking and an embarrassing silence, the war
+    chief rose to his feet and accepted the ransom, giving Wáwátam
+    permission to take away into safety his adopted brother. "Wáwátam led
+    me to his lodge, which was at the distance of a few yards only from
+    the prison lodge. My entrance appeared to give joy to the whole
+    family; food was immediately prepared for me; and I now ate the first
+    hearty meal which I had made since my capture. I found myself one of
+    the family; and, but that I had still my fears as to the other
+    Indians, I felt as happy as the situation could allow."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The next day seven of the English prisoners were killed by the
+    Ojibwés, and Henry actually saw their dead bodies being dragged out
+    into the open. They had been killed in cold blood by an Indian chief
+    who had just arrived from a hunting expedition, and who, not having
+    been present at the attack on the fort, now desired to satisfy his
+    warlike instincts and his agreement with the policy of the Ojibwés by
+    going into the lodge where the English officers and men were tied up,
+    and slaughtering seven of them in cold blood.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Shortly afterwards two of the Ojibwés took the fattest amongst the
+    dead men, cut off his head, and divided his body into five parts, one
+    of which was put into each of five kettles hung over as many fires,
+    which were kindled for this purpose at the door of the house in which
+    the other prisoners were tied up. They then sent to insist on the
+    attendance at their cannibal feast of Wáwátam, the adopted brother and
+    protector of Henry. The invitation was delivered after the Amerindian
+    fashion. A small cutting of cedar wood about four inches in length
+    supplies the place of the written or printed invitation to dinner of
+    European civilization, and the man who bore the slip of cedar wood
+    gave particulars as to place and time by word of mouth. Guests on
+    these occasions were expected to bring their own dish and spoon.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In spite of repugnance, Wáwátam, to save his life and that of Henry,
+    was obliged to go. He returned after an absence of half an hour,
+    bringing back in his dish the portion given to him&mdash;a human hand and a
+    large piece of flesh. His objection to eat this gruesome food was
+    apparently not very deep or persistent. He excused the custom by
+    saying that amongst all Amerindian nations there existed this practice
+    of making a war feast from out of the bodies of the slain after a
+    successful battle.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Soon after this episode of horror the Ojibwés abandoned Fort
+    Michili-Makinak, for fear the English should come to attack it. Henry
+    was hidden by his adopted brother, Wáwátam, in a cave, where he found
+    himself by the light of the next morning sleeping on a bed of human
+    bones, which the night before he had taken to be twigs and boughs. The
+    whole of the cave was, in fact, filled with these human remains. No
+    one knew or remembered the reason. Henry thought that the cave had
+    been an ancient receptacle for the bones of persons who had been
+    sacrificed and devoured at war feasts; for, however contemptuous they
+    may be of the flesh, the Amerindians paid particular attention
+    to the bones of human beings&mdash;whether friends, relations, or
+    enemies&mdash;preserving them unbroken, and depositing them in some
+    place kept exclusively for that purpose.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The great chief of the Ojibwés, however, advised that Henry, who had
+    rejoined Wáwátam, should be dressed in disguise as an Indian to save
+    him from any further harm, for the natives all round about were
+    preparing for what they believed to be an inevitable war with the
+    English.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I could not but consent to the proposal, and the chief was so kind as
+    to assist my friend and his family in effecting that very day the
+    desired metamorphosis. My hair was cut off, and my head shaved, with
+    the exception of a spot on the crown, of about twice the diameter of a
+    crown piece. My face was painted with three or four different colours;
+    some parts of it red, and others black. A shirt was provided for me,
+    painted with vermilion, mixed with grease. A large collar of wampum<a name="9-5"></a><a href="#note-9-5"><small>[5]</small></a>
+    was put round my neck, and another suspended on my breast. Both my
+    arms were decorated with large bands of silver above the elbow,
+    besides several smaller ones on the wrists; and my legs were covered
+    with <i>mitasses</i>, a kind of hose, made, as is the favourite fashion, of
+    scarlet cloth. Over all I was to wear a scarlet blanket or mantle, and
+    on my head a large bunch of feathers. I parted, not without some
+    regret, with the long hair which was natural to it, and which I
+    fancied to be ornamental; but the ladies of the family, and of the
+    village in general, appeared to think my person improved, and now
+    condescended to call me handsome, even among Indians."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He then went away to live with his protectors, and with them passed a
+    by no means unhappy autumn, winter, and spring, hunting and fishing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here are some of his adventures at this period.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "To kill beaver, we used to go several miles up the rivers, before the
+    approach of night, and after the dusk came on, suffer the canoe to
+    drift gently down the current, without noise. The beavers, in this
+    part of the evening, come abroad to procure food, or materials for
+    repairing their habitations, and as they are not alarmed by the canoe,
+    they often pass it within gunshot.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "On entering the River Aux Sables, Wáwátam took a dog, tied its feet
+    together, and threw it into the stream, uttering, at the same time, a
+    long prayer, which he addressed to the Great Spirit, supplicating his
+    blessing on the chase, and his aid in the support of the family,
+    through the dangers of a long winter. Our 'lodge' was fifteen miles
+    above the mouth of the stream. The principal animals, which the
+    country afforded, were red deer (wapiti), the common American deer,
+    the bear, racoon, beaver, and marten.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The beaver feeds in preference on young wood of the birch, aspen, and
+    poplar tree<a name="9-6"></a><a href="#note-9-6"><small>[6]</small></a>; but, in defect of these, on any other tree, those of
+    the pine and fir kinds excepted. These latter it employs only for
+    building its dams and houses. In wide meadows, where no wood is to be
+    found, it resorts, for all its purposes, to the roots of the rush and
+    water lily. It consumes great quantities of food, whether of roots or
+    wood; and hence often reduces itself to the necessity of removing into
+    a new quarter. Its house has an arched dome-like roof, of an
+    elliptical figure, and rises from three to four feet above the surface
+    of the water. It is always entirely surrounded by water; but, in the
+    banks adjacent, the animal provides holes or <i>washes</i>, of which the
+    entrance is below the surface, and to which it retreats on the first
+    alarm.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The female beaver usually produces two young at a time, but not
+    unfrequently more. During the first year, the young remain with their
+    parents. In the second, they occupy an adjoining apartment, and assist
+    in building, and in procuring food. At two years old, they part, and
+    build houses of their own; but often rove about for a considerable
+    time before they fix upon a spot. There are beavers, called, by the
+    Indians, <i>old bachelors</i>, who live by themselves, build no houses, and
+    work at no dams, but shelter themselves in holes. The usual method of
+    taking these is by traps, formed of iron, or logs, and baited with
+    branches of poplar.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "According to the Indians, the beaver is much given to jealousy. If a
+    strange male approaches the cabin, a battle immediately ensues. Of
+    this the female remains an unconcerned spectator, careless as to which
+    party the law of conquest may assign her. The Indians add that the
+    male is as constant as he is jealous, never attaching himself to more
+    than one female.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The most common way of taking the beaver is that of breaking up its
+    house, which is done with trenching tools, during the winter, when the
+    ice is strong enough to allow of approaching them; and when, also, the
+    fur is in its most valuable state.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Breaking up the house, however, is only a preparatory step. During
+    this operation, the family make their escape to one or more of their
+    <i>washes</i>. These are to be discovered by striking the ice along the
+    bank, and where the holes are, a hollow sound is returned. After
+    discovering and searching many of these in vain, we often heard the
+    whole family together in the same wash. I was taught occasionally to
+    distinguish a full wash from an empty one, by the motion of the water
+    above its entrance, occasioned by the breathing of the animals
+    concealed in it. From the washes, they must be taken out with the
+    hands; and in doing this, the hunter sometimes receives severe wounds
+    from their teeth. Whilst I was a hunter with the Indians, I thought
+    beaver flesh was very good; but after that of the ox was again within
+    my reach, I could not relish it. The tail is accounted a luxurious
+    morsel.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "One evening, on my return from hunting, I found the fire put out, and
+    the opening in the top of the lodge covered over with skins&mdash;by this
+    means excluding, as much as possible, external light. I further
+    observed that the ashes were removed from the fireplace, and that dry
+    sand was spread where they had been. Soon after, a fire was made
+    withoutside the cabin, in the open air, and a kettle hung over it to
+    boil.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I now supposed that a feast was in preparation. I supposed so only,
+    for it would have been indecorous to enquire into the meaning of what
+    I saw. No person, among the Indians themselves, would use this
+    freedom. Good breeding requires that the spectator should patiently
+    wait the result.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "As soon as the darkness of night had arrived, the family, including
+    myself, were invited into the lodge. I was now requested not to speak,
+    as a feast was about to be given to the dead, whose spirits delight in
+    uninterrupted silence.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "As we entered, each was presented with his wooden dish and spoon,
+    after receiving which we seated ourselves. The door was next shut, and
+    we remained in perfect darkness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The master of the family was the master of the feast. Still in the
+    dark, he asked everyone, by turn, for his dish, and put into each two
+    boiled ears of maize. The whole being served, he began to speak. In
+    his discourse, which lasted half an hour, he called upon the manes of
+    his deceased relations and friends, beseeching them to be present, to
+    assist him in the chase, and to partake of the food which he had
+    prepared for them. When he had ended, we proceeded to eat our maize,
+    which we did without other noise than what was occasioned by our
+    teeth. The maize was not half boiled, and it took me an hour to
+    consume my share. I was requested not to break the spikes,<a name="9-7"></a><a href="#note-9-7"><small>[7]</small></a> as this
+    would be displeasing to the departed spirits of their friends.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When all was eaten, Wáwátam made another speech, with which the
+    ceremony ended. A new fire was kindled, with fresh sparks, from flint
+    and steel; and the pipes being smoked, the spikes were carefully
+    buried, in a hole made in the ground for that purpose, within the
+    lodge. This done, the whole family began a dance, Wáwátam singing, and
+    beating a drum. The dance continued the greater part of the night, to
+    the great pleasure of the lodge. The night of the feast was that of
+    the first day of November."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the month of January, Henry happened to observe that the trunk of a
+    very large pine tree was much torn by the claws of a bear, made both
+    in going up and down. On further examination he saw there was a large
+    opening, in the upper part, near which the smaller branches were
+    broken. From these marks, and from the additional circumstances that
+    there were no tracks on the snow, there was reason to believe that a
+    bear lay concealed in the tree.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He communicated his discovery to his Indian friends, and it was agreed
+    that all the family should go together in the morning to cut down the
+    tree, the girth of which was not less than eighteen feet! This task
+    occupied them for one and a half days with their poor little axes,
+    till about two o'clock in the second afternoon the tree fell to the
+    ground. For a few minutes everything remained quiet, and Henry feared
+    that all his expectations would be disappointed; but, as he advanced
+    to the opening, there came out a female bear of extraordinary size,
+    which he had shot and killed before she had proceeded many yards.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The bear being dead, all my assistants approached, and all, but more
+    particularly my old mother, (as I was won't to call her), took the
+    bear's head in their hands, stroking and kissing it several times;
+    begging a thousand pardons for taking away her life; calling her their
+    relation and grandmother; and requesting her not to lay the fault upon
+    them, since it was truly an Englishman that had put her to death.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This ceremony was not of long duration; and if it was I that killed
+    their grandmother, they were not themselves behindhand in what
+    remained to be performed. The skin being taken off, we found the fat
+    in several places six inches deep. This, being divided into two parts,
+    loaded two persons; and the flesh parts were as much as four persons
+    could carry. In all, the carcass must have exceeded five
+    hundredweight.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "As soon as we reached the lodge, the bear's head was adorned with all
+    the trinkets in the possession of the family, such as silver armbands
+    and wristbands, and belts of wampum; and then laid upon a scaffold,
+    set up for its reception, within the lodge. Near the nose was placed a
+    large quantity of tobacco.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The next morning no sooner appeared, than preparations were made for
+    a feast to the manes. The lodge was cleaned and swept; and the head of
+    the bear lifted up, and a new Stroud blanket, which had never been
+    used before, spread under it. The pipes were now lit; and Wáwátam blew
+    tobacco smoke into the nostrils of the bear, telling me to do the
+    same, and thus appease the anger of the bear, on account of my having
+    killed her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "At length, the feast being ready, Wáwátam commenced a speech,
+    resembling, in many things, his address to the manes of his relations
+    and departed companions; but, having this peculiarity, that he here
+    deplored the necessity under which men laboured, thus to destroy their
+    <i>friends</i>. He represented, however, that the misfortune was
+    unavoidable, since without doing so, they could by no means subsist.
+    The speech ended, we all ate heartily of the bear's flesh; and even
+    the head itself, after remaining three days on the scaffold, was put
+    into the kettle. The fat of our bear was melted down, and the oil
+    filled six porcupine-skin bags. A part of the meat was cut into
+    strips, and fire-dried, after which it was put into the vessels
+    containing the oil, where it remained in perfect preservation, until
+    the middle of summer."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the spring of 1762 Henry once more returned to Fort
+    Michili-Makinak, and went sugar-making with his Indian companions.
+    Whilst engaged in this agreeable task, a child belonging to one of the
+    party fell into a kettle of boiling syrup. It was instantly snatched
+    out, but with little hope of its recovery. So long, however, as it
+    lived, a continual feast was observed; and this was made "to the Great
+    Spirit and Master of Life", that he might be pleased to save and heal
+    the child. At this feast Henry was a constant guest; and often found
+    some difficulty in eating the large quantity of food which, on such
+    occasions as these, was put upon his dish.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Several sacrifices were also offered; among which were dogs, killed
+    and hung upon the tops of poles, with the addition of blankets and
+    other articles. These, also, were yielded to the Great Spirit, in the
+    humble hope that he would give efficacy to the medicines employed. But
+    the child died. To preserve the body from the wolves it was placed
+    upon a scaffold, and then later carried to the borders of a lake, on
+    the border of which was the burial ground of the family.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "On our arrival there, which happened in the beginning of April, I did
+    not fail to attend the funeral. The grave was made of a large size,
+    and the whole of the inside lined with birch bark. On the bark was
+    laid the body of the child, accompanied with an axe, a pair of
+    snowshoes, a small kettle, several pairs of common shoes, its own
+    strings of beads, and&mdash;because it was a girl&mdash;a carrying belt and a
+    paddle. The kettle was filled with meat. All this was again covered
+    with bark; and at about two feet nearer the surface logs were laid
+    across, and these again covered with bark, so that the earth might by
+    no means fall upon the corpse.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The last act before the burial, performed by the mother, crying over
+    the dead body of her child, was that of taking from it a lock of hair
+    for a memorial. While <a name="p230"></a>she did this, I endeavoured to console her by
+    offering the usual arguments: that the child was happy in being
+    released from the miseries of this present life, and that she should
+    forbear to grieve, because it would be restored to her in another
+    world, happy and everlasting. She answered that she knew it, and that
+    by the lock of hair she should discover her daughter; for she would
+    take it with her. In this she alluded to the day when some pious hand
+    would place in her own grave, along with the carrying belt and paddle,
+    this little relic, hallowed by maternal tears."
+</p>
+<p>
+    After many ups and downs of hope and despair, and many narrow escapes
+    of being killed and made into broth for warlike Ojibwés, Henry at
+    length obtained permission to travel with a party of Ojibwé Indians
+    who were invited to visited Sir William Johnson at Niagara. This
+    British Governor of Canada was attempting to enter into friendly
+    relations with the Amerindian tribes, and induce them to accept
+    quietly the transference of Canada from French to English control.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0013"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc13.jpg" width="450" height="286"
+alt="Scene on Canadian River: Wild Swans Flying up Disturbed
+By Bear">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>SCENE ON CANADIAN RIVER: WILD SWANS FLYING UP DISTURBED BY BEAR</h5>
+<p>
+    Before starting, however, to interview this great White Governor, the
+    Ojibwés decided to consult their oracle, the Great Turtle, after which
+    Fort Michili-Makinak was named.<a name="9-8"></a><a href="#note-9-8"><small>[8]</small></a> Behind Fort Michili-Makinak is an
+    extraordinary mound or hill of stone supposed to resemble this reptile
+    exactly, and in fact to be in some way the residence of a supernatural
+    giant turtle.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For invoking and consulting the Great Turtle, the first thing to be
+    done was to build a large house, within which was placed a kind of
+    tent, for the use of the priest and reception of the spirit. The tent
+    was formed of moose skins, hung over a framework of wood made out of
+    five pillars of five different species of timber, about ten feet in
+    height and eight inches in diameter, set up in a circle of four feet
+    in diameter, with their bases two feet deep in the soil. At the top
+    the pillars were bound together by a circular hoop of withies. Over
+    the whole of this edifice were spread the moose skins, covering it at
+    top and round the sides, and made fast with thongs of the same, except
+    that on one side a part was left unfastened, to admit of the entrance
+    of the priest.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The ceremonies did not commence till the approach of night. To give
+    light inside the house several fires were kindled round the tent.
+    Nearly the whole village assembled in the house, Alexander Henry among
+    the rest. It was not long before the priest appeared, almost in a
+    state of nakedness. As he approached the tent the skins were lifted
+    up, as much as was necessary to allow of his creeping under them on
+    his hands and knees. His head was scarcely within side when the
+    edifice, massive as it has been described, began to shake; and the
+    skins were no sooner let fall than the sounds of numerous voices were
+    heard beneath them&mdash;some yelling, some barking as dogs, some howling
+    like wolves; and in this horrible concert were mingled screams and
+    sobs of despair, anguish, and the sharpest pain. Articulate speech was
+    also uttered, as if from human lips, but in a tongue unknown to any of
+    the audience.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After some time these confused and frightful noises were succeeded by
+    a perfect silence; and now a voice, not heard before, seemed to
+    manifest the arrival of a new character in the tent. This was low and
+    feeble, resembling the cry of a young puppy. The sound was no sooner
+    distinguished than all the Indians clapped their hands for joy,
+    exclaiming that this was the Chief Spirit, the Turtle, the Spirit that
+    never lied! Other voices, which they had distinguished from time to
+    time, they had previously hissed, as recognizing them to belong to
+    evil and lying spirits, the deceivers of mankind.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then came from the tent a succession of songs, in which a diversity
+    of voices met the ear. From his first entrance, till these songs were
+    finished, we heard nothing in the proper voice of the priest. But now
+    he addressed the multitude, declaring the presence of the Great
+    Turtle, and the spirit's readiness to answer such questions as should
+    be proposed. The questions were to come from the chief of the village,
+    who was silent, however, till after he had put a large quantity of
+    tobacco into the tent, introducing it at the aperture. This was a
+    sacrifice offered to the spirit; for the spirits were supposed by the
+    Indians to be as fond of tobacco as themselves. This done, the chief
+    desired the priest to enquire: Whether or not the English were
+    preparing to make war upon the Indians? and whether or not there were
+    at Fort Niagara a large number of English troops?
+</p>
+<p>
+    The priest was heard to put the questions, and then the tent shook and
+    rocked so violently that Henry expected to see it levelled with the
+    ground. But apparently answers were given, after which a terrific cry
+    announced, with sufficient intelligibility, the departure of the
+    Turtle. Subsequently the priest interpreted the Great Turtle's
+    answers, which gave a great deal of information regarding the
+    disposition and numbers of the English soldiers, and the presents
+    which Sir William Johnson was preparing for the Ojibwés; and which
+    finally approved the wisdom of the embassy proceeding on its way.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Journeying along the shores of Lake Huron, they stopped to avoid a
+    gale of wind and to rest. Henry, gathering firewood, disturbed a
+    rattlesnake which manifested hostile intentions. He went back to the
+    canoe to fetch his gun; but upon telling the Ojibwés that he was about
+    to kill a rattlesnake they begged him to desist. They then seized
+    their pipes and tobacco pouches and returned with him to the place
+    where he had left the rattlesnake, which was still coiled up and
+    angry.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The Indians, on their part, surrounded it, all addressing it by
+    turns, and calling it their <i>grandfather</i>; but yet keeping at some
+    distance. During this part of the ceremony they filled their pipes;
+    and now each blew the smoke towards the snake, who, as it appeared to
+    me, really received it with pleasure. In a word, after remaining
+    coiled, and receiving incense for the space of half an hour, it
+    stretched itself along the ground, in visible good humour. Its length
+    was between four and five feet. Having remained outstretched for some
+    time, at last it moved slowly away, the Indians following it, and
+    still addressing it by the title of grandfather, beseeching it to take
+    care of their families during their absence, and to be pleased to open
+    the heart of Sir William Johnson, so that he might <i>show them
+    charity</i>, and fill their canoe with rum.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "One of the chiefs added a petition, that the snake would take no
+    notice of the insult which had been offered him by the Englishman, who
+    would even have put him to death, but for the interference of the
+    Indians, to whom it was hoped he would impute no part of the offence."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Early the next morning they proceeded on their way, with a serene sky
+    and very little wind, so that to shorten the journey they determined
+    to steer across the lake to an island which just appeared on the
+    horizon. But after hoisting a sail the wind increased, and the
+    Indians, beginning to be alarmed, frequently called on the rattlesnake
+    to come to their assistance. By degrees the waves grew high, and at
+    last it blew a hurricane, Henry and his companions expecting every
+    moment to be swallowed up. From prayers the Indians now proceeded to
+    sacrifices, both alike offered to the god-rattlesnake, or
+    <i>manito-kinibik</i>. One of the chiefs took a dog, and, after tying its
+    fore legs together, threw it overboard, at the same time calling on
+    the snake to preserve the party from being drowned, and desiring him
+    to satisfy his hunger with the carcass of the dog. The snake was
+    unpropitious, and the wind increased. Another chief sacrificed
+    another dog, with the addition of some tobacco. In the prayer which
+    accompanied these gifts he besought the snake, as before, not to
+    avenge upon the Indians the insult which he had received from the
+    Englishman. "He assured the snake that I was <i>absolutely</i> an
+    Englishman, and of kin neither to him nor to them."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "At the conclusion of this speech, an Indian, who sat near me,
+    observed, that if we were drowned it would be for my fault alone, and
+    that I ought myself to be sacrificed, to appease the angry manito; nor
+    was I without apprehensions, that in case of extremity this would be
+    my fate; but, happily for me, the storm at length abated, and we
+    reached the island safely."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The next day they arrived at the shore of Lake Ontario. Here they
+    remained two days to make canoes out of the bark of the elm tree, in
+    which they might travel to Niagara. For this purpose the Indians first
+    cut down a tree, then stripped off the bark in one entire sheet of
+    about eighteen feet in length, the incision being lengthwise. The
+    canoe was now complete as to its bottom and sides. Its ends were next
+    closed, by sewing the bark together; and a few ribs and bars being
+    introduced, the architecture was finished. In this manner they made
+    two canoes; of which one carried eight men, and the other nine.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A few days later Henry was handed over safe and sound to Sir William
+    Johnson at Niagara. He was then given the command of a corps of Indian
+    allies which was to accompany the expedition under General Bradstreet
+    to raise the siege of Detroit, which important place had been long
+    invested by a great Indian chief, Pontiac, who still carried on the
+    war on behalf of King Louis XV. This enterprise was successful, and
+    British control was extended to many places in central Canada. Henry
+    returned to Fort Michili-Makinak and regained much of the property
+    which he had lost in the Indian attacks. As some compensation for his
+    former sufferings he received from the British commandant of
+    Michili-Makinak the exclusive fur trade of Lake Superior.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The currency at that period, and long before, in Canadian history, was
+    in beaver skins, which were approximately valued at the price of two
+    shillings and sixpence a pound. Otter skins were valued at six
+    shillings each, and marten skins at one shilling and sixpence, and
+    others in proportion; but all these things were classed at being worth
+    so many beaver skins or proportion of beaver skins. Thus, for example,
+    the native canoemen and porters engaged by Henry for his winter hunts
+    were paid each at the rate of a hundred pounds weight of beaver
+    skins.<a name="9-9"></a><a href="#note-9-9"><small>[9]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    At various places on the River Ontonagan, which flows into Lake
+    Superior, Henry was shown the extraordinary deposits of copper, which
+    presented itself to the eye in masses of various weight. The natives
+    smelted the copper and beat it into spoons and bracelets. It was so
+    absolutely pure of any alloy that it required nothing but to be beaten
+    into shape. In one place Henry saw a mass of copper weighing not less
+    than five tons, pure and malleable, so that with an axe he was able to
+    cut off a portion weighing a hundred pounds. He conjectured that this
+    huge mass of copper had at some time been dislodged from the side of a
+    lofty hill and thence rolled into the position where he found it.
+    Farther to the north of Lake Superior he found pieces of virgin copper
+    remarkable for their form, some resembling leaves of vegetables, and
+    others the shapes of animals.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In these journeys he collected some of the native traditions, amongst
+    others that of the Great Hare, Naniboju, who was represented to him as
+    the founder or creator of the Amerindian peoples. An island in Lake
+    Superior was called Naniboju's burial place. Henry landed there, and
+    "found on the projecting rocks a quantity of tobacco, rotting in the
+    rain; together with kettles, broken guns, and a variety of other
+    articles. His spirit is supposed to make this its constant residence;
+    and here to preside over the lake, and over the Indians, in their
+    navigation and fishing."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the spring of the following year (1768), whilst the snow still lay
+    many feet thick on the ground, he and his men made sugar from the
+    maple trees on a mountain, and for nearly three weeks none of them ate
+    anything but maple sugar, consuming a pound a day, desiring no other
+    food, and waxing fat and strong on this diet. Then they returned to
+    the banks of the Ontonagan River, where the wild fowl appeared in such
+    abundance that one man, with a muzzle-loading gun, could kill in a day
+    sufficient birds for the sustenance of fifty men. As soon as the ice
+    and snow had melted, parties of Indians came in from their winter's
+    hunt, bringing to Henry furs to pay him for all the goods he had
+    advanced. In this way the whole of his outstanding credit was
+    satisfied, with the exception of thirty skins, which represented the
+    contribution due from one Indian who had died. In this case even, the
+    man's family had sent all the skins they could gather together, and
+    gradually acquitted themselves of the amount due, in order that the
+    spirit of the dead man might rest in peace, which it could not do if
+    his debts were not acquitted.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the following autumn he had an experience which showed him how near
+    famine was to great abundance, and how ready the Amerindians were in
+    cases of even slight privation to turn cannibal, kill and eat the
+    weaker members of the party. He was making an excursion to the Sault
+    de Sainte Marie, and took with him three half-breed Canadians and a
+    young Indian woman who was journeying in that direction to see her
+    relations. As the distance was short, and they expected to obtain much
+    fish by the way, they only took with them as provisions a quart of
+    maize for each person. On the first night of their journey they
+    encamped on the island of Naniboju and set their net to catch fish.
+    But there arose a violent storm, which continued for three days,
+    during which it was impossible for them to take up the net or to leave
+    the island. In consequence of this they ate up all their maize. On the
+    evening of the third day the storm abated, and they rushed to examine
+    the net. It was gone! It was impossible to return to the point of
+    their departure, where there would have been plenty of food, on
+    account of the strong wind against them. They therefore steered for
+    the Sault de Sainte Marie. But the wind veered round, and for nine
+    days blew a strong gale against their progress in this direction,
+    making the waves of the lake so high that they were obliged to take
+    refuge on the shore.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Henry went out perpetually to hunt, but all he got during those nine
+    days were two small snow-buntings. The Canadian half-breeds with him
+    then calmly proposed to kill and feed upon the young woman. One of
+    these men, indeed, admitted that he had had recourse to
+    this expedient for sustaining life when wintering in the north-west
+    and running out of food. But Henry indignantly repudiated the
+    suggestion. Though very weak, he searched everywhere desperately for
+    food, and at last found on a very high rock a thick lichen, called by
+    the French Canadians <i>tripe de roche</i>,<a name="9-10"></a><a href="#note-9-10"><small>[10]</small></a> looking, in fact, very much
+    like slices of tripe. Henry fetched the men and the Indian woman, and
+    they set to work gathering quantities of this lichen. The woman was
+    well acquainted with the mode of preparing it, which was done by
+    boiling it into a thick mucilage, looking rather like the white of an
+    egg. On this they made hearty meals, though it had a bitter and
+    disagreeable taste. After the ninth day of their sufferings the wind
+    fell, they continued their journey, and met with kindly Indians, who
+    supplied them with as many fish as they wanted. Nevertheless, they all
+    were so ill afterwards that they nearly died, from the effects of the
+    lichen diet.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Some time after this Henry resolved to search for the marvellous
+    island of Yellow Sands,<a name="9-11"></a><a href="#note-9-11"><small>[11]</small></a> an island of Lake Superior which, it is
+    true, the French had discovered, but about which they kept up a good
+    deal of mystery. The Indian legend was that the sands of this small
+    island consisted of gold dust, and the Ojibwé Indians, having
+    discovered this, and attempting to bring some away, they were
+    disturbed by a supernatural being of amazing size, sixty feet in
+    height, which strode into the water and commanded them to deliver back
+    what they had taken away. Terrified at his gigantic stature, they
+    complied with his request, since which time no Indian has ever dared
+    to approach the haunted coast. Henry, however, with his men, finally
+    discovered this Island of Yellow Sands in 1771, in the north-east part
+    of Lake Superior. It was much smaller than he had been led to expect,
+    and very low and studded with small lakes, probably made by the action
+    of beavers damming up the little streams. He found no supernatural
+    monster to dispute the island with him, but a number of large
+    reindeer, so unused to the sight of man that they scarcely got out of
+    his way, so that he was able to shoot as many as he wanted. The
+    ancestors of these reindeer may have reached the island either by
+    floating ice or by swimming. They seem, with the birds, to have been
+    the island's only inhabitants, and to have increased and multiplied to
+    a remarkable extent, small portions of the island's surface being
+    actually formed of immense accumulations of reindeer bones.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Amongst the birds of the island, besides geese and pigeons, were
+    hawks. No serpents whatever were seen by the party, but Henry remarks
+    that the hawks nearly made up for them in abundance and ferocity. They
+    appeared very angry at the intrusion of these strangers on the sacred
+    island, and hovered round perpetually, swooping at their faces and
+    even carrying off their caps.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In 1775 Henry, having been greatly disappointed over an attempt to
+    work the copper of Lake Superior, entered with vigour into a fur trade
+    with the north-west. He penetrated from Lake Superior to the Lake of
+    the Woods and reached the great Lake Winnipeg. Here he encountered the
+    Kristino,<a name="9-12"></a><a href="#note-9-12"><small>[12]</small></a> Knistino, or Kri Indians. He found these people very
+    different in appearance from the other Amerindian tribes farther
+    south. The men were almost entirely naked in spite of the much colder
+    climate. Their bodies were painted with an ochre or clay so red that
+    it was locally known by the French Canadians as vermilion. Every man
+    and boy had his bow strung and in his hand, with the arrow, ready to
+    attack in case of need. Their heads were shaved all over except for a
+    large spot on the crown. Here the hair grew very long, and was rolled
+    and gathered into a tuft; and this tuft, which was the object of the
+    greatest care, was covered with a piece of skin. The lobes of their
+    ears were pierced, and through the opening was inserted the bones of
+    fish or small beasts. The women wore their hair in great length all
+    over the head. It was divided by a parting, and on each side was
+    collected into a roll fastened above the ear and covered with a piece
+    of painted skin or ornamented with beads. The clothing of the women
+    was of leather, the dressed skins of buffalo or deer. This cloak was
+    fastened round the waist by a girdle, and the legs were covered with
+    leather gaiters. The Kristino men were eager that their women should
+    marry Europeans, because the half-breed children proved to be bolder
+    warriors and better hunters than themselves. Henry found that although
+    the Kris were much addicted to drunkenness they were peaceable when
+    inebriated, and, moreover, detached two of their number, who refused
+    ever to touch the liquor under such circumstances, in order that they
+    might guard the white men, and not allow any drunken Indian to
+    approach their camp.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Henry and his party, after crossing Lake Winnipeg, ascended the
+    Saskatchewan (in the autumn of 1775). On their way up this river they
+    came to a village of Paskwaya Indians, which consisted of thirty
+    families, who were lodged in tents of a circular form, composed of
+    dressed bison skins stretched upon poles twelve feet in length. On
+    their arrival the chief of this village, named Chatik, which name
+    meant Pelican,<a name="9-13"></a><a href="#note-9-13"><small>[13]</small></a> called the party rather imperiously into his lodge
+    or meeting house, and then told them very plainly that his armed men
+    exceeded theirs in number, and that he would put the whole of the
+    party to death unless they were very liberal in their presents. To
+    avoid misunderstanding, he added that he would inform them exactly
+    what it was that he required: Three casks of gunpowder, four bags of
+    shot and ball, two bales of tobacco, three kegs of rum, and three
+    guns, together with knives, flints, and other articles. He went on to
+    say that he had already seen white men, and knew that they promised
+    more than they performed. He, personally, was a peaceful man, who
+    contented himself with moderate views in order to avoid quarrels;
+    nevertheless, he desired that an immediate answer should be given
+    before the strangers quitted his lodge. A hurried consultation took
+    place, and Henry could do nothing but comply with the chief's demands,
+    for he was powerless to resist. Having, therefore, intimated his
+    acceptance of these demands, he was invited to smoke the pipe of
+    peace, and then obtained permission to depart. After this the goods
+    demanded were handed over, but Chatik managed to snatch more rum from
+    them before they got safely away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the winter of 1776 Henry, who, together with his party, had
+    received welcome hospitality from the Hudson's Bay Company's station
+    at Cumberland House, resolved to reach the western region known as the
+    Great Plains, or Prairies&mdash;that immense tract of country through which
+    flow the Athabaska, the Saskatchewan, the Red River, and the Missouri.
+    He and his party, of course, travelled on snowshoes, and their goods
+    were packed on sledges made of thin boards, and drawn after them by
+    the men. The cold was intense, so that, besides wearing very warm
+    woollen clothes, they were obliged to wrap themselves in blankets of
+    beaver skin and huge bison robes. On these plains there were
+    occasional knolls covered with trees, which were usually called
+    "islands". These provided the precious fuel which alone enabled the
+    travellers to support the intense cold of the nights.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After fifteen days of very difficult travel, during which it had been
+    impossible to kill any game, as the beasts were mostly hidden in the
+    dense woods on these rare hillocks, the situation of his party became
+    alarming. They were now on the borders of the plains, and the trees
+    were getting small and scanty. On the twentieth day of their journey
+    they had finished the last remains of their provisions. But Henry had
+    taken the precaution of concealing a large cake of chocolate<a name="9-14"></a><a href="#note-9-14"><small>[14]</small></a> as a
+    reserve in case of great need. His men had walked till they were
+    exhausted, and had lost both strength and hope, when Henry informed
+    them of the treasure which was still in store. They filled the big
+    kettle with snow. It held two gallons of water, and into this was put
+    one square of the chocolate. The quantity was scarcely sufficient to
+    give colour to the water, but each man drank off a gallon of this hot
+    liquor and felt much refreshed. The next day they marched vigorously
+    for six hours on another two gallons of chocolate and water. For five
+    days the chocolate kept them going, though more by faith than by any
+    actual nourishment that it imparted. They now began to be surrounded
+    by large herds of wolves, who seemed to be conscious of their dire
+    extremity and the probability that they would soon fall an easy prey,
+    yet were cunning enough to keep out of gunshot. At last, however, at
+    sunset on the fifth day, they discovered on the ice the remains of an
+    elk's carcass on which the wolves had left a little flesh. From these
+    elk bones a meal of strong and excellent soup was soon prepared, and
+    the men's bodies thrilled with new life.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Want had lost his dominion over us. At noon we saw the horns of a red
+    deer, standing in the snow, on the river. On examination we found that
+    the whole carcass was with them, the animal having broken through the
+    ice in the beginning of the winter, in attempting to cross the river,
+    too early in the season; while his horns, fastening themselves in the
+    ice, had prevented him from sinking. By cutting away the ice we were
+    enabled to lay bare a part of the back and shoulders, and thus procure
+    a stock of food amply sufficient for the rest of our journey. We
+    accordingly encamped, and employed our kettle to good purpose, forgot
+    all our misfortunes, and prepared to walk with cheerfulness the twenty
+    leagues which, as we reckoned, still lay between ourselves and Fort
+    des Prairies. Though the deer must have been in this situation ever
+    since the month of November, yet its flesh was perfectly good. Its
+    horns alone were five feet high or more, and it will therefore not
+    appear extraordinary that they should be seen above the snow."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The next day they reached the Fort des Prairies, established by the
+    Hudson's Bay people, on the verge of the Assiniboin country. The
+    journey was resumed in company with Messrs. Patterson and Holmes, and
+    accompanied by a band of natives. They had entered the bison country,
+    and were regaled by the Indians with bison tongue and beef.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Soon after sunrise we descried a herd of oxen (bison) extending a
+    mile and a half in length, and too numerous to be counted. They
+    travelled, not one after another, as, in the snow, other animals
+    usually do, but, in a broad phalanx, slowly, and sometimes stopping to
+    feed.... Their numbers were so great that we dreaded lest they should
+    fairly trample down the camp; nor could it have happened otherwise,
+    but for the dogs, almost as numerous as they, who were able to keep
+    them in check. The Indians killed several when close upon their tents,
+    but neither the fire of the Indians nor the noise of the dogs could
+    soon drive them away." The poor animals were more frightened of the
+    frightful snowstorm which was raging than of what man or dog might do
+    to them in the shelter of the woods.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At last the party reached the residence of the great chief of the
+    Assiniboins, whose name was "Great Road". These Amerindians received
+    Henry and his people with the greatest respect, giving them a
+    bodyguard, armed with bows and spears, who escorted them to the lodge
+    or tent prepared for their reception. This was of circular form,
+    covered with leather, and not less than twenty feet in diameter. On
+    the ground within, bison skins were spread for beds and seats.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "One-half of the tent was appropriated to our use. Several women
+    waited upon us, to make a fire and bring water, which latter they
+    fetched from a neighbouring tent. Shortly after our arrival these
+    women brought us water, unasked for, saying that it was for washing.
+    The refreshment was exceedingly acceptable, for on our march we had
+    become so dirty that our complexions were not very distinguishable
+    from those of the Indians themselves."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Invited to feast with the great chief, they proceeded to the tent of
+    "Great Road", which they found neither more ornamented nor better
+    furnished than the rest. At their entrance the chief arose from his
+    seat, saluted them in the Indian manner by shaking hands, and
+    addressed them in a few words, in which he offered his thanks for the
+    confidence which they had reposed in him in trusting themselves so far
+    from their own country. After all were seated, on bearskins spread on
+    the ground, the pipe, as usual, was introduced, and presented in
+    succession to each person present. Each took his whiff, and then let
+    it pass to his neighbour. The stem, which was four feet in length, was
+    held by an officer attendant on the chief. The bowl was of red marble
+    or pipe stone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the pipe had gone its round, the chief, without rising from his
+    seat, delivered a speech of some length, after which several of the
+    Indians began to weep, and they were soon joined by the whole party.
+    "Had I not previously been witness" (writes Henry) "to a weeping scene
+    of this description, I should certainly have been apprehensive of some
+    disastrous catastrophe; but, as it was, I listened to it with
+    tranquillity. It lasted for about ten minutes, after which all tears
+    were dried away, and the honours of the feast were performed by the
+    attending chiefs." This consisted in giving to every guest a dish
+    containing a boiled bison's tongue. Henry having enquired why these
+    people always wept at their feasts, and sometimes at their councils,
+    he was answered that their tears flowed to the memory of their
+    deceased relations, who were formerly present on these occasions, and
+    whom they remembered as soon as they saw the feast or the conference
+    being got ready.<a name="9-15"></a><a href="#note-9-15"><small>[15]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    The chief to whose kindly reception they were so much indebted was
+    about five feet ten inches high, and of a complexion rather darker
+    than that of the Indians in general. His appearance was greatly
+    injured by the condition of his head of hair, and this was the result
+    of an extraordinary superstition.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The Indians universally fix upon a particular object, as sacred to
+    themselves; as the giver of their prosperity, and as their preserver
+    from evil. The choice is determined either by a dream, or by some
+    strong predilection of fancy; and usually falls upon an animal, or
+    part of an animal, or something else which is to be met with, by land,
+    or by water; but 'Great Road' had made choice of his <i>hair</i>&mdash;placing,
+    like Samson, all his safety in this portion of his proper substance!
+    His hair was the fountain of all his happiness; it was his strength
+    and his weapon, his spear and his shield. It preserved him in battle,
+    directed him in the chase, watched over him on the march, and gave
+    length of days to his wife and children. Hair, of a quality like this,
+    was not to be profaned by the touch of human hands. I was assured that
+    it had never been cut nor combed from his childhood upward, and, that
+    when any part of it fell from his head, he treasured up that part with
+    care: meanwhile, it did not escape all care, even while growing on the
+    head; but was in the special charge of a spirit, who dressed it while
+    the owner slept. All this might be; but the spirit's style of
+    hairdressing was at least peculiar; the hair being suffered to remain
+    very much as if it received no dressing at all, and matted into ropes,
+    which spread themselves in all directions."
+</p>
+<p>
+    From this Assiniboin village Henry saw, for the first time, one of
+    those herds of horses which the Assiniboins possessed in numbers. The
+    herd was feeding on the skirts of the plain. The horses were provided
+    with no fodder, but were left to find food for themselves, which they
+    did in winter by removing the snow with their feet till they reach
+    the grass. This was everywhere on the ground in plenty.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Amongst these people they saw the paunch or stomach of a bison
+    employed as a kettle. This was hung in the smoke of a fire and filled
+    with snow. As the snow melted, more was added, till the paunch was
+    full of water. The lower orifice of the organ was used for drawing off
+    the water, and stopped with a plug and string.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Henry also noticed amongst the Assiniboins the celebrated lariat. This
+    is formed of a stone of about two pounds weight, which is sewed up in
+    leather and made fast to a wooden handle two feet long. In using it
+    the stone is whirled round the handle by a warrior sitting on
+    horseback and riding at full speed. Every stroke which takes effect
+    brings down a man, a horse, or a bison. To prevent the weapon from
+    slipping out of the hand, a string, which is tied to the handle, is
+    also passed round the wrist of the wearer.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Alexander Henry extended his travels in the north-west within four
+    hundred and fifty miles of Lake Athabaska. He met at this point some
+    Chipewayan slaves in the possession of the Assiniboins, and heard from
+    them (1) of the Peace River in the far west which led one through the
+    Rocky Mountains (he uses that name) to a region descending towards a
+    great sea (the Pacific Ocean); and (2) of the Slave River which, after
+    passing through several lakes, also reached a great sea on the north.
+    This, of course, was an allusion to the Mackenzie River. Here were
+    given and recorded the chief hints at possible lines of exploration
+    which afterwards sent Alexander Mackenzie and other explorers on the
+    journeys that carried British-Canadian enterprise and administration
+    to the shores of the Pacific and Arctic Oceans.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After 1776 Alexander Henry ceased his notable explorations of the far
+    west. In that year he paid a visit to England and France, returning to
+    Canada in 1777. Whilst in France he was received at the French Court
+    and had the privilege of relating to Queen Marie Antoinette some of
+    his wonderful adventures and experiences. After two more visits to
+    England he settled down at Montreal as a merchant (autumn of 1780),
+    and in 1784 he joined with other great pioneers in founding, at
+    Montreal, The North-west Trading Company. Eventually he handed over
+    his share in this enterprise to his nephew, Alexander Henry the
+    Younger, and established himself completely in a life of ease and
+    quiet. He died at Montreal in 1824, aged eighty-five years.
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="note-9-1"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-1"><u>1</u></a> Carver was not so remarkable for his actual journeys as
+    for his confident predictions of a feasible transcontinental route
+    being found to the Pacific coast.
+</p>
+<a name="note-9-2"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-2"><u>2</u></a> The white-barked conifer, which gives its name to this
+    lake, is <i>Thuja occidentalis</i>. There are no real "cedars" in America.
+</p>
+<a name="note-9-3"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-3"><u>3</u></a> The famous place of call (the name means "Turtle Island")
+    in the narrow strait between Lakes Huron and Michigan, and near Lake
+    Superior. (See p. <a href="#p230">230</a>.) But some authorities declare that
+    Michili-makinak means "Island of the great wounded person".
+</p>
+<a name="note-9-4"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-4"><u>4</u></a> There are at least two species of maple in Canada
+    yielding sugar from their sap; but the best is <i>Acer saccharinum</i>. The
+    maple leaf is the national emblem of Canada.
+</p>
+<a name="note-9-5"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-5"><u>5</u></a> Shell beads.
+</p>
+<a name="note-9-6"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-6"><u>6</u></a> <i>Populus nigra</i>, called by the French Canadians <i>liard</i>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-9-7"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-7"><u>7</u></a> The grains of maize (Indian corn) grow in compact cells,
+    round a pithy core.
+</p>
+<a name="note-9-8"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-8"><u>8</u></a> Michili, pronounced "Mishili", means "great", and
+    Makinak, "turtle", in the translation of some Canadian writers. The
+    turtle in question is, of course, not the turtle of sea waters, but
+    the Snapping Turtle (<i>Chelydra serpentina</i>) found in most Canadian
+    lakes and the big rivers of North America, east of the Rocky
+    Mountains.
+</p>
+<a name="note-9-9"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-9"><u>9</u></a> The smallest change, so to speak, was the skin of a
+    marten, worth one shilling and sixpence. If you went to a canteen for
+    a drink you paid your score with a marten skin, unless the value of
+    your refreshment exceeded the sum of eighteen pence.
+</p>
+<a name="note-9-10"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-10"><u>10</u></a> See p. <a href="#p128">128</a>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-9-11"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-11"><u>11</u></a> The Isle of Yellow Sands, famed in legend for its
+    terrible serpents and ogre sixty feet high, was subsequently
+    identified with the Ile de Pont Chartrain, which is distant sixty
+    miles from the north shore of Lake Superior.
+</p>
+<a name="note-9-12"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-12"><u>12</u></a> See p. <a href="#p166">166</a>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-9-13"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-13"><u>13</u></a> Elsewhere Henry observes the great numbers of pelicans
+    to be seen on Lake Winnipeg.
+</p>
+<a name="note-9-14"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-14"><u>14</u></a> Chocolate from St. Domingue (Haiti) was a favourite form
+    of portable nutriment among the French Canadians, who also provided a
+    means of subsistence for long journeys called <i>praline</i>. This was made
+    of roasted Indian corn on which sugar had been sprinkled. It was a
+    most nourishing food, as well as being an agreeable sweet-meat.
+</p>
+<a name="note-9-15"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#9-15"><u>15</u></a> The Assiniboins (whom Henry calls the Osinipoilles) are
+    the Issati of older travellers, and have sometimes been called the
+    Weeper Indians, from their tendency to tears.
+</p>
+<p class="return">[<a href="#contents">TABLE OF CONTENTS</a>]
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="2HCH0010"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER X
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    Samuel Hearne
+</h3>
+<p>
+    The first noteworthy explorer of the far north was SAMUEL HEARNE,
+<a name="10-1"></a><a href="#note-10-1"><small>[1]</small></a>
+    who had been mate of a vessel in the employ of the whale fishery of
+    Hudson Bay. He entered the service of the Hudson's Bay Company about
+    1765, and was selected four years afterwards by the Governor of Prince
+    of Wales's Fort (a certain Moses Norton, a half-breed) to lead an
+    expedition of discovery in search of a mighty river flowing
+    northwards, which was rumoured to exist by the Eskimo. This
+    "Coppermine" River was said to flow through a region rich in deposits
+    of copper. From this district the northern tribes of Indians derived
+    their copper ornaments and axeheads.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Samuel Hearne started on the 6th of November, 1769, from Prince of
+    Wales's Fort at the mouth of the Churchill River, on the north-west
+    coast of Hudson Bay. Presumably he and the two "common white men" who
+    were with him travelled on snowshoes and hauled small sledges after
+    them. Travelling westward they passed over bleak hills with very
+    little vegetation&mdash;"the barren grounds, where, in general, we thought
+    ourselves well off if we could scrape together as many shrubs as would
+    make a fire; but it was scarcely ever in our power to make any <a name="p249"></a>other
+    defence against the weather than by digging a hole in the snow down to
+    the moss, wrapping ourselves up in our clothing, and lying down in it,
+    with our sledges set up edgeways to windward". But the principal
+    Indian guide that he engaged was so obviously determined to make the
+    expedition a failure that Hearne returned to his base, Prince of
+    Wales's Fort, and made a second start on the 23rd of February, 1770,
+    this time taking care not to be accompanied by any other white men,
+    and insisting that the Indians who accompanied him should be more
+    carefully chosen.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It must be remembered that in all these early expeditions, French and
+    English, the explorers relied for their food almost entirely on what
+    could be obtained as they went along, in the way of venison, grouse,
+    geese, fish, and wild fruits. In the springtime they would probably
+    get goose eggs and some form of maple sugar through the Indians. From
+    the summer to the autumn there would be an abundance of wild fruits
+    and nuts, but for the rest of the year it would be a diet almost
+    entirely of flesh or fish. As a stand-by there was probably
+    <i>pemmican</i>, made in times of plenty from fish, from bison meat and
+    fat, or from the dried flesh of deer or musk oxen; but tea, coffee,
+    bread, biscuits, and such like accessories were absolutely unknown to
+    them, in fact they lived exactly as the Amerindians did. Their
+    habitations, of course, were the tents or houses of the natives, or
+    what they made for themselves.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In order to pitch an Indian tent in winter it was first necessary to
+    search for a level piece of dry ground, and this could only be
+    ascertained by thrusting a stick through the snow, down to the ground,
+    all over the proposed plot. When a suitable site had been found the
+    snow was then cleared away down to the very moss, in the shape of a
+    circle. When a prolonged stay was contemplated, even the moss was cut
+    up and removed, as it was very liable when dry to catch fire. A
+    quantity of poles were then procured, proportionate in number and
+    length to the size of the tent cloth and the number of persons the
+    tent was intended to contain. Two of the longest poles were tied
+    together at the top and raised to an angle of about 45 degrees from
+    the ground, so that the lower ends extended on either side as widely
+    as the proposed diameter of the tent. The other poles were then
+    arranged on either side of the first two, so that they formed a
+    complete circle round the bottom, and their points were tied together
+    at the top. The tent cloth was usually of thin moose leather, and in
+    shape resembled the vane of a fan, so that the large outer curve
+    enclosed the bottom of the poles, and the smaller one fitted round the
+    apex of the poles at the top, leaving an open space which let out the
+    smoke and let in air and light. The fire was made on the ground in the
+    centre of the floor, which floor was covered all over with small
+    branches of firs and pines serving as seats and beds. Pine foliage and
+    branches were laid round the bottom of the poles on the outside, and a
+    quantity of snow was packed all round the exterior of the tent, thus
+    excluding a great part of the external air, and contributing much to
+    the warmth within.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For a month or more Hearne camped in this fashion by the side of a
+    lake, waiting till the season was sufficiently open for him to
+    continue his journey by water. He and his party of Indians lived
+    mainly on fish, but when these became scarce they attempted to snare
+    grouse or kill deer. In the intervals of rare meals all the party
+    smoked or slept, unless they were obliged to go out to hunt and fish.
+    They would delight, after killing deer, in securing as much as
+    possible of the blood and turning it into broth by boiling it in a
+    kettle with fat and scraps of meat. This was reckoned a dainty dish.
+    Their spoons, dishes, and other necessary household furniture were cut
+    out of birch bark.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0014"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc14.jpg" width="425" height="268"
+alt="Lake Louise, the Rocky Mountains">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>LAKE LOUISE, THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS</h5>
+<p>
+    By the 19th of May, geese, swans, ducks, gulls, and other birds of
+    passage were so plentiful, flying from south to north, and halting to
+    rest at the lake, that Hearne felt the time had come to resume his
+    journey, provisions being now very plentiful and the worst of the thaw
+    over. The weather was remarkably fine and pleasant as the party
+    travelled northwards.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There must have been good patent medicines even in those days. Of
+    these Hearne possessed "Turlington's Drops" and "Yellow Basilicon",
+    and with these he not only healed the terrible wounds of a valuable
+    Indian who had cut his leg most severely (when making birch-bark
+    dishes, spoons, &amp;c), but also the hand of another Indian, which was
+    shattered with the bursting of a gun. These medicines soon restored
+    the use of his hand, so that in a short time he was out of danger,
+    while the carver of birch-bark spoons was able to walk. Nevertheless,
+    although they were to the south of the 60th degree of latitude, the
+    snow was not completely melted until the end of June.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All at once the weather became exceedingly hot, the sledges had to be
+    thrown away, and each man had to carry on his back a heavy load. For
+    instance, Hearne was obliged to carry his quadrant for taking
+    astronomical observations, and its stand; a trunk containing books and
+    papers, &amp;c.; a large compass; and a bag containing all his wearing
+    apparel; also a hatchet, a number of knives, files, &amp;c., and several
+    small articles intended for presents to the natives&mdash;in short, a
+    weight of <i>sixty pounds</i>. Moreover, the barren ground was quite
+    unsuited to the pitching of the southern type of tent, the poles of
+    which obviously could not be driven into the bare rock, so that Hearne
+    was obliged to sleep in the open air in all weathers. Very often he
+    was unable to make a fire, and was constantly reduced to eating his
+    meat quite raw. "Notwithstanding these accumulated and complicated
+    hardships, we continued in perfect health and good spirits." The
+    average day's walk was twenty miles, sometimes without any other
+    subsistence than a pipe of tobacco and a drink of water.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At last they saw three musk oxen grazing by the side of a small lake.
+    This seemed a splendid piece of fortune, but, to their mortification,
+    before they could get one of them skinned, a tremendous downpour of
+    rain ensued, so as to make it out of their power to have a fire, for
+    their only form of fuel was moss. And the flesh of the musk ox eaten
+    raw was disgusting; it was coarse and tough, and tasted so strongly of
+    musk that Hearne could hardly swallow it. "None of our natural wants,"
+    he writes, "except thirst, are so distressing or hard to endure as
+    hunger.... For want of action, the stomach so far loses its digestive
+    powers that, after long fasting, it resumes its office with pain and
+    reluctance." After these prolonged fasts, his stomach was scarcely
+    able to contain two or three ounces of food without producing the most
+    agonizing pain. "We fasted many times two whole days and nights, and
+    twice for three days; once for nearly seven days, during which we
+    tasted not a mouthful of anything, except a few cranberries, water,
+    scraps of old leather, and burnt bones."
+</p>
+<p>
+    At a place 63° north latitude he bought a canoe for a single knife
+    "the full value of which did not exceed one penny", having been told
+    that they would soon reach rivers through which they could not wade.
+    And, moreover, they found an Indian who was willing to carry it. In
+    July his guide persuaded him to join an encampment of natives&mdash;about
+    six hundred persons living in seventy tents&mdash;asserting that, as it was
+    no use proceeding much farther north in their search for the
+    Coppermine River that season, it would be well to winter to the west,
+    and resume their northern journey in the spring. The country, though
+    quite devoid of trees, and mostly barren rock, was covered with a herb
+    or shrub called by the Indian name of Wishakapakka, <a name="10-2"></a><a href="#note-10-2"><small>[2]</small></a> from which the
+    European servants of the Hudson's Bay Company had long been used to
+    prepare a kind of tea by steeping it in boiling water. Here there were
+    multitudes of reindeer feeding on the <i>Cladina</i> lichen and the Indians
+    with Hearne killed large numbers for the food of the party, and also
+    for their skins and the marrow in their bones.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Indian who had volunteered to carry the canoe proved unequal to
+    his task. But Hearne found another of his carriers who was willing to
+    take the burden. In order, therefore, to be readier with his gun to
+    shoot deer, he transferred a portion of his own load to the ex-canoe
+    carrier. This portion consisted of the invaluable quadrant and its
+    stand, and a bag of gunpowder. The gunpowder was of such importance to
+    Hearne and his party that one wonders he made this exchange; for if he
+    lost this powder he had no means of killing game, and was entirely
+    dependent for food on the troop of Indians with whom he was
+    travelling, and whom he knew to be most niggardly and inhospitable.
+    Judge, therefore, of his horror when, at the end of a day's march,
+    this weakly Indian porter was missing with his load. All night Hearne
+    was unable to sleep with anxiety, and the whole of the next day he
+    spent searching the rocky ground for miles to discover some sign of
+    the missing man. At that season of the year it was like looking for a
+    needle in a pottle of hay, for there was no snow, and equally no
+    herbage, on which a man's foot could leave traces. However, at last,
+    by some miracle, they discovered the load by the banks of a little
+    river where a party of Indians had crossed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Shortly afterwards, leaving his quadrant on its stand for a few
+    minutes, whilst he went to eat his dinner, a violent wind arose and
+    blew the whole thing on to the rocks, so that the quadrant was
+    smashed and rendered useless. On this account he determined once more
+    to return to Fort Prince of Wales. The Northern Indians<a name="10-3"></a><a href="#note-10-3"><small>[3]</small></a> with whom
+    Hearne travelled backwards towards the fort were most inhospitable,
+    not to say dangerous. They robbed him of most of his goods, and
+    refused to allow their women to assist his people to dress the
+    reindeer skins out of which it would be necessary shortly to make
+    coverings to protect them from the severe cold of the autumn. In fact
+    Hearne was in rather a desperate condition by September, 1770, when he
+    was joined by a party of Indians under a famous leader, whom he calls
+    Matonabi.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Matonabi, though of Athapaskan stock, had, when a boy, resided several
+    years at Prince of Wales's Fort, and learnt a little English, and,
+    above all, was a master of several Algonkin dialects or languages, so
+    that he could discourse with the Southern Indians. As soon as he heard
+    of Hearne's distress he furnished him with a good, warm suit of skins,
+    and had the reindeer skins dressed for the Indian carriers who
+    accompanied Hearne. In journeying together, Matonabi invited him to
+    return once more, with himself as guide, to discover the copper mines.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He attributed all our misfortunes to the misconduct of my guides, and
+    the very plan we pursued, by the desire of the Governor, in not taking
+    any women with us on this journey, was, he said, the principal thing
+    that occasioned all our wants. 'For,' said he, 'when all the men are
+    heavy laden, they can neither hunt nor travel to any considerable
+    distance; and in case they meet with success in hunting, who is to
+    carry the produce of their labour?' 'Women,' added he, 'were made for
+    labour; one of them can carry, or haul, as much as two men can do.
+    They also pitch our tents, make and mend our clothing, keep us warm at
+    night; and, in fact, there is no such thing as travelling any
+    considerable distance, or for any length of time, in this country,
+    without their assistance.' 'Women,' said he again, 'though they do
+    everything, are maintained at a trifling expense; for as they always
+    stand cook, the very licking of their fingers in scarce times is
+    sufficient for their subsistence.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This," added Hearne, "however odd it may appear, is but too true a
+    description of the situation of women in this country: it is at least
+    so in appearance; for the women always carry the provisions, though it
+    is more than probable they help themselves when the men are not
+    present."
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the 7th of December, 1770, Samuel Hearne started again
+    from Prince of Wales's Fort, Hudsons Bay, but under very much happier
+    circumstances, Matonabi being practically in charge of the expedition.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Unfortunately, on reaching the Egg River, where Matonabi's people had
+    made a <i>cache</i> or hiding place in which they had stored a quantity of
+    provisions and implements, they found that other Indians had
+    discovered this hiding place and robbed it of nearly every article.
+    This was a great disappointment to Matonabi's people; but Hearne
+    remarks the fortitude with which they bore this, nor did one of them
+    ever speak of revenge. But the expedition's scarcity of food obliged
+    them to push on from morning till night, day after day; yet the road
+    being very bad, and their sledges heavy, they were seldom able to do
+    more than eighteen miles a day. Hearne himself writes that he never
+    spent so dull a Christmas. For the last three days he had not tasted a
+    morsel of anything, except a pipe of tobacco and a drink of snow
+    water, yet he had to walk daily from morning till night heavily laden.
+    However, at the end of December they reached Island Lake, where they
+    entered a camp of Matonabi's people, and here they found a little
+    food in the way of fish and dried venison. From Island Lake they made
+    their way in a zigzag fashion, stopping often to drive reindeer into
+    pounds to secure large supplies of venison and of skins, till, in the
+    month of April, 1771, they reached a small lake with an almost
+    unpronounceable name, which meant "Little Fish Hill", from a high hill
+    which stood at the west end of this sheet of water.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On an island in this lake they pitched their tents, as deer were very
+    numerous. During this time also they were busily employed in preparing
+    staves of birch wood, about seven or eight feet long, to serve as tent
+    poles in the summer, and in the winter to be converted into snowshoe
+    frames. Here also Chief Matonabi purchased another wife. He had now
+    with him no less than seven, most of whom would for size have made
+    good grenadiers. He prided himself much on the height and strength of
+    his wives, and would frequently say few women could carry off heavier
+    loads. In fact in this country wives were very seldom selected for
+    their beauty, but rather for their strength.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ask a Northern Indian," wrote Hearne, "'What is beauty?' He will
+    answer: 'A broad, flat face, small eyes, high cheekbones, three or
+    four broad black lines across each cheek, a low forehead, a broad
+    chin, a clumsy hook nose, and a tawny hide.'"
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the model woman amongst these Indians was one who was capable of
+    dressing all kinds of skins and making them into clothing, and who was
+    strong enough to carry a load of about a hundred pounds in weight in
+    summer, and to haul perhaps double that weight on a sledge in winter.
+    "As to their temper, it is of little consequence; for the men have a
+    wonderful facility in making the most stubborn comply with as much
+    alacrity as could possibly be expected." When the men kill any large
+    beast the women are always sent to bring it to the tent. When it is
+    brought there, every operation it undergoes, such as splitting,
+    drying, pounding, is performed by the women. When anything is prepared
+    for eating it is the women who cook it; and when it is done, not even
+    the wives and daughters of the greatest chiefs in the country are
+    served until all the males&mdash;even the male slaves&mdash;have eaten what they
+    think proper. In times of scarcity it was frequently the lot of the
+    women to be left without a single mouthful; though, no doubt, they
+    took good care to help themselves in secret.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0015"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc15.jpg" width="273" height="425"
+alt="Samuel Hearne; Alexander Mackenzie">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>SAMUEL HEARNE and ALEXANDER MACKENZIE</h5>
+<p>
+    Hearne mentions that in this country among the Northern Indians the
+    names of the boys were various and generally derived from some place,
+    or season of the year, or animal; whilst the names of the girls were
+    chiefly taken from some part or property of a marten, <a name="10-4"></a><a href="#note-10-4"><small>[4]</small></a> such as the
+    white marten, the black marten, the summer marten, the marten's head,
+    foot, heart, or tail.
+</p>
+<p>
+    From the Lake of Little Fish Hill the party moved on to Lake Clowey,
+    and here the Northern Indians set to work to build their canoes in the
+    warm and dry weather, which was about to come in at the end of May.
+    These canoes were very slight and simple in construction and
+    wonderfully light, which was necessary, for some of the northern
+    portages might be a hundred to one hundred and fifty miles in length,
+    over which the canoes would have to be carried by the Indians. All the
+    tools employed in those days, in building such canoes and making
+    snowshoes and all the other furniture and utensils of Indian life,
+    consisted of a <i>hatchet</i>, a <i>knife</i>, a <i>file</i>, and an <i>awl</i> obtained
+    from the stores of the Hudson's Bay Company. In the use of these tools
+    they were so dexterous that everything they manufactured was done with
+    a neatness which could not be excelled by the most expert mechanic.
+    These northern canoes were flat-bottomed, with straight, upright
+    sides, and sharp prow and peak. The stern part of the canoe was wider
+    than the rest in order to receive the baggage. The average length of
+    the canoe would be from twelve to thirteen feet, and the breadth in
+    the widest part about two feet. Generally but a single paddle was
+    used, and that rather attenuated. When transporting the canoes from
+    one river to another, a strong band of bark or fibre would be fastened
+    round the thwarts of the canoe, and then slung over the breast and
+    shoulders of the Indian that was carrying it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    From Lake Clowey the northern progress was made on foot, steady and
+    fatiguing walking over the barren grounds. The wooded region had been
+    left behind to the south; but for a distance of about twenty miles
+    outside the living woods there was a belt of dry stumps more or less
+    ancient. According to Hearne, these vestiges of trees to the north of
+    the present forest limit were an indication that the climate had grown
+    colder during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, because,
+    according to the traditions of the Indians and the remembrances of
+    their old people, the forest had formerly extended much farther to the
+    north.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Whilst they were staying for the canoe building at Lake Clowey, Hearne
+    was a great deal bothered by the domestic troubles of his Indian
+    friend Matonabi. This man had been constantly trying to add to his
+    stock of wives as he passed up country, and at Clowey he had met the
+    former husband of one of these women whom he had carried off by force.
+    The man ventured to reproach him, whereupon Matonabi went into his
+    tent, opened one of his wives' bundles, and with the greatest
+    composure took out a new, long, box-handled knife; then proceeded to
+    the tent of the man who had complained, and without any parley
+    whatever took him by the collar and attempted to stab him to death.
+    The man had already received three bad knife wounds in the back before
+    other people, rushing in to his assistance, prevented Matonabi from
+    finishing him. After this, Matonabi returned to his tent as though
+    nothing had happened, called for water, washed the blood off his hands
+    and knife, and smoked his pipe as usual, asking Hearne if he did not
+    think he had done quite right!
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It has ever been the custom among those people for the men to wrestle
+    for any woman to whom they are attached; and of course the strongest
+    party always carries off the prize. A weak man, unless he be a good
+    hunter and well beloved, is seldom permitted to keep a wife that a
+    stronger man thinks worth his notice; for at any time when the wives
+    of those strong wrestlers are heavy laden either with furs or
+    provisions, they make no scruple of tearing any other man's wife from
+    his bosom and making her bear a part of his luggage. This custom
+    prevails throughout all their tribes, and causes a great spirit of
+    emulation among their youth, who are upon all occasions, from their
+    childhood, trying their strength and skill in wrestling. This enables
+    them to protect their property, and particularly their wives, from the
+    hands of those powerful ravishers, some of whom make almost a
+    livelihood by taking what they please from the weaker parties without
+    making them any return. Indeed it is represented as an act of great
+    generosity if they condescend to make an unequal exchange, as, in
+    general, abuse and insult are the only return for the loss which is
+    sustained.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The way in which they tear the women and other property from one
+    another, though it has the appearance of the greatest brutality, can
+    scarcely be called fighting. I never knew any of them receive the
+    least hurt in these <i>rencontres</i>; the whole business consists in
+    hauling each other about by the hair of the head; they are seldom
+    known either to strike or kick one another. It is not uncommon for one
+    of them to cut off his hair and to grease his ears immediately before
+    the contest begins. This, however, is done privately; and it is
+    sometimes truly laughable to see one of the parties strutting about
+    with an air of great importance, and calling out: 'Where is he? Why
+    does he not come out?' when the other will bolt out with a clean-shorn
+    head and greased ears, rush on his antagonist, seize him by the hair,
+    and, though perhaps a much weaker man, soon drag him to the ground,
+    while the stronger is not able to lay hold of him. It is very frequent
+    on those occasions for each party to have spies, to watch the other's
+    motions, which puts them more on a footing of equality. For want of
+    hair to pull, they seize each other about the waist, with legs wide
+    extended, and try their strength by endeavouring to vie who can first
+    throw the other down."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Early in the morning of the twenty-ninth 'Captain' Keelshies (an
+    Indian) joined us. He delivered to me a packet of letters and a
+    two-quart keg of French brandy, but assured me that the powder, shot,
+    tobacco, knives, &amp;c, which he received at the fort for me, were all
+    expended. He endeavoured to make some apology for this by saying that
+    some of his relations died in the winter, and that he had, according
+    to native custom, thrown all his own things away; after which he was
+    obliged to have recourse to my ammunition and other goods to support
+    himself and a numerous family. The very affecting manner in which he
+    related this story, often crying like a child, was a great proof of
+    his extreme sorrow, which he wished to persuade me arose from the
+    recollection of his having embezzled so much of my property; but I was
+    of a different opinion, and attributed his grief to arise from the
+    remembrance of his deceased relations. However, as a small recompense
+    for my loss, he presented me with four ready-dressed moose skins,
+    which was, he said, the only retribution he could then make. The moose
+    skins, though not the twentieth part of the value of the goods which
+    he had embezzled, were in reality more acceptable to me than the
+    ammunition and the other articles would have been, on account of their
+    great use as shoe leather, which at that time was a very scarce
+    article with us, whereas we had plenty of powder and shot."
+</p>
+<p>
+    During Hearne's stay at Lake Clowey a great number of Indians entered
+    into a combination with those of his party to travel together to the
+    Coppermine River, with no other intent than to murder the Eskimo who
+    frequented that river in considerable numbers. Before leaving Lake
+    Clowey all the Northern Indians who had assembled there prepared their
+    arms for the encounter, and did not forget to make shields before they
+    left the woods of Clowey. These shields were composed of thin boards
+    about three-quarters of an inch thick, two feet broad, and three feet
+    long, and were intended to ward off the arrows of the Eskimo.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the now large expedition reached a river with the fearful name of
+    Congecathawhachaga, they found a portion of the tribe known as Copper
+    Indians,<a name="10-5"></a><a href="#note-10-5"><small>[5]</small></a> and these had never before seen a white man. They gave a
+    very friendly reception to Hearne on account of Matonabi.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They expressed as much desire to examine me from top to toe as a
+    European naturalist would a nondescript animal. They, however, found
+    and pronounced me to be a perfect human being, except in the colour of
+    my hair and eyes; the former, they said, was like the stained hair of
+    a buffalo's tail, and the latter, being light, were like those of a
+    gull. The whiteness of my skin also was, in their opinion, no
+    ornament, as they said it resembled meat which had been sodden in
+    water till all the blood was extracted. On the whole I was viewed as
+    so great a curiosity in this part of the world that during my stay
+    there, whenever I combed my head, some or other of them never failed
+    to ask for the hairs that came off, which they carefully wrapped up,
+    saying: 'When I see you again, you shall again see your hair'."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Copper Indians sent a detachment of their men in the double
+    capacity of guides and warriors, and the whole party now turned
+    towards the north-west, and after some days' walking reached the Stony
+    Mountains. "Surely no part of the world better deserves that name",
+    wrote, Hearne. They appeared to be a confused heap of stones quite
+    inaccessible to the foot of man. Nevertheless, with the Copper Indians
+    as guides, they got over this range, though not without being obliged
+    frequently to crawl on hands and knees. This range, however, had been
+    so often crossed by Indians coming to and fro that there was a very
+    visible path the whole way, the rocks, even in the most difficult
+    places, being worn quite smooth. By the side of the path there were
+    several large, flat stones covered with thousands of small pebbles.
+    These marks had been gradually built up by passengers going to and fro
+    from the copper mines in the far north. The weather all this time,
+    although the month was July, was very bad&mdash;constant snow, sleet, and
+    rain. Hearne seldom had a dry garment of any kind, and in the caves
+    where they lodged at night the water was constantly dropping from the
+    roof. Their food all this time was raw venison. One snowstorm which
+    fell on them was heavier than was customary even in the winter, but at
+    last the weather cleared up and sunshine made the journey far more
+    tolerable.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As they descended the northern side of the Stony Mountains they
+    crossed a large lake, passing over its unmelted ice, and called it
+    Musk-ox Lake, from the number of these creatures which they found
+    grazing on the margin of it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This was not the first time that Hearne had seen the musk ox. These
+    animals were wont to come down as far south as the shores of Hudson
+    Bay.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the northern side of the Stony Mountains Hearne was taken by the
+    Indians to see a place which he called Grizzly-bear Hill, which took
+    its name from the numbers of those animals (presumably what we call
+    grizzly bears) which resorted here for the purpose of bringing forth
+    their young in a cave in this hill. On the east side of the adjoining
+    marsh Hearne was amazed at the sight of the many hills and dry ridges,
+    which were turned over like ploughed land by the long claws of these
+    bears in searching for the ground squirrels and mice which constitute
+    a favourite part of their food. It was surprising to see the enormous
+    stones rolled out of their beds by the bears on these occasions.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As they neared the Coppermine River the weather became very warm, and
+    the country had a good supply of firewood. Reindeer were abundant,
+    and, the Indians having killed some of these, Hearne sat down to the
+    most comfortable meal he had had for some months.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was a kind of haggis, called by the Amerindians "biati", made with
+    the blood of the reindeer, a good quantity of fat shredded small, some
+    of the tenderest of the flesh, together with the heart and lungs, cut,
+    or more commonly torn, into small slivers&mdash;all which would be put into
+    the stomach, and roasted by being suspended before the fire by a
+    string. Care had to be taken that it did not get too much heat at
+    first, as the bag would thereby be liable to be burnt and the contents
+    be let out. When it was sufficiently done it emitted steam, "which",
+    writes Hearne, "is as much as to say: 'Come, eat me now'; and if it be
+    taken in time, before the blood and other contents are too much done,
+    it is certainly a most delicious morsel, even without pepper, salt, or
+    any other seasoning."
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was now almost impossible to sleep at night for the mosquitoes,
+    which swarmed in myriads as soon as the warmth of the sun melted the
+    ice and snow. When Hearne actually reached the banks of the Coppermine
+    River he was a little disappointed at its appearance, as it seemed to
+    be only one hundred and eighty yards wide, shallow, and full of
+    shoals. The Chipewayan Amerindians with him now sent out their spies
+    to try and locate the Eskimo. Presently they found that there were
+    five tents of them on the west side of the river.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When the Indians received this intelligence no further attendance or
+    attention was paid to my survey, but their whole thoughts were
+    immediately engaged in planning the best method of attack, and how
+    they might steal on the poor Eskimo the ensuing night and kill them
+    all when asleep. To accomplish this bloody design more effectually the
+    Indians thought it necessary to cross the river as soon as possible;
+    and, by the account of the spies, it appeared that no part was more
+    convenient for the purpose than that where we had met them, it being
+    there very smooth, and at a considerable distance from any fall.
+    Accordingly, after the Indians had put all their guns, spears,
+    shields, &amp;c, in good order, we crossed the river....
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When we arrived on the west side of the river, each painted the front
+    of his shield; some with the figure of the sun, others with that of
+    the moon, several with different kinds of birds and beasts of prey,
+    and many with the images of imaginary beings, which, according to
+    their silly notions, are the inhabitants of the different elements,
+    Earth, Sea, Air, &amp;c. On enquiring the reason of their doing so, I
+    learned that each man painted his shield with the image of that being
+    on which he relied most for success in the intended engagement. Some
+    were content with a single representation; while others, doubtful, as
+    I suppose, of the quality and power of any single being, had their
+    shields covered to the very margin with a group of hieroglyphics quite
+    unintelligible to everyone except the painter. Indeed, from the hurry
+    in which this business was necessarily done, the want of every colour
+    but red and black, and the deficiency of skill in the artist, most of
+    those paintings had more the appearance of a number of accidental
+    blotches, than 'of anything that is on the earth, or in the water
+    under the earth'....
+</p>
+<p>
+    "After this piece of superstition was completed, we began to advance
+    towards the Eskimo tents; but were very careful to avoid crossing any
+    hills, or talking loud, for fear of being seen or overheard by the
+    inhabitants."
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the attacking party was within two hundred yards of the Eskimo
+    tents, they lay in ambush for some time, watching the motions of their
+    intended victims; and here the Indians wanted Hearne (for whom they
+    had a sincere affection) to stay till the fight was over; but to this
+    he would not consent, lest, when the Eskimo came to be surprised, they
+    should try every way to escape, and, finding him alone, kill him in
+    their desperation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    While they lay in ambush the Northern Indians performed the last
+    ceremonies which were thought necessary before the engagement. These
+    chiefly consisted in painting their faces: some all black, some all
+    red, and others with a mixture of the two; and to prevent their hair
+    from blowing into their eyes, it was either tied before or behind, and
+    on both sides, or else cut short all round. The next thing they
+    considered was to make themselves as light as possible for running,
+    which they did by pulling off their stockings, and either cutting off
+    the sleeves of their jackets, or rolling them up close to their
+    armpits; and though the mosquitoes at that time "were so numerous as
+    to surpass all credibility", yet some of the Indians actually pulled
+    off their jackets and entered the lists nearly or quite naked. Hearne,
+    fearing he might have occasion to run with the rest, thought it also
+    advisable to pull off his stockings and cap, and to tie his hair as
+    close up as possible.
+</p>
+<p>
+    By the time the Indians had made themselves thus "completely
+    frightful", it was nearly one in the morning. Then, finding all the
+    Eskimo quiet in their tents, they rushed forth from their ambuscade,
+    and fell on the poor, unsuspecting creatures, unperceived till they
+    were close to the very eaves of the tents. A horrible massacre
+    forthwith took place, while Hearne stood neutral in the rear.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The scene was shocking beyond description. The poor unhappy victims
+    were surprised in the midst of their sleep, and had neither time nor
+    power to make any resistance; men, women, and children, in all upward
+    of twenty, ran out of their tents stark naked, and endeavoured to make
+    their escape; but the Indians having possession of all the landside,
+    to no place could they fly for shelter. One alternative only remained,
+    that of jumping into the river; but, as none of them attempted it,
+    they all fell a sacrifice to Indian barbarity!
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The shrieks and groans of the poor expiring wretches were truly
+    dreadful; and my horror was much increased at seeing a young girl,
+    seemingly about eighteen years of age, killed so near me, that when
+    the first spear was stuck into her side she fell down at my feet, and
+    twisted round my legs, so that it was with difficulty that I could
+    disengage myself from her dying grasp. As two Indian men pursued this
+    unfortunate victim, I solicited very hard for her life; but the
+    murderers made no reply till they had stuck both their spears through
+    her body, and transfixed her to the ground. They then looked me
+    sternly in the face, and began to ridicule me by asking if I wanted an
+    Eskimo wife; and paid not the smallest regard to the shrieks and agony
+    of the poor wretch, who was twining round their spears like an eel!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    On his requesting that they would at least put the woman out of her
+    misery, one of the Indians hastily drew his spear from the place where
+    it was first lodged, and pierced it through her breast near the heart.
+    The love of life, however, even in this most miserable state, was so
+    predominant, that "though this might justly be called the most
+    merciful act that could be done for the poor creature, it seemed to be
+    unwelcome, for, though much exhausted by pain and loss of blood, she
+    made several efforts to ward off the friendly blow."... "My own
+    situation and the terror of my mind at beholding this butchery,
+    cannot easily be conceived, much less described; though I summed up
+    all the fortitude I was master of on the occasion, it was with
+    difficulty that I could refrain from tears; and I am confident that my
+    features must have feelingly expressed how sincerely I was affected at
+    the barbarous scene I then witnessed; even at this hour I cannot
+    reflect on the transactions of that horrid day without shedding
+    tears."
+</p>
+<p>
+    There were other Eskimo on the opposite shore of the river. Though
+    they took up their arms to defend themselves, they did not attempt to
+    abandon their tents, for they were utterly unacquainted with the
+    nature of firearms; so much so that when the bullets struck the
+    ground, they ran in crowds to see what was sent them, and seemed
+    anxious to examine all the pieces of lead which they found flattened
+    against the rocks. At length one of the Eskimo men was shot in the
+    calf of his leg, which put them in great confusion. They all
+    immediately embarked in their little canoes, and paddled to a shoal in
+    the middle of the river, which being somewhat more than a gunshot from
+    any part of the shore, put them out of the reach of our barbarians.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When the savages discovered that the surviving Eskimo had gained the
+    shore above-mentioned, the Northern Indians began to plunder the
+    tents of the deceased of all the copper utensils they could find; such
+    as hatchets, bayonets, knives, &amp;c, after which they assembled on the
+    top of an adjacent hill, and, standing all in a cluster, so as to form
+    a solid circle, with their spears erect in the air, gave many shouts
+    of victory, constantly clashing their spears against each other, and
+    frequently calling out <i>tima! tima!<a name="10-6"></a></i><a href="#note-10-6"><small>[6]</small></a> by way of derision to the poor
+    surviving Eskimo, who were standing on the shoal almost knee deep in
+    water."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It ought to have been mentioned in its proper place," writes Hearne,
+    after describing further atrocities, "that in making our retreat up
+    the river, after killing the Eskimo on the west side, we saw an old
+    woman sitting by the side of the water killing salmon, which lay at
+    the foot of the fall as thick as a shoal of herrings. Whether from the
+    noise of the fall, or a natural defect in the old woman's hearing, it
+    is hard to determine, but certain it is, she had no knowledge of the
+    tragical scene which had been so lately transacted at the tents,
+    though she was not more than two hundred yards from the place. When we
+    first perceived her she seemed perfectly at ease, and was entirely
+    surrounded with the produce of her labour. From her manner of
+    behaviour, and the appearance of her eyes, which were as red as blood,
+    it is more than probable that her sight was not very good; for she
+    scarcely discerned that the Indians were enemies, till they were
+    within twice the length of their spears of her. It was in vain that
+    she attempted to fly, for the wretches of my crew transfixed her to
+    the ground in a few seconds, and butchered her in the most savage
+    manner. There was scarcely a man among them who had not a thrust at
+    her with his spear; and many in doing this aimed at torture rather
+    than immediate death, as they not only poked out her eyes, but stabbed
+    her in many parts very remote from those which are vital.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It may appear strange that a person supposed to be almost blind
+    should be employed in the business of fishing, and particularly with
+    any degree of success; but when the multitude of the fish is taken
+    into the account, the wonder will cease. Indeed they were so numerous
+    at the foot of the fall, that when a light pole, armed with a few
+    spikes, which was the instrument the old woman used, was put under
+    water, and hauled up with a jerk, it was scarcely possible to miss
+    them. Some of my Indians tried the method, for curiosity, with the old
+    woman's staff, and seldom got less than two at a jerk, sometimes
+    three or four. Those fish, though very fine, and beautifully red, are
+    but small, seldom weighing more (as near as I could judge) than six or
+    seven pounds, and in general much less. Their numbers at this place
+    were almost incredible, perhaps equal to anything that is related of
+    the salmon in Kamschatka, or any other part of the world."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hearne seems to have been so intent on geographical discovery that he
+    did not allow his feelings to influence him very long against the
+    society of his Amerindian companions, who apparently sat down and ate
+    a dish of salmon with him an hour or so after they had killed this
+    last old woman! The Indians now told him that they were ready again to
+    assist him in making an end of his survey, and apparently on foot, for
+    the Coppermine River was not navigable here, even for a boat.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Thus, first of all white men coming overland, he reached the sea coast
+    of the Arctic Ocean. The tide was then out, and a good deal of the sea
+    surface was covered with ice, on which he observed many seals lying
+    about. Along the sea coast and river banks were many birds; gulls,
+    divers or loons, golden plovers, green plovers, curlews, geese, and
+    swans. The country a little way inland was obviously inhabited by
+    numbers of musk oxen, reindeer, bears, wolves, gluttons, foxes, polar
+    hares, snowy owls, ravens, ptarmigans, gopher ground-squirrels, stoats
+    (ermines), and mice. In this region also he saw a bird which the
+    Copper Indians called the Alarm Bird. He tells us that in size and
+    colour it resembles a "Cobadekoock"; but as none of us know what that
+    is, we can only go on to imagine that the Alarm Bird was a kind of
+    owl, as Hearne says it was "of the owl genus". When it perceived
+    people or beasts it directed its way towards them immediately, and,
+    after hovering over them for some time, flew over them in circles or
+    went away with them in the same direction as they walked. All this
+    time the bird made a loud screaming noise like the cry of a child.
+    These owls were sometimes accustomed to follow the Indians for a whole
+    day, and the Copper Indians believed that they would in some way
+    conduct them to herds of deer and musk oxen, which without the birds'
+    assistance might never be found. They also warned Indians of the
+    arrival of strangers. The Eskimo, according to Hearne, paid no heed to
+    these birds, and it was thus that they allowed themselves to be
+    surprised and massacred, for if they had looked out from the direction
+    in which the Chipewayans were lying in ambush, they would have seen a
+    large flock of these owls continually flying about and making
+    sufficient noise to awaken any man out of the soundest sleep.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The country on either side of the estuary of the Coppermine River was
+    not without vegetation. There were stunted pines and tufts of dwarf
+    willows, and the ground was covered with a lichen or herb, which the
+    English of the Hudson's Bay Company knew by the name of
+    Wishakapaka,<a name="10-7"></a><a href="#note-10-7"><small>[7]</small></a> and which they dried and used instead of tea. There
+    were also cranberry and heathberry bushes, but without fruit. The
+    scrub grew gradually thinner and smaller as one approached the sea,
+    and at the mouth of the river there was nothing but barren hills and
+    marsh.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The unfortunate Eskimo of this region, judging by the examples seen by
+    Hearne, were of low stature, with broad thickset bodies. Their
+    complexion was a dirty copper colour, but some of the women were
+    almost fair and ruddy. Their dress, their arms and fishing tackle were
+    precisely similar to those of the Greenland Eskimo. Their tents were
+    made of deerskins, and were pitched in a circular form. But these were
+    only their summer habitations, those for the winter being partly
+    underground, with a roof framework of poles, over which skins were
+    stretched; and of course Nature did the rest, covering the roof with
+    several feet of snow. Owing to being almost entirely surrounded by
+    snow, these winter houses were very warm. Their household furniture
+    consisted of stone kettles and wooden troughs of various sizes, also
+    dishes, scoops, and spoons made of musk-ox horns. The stone kettles
+    (which some people think they borrowed from the Norse discoverers of
+    America in the eleventh century) were as large as to be capable of
+    containing five or six gallons. They were, of course, carved out of
+    solid blocks of stone, every one of them being ornamented with neat
+    moulding round the rims, and some of the large ones with fluted work
+    at each corner. In shape they were oblong, wider at the top than the
+    bottom, and strong handles of solid stone were left at each end to
+    lift them up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Eskimo hatchets were made of a thick lump of copper about five or
+    six inches long, and one and a half to two inches broad. They were
+    bevelled away at one end like a chisel. This piece of copper was
+    lashed into the end of a piece of wood about twelve or fourteen inches
+    long. The men's daggers and the women's knives were also made of
+    copper. The former were in shape like the ace of spades, and the
+    handle was made of reindeer antler.
+</p>
+<p>
+    With the Eskimo was a fine breed of dogs, with erect ears, sharp
+    noses, bushy tails. They were all tethered to stones to prevent them
+    from eating the flesh that was spread all over the rocks to dry.
+    Apparently, these beautiful dogs were left behind still tethered by
+    the wicked Amerindians, after the massacre of their owners. Hearne,
+    however, noticed with these Coppermine River Eskimo that the men were
+    entirely bald, having all their head hair pulled out by the roots. The
+    women wore their hair at the usual length.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Before leaving this region to return southwards, Hearne was led by the
+    Indians to one of the copper mines about thirty miles south-east of
+    the river mouth. It was no more than a jumble of rocks and gravel,
+    which had been rent in many ways, apparently by an earthquake shock.
+    This mine was at the time of Hearne's visit very poor in copper, much
+    of the metal having already been removed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Copper Indians set a great value on this native metal even at the
+    present day, and prefer it to iron for almost every use except that of
+    a hatchet, a knife, and an awl. "For these three necessary
+    implements", writes Hearne, "copper makes but a very poor substitute."
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the return journey, in the course of which the Great Slave
+    Lake&mdash;which Hearne calls "Lake Athapuscow"&mdash;was discovered and crossed
+    on the ice, the party travelled so hard and stayed so seldom to rest
+    that Hearne suffered terribly with his legs and feet. "I had so little
+    power to direct my feet when walking, that I frequently knocked them
+    against the stones with such force, as not only to jar and disorder
+    them, but my legs also; and the nails of my toes were bruised to such
+    a degree, that several of them festered and dropped off. To add to
+    this mishap, the skin was entirely chafed off from the tops of both my
+    feet, and between every toe; so that the sand and gravel, which I
+    could by no means exclude, irritated the raw parts so much, that for a
+    whole day before we arrived at the women's tents, I left the print of
+    my feet in blood almost at every step I took. Several of the Indians
+    began to complain that their feet also were sore; but, on examination,
+    not one of them was the twentieth part in so bad a state as mine. This
+    being the first time I had been in such a situation, or seen anybody
+    foot-foundered, I was much alarmed, and under great apprehensions for
+    the consequences. Though I was but little fatigued in body, yet the
+    excruciating pain I suffered when walking had such an effect on my
+    spirits, that if the Indians had continued to travel two or three days
+    longer at that unmerciful rate, I must unavoidably have been left
+    behind; for my feet were in many places quite honeycombed by the dirt
+    and gravel eating into the raw flesh."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Among the various superstitious customs of those people, it is worth
+    remarking, and ought to have been mentioned in its proper place, that
+    immediately after my companions had killed the Eskimo at the Copper
+    River, they considered themselves in a state of uncleanness, which
+    induced them to practise some very curious unusual ceremonies. In the
+    first place, all who were absolutely concerned in the murder were
+    prohibited from cooking any kind of victuals, either for themselves or
+    others. As luckily there were two in company who had not shed blood,
+    they were employed always as cooks till we joined the women. This
+    circumstance was exceedingly favourable on my side; for had there been
+    no persons of the above description in company, that task, I was told,
+    would have fallen on me; which would have been no less fatiguing and
+    troublesome, than humiliating and vexatious.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When the victuals were cooked, all the murderers took a kind of red
+    earth, or ochre, and painted all the space between the nose and chin,
+    as well as the greater part of their cheeks, almost to the ears,
+    before they would taste a bit, and would not drink out of any other
+    dish, or smoke out of any other pipe, but their own; and none of the
+    others seemed willing to drink or smoke out of theirs."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He goes on to relate that they practised the custom of painting the
+    mouth and part of the cheeks before each meal, and drinking and
+    smoking out of their own utensils, till the winter began to set in,
+    and during the whole of that time they would never kiss any of their
+    wives or children. They refrained also from eating many parts of the
+    deer and other animals, particularly the head, entrails, and blood;
+    and during their "uncleanness" their food was never cooked in water,
+    but dried in the sun, eaten quite raw, or broiled. When the time
+    arrived that was to put an end to these ceremonies, the men, without a
+    female being present, made a fire at some distance from the tents,
+    into which they threw all their ornaments, pipe stems, and dishes,
+    which were soon consumed to ashes; after which a feast was prepared,
+    consisting of such articles as they had long been prohibited from
+    eating, and when all was over each man was at liberty to eat, drink,
+    and smoke as he pleased, "and also to kiss his wives and children at
+    discretion, which they seemed to do with more raptures than I had ever
+    known them to do it either before or since".
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the 11th of January, as some of Hearne's companions were hunting,
+    they saw the track of a strange snowshoe, which they followed, and at
+    a considerable distance came to a little hut, where they discovered a
+    young woman sitting alone. As they found that she understood their
+    language, they brought her with them to the tents. On examination she
+    proved to be one of the Western Dog-rib Indians, who had been taken
+    prisoner by the Athapaska Indians in the summer of 1770. From these,
+    in the following summer, she had escaped, with the intention of
+    returning to her own country, but the distance being so great, and the
+    way being unknown to her, she forgot the track, so she built the hut
+    in which they found her, to protect her from the weather during the
+    winter, and here she had resided from the first setting in of the cold
+    weather. For seven months she had seen no human face. During all this
+    time she had supported herself in comparative comfort by snaring
+    grouse, rabbits, and squirrels; she had also killed two or three
+    beaver, and some porcupines. That she did not seem to have been in
+    want was evident, as she had a small stock of provisions by her when
+    she was discovered, and was in good health and condition; and Hearne
+    thought her "one of the finest women", of the real Indian type, that
+    he had seen in any part of North America.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The methods practised by this poor creature to procure a livelihood
+    were truly admirable, and are great proofs that necessity is the real
+    mother of invention. When the few deer sinews that she had an
+    opportunity of taking with her were all expended in making snares and
+    sewing her clothing, she had nothing to supply their place but the
+    sinews of the rabbits' [he means hares'] legs and feet; these she
+    twisted together for that purpose with great dexterity and success.
+    The rabbits, &amp;c, which she caught in those snares, not only furnished
+    her with a comfortable subsistence, but of the skins she made a suit
+    of neat and warm clothing for the winter. It is scarcely possible to
+    conceive that a person in her forlorn situation could be so composed
+    as to be capable of contriving or executing anything that was not
+    absolutely necessary to her existence; but there were sufficient
+    proofs that she had extended her care much farther, as all her
+    clothing, beside being calculated for real service, showed great taste
+    and exhibited no little variety of ornament. The materials, though
+    rude, were very curiously wrought and so judiciously placed as to make
+    the whole of her garb have a very pleasing, though rather romantic,
+    appearance.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Her leisure hours from hunting had been employed in twisting the
+    inner rind or bark of willows into small lines, like net twine, of
+    which she had some hundred fathoms by her; with this she intended to
+    make a fishing net as soon as the spring advanced. It is of the inner
+    bark of willows, twisted in this manner, that the Dog-rib Indians make
+    their fishing nets, and they are much preferable to those made by the
+    Northern Indians.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Five or six inches of an iron hoop, made into a knife, and the shank
+    of an arrowhead of iron, which served her as an awl, were all the
+    metals this poor woman had with her when she eloped, and with these
+    implements she had made herself complete snowshoes, and several other
+    useful articles.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Her method of making a fire was equally singular and curious, having
+    no other materials for that purpose than two hard sulphurous stones.
+    These, by long friction and hard knocking, produced a few sparks,
+    which at length communicated to some touchwood (a species of fungus
+    which grew on decayed poplars); but as this method was attended with
+    great trouble, and not always with success, she did not suffer her
+    fire to go out all the winter...."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hearne regained Prince of Wales's Fort on Hudson Bay in June, 1772.
+    Subsequently he was dispatched, in the year 1774, to found the first
+    great inland trading station and fort of the Hudson's Bay Company
+    which was established at any considerable distance westward of Hudson
+    Bay&mdash;the first step, in fact, which led to this chartered company
+    becoming in time the ruler and colonizing agent of Alberta and British
+    Columbia. Hearne chose for his station of "Cumberland House" a site at
+    the entrance to Pine Island Lake on the lower Saskatchewan River.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In 1775 he became Governor of his old starting-point on Hudson
+    Bay&mdash;Fort Prince of Wales. During the American war with France, the
+    French admiral, La Pérouse, made a daring excursion into Hudson Bay
+    (1782), and summoned Hearne to surrender his fort. This he felt
+    obliged to do, not deeming his small garrison strong enough to resist
+    the French force.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Samuel Hearne returned to England in 1787, and died (probably in
+    London) in 1792.
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+
+<a name="note-10-1"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#10-1"><u>1</u></a> Hearne was born in London in 1745. He entered the Royal
+    Navy as a midshipman at the tender age of eleven, and remained in the
+    Navy till about 1765, when he went out to Hudson Bay with the rank of
+    quartermaster. He must have acquired a considerable education, even in
+    botany and zoology. He not only wrote well, and was a good surveyor
+    for rough map making, but he had a considerable talent as a
+    draughtsman.
+</p>
+<a name="note-10-2"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#10-2"><u>2</u></a> This word is said to be a corruption or altered form of
+    <i>Wishakagami&#363;</i>, a liquid or broth (Kri language). The drink made
+    from this shrub or herb (<i>Ledum palustre</i>) is now known as Labrador
+    tea. It is a bitter aromatic infusion.
+</p>
+<a name="note-10-3"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#10-3"><u>3</u></a> The Indians of the Athapaskan or Déné group were usually
+    called the <i>Northern Indians</i> by the Hudson Bay people, in comparison
+    to all the other tribes of the more temperate regions farther south,
+    who were known as the <i>Southern Indians</i> (Algonkins, &amp;c.).
+</p>
+<a name="note-10-4"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#10-4"><u>4</u></a> A fur-bearing animal (<i>Mustela americana</i>), very like the
+    British pine marten.
+</p>
+<a name="note-10-5"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#10-5"><u>5</u></a> Or "Tantsawh&#363;ts". Like the "Dog-rib" Indians,
+    mentioned farther on, they belonged to the "Northern", Tinné,
+    Athabaskan type.
+</p>
+<a name="note-10-6"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#10-6"><u>6</u></a> "<i>Tima</i> in the Eskimo language is a friendly word similar
+    to <i>what cheer</i>?"&mdash;Hearne.
+</p>
+<a name="note-10-7"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#10-7"><u>7</u></a> <i>Ledum palustre</i>.
+</p>
+<p class="return">[<a href="#contents">TABLE OF CONTENTS</a>]
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+
+<a name="2HCH0011"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XI
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    Alexander Mackenzie's Journeys
+</h3>
+<p>
+    It has been already mentioned that the conquest of Canada by the
+    British led to a great increase in travel for the development of the
+    fur trade. Previously, under the French, permission was only granted
+    to a few persons to penetrate into the interior to trade with the
+    natives, commerce being regarded as a special privilege or monopoly to
+    be sold or granted by the Crown. But after the British had completely
+    assumed control, nothing was done to bar access to the interior. So
+    long as the Catholic missionaries had been practically placed in
+    charge of the Amerindians, and had served as buffers between them and
+    unscrupulous traders, they&mdash;the Amerindians&mdash;had been saved from two
+    scourges, smallpox and strong drink.<a name="11-1"></a><a href="#note-11-1"><small>[1]</small></a> But now, unhappily, all
+    restrictions about trade in alcohol were removed. In their eagerness
+    to obtain ardent spirits and "high" wine, the Indians eagerly welcomed
+    British traders and French Canadians in their midst. The fur trade
+    developed fast. The Hudson's Bay Company had established its trading
+    stations only in the vicinity or on the coasts of that inland sea, far
+    away from the two Canadas, from the Middle West and the vast North
+    West. After a little reluctance and suspicion, most of the northern
+    Amerindian tribes were persuaded to deflect their caravans from the
+    routes leading to Hudson Bay, and to meet the British, the New
+    Englander ("Bostonian"), and the French Canadian traders at various
+    rendezvous on <a name="p278"></a>Lake Winnipeg and its tributary lakes and rivers. The
+    principal depot and starting-point for the north-west traders was
+    <i>Grand Portage</i>, on the north-west coast of Lake Superior, whence
+    canoes and goods were transferred by a nine-mile portage to the waters
+    flowing to Rainy Lake, and so onwards to the Winnipeg River and the
+    vast system of the Saskatchewan, the Red River, and the Assiniboine.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Amongst the pioneers in this new development of the fur trade, who
+    became also the great explorers of northernmost America, was Alexander
+    Henry (already described), THOMAS CURRIE, JAMES FINLAY, PETER POND,<a name="11-2"></a><a href="#note-11-2"><small>[2]</small></a>
+    JOSEPH and BENJAMIN FROBISHER, and SIMON M'TAVISH. These and some of
+    their supporting merchants in Montreal resolved to form a great
+    fur-trading association, the celebrated North-west Trading Company,
+    and did so in 1784.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Two of the Montreal merchant firms participating in this confederation
+    (Gregory and M'Leod) were inclined to play a somewhat independent
+    part, and called themselves the New North-west Trading Company. They
+    had the foresight to engage as their principal agents in the
+    north-west (Sir) ALEXANDER MACKENZIE and his cousin RODERICK
+    MACKENZIE. Both these young men were Highlanders, probably of Norse
+    origin. Alexander Mackenzie was born at Stornoway, in the Island of
+    Lewis (Hebrides), in 1763. He was only sixteen when he started for
+    Canada to take up a position as clerk in the partnership concern of
+    Gregory &amp; M'Leod at Montreal.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It may be said here briefly that this "New North-west Company" went at
+    first by the nickname of "The Little Company" or "The Potties", this
+    last being an Amerindian corruption of the French <i>Les Petits</i>. Later
+    it developed into the "X.Y. Company", or "Sir Alexander Mackenzie &amp;
+    Co.". Although much in rivalry with the original "Nor'-westers", the
+    rivalry never degenerated into the actual warfare, the indefensible
+    deeds of violence and treachery, which later on were perpetrated by
+    the Hudson's Bay Company on the agents of the North-west, and returned
+    with interest by the latter. Often the New North-west agents and the
+    original Nor'-westers would camp or build side by side, and share
+    equably in the fur trade with the natives; their canoemen and
+    French-Canadian <i>voyageurs</i> would sing their boating songs in chorus
+    as they paddled side by side across the lakes and down the rivers, or
+    marched with their heavy loads over the portages and along the trails.
+    Eventually, in 1804, the X.Y. Company and the North-west fused into
+    the North-west Trading Company, which until 1821 fought a hard fight
+    against the encroachments and jealousy of the Hudson's Bay Company.
+</p>
+<p>
+    During the period, however, from 1785 to 1812 the men of the
+    north-west, of Montreal, and Grand Portage (as contrasted with those
+    of Hudson Bay) effected a revolution in Canadian geography. They
+    played the rôle of imperial pioneers with a stubborn heroism, with
+    little thought of personal gain, and in most cases with full
+    foreknowledge and appreciation of what would accrue to the British
+    Empire through their success. It is impossible to relate the
+    adventures of all of them within the space of any one book, or even of
+    several volumes. Moreover, this has been done already, not only in
+    their own published journals and books, but in the admirable works of
+    Elliot Coues, Dr. George Bryce, Dr. S.J. Dawson, Alexander Ross, and
+    others. I must confine myself here to a description of the adventures
+    of Sir Alexander Mackenzie, with a glance at incidents recorded by
+    Simon Fraser and by Alexander Henry the Younger.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mackenzie, having been appointed at the age of twenty-two a partner in
+    the New North-west Company, proceeded to Grand Portage in 1785, and
+    by the year 1788 (after founding Fort Chipewayan on Lake Athabaska)
+    conceived the idea of following the mysterious Slave River to its
+    ultimate outlet into the Arctic or the Pacific Ocean. He left Fort
+    Chipewayan on June 3, 1789, accompanied by four French-Canadian
+    <i>voyageurs</i>, two French-Canadian women (wives of two <i>voyageurs</i>), a
+    young German named John Steinbruck, and an Amerindian guide known as
+    "English Chief". This last was a follower and pupil of the Matonabi
+    who had guided Hearne to the Coppermine River and the eastern end of
+    the Great Slave Lake. The party of eight whites packed themselves and
+    their goods into one birch-bark canoe. English Chief and his two
+    wives, together with an additional Amerindian guide and a hunter,
+    travelled in a second and smaller canoe. The expedition, moreover, was
+    accompanied as far as Slave River by LE ROUX, a celebrated
+    French-Canadian exploring trader who worked for the X.Y. Company. The
+    journey down the Slave River was rendered difficult and dangerous by
+    the rapids. Several times the canoes and their loads had to be lugged
+    past these falls by an overland portage. Mosquitoes tortured the whole
+    party almost past bearance. The leaders of the expedition and their
+    Indian hunter had to be busily engaged (the Indian women also) in
+    hunting and fishing in order to get food for the support of the party,
+    who seemed to have had little reserve provisions with them. Pemmican
+    was made of fish dried in the sun and rubbed to powder. Swans, geese,
+    cranes, and ducks fell to the guns; an occasional beaver was also
+    added to the pot. When they reached the Great Slave Lake they found
+    its islands&mdash;notwithstanding their barren appearance&mdash;covered with
+    bushes producing a great variety of palatable fruits&mdash;cranberries,
+    juniper berries, raspberries, partridge berries, gooseberries, and the
+    "pathogomenan", a fruit like a raspberry.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <a name="p281"></a>Slave Lake, however, was still, in mid-June, under the spell of
+    winter, its surface obstructed with drifting ice. In attempting to
+    cross the lake the frail birch-bark canoes ran a great risk of being
+    crushed between the ice floes. However, at length, after halting at
+    several islands and leaving Le Roux to go to the trading station he
+    had founded on the shores of Slave Lake, Mackenzie and his two canoes
+    found their way to the river outlet of Slave Lake, that river which
+    was henceforth to be called by his name. Great mountains approached
+    near to the west of their course. They appeared to be sprinkled with
+    white stones, called by the natives "spirit stones"&mdash;indeed over a
+    great part of North America the Rocky Mountains were called "the
+    Mountains of Bright Stones"&mdash;yet these brilliant patches were nothing
+    more wonderful than unmelted snow.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A few days later the party encountered Amerindians of the Slave and
+    Dog-rib tribes, who were so aloof from even "Indian" civilization that
+    they did not know the use of tobacco, and were still in the Stone Age
+    as regards their weapons and implements. These people, though they
+    furnished a guide, foretold disaster and famine to the expedition, and
+    greatly exaggerated the obstacles which would be met with&mdash;rapids near
+    the entrance of the tributary from Great Bear Lake&mdash;before the salt
+    water was reached.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The canoes of these Slave and Dog-rib tribes of the Athapaskan (Tinné)
+    group were covered, not with birch bark, but with the bark of the
+    spruce fir.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The lodges of the Slave Indians were of very simple structure: a few
+    poles supported by a fork and forming a semicircle at the bottom, with
+    some branches or a piece of bark as a covering. They built two of
+    these huts facing each other, and made a fire between them. The
+    furniture consisted of a few dishes of wood, bark, or horn. The
+    vessels in which they cooked their victuals were in the shape of a
+    gourd, narrow at the top and wide at the bottom, and made of <i>wátápé</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This was the name given to the divided roots of the spruce fir, which
+    the natives wove into a degree of compactness that rendered it capable
+    of containing a fluid. Wátápé fibre was also used to sew together
+    different parts of the bark canoes. They also made fibre or thread
+    from willow bark. Their cooking vessels made of this wátápé not only
+    contained water, but water which was made to boil by putting a
+    succession of hot stones into it. It would, of course, be impossible
+    to place these vessels of fibre on a fire, and apparently none of the
+    Amerindians of temperate North America knew anything about pottery.
+    Those that were in some degree in touch with the Eskimo used kettles
+    or cauldrons of stone. Elsewhere the vessels for boiling water and
+    cooking were made of bark or fibre, and the water therein was made to
+    boil by the dropping in of red-hot stones. The arrows of these Slave
+    Indians were two and a half feet long, and the barb was made of bone,
+    horn, flint, or copper. Iron had been quite lately introduced,
+    indirectly obtained from the Russians in Alaska. Their spears were
+    pointed with barbed bone, and their daggers were made of horn or bone.
+    Their great club, the <i>pógamagán</i>, was made of a reindeer's antler.
+    Axes were manufactured out of a piece of brown or grey stone, six to
+    eight inches long and two inches thick. They kindled fire by striking
+    together a piece of iron pyrites and touchwood, and never travelled
+    without a small bag containing such materials.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Amerindians along the lower Mackenzie had heard vague and terrible
+    legends about the Russians, far, far away on the coast of Alaska; they
+    were represented as beings of gigantic stature, and adorned with
+    wings; which, however, they never employed in flying (possibly the
+    sails of their ships). They fed on large birds, and killed them with
+    the greatest ease. They also possessed the extraordinary power of
+    killing with their eyes (no doubt putting up a gun to aim), and they
+    travelled in canoes of very large dimensions.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0016"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc16.jpg" width="285" height="450"
+alt="Big-horned Sheep of Rocky Mountains">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>BIG-HORNED SHEEP OF ROCKY MOUNTAINS</h5>
+<p>
+    "I engaged one of these Indians," writes Mackenzie, "by a bribe of
+    some beads, to describe the surrounding country upon the sand. This
+    singular map he immediately undertook to delineate, and accordingly
+    traced out a very long point of land between the rivers ... which he
+    represented as running into the great lake, at the extremity of which
+    he had been told by Indians of other nations there was a white man's
+    fort." The same people described plainly the Yukon River westward of
+    the mountains, and told Mackenzie it was a far greater stream than the
+    one he was exploring. This was the first "hint" of the existence of
+    the great Alaskan river which was ever recorded. They also spoke to
+    Mackenzie of "small white buffaloes" (?the mountain goat), which they
+    found in the mountains west of the Mackenzie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Whenever and wherever Mackenzie's party met these northernmost tribes
+    of Athapascan Indians they were always ready to dance in between short
+    spells of talking. This dancing and jumping was their only amusement,
+    and in it old and young, male and female, went to such exertions that
+    their strength was exhausted. As they jumped up and down they imitated
+    the various noises produced by the reindeer, the bear, and the wolf.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In descending the Mackenzie River, and again on the return journey
+    upstream, Mackenzie notices the abundance of berries on the banks of
+    the river, especially the kind which was called "pears" by the French
+    Canadians. These were of a purple hue, rather bigger than a pea, and
+    of a luscious taste. There were also gooseberries and a few
+    strawberries. Quantities of berries were collected and dried, but
+    while on the lower Mackenzie the expedition fed mainly on fat geese.
+    On the beach of the great river they found an abundance of a sweet
+    fragrant root which Mackenzie calls "liquorice".
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mackenzie seemed to think that along the lower Mackenzie River, near
+    the sea, there were not only reindeer, bears, wolverines, martens,
+    foxes, and hares, but a species of white buffalo or white musk ox,
+    which may have been the mountain goat above referred to. He noted, in
+    the cliffs or banks of the lower Mackenzie, pieces of "petroleum"
+    which bore a resemblance to yellow wax but was more friable. His
+    Indian guide informed him that rocks of a similar kind were scattered
+    about the country at the back of the Slave Lake, near where the
+    Chipewayans collected copper. If so, there may be a great oilfield yet
+    to be discovered in Arctic Canada.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the river coming out of the Bear Lake Mackenzie discovered coal;
+    the whole beach was strewn with it. He was attracted towards it by
+    seeing smoke and noticing a strong sulphurous smell. The whole bank of
+    the river was on fire for a considerable distance, and he thought this
+    was due to the natives having camped there and set fire to the coal in
+    the bank from their hearths. But subsequent travellers have also found
+    this lignite coal burning to waste, and imagine that, being full of
+    gas, it catches fire spontaneously if any landslip or other accident
+    exposes it to moist air. In 1906 it was still burning!
+</p>
+<p>
+    According to Mackenzie, the ground in the regions about the lower
+    reaches of the Mackenzie River is always frozen at least five inches
+    down from the surface, yet he found small spruce trees growing in
+    patches near the delta of this river, besides pale-yellow raspberries
+    of an agreeable flavour, and a great variety of other plants and
+    herbs.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As the expedition drew near to the estuary of the great Mackenzie
+    River a range of lofty snowy mountains rose into sight on the west.
+    These mountains were said by the natives to swarm with large
+    bears&mdash;probably of the huge chocolate-coloured Alaska type; and again
+    a mention was made of "small white buffaloes", which were in all
+    probability the large white mountain goat (<i>Oreamnus</i>). The
+    Amerindians along the river greatly magnified the dangers, predicting
+    impassable rapids between the confluence of the Great Bear River and
+    the sea. But these stories were greatly exaggerated. Every now and
+    then the river would narrow and flow between white precipitous
+    limestone walls of rock, but there was no obstacle to navigation,
+    though it was very deep and the current fast.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The travellers now began to get within touch of the Eskimo and to hear
+    of their occasional raids up the river from the sea. They were said to
+    use slings, from which they flung stones with such dexterity as to
+    prove formidable in their fights with the Amerindians, who regarded
+    them with great respect, the more so because of their intercourse with
+    the mysterious white people (Russians) from whom they obtained iron.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mackenzie just managed to reach within sight of the sea, beyond the
+    delta of the river, his most northern point being about 69° 14" north
+    latitude. Hence he gazed out northwards over a vast expanse of
+    piled-up ice in which several small islands were embedded. In the
+    spaces of open water whales were visible (the small white whale,
+    <i>Beluga</i>). The water in between the islands was affected by the tide.
+    The travellers had, in fact, reached the Arctic ocean. But, owing to
+    the fickleness of their guides, and the danger of being detained by
+    some obstacle in these northern latitudes without proper supplies for
+    the winter, Mackenzie was afraid to stay for further investigations,
+    and on July 16, 1789, turned his back on the sea and commenced his
+    return journey up the stream of the great river which was henceforth
+    to bear his name.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The strength of the current made the homeward travel much more
+    lengthy and tedious. The Indians of the party were troublesome, and
+    the principal guide, English Chief, was sulky and disobedient. This
+    man had insisted on being accompanied by two of his wives, of whom he
+    was so morbidly jealous that he could scarcely bring himself to leave
+    them for an hour in order to go hunting or to prospect the country;
+    consequently he did little or nothing in the killing of game, and this
+    kept the expedition on very small rations. Mackenzie got wroth with
+    him, and so gave him a sound rating. This irritated English Chief to a
+    high degree, and after a long and vehement harangue he burst into
+    tears and loud and bitter lamentations. Thereat his friends and wives
+    commenced crying and wailing vociferously, though they declared that
+    their tears were shed, not for any trouble between the white man and
+    English Chief, but because they suddenly recollected all the friends
+    and relations they had lost within the last few years! "I did not
+    interrupt their grief for two hours, but as I could not well do
+    without them, I was at length obliged to sooth it and induce the chief
+    to change his resolution (to leave me), which he did with great
+    apparent reluctance."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Later on English Chief told Mackenzie that he feared he might have to
+    go to war, because it was a custom amongst the Athapaskan chiefs to
+    make war after they had given way to the disgrace attached to such a
+    feminine weakness as shedding tears. Therefore he would undertake a
+    warlike expedition in the following spring, but in the meantime he
+    would continue with Mackenzie as long as he wanted him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mackenzie, rejoining Le Roux at the Slave Lake, safely reached his
+    station at Fort Chipewayan on September 12, 1789, just as the approach
+    of winter was making travel in these northern regions dangerous to
+    those who relied on unfrozen water as a means of transit.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mackenzie seems to have been a little disappointed with the results
+    of his northward journey; perhaps he had thought that the outlet of
+    Slave Lake and the Mackenzie River would be into the Pacific, the <i>Mer
+    de l'Ouest</i> of his Canadian <i>voyageurs</i>. Yet he must have realized
+    that he had discovered something very wonderful after all: the
+    beginning of Alaska, the approach to a region which, though lying
+    within the Arctic circle, has climatic conditions permitting the
+    existence of trees, abundant vegetation, and large, strange beasts,
+    and which, moreover, is highly mineralized. His work in this
+    direction, however (and that of Hearne), was to be completed in the
+    next century by SIR JOHN FRANKLIN, SIR GEORGE BACK, SIR JOHN
+    RICHARDSON, and SIR JOHN ROSS&mdash;all knighthoods earned by magnificent
+    services in geographical exploration&mdash;and by THOMAS SIMPSON, Dr. John
+    Rae,<a name="11-3"></a><a href="#note-11-3"><small>[3]</small></a> WARREN DEASE, JOHN M'LEOD, ROBERT CAMPBELL, and other servants
+    of the Hudson's Bay Company.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In October, 1792, Mackenzie had determined to make a great attempt to
+    reach the Pacific Ocean. By this time he and his colleagues had
+    explored the Peace River (the main tributary of Slave Lake), and had
+    realized that they could travel up it into the heart of the Rocky
+    Mountains. He wintered and traded at a place which he called "New
+    Establishment", on the banks of the Peace River, near the foothills of
+    the Rocky Mountains. He left this station on May 9, 1793, accompanied
+    by ALEXANDER MACKAY,<a name="11-4"></a><a href="#note-11-4"><small>[4]</small></a> six French Canadians, and two Indian guides.
+    They travelled up the Peace River in a twenty-five-foot canoe, and at
+    first passed through scenery the most beautiful Mackenzie had ever
+    beheld. He describes it as follows:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The ground rises at intervals to a considerable height, and
+    stretching inwards to a considerable distance: at every interval or
+    pause in the rise, there is a very gently ascending space or lawn,
+    which is alternate with abrupt precipices to the summit of the whole,
+    or at least as far as the eye could distinguish. This magnificent
+    theatre of nature has all the decorations which the trees and animals
+    of the country can afford it: groves of poplars in every shape vary
+    the scene; and their intervals are enlivened with vast herds of elks
+    and buffaloes: the former choosing the steeps and uplands and the
+    latter preferring the plains. At this time the buffaloes were attended
+    with their young ones, who were striking about them; and it appeared
+    that the elks would soon exhibit the same enlivening circumstance. The
+    whole country displayed an exuberant verdure; the trees that bear a
+    blossom were advancing fast to that delightful appearance, and the
+    velvet rind of their branches reflecting the oblique rays of a rising
+    or setting sun, added a splendid gaiety to the scene which no
+    expressions of mine are qualified to describe."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Of course, as they neared the Rocky Mountains the navigation of the
+    Peace River became more and more difficult. At last they left the
+    river to find their way across the mountains till they should reach
+    the headwaters of a stream flowing towards the Pacific Ocean.
+    Sometimes they only accomplished three miles a day, having to carry
+    all their goods and their canoe. The mountainous country was covered
+    with splendid forests of spruce, pine, cypress, poplar, birch, willow,
+    and many other kinds of trees, with an undergrowth of gooseberries,
+    currants, and briar roses. The travellers generally followed paths
+    made by the elk,<a name="11-5"></a><a href="#note-11-5"><small>[5]</small></a> just as in the dense forests of Africa the way
+    sometimes is cleared for human travellers by the elephant. Every now
+    and again they resumed their journey on the river between the falls
+    and cascades. The mountains seemed to be a solid mass of limestone, in
+    some places without any covering of foliage.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In no part of the north-west", writes Mackenzie, "did I see so much
+    beaver work" (along the eastern branch of the Peace River). In some
+    places the beavers had cut down acres of large poplars, and were
+    busily at work on their labours of dam-making during the night,
+    between the setting and the rising sun.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Gnats and mosquitoes came with the intense heat of June to make life
+    almost unbearable. As they got close to the Rocky Mountains they
+    encountered Amerindians who had never seen a white man before, and who
+    at first received them with demonstrations of great hostility and
+    fright. But owing to the diplomatic skill of Mackenzie they gradually
+    yielded to a more friendly attitude, and here he decided to camp until
+    the natives had become familiarized with him and his party, and could
+    give them information as to his route. But they could only tell that,
+    away to the west beyond the mountains, a month's travel, there was a
+    vast "lake of stinking water", to which came, for purposes of trade,
+    other white men with vessels as big as islands.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These Rocky Mountain Indians made their canoes from spruce bark<a name="11-6"></a><a href="#note-11-6"><small>[6]</small></a> in
+    the following manner: The bark is taken off the spruce fir to the
+    whole length of the intended canoe, only about eighteen feet, and is
+    sewed with <i>wátápé</i> at both ends. Two laths are then laid across the
+    end of the gunwale. In these are fixed the bars, and against them the
+    ribs or timbers, that are cut to the length to which the bark can be
+    stretched; and to give additional strength, strips of wood are laid
+    between them. To make the whole water-tight, gum is abundantly
+    employed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Obtaining a guide from these people, Mackenzie continued his journey
+    along the Parsnip, or southern branch of the upper Peace River,
+    partly by water, partly by land till he reached its source,<a name="11-7"></a><a href="#note-11-7"><small>[7]</small></a> a lake,
+    on the banks of which he saw innumerable swans, geese, and ducks. Wild
+    parsnips grew here in abundance, and were a grateful addition to the
+    diet of the travellers. As to birds, they not only saw blue jays and
+    yellow birds, but the first humming bird which Mackenzie had ever
+    beheld in the north-west.<a name="11-8"></a><a href="#note-11-8"><small>[8]</small></a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    From this tiny lake he made his way over lofty mountains to another
+    lake at no great distance, and from this a small stream called the Bad
+    River flowed southwards to join a still bigger stream, which Mackenzie
+    thought might prove to be one of the branches of the mighty Columbia
+    River that flows out into the Pacific through the State of Oregon. It
+    really was the Fraser River, and of the upper waters of the Fraser
+    Mackenzie was the discoverer.<a name="11-9"></a><a href="#note-11-9"><small>[9]</small></a>
+</p>
+<a name="image-0017"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc17.jpg" width="268" height="425"
+alt="The Upper Waters of the Fraser River">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>THE UPPER WATERS OF THE FRASER RIVER</h5>
+<p>
+    Their experiences down the little mountain stream which was to take
+    them into the Fraser nearly ended in complete disaster. "The violence
+    of the current being so great as to drive the canoe sideways down the
+    river, and break her by the first bar, I instantly jumped into the
+    water and the men followed my example; but before we could set her
+    straight, or stop her, we came to deeper water, so that we were
+    obliged to re-embark with the utmost precipitation.... We had hardly
+    regained our situations when we drove against a rock which shattered
+    the stern of the canoe in such a manner, that it held only by the
+    gunwales, so that the steersman could no longer keep his place. The
+    violence of this stroke drove us to the opposite side of the river,
+    which is but narrow, when the bow met with the same fate as the
+    stern.... In a few moments, we came across a cascade which broke
+    several large holes in the bottom of the canoe, and started all the
+    bars.... The wreck becoming flat on the water, we all jumped out ...
+    and held fast to the wreck; to which fortunate resolution we owed our
+    safety, as we should otherwise have been dashed against the rocks by
+    the force of the water, or driven over the cascades.... At length we
+    most fortunately arrived in shallow water, and at a small eddy, where
+    we were enabled to make a stand, from the weight of the canoe resting
+    on the stones, rather than from any exertions of our exhausted
+    strength.... The Indians, when they saw our deplorable situation,
+    instead of making the least effort to help us, sat down and gave vent
+    to their tears."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nobody, however, had been killed, though much of the luggage was lost,
+    and what remained had to be spread out to dry. Many of Mackenzie's
+    people, however, when they took stock of their misfortunes, were
+    rather pleased than otherwise, as they thought the disaster would stop
+    him from any further attempt to reach the Western Sea. He wisely
+    listened to their observations without replying, till their panic was
+    dispelled, and they had got themselves warm and comfortable with a
+    hearty meal and a glass of rum; though a little later only by their
+    indifferent carelessness they nearly exploded the whole of the
+    expedition's stock of gunpowder.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Fortunately the weather was fine. Mackenzie and his fellow
+    countryman, Mackay, allowed nothing to dismay them or damp their
+    spirits. Bark was obtained from the forest, the canoe was repaired,
+    and they heard from their guide that this violent little stream
+    would before long join a great and much smoother river. But they
+    were tormented with sandflies and mosquitoes, and a day or two
+    afterwards the guide bolted, while the expedition had to cross
+    morasses in which they were nearly engulfed, and the water journey
+    was constantly obstructed by driftwood. Nevertheless, at last they
+    had "the inexpressible satisfaction of finding themselves on the
+    bank of a navigable river on the western side of the first great
+    range of mountains". Here they re-embarked, and were cheerful in
+    spite of heavy rain.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As they paddled down this great stream, more than two hundred yards
+    wide, snow-capped mountains rose immediately above the river. The
+    current was strong, but perfectly safe. Flocks of ducks, entirely
+    white, except the bill and a part of the wing, rose before them. Smoke
+    ascending in columns from many parts of the woods showed that the
+    country was well inhabited, and the air was fragrant with the strong
+    odour of the gum of cypress and spruce fir.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then came a series of cascades and falls and a most arduous portage
+    of the heavy canoe. These labours were somewhat lightened by the
+    discovery of quantities of wild onions growing on the banks; but
+    these, when mixed with the pemmican, on which the party was
+    subsisting, stimulated their appetites to an inconvenient degree,
+    seeing that they were on short commons. Meeting with strange Indians
+    they found no one to interpret, and had to use signs. But on the banks
+    of the Fraser they were lucky enough to find the "real red deer", the
+    great wapiti stag, which is absent from the far north-west, beyond the
+    region of the Saskatchewan. The canoe was loaded with venison. The
+    banks of the Fraser River sank to a moderate height and were covered
+    with poplars and cypresses, birch trees, junipers, alders, and
+    willows. The deserted house or lodge of some Amerindian tribe was
+    visited on the banks. It was a finer structure than anything that
+    Mackenzie had seen since he left Fort Michili-Makinak in upper
+    Canada. It had been constructed for three families. There were three
+    fireplaces and three beds and a kind of larder for the purpose of
+    keeping fish. The whole "lodge" was twenty feet long by three wide,
+    and had three doors. The walls were formed of straight spruce timbers
+    with some skill of carpentry. The roof was covered with bark, and
+    large rods were fixed across the upper part of the building, where
+    fish might hang and dry.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As they continued to descend the Fraser River, with here and there a
+    rapid which nearly swamped the canoe, and lofty cliffs of red and
+    white clay like the ruins of ancient castles (stopping on their way to
+    bury supplies of pemmican against their return, and to light a fire on
+    the top of the burial place so as to mislead bears or other animals
+    that might dig it up), they were more or less compelled to seek
+    intercourse with the new tribes of Amerindians, whose presence on the
+    river banks was obvious. As usual, Mackenzie had to exercise great
+    bravery, tact, and guile to get into peaceful conversation with these
+    half-frightened, half-angry people. The peacemaking generally
+    concluded with the distribution of trinkets amongst the men and women,
+    and presents of sugar to the children. Talking with these folk,
+    however, through such interpreters as there were amongst the Indians
+    of his crew, he learnt that lower down on the Fraser River there was a
+    peculiarly fierce, malignant race, living in vast caves or
+    subterranean dwellings, who would certainly massacre the Europeans if
+    they attempted to pass through their country on their way to the sea.
+    He therefore stopped and set some of his men to work to make a new
+    canoe. He noticed, by the by, that these Amerindians of the Fraser had
+    small pointed canoes, "made after the fashion of the Eskimo".
+</p>
+<p>
+    Renewing their voyage, they reached a house the roof of which just
+    appeared above the ground. It was deserted by its inhabitants, who had
+    been alarmed at the approach of the white men, but in the
+    neighbourhood appeared gesticulating warriors with bows and arrows.
+    Yet these people of underground houses turned out to be friendly and
+    very ready to give information, partly because they were in
+    communication with the Amerindian tribes to the east of the Rocky
+    Mountains. From the elderly men of this tribe Mackenzie ascertained
+    that the Fraser River flowed south by east, was often obstructed by
+    rapids, and, though it would finally bring them to a salt lake or
+    inlet, and then to the sea, it would cause them to travel for a great
+    distance to the south. He noticed the complete difference in the
+    language of these Atna or Carrier Indians<a name="11-10"></a><a href="#note-11-10"><small>[10]</small></a> and that of the Nagailer
+    or Chin Indians of the Athapaskan group on the eastern side of the
+    Rocky Mountains.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He, however, learnt from these Atna Indians that although the Fraser
+    was out of the question as a quick route to the sea, if he retraced
+    his journey a little up this river he would find another stream
+    entering it from the west, and along this they could travel upstream.
+    And then the route to the water "which was unfit to drink", and the
+    region to which came people with large ships, would be of no great
+    length. Accordingly, after having had a tree engraved with Mackenzie's
+    name and the date, by the bank of the Fraser River, the expedition
+    returned to the subterranean house which they had seen the day before.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We were in our canoe by four this morning, and passed by the Indian
+    hut, which appeared in a state of perfect tranquillity. We soon came
+    in sight of the point where we first saw the natives, and at eight
+    were much surprised and disappointed at seeing Mr. Mackay and our two
+    Indians coming alone from the ruins of a house that had been partly
+    carried away by the ice and water, at a short distance below the place
+    where we had appointed to meet. Nor was our surprise and apprehension
+    diminished by the alarm which was painted in their countenances....
+    They informed me they had taken refuge in that place, with the
+    determination to sell their lives ... as dear as possible. In a very
+    short time after we had separated, they met a party of the Indians,
+    whom we had known at this place, and were probably those whom we had
+    seen landing from their canoe. These Indians appeared to be in a state
+    of extreme rage, and had their bows bent, with their arrows across
+    them. The guide stopped to ask them some questions, which our people
+    did not understand, and then set off with his utmost speed. Mr.
+    Mackay, however, followed, and did not leave him till they were both
+    exhausted with running.... The guide then said that some treacherous
+    design was meditated against them, ... and conducted them through very
+    bad ways as fast as they could run. When he was desired to slacken his
+    pace, he answered that they might follow him in any manner they
+    pleased, but that he was impatient to get to his family, in order to
+    prepare shoes and other necessaries for his journey. They did not,
+    however, think it prudent to quit him, and he would not stop till ten
+    at night. On passing a track that was but lately made, they began to
+    be seriously alarmed, and on enquiring of the guide where they were,
+    he pretended not to understand. Then they all laid down, exhausted
+    with fatigue, and without any kind of covering; they were cold, wet,
+    and hungry, but dared not light a fire, from the apprehension of an
+    enemy. This comfortless spot they left at the dawn of day, and, on
+    their arrival at the lodges, found them deserted; the property of the
+    Indians being scattered about, as if abandoned for ever. The guide
+    then made two or three trips into the woods, calling aloud, and
+    bellowing like a madman. At length he set off in the same direction as
+    they had come, and had not since appeared. To heighten their misery,
+    as they did not find us at the place appointed, they concluded that
+    we were all destroyed, and had already formed their plan to take to
+    the woods, and cross in as direct a line as they could proceed, to the
+    waters of the Peace River, a scheme which could only be suggested by
+    despair. They intended to have waited for us till noon, and if we did
+    not appear by that time, to have entered without further delay on
+    their desperate expedition."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Making preparations for warfare, if necessary, yet neglecting no
+    chance of re-entering into friendly relations with the natives,
+    Mackenzie set to work to repair the wretched canoe, which was
+    constantly having holes knocked through her. He dealt tactfully with
+    the almost open mutiny of his French Canadians and Indians. At last
+    everyone settled down to the making of a new canoe, on an island in
+    the river where there were plenty of spruce firs to provide the
+    necessary bark. Even here they were plagued with thunderstorms.
+    Nevertheless, the men set to work, and as they worked Mackenzie
+    addressed them with simple fervour, saying he knew of their plans to
+    desert him, but, come what might, <i>he</i> was resolved to travel on to
+    the westwards until he reached the waters of the Pacific.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This calmed down the mutineers, and, to the great relief of all
+    concerned, that very afternoon the runaway guide of the Atna people
+    returned and apologized for having deserted them. He then offered once
+    again to conduct them to the seacoast. Nevertheless, again he fled,
+    and Mackenzie was obliged to guide the expedition, according to the
+    information he had gathered from the natives, up the small western
+    affluent of the upper Fraser, which he called the West Road River (now
+    known as the Blackwater).
+</p>
+<p>
+    His perseverance was rewarded, for after proceeding up this river for
+    some distance he saw two canoes coming towards them containing the
+    runaway guide and six of his relations. The guide was dressed in a
+    painted beaver robe, and looked so splendid that they scarcely knew
+    him again. Once more he declared it really was his intention not to
+    disappoint them. Soon afterwards they landed, buried their property
+    and provisions, and placed their canoe on a stage, shaded by a
+    covering of small trees and branches from the sun. Each man carried on
+    his back four bags and a half of pemmican, of an average weight of
+    eighty-five pounds, or other loads (instruments, goods for presents,
+    ammunition, &amp;c.) of ninety pounds in weight. Moreover, each of the
+    Canadians carried a gun. The Amerindian servants of the expedition
+    were only asked to carry loads of forty-five pounds in weight.
+    Mackenzie's pack, and that of his companion, Mackay, amounted to about
+    seventy pounds. Loaded like this they had to scramble up the wooded
+    mountains, first soaked in perspiration from the heat and then
+    drenched with heavy rain. Nevertheless they walked for about thirteen
+    miles the first day. Now they began to meet natives who were closely
+    in touch with the seacoast, which lay to the west at a distance of
+    about six days' journey.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We had no sooner laid ourselves down to rest last night than the
+    natives began to sing, in a manner very different from what I had been
+    accustomed to hear among savages. It was not accompanied either with
+    dancing, drum, or rattle; but consisted of soft, plaintive tones, and
+    a modulation that was rather agreeable: it had somewhat the air of
+    church music." The country through which they travelled abounded in
+    beavers. It was the month of July, however, and they were harassed
+    with thunderstorms, some of which were followed by hailstones as big
+    as musket balls. After one such storm the ground was whitened for two
+    miles with these balls of ice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In order not to be deserted by all of their new guides, Mackenzie was
+    obliged to insist on one of them sharing his hut. This young
+    Amerindian was dressed in beaver garments which were a nest of
+    vermin. His hair was greased with fish oil, and his body smeared with
+    red earth, so that at first Mackenzie thought he would never be able
+    to sleep; but such was his fatigue that he passed a night of profound
+    repose, and found the guide still there in the morning. In this region
+    he notes that the balsam fir of Canada was abundant, the tree which
+    provided the gum that cured Cartier's expedition of scurvy. Some of
+    the natives with whom they now came into contact were remarkable for
+    their grey eyes, a feature often observed amongst the Amerindians of
+    the North Pacific coast.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "On observing some people before us, our guides hastened to meet them,
+    and, on their approach, one of them stepped forward with an axe in his
+    hand. This party consisted only of a man, two women, and the same
+    number of children. The eldest of the women, who probably was the
+    man's mother, was engaged, when we joined them, in clearing a circular
+    spot, of about five feet in diameter, of the weeds that infested it;
+    nor did our arrival interrupt her employment, which was sacred to the
+    memory of the dead. The spot to which her pious care was devoted
+    contained the grave of a husband and a son, and whenever she passed
+    this way she always stopped to pay this tribute of affection."
+</p>
+<p>
+    By this time, exposure to wind and sun, the attacks of mosquitoes and
+    flies, the difficulty of washing or of changing their clothes, had
+    made all the Europeans of the party as dark in skin colour as the
+    Amerindians, so that such natives as they met who had the courage to
+    examine them, did so with the intention of discovering whether they
+    had any white skin left. The natives whom they now encountered
+    (belonging to the maritime tribes) were comely in appearance, and far
+    more cleanly than the tribes of the north-west. As already mentioned,
+    they had grey eyes, sometimes tinged with hazel. Their stature was
+    noble, one man measuring at least six feet four inches. They were
+    clothed in leather, and their hair was nicely combed and dressed with
+    beads. One of a travelling band of these Indians, finding that
+    Mackenzie's party was on short rations and very hungry, offered to
+    boil them a kettle of fish roes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He took the roes out of a bag, and having bruised them between two
+    stones, put them in water to soak. His wife then took an handful of
+    dry grass in her hand, with which she squeezed them through her
+    fingers. In the meantime her husband was employed in gathering wood to
+    make a fire, for the purpose of heating stones. When she had finished
+    her operation, she filled a <i>wátápé</i> kettle nearly full of water, and
+    poured the roes into it. When the stones were sufficiently heated,
+    some of them were put into the kettle, and others were thrown in from
+    time to time, till the water was in a state of boiling. The woman also
+    continued stirring the contents of the kettle, till they were brought
+    to a thick consistency; the stones were then taken out, and the whole
+    was seasoned with about a pint of strong rancid oil. The smell of this
+    curious dish was sufficient to sicken me without tasting it, but the
+    hunger of my people surmounted the nauseous meal. When unadulterated
+    by the stinking oil these boiled roes are not unpalatable food."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Farther on their journey their hunger was alleviated by wild parsnips,
+    also roots which appeared, when pulled up, like a bunch of white peas,
+    with the colour and taste of a potato. On their way they were obliged
+    to cross snow mountains, where the snow was so compact that their feet
+    hardly made any perceptible impression. "Before us appeared a
+    stupendous mountain, whose snow-clad summit was lost in the clouds."
+    These mountains, according to the Indians, abounded in white
+    goats.<a name="11-11"></a><a href="#note-11-11"><small>[11]</small></a> Emerging from the mountains on to the lower ground, sloping
+    towards the sea, at nightfall they came upon a native village in the
+    thickness of the woods. Desperate with his fatigue, and risking any
+    danger to obtain rest, Mackenzie walked straight into one of the
+    houses, where people were busily employed in cooking fish, threw down
+    his burden, shook hands with the people, and sat down.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They received me without the least appearance of surprise, but soon
+    made signs for me to go up to the large house, which was erected, on
+    upright posts, at some distance from the ground. A broad piece of
+    timber with steps cut in it led to the scaffolding even with the
+    floor, and by this curious kind of ladder I entered the house at one
+    end; and having passed three fires, at equal distances in the middle
+    of the building, I was received by several people, sitting upon a very
+    wide board, at the upper end of it. I shook hands with them, and
+    seated myself beside a man, the dignity of whose countenance induced
+    me to give him that preference...."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Later on, this man, seeing Mackenzie's people arriving tired and
+    hungry, rose and fetched from behind a plank, four feet wide, a
+    quantity of roasted salmon. A whole salmon was offered to Mackenzie,
+    and another to Mackay; half a salmon was given to each of the French
+    Canadian <i>voyageurs</i>. Their host further invited them to sleep in the
+    house, but, Mackenzie thinking it preferable to camp outside, a fire
+    was lit to warm the weary travellers, and each was lent a thick board
+    on which to sleep, so that he might not lie on the bare ground.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We had not long been seated round the fire when we received a dish of
+    salmon roes, pounded fine and beat up with water so as to have the
+    appearance of a cream. Nor was it without some kind of seasoning that
+    gave it a bitter taste. Another dish soon followed, the principal
+    article of which was also salmon roes, with a large proportion of
+    gooseberries, and an herb that appeared to be sorrel. Its acidity
+    rendered it more agreeable to my taste than the former preparation.
+    Having been regaled with these delicacies, for such they were
+    considered by that hospitable spirit which provided them, we laid
+    ourselves down to rest with no other canopy than the sky. But I never
+    enjoyed a more sound and refreshing rest, though I had a board for my
+    bed and a billet for my pillow."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The gooseberries, wortleberries, and raspberries which Mackenzie ate
+    at this hospitable village were the finest he ever saw or tasted of
+    their respective kinds. They were generally eaten together with the
+    dry roes of salmon. Salmon was the staple food of the country, and
+    very abundant in the river which Mackenzie was following down to the
+    Pacific shore. The fish were usually caught in weirs, and also by
+    dipping nets. The natives were so superstitious about the salmon, that
+    they believed they would give offence to the spirits if they ate any
+    other animal food, especially meat. They would scarcely allow
+    Mackenzie to carry venison in his canoe, in case the salmon should
+    smell it and abandon the river.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After this welcome rest they embarked in two canoes on the stream
+    which Mackenzie calls the Salmon River. The stream was rapid, and they
+    proceeded at a great rate, stopping every now and then to get out and
+    walk round salmon weirs. Nevertheless, although other Indians ran
+    before them announcing their approach towards a village, the noise of
+    which was apparent in the distance, they were received at this place
+    in a very hostile way, the men rapidly arming themselves with bows and
+    arrows, spears, and axes. But Mackenzie walked on alone to greet them,
+    and shook hands with the nearest man. Thereupon an elderly man broke
+    from the crowd and took Mackenzie in his arms. Another then came and
+    paid him the same compliment. One man to whom he presented his hand
+    broke the string of a handsome robe of sea-otter skin and threw it
+    over Mackenzie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The chief made signs to the white men to follow him to his house,
+    which Mackenzie found to be of larger dimensions and better materials
+    than any he had yet seen. "Very clean mats" were spread in this house
+    for the chief, his counsellors, and the two white men. A small roasted
+    salmon was then placed before each person.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When we had satisfied ourselves with the fish, one of the people who
+    came with us from the last village approached, with a kind of ladle in
+    one hand, containing oil, and in the other something that resembled
+    the inner rind of the cocoanut, but of a lighter colour. This he
+    dipped in the oil, and, having eaten it, indicated by his gestures how
+    palatable he thought it. He then presented me with a small piece of
+    it, which I chose to taste in its dry state, though the oil was free
+    from any unpleasant smell. A square cake of this was next produced,
+    when a man took it to the water near the house, and having thoroughly
+    soaked it, he returned, and, after he had pulled it to pieces like
+    oakum, put it into a well-made trough, about three feet long, nine
+    inches wide, and five deep. He then plentifully sprinkled it with
+    salmon oil, and manifested by his own example that we were to eat of
+    it. I just tasted it, and found the oil perfectly sweet, without which
+    the other ingredient would have been very insipid. The chief partook
+    of it with great avidity after it had received an additional quantity
+    of oil. This dish is considered by these people as a great delicacy;
+    and on examination, I discovered it to consist of the inner rind of
+    the hemlock pine tree, taken off early in summer, and put into a
+    frame, which shapes it into cakes of fifteen inches long, ten broad,
+    and half an inch thick; and in this form I should suppose it may be
+    preserved for a great length of time. This discovery satisfied me
+    respecting the many hemlock trees which I had observed stripped of
+    their bark."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mackenzie found some of the older men here with long beards, and to
+    one of them he presented a pair of scissors for clipping his beard.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After describing some remarkable oblong "tables" (as they might be
+    called) of cedar wood&mdash;twenty feet long by eight feet broad&mdash;made of
+    thick cedar boards joined together with the utmost neatness, and
+    painted with hieroglyphics and the figures of animals; and his visit
+    to a kind of temple in the village, into the architecture of which
+    strangely carved and painted figures were interwoven; Mackenzie
+    goes on to relate an episode giving one a very vivid idea of the
+    helplessness of "native" medicine in many diseases.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He was taken to see a son of the chief, who was suffering from a
+    terrible ulcer in the small of his back, round which the flesh was
+    gangrened, one of his knees being afflicted in the same way. The poor
+    fellow was reduced to a skeleton, and apparently drawing very near to
+    death.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I found the native physicians busy in practising their skill and art
+    on the patient. They blew on him, and then whistled; at times they
+    pressed their extended fingers with all their strength on his stomach;
+    they also put their forefingers doubled into his mouth, and spouted
+    water from their own with great violence into his face. To support
+    these operations the wretched sufferer was held up in a sitting
+    posture, and when they were concluded he was laid down and covered
+    with a new robe made of the skin of a lynx. I had observed that his
+    belly and breast were covered with scars, and I understood that they
+    were caused by a custom prevalent among them of applying pieces of
+    lighted touchwood to their flesh, in order to relieve pain or
+    demonstrate their courage. He was now placed on a broad plank, and
+    carried by six men into the woods, where I was invited to accompany
+    them. I could not conjecture what would be the end of this ceremony,
+    particularly as I saw one man carry fire, another an axe, and a third
+    dry wood. I was, indeed, disposed to suspect that, as it was their
+    custom to burn the dead, they intended to relieve the poor man from
+    his pain, and perform the last sad duty of surviving affection. When
+    they had advanced a short distance into the wood, they laid him upon a
+    clear spot, and kindled a fire against his back, when the physician
+    began to scarify the ulcer with a very blunt instrument, the cruel
+    pain of which operation the patient bore with incredible resolution.
+    The scene afflicted me, and I left it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The chief of this village had probably met Captain Cook about ten
+    years before. He had been down in a large canoe<a name="11-12"></a><a href="#note-11-12"><small>[12]</small></a> with forty of his
+    people to the seacoast, where he saw two large vessels.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Farther down the river the natives, instead of regaling them with
+    fish, placed before them a long, clean, and well-made trough full of
+    berries, most of them resembling blackberries, though white in colour,
+    and others similar to huckleberries. In this region the women were
+    employed in beating and preparing the inner rind of the juniper bark,
+    to which they gave the appearance of flax, and others were spinning
+    with a distaff; again, others were weaving robes of this fibrous
+    thread, intermixed with strips of sea-otter skin. The men were fishing
+    on the river with drag nets between two canoes, thus intercepting the
+    salmon coming up the river.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At last, on Saturday, the 20th of July, 1793, they emerged from the
+    Salmon River into an arm of the sea (probably near King Island). The
+    tide was out, and had <a name="p305"></a>left a large space covered with seaweed. The
+    surrounding hills were involved in fog.... The bay appeared to be some
+    three miles in breadth, and on the coast the travellers saw a great
+    number of sea otters.<a name="11-13"></a><a href="#note-11-13"><small>[13]</small></a> At two in the afternoon the swell was so
+    high, and the wind, which was against them, so boisterous, that they
+    could not proceed along the seacoast in their leaky canoe. A young
+    chief who had come with them as one of their guides, and who had been
+    allowed to leave when the seacoast was reached, returned bearing a
+    large porcupine on his back. He first cut the animal open and threw
+    its entrails into the sea, then singed the skin and boiled it in
+    separate pieces; nor did he go to rest till, with the assistance of
+    two others who happened to be awake, every morsel of it had been
+    devoured. This was fortunate, because their stock of provisions was
+    reduced to twenty pounds' weight of pemmican, sixteen pounds of rice,
+    and six pounds of flour amongst ten men, "in a leaky vessel, and on a
+    barbarous coast".
+</p>
+<p>
+    The rise and fall of the tide here was noted at fifteen feet in
+    height. Mr. Mackay collected a quantity of small mussels, which were
+    boiled and eaten by the two Scotchmen, but not by the Canadians, who
+    were quite unacquainted with sea shellfish.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Near Point Menzies, which had already been reached and named by
+    Captain VANCOUVER in the spring of 1793 on his great voyage of
+    discovery up the North American coast,<a name="11-14"></a><a href="#note-11-14"><small>[14]</small></a> Alexander Mackenzie met a
+    party of Amerindians, amongst whom was a man of insolent aspect, who,
+    by means of signs and exclamations, made him understand that he and
+    his friends had been fired at by a white man named Makuba (Vancouver),
+    and that another white man, called "Bensins", had struck him on the
+    back with the flat of his sword. This man more or less compelled
+    Mackenzie to accompany him in the direction of his village, and on the
+    way explained that "Makuba" had come there with his "big boat".
+    Indeed, Mackenzie's party perceived the remains of sheds or buildings
+    on the shore where Europeans had probably made a camp, and here they
+    established themselves, taking up a position of defence, because the
+    attitude of the natives was rather threatening.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At this camp there was a rock, and on this Alexander Mackenzie, mixing
+    up some vermilion or red clay in melted grease, inscribed in large
+    characters the following words: "Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by
+    land, the twenty-second of July, one thousand seven hundred and
+    ninety-three". He then shifted his camp to a place three miles to the
+    north-east, below a precipice from which issued streams of fine water
+    as cold as ice. And here he took careful observations with his
+    astronomical and surveying instruments, in order to fix his position.
+    Fortunately the day was one of bright sunshine. Otherwise, had there
+    been a long persistence of cloud, he might have been obliged to leave
+    the Pacific coast without being able to fix precisely the place where
+    he had reached the sea.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then he yielded to the passionate desire of his people to withdraw
+    inland from the possibly dangerous inhabitants of the coast, and
+    returned with them to the encampment where the porcupine had been
+    eaten. Here the guide made off into the woods. Mackenzie followed him,
+    and thus reached a village from which two men issued armed with
+    daggers and intending to attack him. While stopping to defend himself,
+    many other people assembled, and amongst them he recognized the
+    irritating person who incessantly repeated the names "Makuba" and
+    "Benzins". However, this threatened danger was narrowly averted, and
+    eventually they left the village with a supply of food; but also in a
+    state of considerable irritation with&mdash;fleas! For some of the houses
+    of these Pacific coast villages swarmed with fleas to such an extent
+    that Mackenzie and his men were obliged to take to the water to rid
+    themselves of these vermin, which swarmed also on the ground that was
+    bare of grass.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The return journey up the Salmon River was a series of bewildering
+    vicissitudes. Sometimes Mackenzie and his party were received in the
+    most threatening way by persons who had been warm friends on their
+    downward journey, then seemingly inevitable war was transformed into
+    peace, but guides deserted, or the Amerindians from across the Rocky
+    Mountains attempted to mutiny. However, they struggled through all
+    their difficulties, till at last they reached the place known as the
+    Friendly Village, and were here fortunately received with great
+    kindness, being once more entertained "with the most respectful
+    hospitality". "In short, the chief behaved to us with so much
+    attention and kindness that I did not withhold anything in my power to
+    give which might afford him satisfaction.... I presented him with two
+    yards of blue cloth, an axe, knives, and various other articles. He
+    gave me in return a large shell which resembled the under shell of a
+    Guernsey oyster, but was somewhat larger. Where they procure them I
+    could not discover, but they cut and polish them for bracelets,
+    ear-rings, and other personal ornaments...."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The women of this place were employed in boiling sorrel and different
+    kinds of berries in large square kettles made of cedar wood. This
+    pottage, when it had attained a certain consistency, they took out
+    with ladles, and poured it into frames about twelve inches square.
+    These were then exposed to the sun, until their contents became so
+    many dried cakes. This was their principal article of food, and
+    probably of traffic. These people had also made portable chests of
+    cedar, in which they packed these cakes, as well as their salmon, both
+    dried and roasted. The only flesh they ate in addition to the salmon
+    was that of the sea otter and the seal; except that one instance
+    already mentioned of the young Indian who feasted on the flesh of the
+    porcupine.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Their faces are round, with high cheekbones, and their complexion
+    between olive and copper. They have small grey eyes with a tinge of
+    red,... their hair is of a dark-brown colour." The men wore their hair
+    long, and either kept it well combed and hanging loose over the
+    shoulders, or plaited it and bedaubed it with brown earth so as to
+    make it quite impervious to the comb. Those who adopted this fashion
+    had to carry a bone bodkin about with them to ease the frequent
+    irritation which arose from the excessive abundance of vermin in their
+    hair.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The women, on the other hand, usually wore their hair short. Mackenzie
+    noticed that the infants had their heads enclosed with boards covered
+    with leather, to press the skull into the shape of a wedge. The women
+    wore a fringed apron, and over that a long robe made of skins or
+    leather, either loose or tied round the middle with a girdle. Over
+    these in wet weather was worn a cap in the shape of an inverted bowl
+    or dish. The men also wore this cap, and in cold weather used the
+    robe, but in warm weather went about in no clothing at all, except
+    that their feet were protected with shoes made of dressed elks' skins.
+    In wet weather, over their robe they wore a circular mat with an
+    opening in the middle sufficiently large to admit the head. This,
+    spreading over the shoulders, threw off the wet. As compared with the
+    Indians of the Rocky Mountains and the great plains, the men and boys
+    were very cleanly, being constantly in the water. The women, however,
+    were dirty.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the end of July, 1793, Mackenzie left what he calls the Friendly
+    Village, and prepared to return to the east across the Rocky
+    Mountains, having distributed to each man about twenty pounds weight
+    of smoked salmon, flour, and pemmican. The fatigue of ascending the
+    precipices of the mountains was past description. When they arrived at
+    a spot where water could be obtained, and a camp made, they were in
+    such an extremity of weariness they could hardly crawl about to gather
+    wood for the purpose of making a fire; but two hours afterwards the
+    Amerindians of their party arrived and came to their assistance. Then
+    when they were sitting round a blazing fire, and some of their fatigue
+    had lessened, they could sit and talk of past dangers, and indulge in
+    the delightful reflection that they were thus far advanced on their
+    homeward journey. "Nor was it possible to be in this situation without
+    contemplating the wonders of it. Such was the depth of the precipices
+    below, and the height of the mountains above, with the rude and wild
+    magnificence of the scenery around, that I shall not attempt to
+    describe such an astonishing and awful combination of objects.... Even
+    at this place, which is only, as it were, the first step towards
+    gaining the summit of the mountains, the climate was very sensibly
+    changed. The air that fanned the village which we left at noon, was
+    mild and cheering; the grass was verdant, and the wild fruits ripe
+    around it. But here the snow was not yet dissolved, the ground was
+    still bound by the frost, the herbage had scarce begun to spring, and
+    the crowberry bushes were just beginning to blossom."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Eventually they found their canoe, and the property which they had
+    left behind, in perfect safety. At this camp, where the canoe had been
+    left behind, many natives arrived both from the upper and lower parts
+    of the river, all of them dressed in beaver robes, which they were
+    ready enough to sell for large knives. It struck Alexander Mackenzie
+    as being very extraordinary that these people, who had left absolutely
+    untouched the property stored at this place&mdash;when anyone passing by
+    could have stolen it and never have been detected&mdash;should now be so
+    ready to pilfer articles and utensils from the camp. So many small
+    things had been picked up and taken away by them, when coming to sell
+    their beaver robes, that he was obliged to take some action. So,
+    before all these beaver-clad Amerindians had departed on their
+    westward journey, he told the rearguard that he had noticed the
+    thefts, and scarcely thought their relations who were guilty of
+    stealing realized the awful mischief that would result from this
+    dishonesty; that they were on their way now to the sea to procure
+    large quantities of salmon from the rivers, but the salmon, which was
+    absolutely necessary to their existence, came from the sea which
+    belonged to the white men, and it only needed a message from the white
+    men to the powers of nature to prevent the fish coming up from the sea
+    into the rivers; and if this word were spoken they and their children
+    might starve. He consequently advised them to hurry after their
+    friends, and see that all the stolen articles were sent back. This
+    plan succeeded. The stolen articles were restored, and then Mackenzie
+    purchased from these people several large salmon, and his party
+    enjoyed a delicious meal.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mackenzie declared that there were no bison to be found on the west
+    side of the Rocky Mountains<a name="11-15"></a><a href="#note-11-15"><small>[15]</small></a> (British Columbia), and no wolves.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Resuming their journey up the Fraser River, they passed through the
+    narrow gut between mountainous rocks, which on the outward journey had
+    been a passage of some risk. But now the state of the water was such
+    that, they got up without difficulty, and had more time to examine
+    these extraordinary rocks, which were as perpendicular as a wall, and
+    gave the traveller the idea of a succession of enormous Gothic
+    cathedrals. With little difficulty they transported their canoe across
+    the water parting to the Peace River.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As they began to glide down this stream, homeward bound, they noticed
+    at the entrance of a small tributary an object which proved to be four
+    beaver skins hung up to attract their attention. These were the skins
+    which had been given to Mackenzie as a present by a native as he
+    travelled westwards. Not wishing to add to his loads, he had left the
+    skins behind, saying he would call for them on his return. Mackenzie
+    imagined, therefore, that, being under the necessity of leaving the
+    river, this Indian had hung up the skins in the hope that they would
+    attract the attention of the travellers on their return. "To reward
+    his honesty, I left three times the value of the skins in trade goods
+    in their place." As the Peace River carried them away from the great
+    mountains, and the plains extended before their sight, they stopped to
+    repair the canoe and to get in supplies of food from the herds of game
+    that were visible. They began with a hearty meal of bison beef. "Every
+    fear of future want was removed." Soon afterwards they killed an elk,
+    the carcass of which weighed over two hundred and fifty pounds. "As we
+    had taken a very hearty meal at one o'clock, it might naturally be
+    supposed that we should not be very voracious at supper; nevertheless,
+    a kettleful of elk flesh was boiled and eaten, and that vessel
+    replenished with more meat and put on the fire. All that remained of
+    the bones, &amp;c, were placed after the Indian fashion round the fire to
+    roast, and at ten the next morning the whole was consumed by ten
+    persons and a large dog, who was allowed his share of the banquet. Nor
+    did any inconvenience result from what may be considered as an
+    inordinate indulgence."
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the 24th of August, 1793, Mackenzie was back again at Fort
+    Chipewayan, after an absence of eleven months, having been the first
+    white man to cross the broad continent of North America from the
+    Atlantic to the Pacific, north of Mexico.
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="note-11-1"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-1"><u>1</u></a> See Sir Alexander Mackenzie's <i>Travels</i>, p. 5.
+</p>
+<a name="note-11-2"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-2"><u>2</u></a> Peter Pond was a native of Connecticut, and in the
+    opinion of his trading associates rather a ruffian. He was strongly
+    suspected of having murdered an amiable Swiss fur trader named Wadin,
+    and at a later date he actually did kill his trading partner, Ross.
+</p>
+<a name="note-11-3"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-3"><u>3</u></a> See p. <a href="#p125">125</a>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-11-4"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-4"><u>4</u></a> Alexander Mackay long afterwards left the service of the
+    North-west Company, and was killed by savages on the Alaska coast,
+    near Nutka Sound.
+</p>
+<a name="note-11-5"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-5"><u>5</u></a> For the word "elk" Mackenzie uses "moose deer". "Elk" in
+    the Canadian Dominion is misapplied to the great Wapiti red deer.
+</p>
+<a name="note-11-6"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-6"><u>6</u></a> See p. <a href="#p281">281</a>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-11-7"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-7"><u>7</u></a> Mr. Burpee points out that this was really the
+    southernmost source of the mighty congeries of streams which flowed
+    northwards to form the Mackenzie River system. Having traced the
+    Mackenzie to the sea, its discoverer now stood four years afterwards
+    at its most remote source, 2420 miles from its mouth at which he had
+    seen the ice floes and the whales.
+</p>
+<a name="note-11-8"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-8"><u>8</u></a> Humming birds arrive annually in British Columbia between
+    April and May, and stay there till the autumn. They winter in the
+    warmer parts of California.
+</p>
+<a name="note-11-9"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-9"><u>9</u></a> The great surveyor and map maker, David Thompson, was the
+    first white man to reach the upper waters of the <i>Columbia</i> River. The
+    Fraser River was afterwards followed to its outlet in the Straits of
+    Georgia (opposite Vancouver Island) by Simon Fraser.
+</p>
+<a name="note-11-10"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-10"><u>10</u></a> Apparently these were of the Sikanni tribe, and only
+    another branch of the great Tinné (Athapaskan) stock.
+</p>
+<a name="note-11-11"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-11"><u>11</u></a> <i>Oreamnus</i>.
+</p>
+<a name="note-11-12"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-12"><u>12</u></a> Mackenzie thus describes one of the large sea-going
+    canoes of the coast natives: "This canoe was built of cedar,
+    forty-five feet long, four feet broad, and three and a half in depth.
+    It was painted black and decorated with white figures of different
+    kinds. The gunwale fore and aft was inlaid with the teeth of the sea
+    otter." He adds that "these coast tribes (north of Vancouver Island
+    and of Queen Charlotte Sound) had been in indirect contact with the
+    Spaniards since the middle of the sixteenth century, and with the
+    Russians from the middle of the eighteenth century. Therefore, from
+    these two directions they had learnt the use of metal, and had
+    obtained copper, brass, and iron. They may possibly have had copper
+    earlier still from the Northern Indians on the other side of the Rocky
+    Mountains; but brass and iron they could, of course, only have
+    obtained from Europeans. They had already become very deft at dealing
+    with these metals, and twisted the iron into collars which weighed
+    upwards of twelve pounds, also beating it into plates for their
+    daggers and knives."
+</p>
+<a name="note-11-13"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-13"><u>13</u></a> These <i>may</i> have been small seals, but the sea otter
+    (<i>Enhydris lutris</i>), now nearly extinct, was at one time found in
+    numbers along the north-west American coast, from the Aleutian Islands
+    and Alaska to Oregon. Owing to persecution it now leads an almost
+    entirely aquatic life, resting at times on the masses of floating
+    seaweed.
+</p>
+<a name="note-11-14"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-14"><u>14</u></a> GEORGE VANCOUVER (born about 1758, and probably
+    descended from Dutch or Flemish ancestors) was one of the great
+    pioneers of the British Empire. His name is commemorated in
+    Vancouver's Island, an important portion of British Columbia.
+    Vancouver entered the navy when only thirteen, sailed with Captain
+    Cook, and eventually was appointed to command a naval expedition sent
+    out in 1791 to survey and take over from the Spaniards the north-west
+    American coast north of Oregon. It is remarkable that he should only
+    have missed Mackenzie's arrival at Point Menzies by about two months.
+    With what amazed rejoicing would these two heroic explorers have
+    greeted one another had they met on this remote point of the Pacific
+    coast, the one coming overland (so to speak) from Quebec and the
+    Atlantic, and the other all the way by sea from Falmouth via the Cape
+    of Good Hope, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, and Hawaii.
+</p>
+<a name="note-11-15"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#11-15"><u>15</u></a> He was not quite accurate: there were a few "wood" bison
+    in the north and east of British Columbia.
+</p>
+<p class="return">[<a href="#contents">TABLE OF CONTENTS</a>]
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+<a name="2HCH0012"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XII
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    Mackenzie's Successors
+</h3>
+<p>
+    The Spaniards of California had been aware in the middle of the
+    eighteenth century that there was a big river entering the sea to the
+    north of the savage country known as Oregon. The estuary of this river
+    was reached in May, 1792, by an American sea captain of a whaling
+    ship&mdash;ROBERT GRAY, of Boston. He crossed the bar, and named the great
+    stream after his own ship, the <i>Columbia</i>. Five months afterwards
+    (October, 1792) Lieutenant BROUGHTON, of the Vancouver expedition,
+    entered the Columbia from the sea, explored it upstream for a hundred
+    miles, and formally took possession of it for the King of Great
+    Britain. The news of this discovery reached Alexander Mackenzie (no
+    doubt after his return from his overland journey to the Pacific
+    coast), and he at once jumped to the conclusion that the powerful
+    stream he had discovered in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, and had
+    partially followed on its way to the Pacific, must be the Columbia. As
+    a matter of fact it was the river afterwards called Fraser.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If you look at the map of British North America, and then at the map
+    of Russian Asia&mdash;Siberia&mdash;you will notice a marked difference in the
+    arrangement of the waterways. Those of the Canadian Dominion, on the
+    whole, flow more eastwards and westwards, or at any rate radiate in
+    all directions, so as to constitute the most wonderful system of
+    natural canals possessed by any country or continent. On the contrary,
+    the rivers of Siberia flow usually in somewhat parallel lines from
+    south to north. Siberia also is far less well provided than British
+    North America with an abundance of navigable rivers, streams, and
+    great lakes. Therefore the traveller in pre-railway days wishing to
+    cross Siberia from west to east or east to west was obliged to have
+    recourse to wheeled traffic, to ride, or to walk. Consequently, until
+    the beginning of the twentieth century, the "exploitation" (or turning
+    to useful account) of Siberia was a far more difficult process than
+    the development of North America, once the question of British
+    <i>versus</i> French or Spanish was settled. Siberia at one time was almost
+    as rich in fur-bearing animals as British North America; yet so
+    difficult was transport (and so severe were the rigours of the
+    climate) that the Russians, once they reached the shores of the
+    Pacific at the beginning of the eighteenth century, began to stretch
+    out their influence to the opposite peninsula of Alaska mainly on
+    account of the fur trade. For it was easier and less expensive to
+    bring furs from Alaska round Cape Horn, or the Cape of Good Hope, to
+    Europe than to convey them overland from eastern Siberia. Then, also,
+    the Chinese market was becoming of importance to the fur trade.
+    Already Mackenzie, at the end of the eighteenth century, is found
+    considering whether a sea trade between China and a British port on
+    the North Pacific coast could not be arranged so as to develop a
+    profitable market among the mandarins and grandees of the Celestial
+    Empire for a good proportion of the North-west Company's skins.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0018"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<a href="images/map18-large.jpg"><img src="images/map18-small.jpg" width="400" height="600" alt="Map of Part Of the Coast Region Of British Columbia"></a>
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p class="ar"> [<a href="images/map18-large.jpg"><small>LARGER MAP</small></a>]
+<p>
+    Peter Pond, already referred to on p. <a href="#p278">278</a>, is said to have expressed
+    his intention (in 1788) of going to treat with the Empress Catherine
+    II for a Russian occupation of the Alaskan and Columbian coasts. For
+    this reason, or the mere desire to have a proportion of this
+    fur-producing country, the Emperor Paul, in 1799, created a Russian
+    Chartered Company to occupy the Alaska and north Columbian coasts.
+    Great Britain offered no objection&mdash;in spite of having acquired some
+    rights here by an agreement with Spain&mdash;and that is why, when you look
+    at the map of the vast Canadian Dominion, you find with surprise that
+    it has been robbed (one might almost say) of at least half of its
+    legitimate Pacific seaboard. The Russian Company was allowed to claim
+    the north Columbian coast between Alaska proper and Queen Charlotte
+    Islands.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In 1867 the Russian Government sold all Alaska and the north Columbian
+    coast to the United States, partly to annoy Great Britain, whom it had
+    not forgiven for the Crimean War.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You will have noticed that quite a number of United States citizens
+    (mostly born British subjects in New England) had taken part in the
+    north-west fur trade immediately after the British conquest of Canada
+    disposed of French monopolies. There were Jonathan Carver and Peter
+    Pond, for example; and a much more worthy person than the last
+    named&mdash;Daniel W. Harmon, a New Englander, who entered the service of
+    the North-west Company in 1800, and followed in Mackenzie's footsteps
+    to the upper Fraser River and the vicinity of the Skeena. Simon Fraser
+    also, whose tracing of the Fraser River from its upper waters to the
+    Pacific coast we shall presently deal with, was a native of Vermont,
+    though his father came from Scotland. The furs which began to
+    penetrate into the United States by way of Detroit and Niagara, the
+    rising scale of luxury in dress in the towns of the eastern seaboard
+    of the United States, the voyages of American whalers up the west
+    coast of North America (including the discovery of the Columbia River
+    in 1792 by Captain Robert Gray), the purchase of Louisiana from the
+    Emperor Napoleon in 1804&mdash;with the vague claim it gave to the coast
+    line of Oregon on the Pacific: all these circumstances inspired
+    far-sighted persons in the United States at the beginning of the
+    nineteenth century with a wish to secure for their Government and
+    commerce a share in the fur trade and in these wonderful new lands of
+    the Pacific watershed. American ships (whaling ships) had already
+    become accustomed to sail round Cape Horn and to visit the Oregon and
+    Alaskan coasts. The American Government therefore, immediately after
+    the Louisiana purchase, dispatched an American expedition under
+    Captains Meriwether Lewis and Jonathan Clarke to travel up the
+    Missouri River and so across the mountains to the coast of Oregon, a
+    wonderful expedition, which they carried out with great success in two
+    years (1804-6), reaching the lower Columbia River and following it
+    down to the sea.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Consequently, with all this in the air, it is not very surprising that
+    the far-sighted John Jacob Astor, a wealthy German merchant of New
+    York, should have conceived the idea of founding a great American
+    fur-trading company and of establishing it at the mouth of the
+    Columbia River.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the beginning of the nineteenth century he had entered into
+    arrangements with an Anglo-Canadian Company (the Mackinaw), which
+    worked the southernmost part of Canada, to fuse its enterprise with
+    his, and thus founded the <i>South-west Company</i>, the name of which (at
+    any rate in current speech) was afterwards changed into the Pacific
+    Fur-trading Company. After attempting in vain to come to a working
+    arrangement with the great North-west Company, he decided to act quite
+    independently and to establish the headquarters of his new concern at
+    the mouth of the Columbia River. Accordingly, the expedition was sent
+    out in duplicate to the mouth of the Columbia River, one-half going a
+    six-months' voyage round Cape Horn in a sailing ship, the <i>Tonquin</i>,
+    and the other marching overland or canoeing on lakes and rivers in
+    eighteen months from Montreal via the Mississippi and Missouri. These
+    two parties together founded "Astoria", at the mouth of the Columbia.
+    But most of Astor's employees were British subjects derived from men
+    of the North-west and Mackinaw Companies; and when, in 1812, war
+    broke out between the United States and Great Britain, a British war
+    vessel came up the Pacific coast to Astoria and promptly turned it
+    into "Fort George". Forthwith the North-west Company bought up the
+    derelict property of Mr. Astor's Company from his not very honest
+    British employees, and the few Americans in the concern retreated
+    inland, and, after almost incredible sufferings from the attacks of
+    unfriendly Indians, succeeded in reaching the Mississippi.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0019"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc19.jpg" width="425" height="271"
+alt="The Kootenay Or Head Stream of the Columbia River">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>THE KOOTENAY OR HEAD STREAM OF THE COLUMBIA RIVER</h5>
+<p>
+    This Columbia River had in reality been discovered at its sources, and
+    traced down to the sea, between 1807 and 1811 by DAVID THOMPSON (once
+    a Blue-coat boy in London; from 1784 to 1792 in the service of the
+    Hudson's Bay Company, and after that one of the most famous of the
+    Nor'-westers). The upper course of this river and its northern
+    affluents were annexed as British by David Thompson; the lower course
+    did not at once become the political property of the United States,
+    but was considered vaguely to be the joint property of both nations,
+    till the Oregon settlement of 1846. By the treaty of 1792, the
+    southern boundary of central Canada was agreed upon as being the 49th
+    degree of north latitude, but only between the Lake of the Woods and
+    the Rocky Mountains. The agreement of 1846 continued the 49th degree
+    boundary to the shore of the Pacific opposite Vancouver Island.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Prominent among the agents of the North-western Company who followed
+    Sir Alexander Mackenzie as a pioneer towards the Pacific shores was
+    ALEXANDER HENRY THE YOUNGER,<a name="12-1"></a><a href="#note-12-1"><small>[1]</small></a> regarding whose journeys some extracts
+    may be given.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The first entry in his diary of 1799 is not particularly romantic, but
+    shows some of the unexpected dangers attending the life of an
+    adventurer in the far north-west. He had been riding through the
+    Assiniboin country in the autumn of 1799, probably after one of the
+    very indigestible meals which he describes here and there in his
+    pages. Alone, and crossing an open plain swarming with wolves, he was
+    seized suddenly with a violent colic, the pain of which was so
+    terrible that he could not remain in the saddle. He dismounted,
+    hobbled his horse, and threw himself on the grass, where he lay in
+    agony for two hours, expecting every moment would be his last, till,
+    quite exhausted, he fell asleep. He was awakened, however, by the
+    howling of the wolves advancing to tear him to pieces; yet he was so
+    weak that he was scarcely able to mount his horse, and then could only
+    proceed at a slow walk, with the wolves snapping at his horse's heels.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Near the site of the present city of Winnipeg, in the late summer of
+    1800, he and his expedition were much troubled by swarms of water
+    snakes. They were harmless but not pleasant in their familiarity, for
+    they entered the tents and took refuge in the explorers' beds; and as
+    they apparently came from their breeding places in Amerindian graves
+    which covered the remains of people who had died of smallpox in a
+    recent epidemic, they were additionally loathsome.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Smallpox indeed played a very important part in the historical
+    development of western North America. Prior to 1780 the Amerindian
+    tribes between the upper Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, and
+    between the Saskatchewans and the Missouri, were numerous and warlike.
+    At first, about 1765, they received in very friendly fashion the
+    pioneer British traders and French Canadians who attempted to resume
+    the fur trade where it had been dropped by the French monopolists in
+    1760. But fifteen years afterwards, enraged at the violence and
+    wrongdoing of the British and Canadian traders, and maddened by strong
+    drink, they were planning a universal massacre of the whites, when
+    suddenly smallpox (introduced by the Spaniards into New Mexico) came
+    on them as a scourge, which destroyed whole tribes, and depopulated
+    much of western North America.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Alexander Henry had many adventures with the bison of the plains. Here
+    is one of them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just as I came up to him at full speed and prepared to fire, my horse
+    suddenly stopped. The bull had turned about to face my horse, which
+    was naturally afraid of buffaloes, and startled at such a frightful
+    object; he leaped to one side to avoid the bull. As I was not prepared
+    for this I was pitched over his head, and fell within a few yards of
+    the bull's nose; but fortunately for me he paid no more attention to
+    my horse than to me. The grass was long, and I lay quiet until a
+    favourable opportunity offered as he presented his placotte. I
+    discharged both barrels of my double gun at him; he turned and made
+    one plunge toward me, but had not time to repeat it before he fell,
+    with his nose not more than three paces off.... I had to return on
+    foot as my horse had bolted."
+</p>
+<p>
+    At this place&mdash;near the Red River (the season September)&mdash;the country
+    swarmed with big game such as North America will never see any more:
+    enormous numbers of bison, of wapiti or Canadian red deer, moose or
+    elk, prong-buck, and of grizzly bears and black bears who followed the
+    herds to attack them. The rivers swarmed with otters and beavers. The
+    ground along the banks of the river was worn into a smooth, hard
+    pavement by the hoofs of the thousands of buffaloes. Racoons, red
+    foxes, wolves, and pumas frequented the bush country and the chumps of
+    forest. A large white wolf, prowling rather imprudently, came within a
+    few yards of Henry, and was shot dead. "We observed on the opposite
+    beach no fewer than seven bears drinking all at the same time. Red
+    deer were whistling in every direction, but our minds were not
+    sufficiently at ease to enjoy our situation." Large flocks of swans
+    (<i>Cygnus columbianus</i>) rose out of the Red River apparently in a state
+    of alarm and confusion, possibly caused by the many herds of buffaloes
+    rushing down to the river to drink. At night everything was quiet
+    except the bellowing of buffaloes and the whistling of red deer. "I
+    climbed up a tall oak at the entrance of the plain, from the top of
+    which I had an extensive view of the country. Buffalo and red deer
+    were everywhere in sight passing to and fro."
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the prairie had its nuisances as well as its wonders of animal
+    life. From the end of April to the end of July the woods and grass
+    swarmed with ticks (<i>Ixodes</i>), which covered the clothes of the
+    Europeans and entered their ears and there caused serious
+    inflammations. They would in time get such a firm hold by the
+    insertion of their heads into the skin that they could not be removed
+    without pulling the body from the head, which caused a terrible
+    itching lasting for months. If left alone they adhered to the flesh
+    until they swelled to the size of a musket ball, when they fell off of
+    themselves. In the summertime gadflies were exasperating in their
+    attacks on men and cattle. Mosquitoes were a veritable plague, and
+    midges also, between June and the end of September.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Not the least of the terrors of life in the far north-west in those
+    days was the vermin that collected in the houses or huts built for a
+    winter sojourn. It is frequently mentioned, in the records of the
+    pioneers, how the lodges or tents of the Amerindians swarmed with
+    fleas and lice. Henry notes on the 19th of April, 1803: "The men began
+    to demolish our dwelling houses, which were built of bad wood, and to
+    build new ones of oak. The nests of mice we found, and the swarms of
+    fleas hopping in every direction, were astonishing."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Henry reached the Pacific coast in 1814, by way of the Kootenay,
+    Spokane, and Columbia River route, which had been discovered by David
+    Thompson. He describes well the forests of remarkable trees on this
+    portion of the Pacific coast, opposite the south end of Vancouver
+    Island: the crooked oaks loaded with mistletoe, the tall wild cherry
+    trees, the hazels with trunks thicker than a man's thigh, the
+    evergreen arbutus, the bracken fern, blackberries, and black
+    raspberries; and the game in these glades of trees and fern: small
+    Columbian <i>Mazama</i> deer, large lynxes, bears, gluttons, wolves, foxes,
+    racoons, and squirrels. Overhead soared huge Californian condors
+    (<i>Pseudogryphus</i>).
+</p>
+<p>
+    Henry was drowned in 1812 in the estuary of the Columbia River,
+    through the capsizing of a boat.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The question of the identity of the great river flowing to the Pacific
+    from near the headwaters of the Peace&mdash;the river which Mackenzie had
+    discovered and been forced to leave&mdash;was finally decided by SIMON
+    FRASER, one of the most celebrated among the North-west Company's
+    pioneers. Like Mackenzie, he believed this stream to be the upper
+    Columbia.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Accompanied by John Stuart and Jules Quesnel, he left the Fraser River
+    at its junction with the Nechaco on May 22, 1807, and, keeping as near
+    as he could to the course of the river, found himself in the country
+    of the Atna tribe, Amerindians of a diminutive size but active
+    appearance, from whom he obtained an invaluable guide and faithful
+    interpreter, Little Fellow, but for whose bravery, wise advice, and
+    clever diplomacy the journey must have ended in disaster or
+    disappointment&mdash;a remark which might be made about nearly all the
+    Amerindian guides of the pioneers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Atna Indians were dressed in skins with the hair outside, and were
+    armed with bows and arrows. They besmeared their bodies with fish oil
+    and red earth, and painted their faces in different colours. Bison
+    were quite unknown to them, being very seldom found in those latitudes
+    on the western side of the Rocky Mountains. The country of the Atna
+    Indians on the upper Fraser abounded in elk, wapiti, reindeer, bighorn
+    sheep, mountain goats,<a name="12-2"></a><a href="#note-12-2"><small>[2]</small></a> and beaver.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here is a description by Fraser of some of the rapids in the upper
+    part of the river named after him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The channel contracts to about forty yards, and is enclosed by two
+    precipices of immense height, which bending towards each other make it
+    narrower above than below. The water which rolls down this
+    extraordinary passage in tumultuous waves and with great velocity has
+    a frightful appearance. However, it being impossible to carry canoes
+    by land, all hands without hesitation embarked, as it were, <i>à corps
+    perdu</i> upon the mercy of this awful tide. Once engaged, the die was
+    cast. Our great difficulty consisted in keeping the canoes in the
+    middle of the stream, that is, clear of the precipice on the one side,
+    and of the gulfs formed by the waves on the other. Thus, skimming
+    along as fast as lightning, the crews, cool and determined, followed
+    each other in awful silence, and when we arrived at the end we stood
+    gazing at each other in silent gratification at our narrow escape from
+    total destruction.... I scarcely ever saw anything so dreary and
+    dangerous in any country (such precipices, mountains, and rapids), and
+    I still seem to see, whichever way I turn my eyes, mountains upon
+    mountains whose summits are covered with eternal snow."
+</p>
+<a name="image-0020"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/pc20.jpg" width="425" height="271"
+alt="A Hunter's 'shack' in British Columbia: After A
+Successful Shoot of Blue Grouse">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<h5>A HUNTER'S 'SHACK' IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: AFTER A SUCCESSFUL SHOOT OF BLUE GROUSE</h5>
+<p>
+    They had to take to these same mountains, the river being unnavigable.
+    The Asketti Indians brought them different kinds of roots, especially
+    wild onions boiled into a syrup, excellent dried salmon, and some
+    berries. These Indians had visited the seacoast, and had seen ships of
+    war come there with white men, "very well dressed, and very proud,
+    for," continued the chief, getting up and clapping his two hands upon
+    his hips, and then striding <a name="p323"></a>about the place with an air of
+    importance, "this is the way they go". In this country of the Hakamaw
+    and Asketti Indians, dogs were much in use for carrying purposes, and
+    could draw from one hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds. They were
+    considered by the French Canadians very good eating, though only the
+    smaller kinds were eaten, the large dogs being of another race and
+    having a rank taste. They also shaved these dogs in the summer time,
+    and wove rugs from their hair. These rugs were striped in different
+    colours, crossing at right angles, and resembling at a distance a
+    Highland plaid.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The tombs of the Indian villages on this western side of the Rocky
+    Mountains were superior to anything that Fraser had ever seen amongst
+    savages. They were about fifteen feet long, and of the form of a chest
+    of drawers. Upon the boards and posts, beasts and birds were carved in
+    a curious but crude manner, and pretty well proportioned. Returning to
+    the river, when the worst of the rapids were passed, they descended it
+    rapidly, helped by a strong current, and at length entered a lake
+    where they saw seals, which showed that they had got near to the
+    Pacific Ocean. They also beheld a round mountain, the now celebrated
+    Mount Baker, which is visible from so much of the surrounding country
+    of British Columbia and Vancouver Island. The trees were splendid,
+    junipers thirty feet in circumference in their trunks and two or three
+    hundred feet high. Mosquitoes, however, were in clouds. Nearer to the
+    coast the Indians often appeared in the distance like white men, for
+    the very literal reason that they had covered their skins with white
+    paint. Their houses were built of cedar planks, and were six hundred
+    and forty feet long by sixty feet broad, all under one roof, but of
+    course separated into a great number of partitions for different
+    families. On the outside the boards (as Mackenzie had noticed) were
+    carved with figures of men, beasts, and birds as large as life. Simon
+    Fraser, however, when he reached sea water, near the site of New
+    Westminster, was greatly disappointed that any view of the main ocean
+    should be obstructed by distant lands. He had believed all along that
+    he was tracing the far-famed Columbia River to its entrance into the
+    Pacific Ocean; and now that, instead of this, he had discovered an
+    entirely new river, henceforth to be called after him but without so
+    long a course as the Columbia, his vanity was hurt.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Amerindians of the sea coast, opposite Vancouver Island, showed
+    hostility to Fraser's party, as they had done farther north to
+    Mackenzie. The Canadian <i>voyageurs</i> got alarmed, and told Fraser's
+    assistant, John Stuart, that they had made up their minds to return by
+    land across the Rocky Mountains. Fraser and the other officers of the
+    expedition joined in arguing with them and recalling them to their
+    senses. Finally each member of the party swore a solemn oath before
+    Almighty God that they would sooner perish than forsake in distress
+    any of the crew in the present voyage. After this ceremony was over
+    all hands dressed in their best apparel, and each took charge of his
+    own bundle. They therefore returned as much as possible by the Fraser
+    River, and only took to the mountains when obliged by the rapids. They
+    had to pass many difficult rocks, defiles, precipices, in which there
+    was a beaten path made by the natives, and made possible by means of
+    scaffolds, bridges, and ladders, so peculiarly constructed that it
+    required no small degree of necessity, dexterity, and courage in
+    strangers to undertake them. For instance, they had to ascend
+    precipices by means of ladders composed of two long poles placed
+    upright, with sticks tied crosswise with twigs; upon the end of these
+    others were placed, and so on to any height; add to this that the
+    ladders were often so slack that the smallest breeze put them in
+    motion, swinging them against the rocks, while the steps leading from
+    scaffold to scaffold were so narrow and irregular that they could
+    scarcely be traced by the feet without the greatest care and
+    circumspection; but the most perilous part was when another rock
+    projected over the one they were clearing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Hakamaw Indians certainly deserved Fraser's grateful remembrance
+    for their able assistance throughout these alarming situations. The
+    descents were, if possible, still more difficult; in these places the
+    white men were under the necessity of trusting their property to the
+    Indians, even the precious guns were handed from one Indian to
+    another; yet they thought nothing of it, they went up and down these
+    wild places with the same agility as sailors do on a ship. After
+    escaping innumerable perils in the course of the day, the party
+    encamped about sunset, being supplied by the natives with plenty of
+    dried fish.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Thus the main lines of the exploration of the great Canadian Dominion
+    were completed. Alexander Mackenzie went to England in 1799 and
+    received a knighthood for his remarkable achievements. On his return
+    he first definitely created the New North-west or "X.Y." Company, and
+    then brought about its fusion (after several years of bitter rivalry)
+    with the old North-west Company; and it was this united and
+    strengthened organization which, between 1804 and 1819, sent out so
+    many bold pioneers to fill in the details of the map between the
+    Columbia and Missouri on the south, and the Great Slave Lake and Liard
+    River on the north. But during these years the energies of the
+    Hudson's Bay Company were reviving under a strange personality&mdash;THOMAS
+    DOUGLAS, EARL OF SELKIRK. Lord Selkirk conceived the idea of putting
+    new life into the Hudson's Bay Company, reviving the monopolies of
+    trading granted in its old charter, and turning its vague rights to
+    land into the absolute ownership of the enormous area of North
+    America north and west of the Canadian provinces. No regard of course
+    was paid to any rights of the natives, who as a matter of fact were
+    dying out rapidly from the effects of bad alcohol and epidemic
+    diseases.
+</p>
+<p>
+    His motive was to establish large colonies of stalwart Highlanders as
+    the tenants of a Chartered Company. Alexander Mackenzie had already
+    called the north-west country "New Caledonia". Lord Selkirk wished to
+    make it so in its population.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Already he had been instrumental in establishing a Scottish colony on
+    Prince Edward's Island,<a name="12-3"></a><a href="#note-12-3"><small>[3]</small></a> which, after some difficulties at the
+    beginning, had soon begun to prosper. Two or three years later he came
+    to Montreal, and there collected all the information he could obtain
+    from the partners in the North-west Company regarding the prospects of
+    trade and colonization in the far west. In the year 1811 he had
+    managed to acquire the greater part of the shares in the Hudson's Bay
+    Company, and, placing himself at its head, he sent out his first
+    hundred Highlanders and Irish to form a feudatory colony in the Red
+    River district (the modern Manitoba). He also dispatched an official
+    to govern what might be called the Middle West on behalf of the
+    Hudson's Bay Company. This person, acting under instructions, claimed
+    the whole region beyond the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada as the
+    private property of the Hudson's Bay Company, on the strength of their
+    antiquated charter issued by Charles II. The agents of the North-west
+    Company were warned (as also the two or three thousand French
+    Canadians and half-breeds in their pay) that henceforth they must not
+    cut wood, fish or hunt, build or cultivate, save by the permission and
+    as the tenants of the Hudson's Bay Company.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is not surprising that such an outrageous demand, when it was
+    followed up by the use of armed force, soon provoked bloodshed and a
+    state of civil war throughout the North-west Territories. Lord Selkirk
+    himself took command on the Red River, with a small army of
+    disciplined soldiers. At length, in 1817, the British Government
+    intervened through the Governor-General of Canada, and in 1818 Lord
+    Selkirk left North America disgusted, and two years afterwards died at
+    Pau, in France, from an illness brought on by grief at the failure of
+    his projects.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sir Alexander Mackenzie also died suddenly in 1820, in Scotland. For
+    twelve years he had been member of parliament for Huntingdon, and
+    since 1812 had been the determined opponent in England of Lord
+    Selkirk's plans of forcible colonization. After his death, however, in
+    1821, a sudden movement for reconciliation took place between the two
+    Companies. Thenceforth the Hudson's Bay Company ruled over the vast
+    regions of British North America, beyond Newfoundland, New Brunswick,
+    Nova Scotia, and the two Canadian provinces. Under their government
+    the work of geographical exploration went on apace. In 1834 one of
+    their officers, J. M'Leod, discovered the Stikine River in northern
+    British Columbia, and by 1848 J. Bell and Robert Campbell had revealed
+    the Porcupine and Yukon Rivers. By the time Thomas Simpson, Warren
+    Dease, and Dr. John Rae, on behalf of the Hudson's Bay Company; and
+    Franklin, Back, Parry, Richardson, and M'Clintock, for the Imperial
+    Government, had completed the explorations mentioned in Chapter VI,
+    all the main features of Canadian geography were made known. The next
+    series of pioneers were to be those of the mining industry&mdash;it was the
+    discovery of gold in 1856 which created British Columbia; of
+    agriculture&mdash;the wheat-growers of the Red River region made the
+    province of Manitoba; of the steamboat; and above all the railway.
+    Developments of science scarcely yet dreamt of will demand in further
+    time their pioneers, and these will not come from abroad, but will
+    assuredly be found in this splendid Canadian people, the descendants
+    of the men or of the types of men I have attempted to describe.
+</p>
+<hr class="short">
+
+<a name="note-12-1"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#12-1"><u>1</u></a> The nephew of the Alexander Henry already mentioned as an
+    explorer between 1761 and 1775.
+</p>
+<a name="note-12-2"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#12-2"><u>2</u></a> This remarkable beast (<i>Oreamnus</i>) they called "Aspai",
+    and wove from its white wool an excellent cloth for their clothing.
+</p>
+<a name="note-12-3"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#12-3"><u>3</u></a> Prince Edward's Island is off the north coast of New
+    Brunswick. It was named after Queen Victoria's father, the Duke of
+    Kent.
+</p>
+<br>
+<p class="return">[<a href="#top">TOP</a>]
+</p>
+<br>
+<br>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Pioneers in Canada, by Sir Harry Johnston,
+Illustrated by E. Wallcousins
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Pioneers in Canada
+
+Author: Sir Harry Johnston
+
+Release Date: July 23, 2004  [eBook #13003]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PIONEERS IN CANADA***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Janet Kegg and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 13003-h.htm or 13003-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/0/0/13003/13003-h/13003-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/0/0/13003/13003-h.zip)
+
+      In this e-text "a" with a breve and "o", "u", and
+      "a" with a macron are represented by [)a] [-o] [-u] [-a].
+
+
+
+
+
+PIONEERS IN CANADA
+
+By
+
+SIR HARRY JOHNSTON, G.C.M.G., K.C.B.
+
+With Eight Coloured Illustrations by E. Wallcousins
+
+1912
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: TYPE OF SHIP SAILED IN BY THE ENGLISH OR FRENCH
+PIONEERS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY]
+
+
+
+
+The Pioneer Library
+
+A standard series by Sir Harry Johnston. Tastefully bound.
+
+     Pioneers in Australasia.
+     Pioneers in Canada.
+     Pioneers in South Africa.
+     Pioneers in West Africa.
+     Pioneers in Tropical America.
+     Pioneers in India.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+I have been asked to write a series of works which should deal with
+"real adventures", in parts of the world either wild and uncontrolled
+by any civilized government, or at any rate regions full of dangers,
+of wonderful discoveries; in which the daring and heroism of white men
+(and sometimes of white women) stood out clearly against backgrounds
+of unfamiliar landscapes, peopled with strange nations, savage tribes,
+dangerous beasts, or wonderful birds. These books would again and
+again illustrate the first coming of the white race into regions
+inhabited by people of a different type, with brown, black, or yellow
+skins; how the European was received, and how he treated these races
+of the soil which gradually came under his rule owing to his superior
+knowledge, weapons, wealth, or powers of persuasion. The books were to
+tell the plain truth, even if here and there they showed the white man
+to have behaved badly, or if they revealed the fact that the American
+Indian, the Negro, the Malay, the black Australian was sometimes cruel
+and treacherous.
+
+A request thus framed was almost equivalent to asking me to write
+stories of those pioneers who founded the British Empire; in any case,
+the first volumes of this series do relate the adventures of those who
+created the greater part of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, by
+their perilous explorations of unknown lands and waters. In many
+instances the travellers were all unconscious of their destinies, of
+the results which would arise from their actions. In some cases they
+would have bitterly railed at Fate had they known that the result of
+their splendid efforts was to be the enlargement of an empire under
+the British flag. Perhaps if they could know by now that we are
+striving under that flag to be just and generous to all types of men,
+and not to use our empire solely for the benefit of English-speaking
+men and women, the French who founded the Canadian nation, the Germans
+and Dutch who helped to create British Africa, Malaysia, and
+Australia, the Spaniards who preceded us in the West Indies, and the
+Portuguese in West, Central, and East Africa, in Newfoundland and
+Ceylon, might--if they have any consciousness or care for things in
+this world--be not so sorry after all that we are reaping where they
+sowed.
+
+It is (as you will see) impossible to tell the tale of these early
+days in the British Dominions beyond the Seas, without describing here
+and there the adventures of men of enterprise and daring who were not
+of our own nationality. The majority, nevertheless, were of British
+stock; that is to say, they were English, Welsh, Scots, Irish, perhaps
+here and there a Channel Islander and a Manxman; or Nova Scotians,
+Canadians, and New Englanders. The bulk of them were good fellows, a
+few were saints, a few were ruffians with redeeming features.
+Sometimes they were common men who blundered into great discoveries
+which will for ever preserve their names from perishing; occasionally
+they were men of Fate, predestined, one might say, to change the
+history of the world by their revelations of new peoples, new lands,
+new rivers, new lakes, snow mountains, and gold mines. Here and there
+is a martyr like Marquette, or Livingstone, or Gordon, dying for the
+cause of a race not his own. And others again are mere boys, whose
+adventures come to them because they are adventurous, and whose feats
+of arms, escapes, perils, and successes are quite as wonderful as
+those attributed to the juvenile heroes of Marryat, Stevenson, and the
+author of _The Swiss Family Robinson_.
+
+I have tried, in describing these adventures, to give my readers some
+idea of the scenery, animals, and vegetation of the new lands through
+which these pioneers passed on their great and small purposes; as well
+as of the people, native to the soil, with whom they came in contact.
+And in treating of these subjects I have thought it best to give the
+scientific names of the plant or animal which was of importance in my
+story, so that any of my readers who were really interested in natural
+history could at once ascertain for themselves the exact type alluded
+to, and, if they wished, look it up in a museum, a garden, or a
+natural history book.
+
+I hope this attempt at scientific accuracy will not frighten away
+readers young and old; and, if you can have patience with the author,
+you will, by reading this series of books on the great pioneers of
+British West Africa, Canada, Malaysia, West Indies, South Africa, and
+Australasia, get a clear idea of how the British Colonial Empire came
+to be founded.
+
+You will find that I have often tried to tell the story in the words
+of the pioneers, but in these quotations I have adopted the modern
+spelling, not only in my transcript of the English original or
+translation, but also in the place and tribal names, so as not to
+puzzle or delay the reader. Otherwise, if you were to look out some of
+the geographical names of the old writers, you might not be able to
+recognize them on the modern atlas. The pronunciation of this modern
+geographical spelling is very simple and clear: the vowels are
+pronounced _a_ = ah, _e_ = eh, _i_ = ee, _o_ = o, _o_ = oh,
+_[-o]_ = aw, _oe_ = u in 'hurt', and _u_ = oo, as in German, Italian, or
+most other European languages; and the consonants as in English.
+
+H. H. JOHNSTON.
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS
+
+     I. THE WHITE MAN'S DISCOVERY OF NORTH AMERICA............... 15
+    II. JACQUES CARTIER.......................................... 29
+   III. ELIZABETHAN PIONEERS IN NORTH AMERICA.................... 45
+    IV. CHAMPLAIN AND THE FOUNDATION OF CANADA................... 53
+     V. AFTER CHAMPLAIN: FROM MONTREAL TO THE MISSISSIPPI........ 88
+    VI. THE GEOGRAPHICAL CONDITIONS OF THE CANADIAN DOMINION.....120
+   VII. THE AMERINDIANS AND ESKIMO: THE ABORIGINES OF BRITISH
+             NORTH AMERICA.......................................153
+  VIII. THE HUDSON BAY EXPLORERS AND THE BRITISH CONQUEST OF
+             ALL CANADA..........................................202
+    IX. THE PIONEERS FROM MONTREAL: ALEXANDER HENRY THE ELDER....211
+     X. SAMUEL HEARNE............................................248
+    XI. ALEXANDER MACKENZIE'S JOURNEYS...........................277
+   XII. MACKENZIE'S SUCCESSORS...................................313
+
+
+
+
+  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  COLOURED PLATES
+
+  Type of Ship sailed in by the English or French Pioneers in the
+    Sixteenth Century _Frontispiece_
+  Icebergs and Polar Bears
+  Indians hunting Bison
+  Indians lying in wait for Moose
+  Caribou swimming a River
+  Great Auks, Gannets, Puffins, and Guillemots
+  Scene on Canadian River: Wild Swans flying up, disturbed by Bear
+  Big-horned Sheep of Rocky Mountains
+
+
+  BLACK-AND-WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  Jacques Cartier
+  Samuel de Champlain and Alexander Henry the Elder
+  An Amerindian Type of British Columbia
+  Lake Louise, the Rocky Mountains
+  Samuel Hearne and Alexander Mackenzie
+  The Upper Waters of the Fraser River
+  The Kootenay or Head Stream of the Columbia River
+  A Hunter's "Shack" in British Columbia: After a successful Shoot of
+    Blue Grouse
+
+  Map of Canada
+  Map of Eastern Canada and Newfoundland
+  Map of Part of the Coast Region of British Columbia
+
+
+
+
+List of the Chief Authorities
+
+
+FROM WHOM THE PRINCIPAL FACTS AND INCIDENTS OF THIS BOOK HAVE BEEN
+DERIVED, IN ADDITION TO THE AUTHOR'S OWN RESEARCHES AND EXPERIENCES,
+AND INFORMATION SUPPLIED BY PROFESSOR R. RAMSAY WRIGHT, OF TORONTO
+UNIVERSITY
+
+_The Saint Lawrence Basin_. By Dr. S.E. DAWSON. London. 1905.
+Lawrence & Bullen.
+
+_Relation Originale du Voyage de Jacques Cartier au Canada en
+1534_; Documents inedits, &c. Publies par H. MICHELANT et A. RAME.
+Paris. Librairie Tross. 1867.
+
+_Voyage de Jacques Cartier au Canada en 1534_, &c. Par H.
+MICHELANT. Paris. 1865.
+
+_Champlain's Voyages_: The Publications of the Prince Society.
+Boston. 1878. Three volumes.
+
+_Voyage of Verrazano_, &c. By HENRY C. MURPHY. New York. 1875.
+(Also the Essay on the Journeys of Verrazano, by Alessandro Bacchiani,
+in the Bollettino della Societa Geografica Italiana. Rome. November,
+1909.)
+
+_Volume IX of the Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of
+Canada_. (For the History of Cape Breton and of the Beothiks of
+Newfoundland.)
+
+_The Search for the Western Sea_. By Lawrence J. Burpee. London.
+Alston Rivers. 1908.
+
+_Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New
+France_, &c. Edited by REUBEN GOLD THWAITES. Vol. LIX. Cleveland,
+U.S.A. Burrows Bros. 1900.
+
+_Travels and Explorations in Canada and the Indian Territories between
+the years 1760 and 1776_. By ALEXANDER HENRY, Esq. New York. 1809.
+
+_Voyages from Montreal on the River St. Lawrence through the Continent
+of North America to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans, in the years 1789
+and 1793_, &c. &c. By ALEXANDER MACKENZIE, Esq. London. 1801.
+
+_A Journey from Prince of Wales's Fort in Hudson's Bay to the Northern
+Ocean_, &c. By SAMUEL HEARNE. London. 1795.
+
+_Les Bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest_. By L.R. MASSON.
+Quebec. 1890. Two volumes.
+
+_New Light on the Early History of the Greater North-West_: The
+Manuscript Journals of Alexander Henry, Jun., and of David Thompson.
+Edited by ELLIOTT COUES. Three Volumes. New York. Harper. 1897.
+
+_Sport and Travel in the Northland of Canada_. By DAVID T. HANBURY.
+London. Edward Arnold. 1904.
+
+_Henry Hudson the Navigator_, &c. By G.M. ASHER. London. Hakluyt
+Society, 1860.
+
+_The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher_. By Rear-Admiral RICHARD
+COLLINSON. London. Hakluyt Society. 1867.
+
+_The Voyages and Works of John Davis the Navigator_. By Admiral Sir
+ALBERT HASTINGS MARKHAM. London. Hakluyt Society. 1880.
+
+_The Voyages of William Baffin, 1612-1622_. By Sir CLEMENTS R.
+MARKHAM. London. 1881.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+The White Man's Discovery of North America
+
+
+So far as our knowledge goes, it is almost a matter of certainty that
+Man originated in the Old World--in Asia possibly. Long after this
+wonderful event in the Earth's history, when the human species was
+spread over a good deal of Asia, Europe, and Africa, migration to the
+American continents began in attempts to find new feeding grounds and
+unoccupied areas for hunting and fishing. How many thousands or
+hundreds of thousands of years ago it was since the first men entered
+America we do not yet know, any more than we can determine the route
+by which they travelled from Asia. Curiously enough, the oldest traces
+of man as yet discovered in the New World are not only in South
+America, but in the south-eastern parts of South America. Although the
+most obvious recent land connection between the Old and New Worlds is
+the Aleutian chain of islands connecting Kamschatka with Alaska, the
+ethnologist is occasionally led to think by certain evidence that
+there may, both earlier and later, have existed another way of
+reaching western America from south-eastern Asia through Pacific
+archipelagoes and islets now sunk below the sea. In any case it seems
+quite probable that men of Mongolian or Polynesian type reached
+America on its western coasts long before the European came from the
+north-east and east, and that they were helped on this long journey by
+touching at islands since submerged by earthquake shocks or tidal
+waves.
+
+The aboriginal natives of North and South America seem to be of
+entirely Asiatic origin; and such resemblances as there are between
+the North-American Indians and the peoples of northern Europe do not
+arise (we believe) from any ancient colonization of America from
+western or northern Europe, but mainly from the fact that the
+North-American Indians and the Eskimo (two distinct types of people)
+are descended from the same human stocks as the ancient populations of
+the northern part of Europe and Asia.
+
+It was--we think--from the far _north-west_ of Europe that America was
+first visited by the true White man, though there has been an ancient
+immigration of imperfect "White" men (Ainu) from Kamschatka. Three or
+four hundred years after the birth of Christ there were great race
+movements in northern and central Europe, due to an increase of
+population and insufficiency of food. Not only did these white
+barbarians (though they were not as barbarous as we were led to think
+by Greek and Roman literature) invade southern Europe, North Africa,
+and Asia Minor, but from the fourth century of the Christian era
+onwards they began to cross over to England and Scotland. At the same
+time they took more complete possession of Scandinavia, driving north
+before their advance the more primitive peoples like the Lapps and
+Finns, who were allied to the stock from which arose both the Eskimo
+and the Amerindian.[1] All this time the Goths and Scandinavians
+were either learning ideas of navigation from the Romans of the
+Mediterranean or the Greeks of the Black Sea, or they were inventing
+for themselves better ways of constructing ships; and although they
+propelled them mainly by oars, they used masts and sails as well.[2]
+Having got over the fear of the sea sufficiently to reach the coasts
+of England and Scotland, the Hebrides, Orkneys, and Shetlands, they
+became still more venturesome in their voyages from Norway, until they
+discovered the Faroe Archipelago (which tradition says they found
+inhabited by wild sheep), and then the large island of Iceland, which
+had, however, already been reached and settled by the northern Irish.
+
+[Footnote 1: This is a convenient name for the race formerly called
+"American Indian". They are not Indians (i.e. natives of India), and
+they are not the only Americans, since there are now about 110,000,000
+white Americans of European origin and 24,000,000 negroes and
+negroids. The total approximate "Amerindian" or aboriginal population
+of the New World at the present day is 16,000,000, of whom about
+111,000 live in the Canadian Dominion, and 300,000 in the United
+States, the remainder in Central and South America.]
+
+[Footnote 2: It is doubtful whether actual masts and sails were known
+in America till the coming of Europeans, though the ancient Peruvians
+are said to have used mat sails in their canoes. But the northern
+Amerindians had got as far as placing bushes or branches of fir trees
+upright in their canoes to catch the force of the wind.]
+
+Iceland, though it lies so far to the north that it is partly within
+the Arctic Circle, is, like Norway, Scotland, and Ireland, affected by
+the Gulf Stream, so that considerable portions of it are quite
+habitable. It is not almost entirely covered with ice, as Greenland
+is; in fact, Iceland should be called Greenland (from the large extent
+of its grassy pastures), and Greenland should be called Iceland.
+Instead of this, however, the early Norwegian explorers called these
+countries by the names they still bear.
+
+The Norse rovers from Norway and the Hebrides colonized Iceland from
+the year 850; and about a hundred and thirty-six years afterwards, in
+their venturesome journeys in search of new lands, they reached the
+south-east and south-west coasts of Greenland. Owing to the glacial
+conditions and elevated character of this vast continental island
+(more than 500,000 sq. miles in area)--for the whole interior of
+Greenland rises abruptly from the sea-coast to altitudes of from 5000
+to 11,000 ft.--this discovery was of small use to the early Norwegians
+or their Iceland colony. After it was governed by the kingdom of
+Norway in the thirteenth century, the Norse colonization of south-west
+Greenland faded away under the attacks of the Eskimo, until it ceased
+completely in the fifteenth century. When Denmark united herself with
+the kingdom of Norway in 1397, the Danish king became also the ruler
+of Iceland. In the eighteenth century the Norwegian and Danish
+settlements were re-established along the south-east and south-west
+coasts of Greenland, mainly on account of the value of the whale,
+seal, and cod fisheries in the seas around this enormous frozen
+island; and all Greenland is now regarded as a Danish possession.
+
+But the adventurous Norsemen who first reached Greenland from Iceland
+attempted to push their investigations farther to the south-west, in
+the hope of discovering more habitable lands; and in this way it was
+supposed that their voyages extended as far as Massachusetts and Rhode
+Island, but in all probability they reached no farther than
+Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. This portion of North America they
+called "Vinland", more from the abundance of cranberries (_vinbaer_) on
+the open spaces than the few vines to be found in the woods of Nova
+Scotia.[3]
+
+[Footnote 3: The grapes and vines so often alluded to by the early
+explorers of North America ripened, according to the species, between
+August and October. They belong to the same genus--_Vitis_--as that of
+the grape vines of the Old World, but they were quite distinct in
+species. Nowadays they are known as the Fox Grapes (_Vitis vulpina_),
+the Frost Grape (_V. cordifolia_), the _V. aestivalis_, the _V.
+labruska_, &c. The fruit of the Fox Grape is dark purple, with a very
+dusky skin and a musky flavour. The Frost Grape has a very small
+berry, which is black or leaden-blue when covered with bloom. It is
+very acid to the taste, but from all these grapes it is easy to make a
+delicious, refreshing drink. Champlain, however, says that the wild
+grapes were often quite large in size, and his men found them
+delicious to eat.]
+
+This brings us down to the year 1008. The Icelandic Norsemen then
+ceased their investigations of the North-American Continent, and were
+too ignorant to realize the value of their discoveries. Their colonies
+on the coasts of Nova Scotia ("Vinland") and Newfoundland
+("Estotiland") were attacked probably by Eskimos, at any rate by a
+short, thick-set, yellow-skinned ugly people whom the Norsemen called
+"Skraeling",[4] who overcame the unfortunate settlers, murdered some,
+and carried off others into the interior.
+
+[Footnote 4: Perhaps from the Eastern Eskimo national name _Karalit_.]
+
+But about this period, when Europe was going through that dismal era,
+the Dark Age which followed the downfall of the Roman Empire of the
+west, various impulses were already directing the attention of
+European adventurers to the Western Ocean, the Atlantic. One cause was
+the increased hold of Roman and Greek Christianity over the peoples of
+Europe. These Churches imposed fasts either for single days or for
+continuous periods. When people fasted it meant that they were chiefly
+denied any form of meat, and therefore must eat fish if they were not
+content with oil, bread, or vegetables. So that there was an enormous
+and increasing demand for fish, not only amongst those fortunate
+people who lived by the seashore, and could get it fresh whenever they
+liked, but among those who lived at a distance inland, and were still
+required to fast when the Church so directed. Of course in many parts
+of Europe they could get freshwater fish from the rivers or lakes. But
+the supply was not equal to the demand; and fish sent up from the
+seacoast soon went bad, so that the plan of salting and curing fish
+was adopted. The Norsemen found it a paying business to fish
+industriously in the seas round Iceland, Norway, Scotland, and
+Ireland, salt and cure the fish, and then carry it to more southern
+countries, where they exchanged it against wine, oil, clothing
+materials, and other goods. This led to the Venetians (who had
+absorbed so much of the carrying trade of the Mediterranean) sending
+their ships through the Straits of Gibraltar into the northern seas
+and trading with the Baltic for amber and salt fish. In the course of
+this trade some Venetians, such as Antonio Zeno, found their way to
+Norway and Iceland.[5] It is thought that by this means Venice became
+acquainted with the records of the Icelandic voyages to North
+America, and that her explorers thus grew to entertain the idea of a
+sea journey westward, or north-westward, of Britain, bringing mariners
+to a New World represented by the far-eastern extension of Asia.
+
+[Footnote 5: Antonio Zeno served as pilot to Earl Sinclair of the
+Faeroe Islands and of Roslyn, a Norman-Scottish nobleman who owed
+joint fealty to the kings of Norway and Scotland. Sinclair was so
+impressed with the stories of a "Newland" beyond Greenland that he
+sailed to find it about 1390, but only reached Greenland.]
+
+Christopher Columbus, the Genoese, conceived a similar idea, which
+also may have owed something to the tradition of the Norsemen's
+discovery of Vinland. But Columbus's theories were based on better
+evidence, such as the discovery on the coasts of the Azores
+archipelago, Madeira, and Portugal of strange seeds, tree trunks,
+objects of human workmanship, and even (it is said) the bodies of
+drowned savages--Amerindians--which had somehow drifted across, borne
+by the current of the Gulf Stream, and escaping the notice of the
+sharks.
+
+Whilst Columbus was bestirring himself to find Asia across the
+Atlantic, a sea pilot, JOHN CABOT (Zuan Cabota)--Genoese by birth, but
+a naturalized subject of Venice--came to England and offered himself
+to King Henry VII as a discoverer of new lands across the ocean. At
+first he was employed at Copenhagen to settle fishery quarrels about
+Iceland, and probably Cabota, or Cabot, visited Iceland in King
+Henry's service, and there heard of the Icelandic colonies on the
+other side of the Atlantic, only recently abandoned.
+
+In 1496 King Henry VII provided money to cover some of the expense of
+a voyage of discovery to search for the rumoured island across the
+ocean. The people of Bristol were ordered to assist John Cabot, and by
+them he was furnished with a small sailing ship, the _Matthew_, and a
+crew of fifteen mariners. Cabot, with his two sons, Luis and Sancio,
+sailed for Ireland and the unknown West in May, 1497, and, after a sea
+voyage quite as wonderful as that of Columbus, reached the coast of
+Cape Breton Island (or "the New Isle", as it was first named[6]) on
+June 24, 1497. They found "the land excellent, and the climate
+temperate". The sea was so full of fish along these coasts that the
+mariners opined (truly) that henceforth Bristol need not trouble about
+the Iceland trade. Here along this "new isle" were the predestined
+fisheries of Britain.[7]
+
+[Footnote 6: Cape Breton was not then, or for nearly two hundred years
+afterwards, known to be an island. It was thought to be part of the
+"island" (peninsula) of what we now call Nova Scotia, and the whole of
+this region which advances so prominently into the Atlantic was
+believed to be at first the great unknown "New Island" of Irish and
+English legends--legends based on the Norse discoveries of the
+eleventh century. Cape Breton was thus named by the Breton seaman who
+came thither soon after the Cabot expeditions to fish for cod. This
+large island is separated from Nova Scotia by the Gut of Canso, a
+strait no broader than a river.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Dr. S.E. DAWSON (_The St. Lawrence Basin_) says of this
+voyage: "When the forest wilderness of Cape Breton listened to the
+voices of Cabot's little company (of Bristol mariners) it was the
+first faint whisper of the mighty flood of English speech which was
+destined to overflow the continent to the shores of another
+ocean...."]
+
+They encountered no inhabitants, though they found numerous traces of
+their existence in the form of snares, notched trees, and bone netting
+needles. John Cabot hoisted the English flag of St. George and the
+Venetian standard of St. Mark; then--perhaps after coasting a little
+along Nova Scotia--fearful that a longer stay might cause them to run
+short of provisions, he turned the prow of the _Matthew_ eastward, and
+reached Bristol once more about August 6, and London on August 10,
+1497, with his report to King Henry VII, who rewarded him with a
+donation of L10. He was further granted a pension of L20 a year (which
+he only drew for two years, probably because he died after returning
+from a second voyage to the North-American coast), and he received a
+renewal of his patent of discovery in February, 1498. In this patent
+it is evidently inferred that King Henry VII assumed a sovereignty
+over these distant regions because of John Cabot's hoisting of the
+English flag on "the new Isle" (Cape Breton Island) in the preceding
+year.
+
+The new expedition of 1498 was a relatively important affair. The
+king assisted to finance the ventures of the Bristol captains, and
+five of his ships formed part of the little fleet. It is probable that
+John Cabot was in command, and almost certain that his young son
+Sebastian was a passenger, possibly an assistant pilot. The course
+followed lay much farther to the north, and brought the little sailing
+vessels amongst the icebergs, ice floes, polar bears, and stormy seas
+of Greenland and Labrador. Commercially the voyage was a failure,
+almost a disaster. The ships returned singly, and after a considerable
+interval of time. Nevertheless, some of the king's loans were repaid
+to him; and in 1501 a regular chartered company was formed (perhaps at
+Bristol), with three Bristolians and three Portuguese as directors.
+Henry VII not only gave a royal patent to this association, but lent
+more money to enable it to explore and colonize these new lands across
+the western sea.
+
+There can be little doubt that between 1498 and 1505 these Bristol
+ships, directed by Italian, English, and Portuguese pilots, first
+revealed to the civilized world of western Europe the coasts of
+Newfoundland, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Massachusetts, and
+Delaware. They must have got as far south as the State of Delaware
+(according to Sebastian Cabot, their southern limit was lat. 38 deg.),
+because in 1505 they were able to bring back parrots ("popyngays"), as
+well as hawks and lynxes ("catts of the mountaigne"), for the
+delectation of King Henry; and parrots even at that period could not
+have been obtained from farther north than the latitude of New
+York.[8]
+
+[Footnote 8: Almost certainly this was _Conurus carolinensis_, a green
+and orange parrakeet still found in the south-eastern States of North
+America, but formerly met with as far north as New York and Boston.]
+
+But after 1505 English interest in "the Newe founde launde" and the
+"Newe Isle" languished; the exploration of North America was taken up
+and carried farther by Portuguese, Bretons and Normans of France,
+Italians, and Spaniards.[9] It revived again under Henry VIII, owing
+to the irresistible attraction of the Newfoundland fisheries and the
+knowledge that the ships from France were returning every autumn with
+great supplies of fish cured and salted; for an adequate supply of
+salt fish was becoming a matter of great importance to the markets of
+western Europe. In 1527 Henry VIII sent two ships under the command of
+John Rut to explore the North-American coast, and Captain Rut seems
+to have reached the Straits of Belle Isle between Newfoundland
+and Labrador (then blocked with ice so that he took them for
+a bay), and afterwards to have passed along the east coast of
+Newfoundland--already much frequented by the Bretons, Normans, and
+Portuguese--and to have stopped at the harbour of St. John's, thence
+sailing as far south as Massachusetts.
+
+[Footnote 9: The name _America_ probably appears for the first time in
+English print in the old play or masque the _Four Elements_, which was
+published about 1518. In a review of the geography of the Earth, as
+known at that period, a description is given of this vast New World
+across the Ocean: "But these new landys found lately, been called
+America, because only Americus did find them first". Americus was a
+Florentine bank clerk--Amerigo Vespucci--at Seville who gave up the
+counting-house for adventure, sailed with a Spanish captain to the
+West Indies and the mainland of Venezuela (off which he notes that he
+met an English sailing vessel, and this as early as 1499!), and then
+joined the first exploring voyage of the Portuguese to Brazil. He
+returned to Europe, and in a letter to a fellow countryman at Paris,
+written in the late autumn of 1502, he claimed to have discovered a
+New World across the Ocean. His clear statement about what was really
+the South American Continent aroused so much enthusiasm in civilized
+Europe that five years afterwards the New World was called after him
+by a German printer (Walzmueller) at the little Alsatian University of
+St. Die. By 1518 the English writers and mariners were probably aware
+that the discoveries of Cabot, Columbus, and the Portuguese indicated
+the extension of "America" from the Arctic to the Antarctic, but not
+till about 1553 did the scholars and adventurers of England show
+themselves fully alive to the gigantic importance of this New World.
+Between 1530 and 1553 their attention was distracted from geography
+and over-sea adventure by the religious troubles of the Reformation.]
+
+The Portuguese monarchy had begun to take possession of the Azores
+archipelago from the year 1432. These islands were probably known to
+the Phoenicians, and even to the Arabs of the Middle Ages; between the
+fourteenth and fifteenth centuries they had been rediscovered by
+Catalans, Genoese, Flemings, and Portuguese; and after 1444 the Azores
+began to prove very useful to the sea adventurers of this wonderful
+fifteenth century, as they became a shelter and a place of call for
+fresh water and provisions almost in the middle of the Atlantic, 800
+to 1000 miles due west of Portugal. Portuguese vessels sailed
+northwards from the Azores in search of fishing grounds, and thus
+reached Iceland, which they called Terra do Bacalhao.[10] They may
+even before Cabot have visited in an unrecorded fashion the wonderful
+banks of Newfoundland--an immense area of shallow sea swarming with
+codfish.
+
+[Footnote 10: _Bacalhao_ in Portuguese (and a similar word in Spanish,
+old French, and Italian) means dried, salted fish. It comes from a
+Latin word meaning "a small stick", because the fish were split open
+and held up flat to dry by means of a cross or framework of small
+sticks, the Norse name "stokfiske" meant the same: stockfish or
+stickfish.]
+
+As soon as the news of the Cabot voyages reached the King of Portugal
+he arranged to send an expedition of discovery to the far north-west,
+perhaps to find a northern sea route to Eastern Asia. He gave the
+command to Gaspar Corte-Real, a Portuguese noble connected through
+family property with the Azores. Starting from the Azores in the
+summer of 1500, Corte-Real discovered Newfoundland, and called it
+"Terra Verde" from its dense woods of fir trees, which are now being
+churned into wood pulp to make paper for British books and newspapers.
+He then sailed along the coast of Labrador,[11] and thence crossed
+over to Greenland, the southern half of which he mapped with fair
+accuracy. His records of this voyage take particular note of the great
+icebergs off the coast of Greenland. His men were surprised to find
+that sea water frozen becomes perfectly fresh--all the salt is left
+out in the process. So that his two ships could supply themselves
+with fresh water of the purest, by hacking ice from the masses
+floating in these Greenland summer seas. The next year he started
+again, but on a more westerly course. His two ships reached the coasts
+of New Jersey and Massachusetts, and sailed north once more to
+Labrador. They captured a number of Amerindian aborigines, but only
+one of the two ships (with seven of these savages on board) reached
+Portugal; Gaspar Corte-Real was never heard of again. His brother
+Miguel went out in search of him, but he likewise disappeared without
+a trace.
+
+[Footnote 11: _Labrador_ (_Lavrador_ in Portuguese) means a labourer,
+a serf. The Portuguese are supposed to have brought some Red Indians
+from this coast to be sold as slaves.]
+
+Nevertheless these Portuguese expeditions to North America have left
+ineffaceable traces in the geography of the Newfoundland coast, of
+which (under the name of Terra Nova[12]) the governorship was made
+hereditary in the Corte-Real family. Cape Race for example--the most
+prominent point of the island--is really the Portuguese _Cabo
+Raso_--the bare or "shaved" cape--and this was by the Spaniards
+regarded as the westernmost limit of Portuguese sovereignty in that
+direction. For the Spaniards were by no means pleased at the intrusion
+of other nations into a New World which they desired to monopolize
+entirely for the Spanish Crown. They did not so much mind sharing it,
+along the line agreed upon in the Treaty of Tordesillas, with the
+Portuguese, but the ingress of the English and French infuriated them.
+The Basque people of the north-east corner of Spain were a hardy
+seafaring folk, especially bold in the pursuit of whales in the Bay of
+Biscay, and eager to take a share in the salt-fish trade. This desire
+took them in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to Ireland and
+Iceland. They began to fish off the Newfoundland coasts perhaps as
+early as 1525. About this time also the Emperor Charles V, King of
+Spain, having through one great Portuguese sea captain--Magalhaes
+(Magellan)--discovered the passage from Atlantic to Pacific across
+the extremity of South America, thought by employing another
+Portuguese--Estevao Gomez--to find a similar sea route through North
+America, which would prove a short cut from Europe to China. This was
+the famous "North-west Passage" the search for which drew so many
+great and brave adventurers into the Arctic sea of America between
+1500 and 1853, to be revealed at last by our fellow countrymen, but to
+prove useless to navigation on account of the enormous accumulation of
+ice.
+
+[Footnote 12: Corte-Real's name of Terra Verde ("Greenland") was soon
+dropped in favour of the older English name "New Land" (Newfoundland,
+Terra Nova). This was at once adopted by the French seamen as "Terre
+Neuve".]
+
+Gomez left Corunna in the winter of 1524-5, and reached the
+North-American coast somewhere about Florida. He probably only began
+to investigate closely after he passed into the broad gulf of Maine,
+between Cape Cod and Nova Scotia. Here he sighted from the sea the
+lofty mountains of New Hampshire, and steered for the mouth of the
+Penobscot River (which he named the River of Deer), a title which
+sticks to the locality--in Deer Island--at the present day. But this
+being no opening of a broad strait, he passed on into the Bay of Fundy
+(from Portuguese word, _Fundo_, the bottom of a sack or passage),
+explored its two terminal gulfs, then returned along the coast of Nova
+Scotia,[13] past Cape Sable, and so to the "gut" or Canal of Canso.
+Gomez realized that Cape Breton was an island (we now know that it is
+two islands separated by a narrow watercourse), but thought that Cabot
+Strait was a great bay, and guessed nothing of the Gulf of St.
+Lawrence, and the chance of securing for Spain the possession of this
+mighty waterway into the heart of North America.
+
+[Footnote 13: The name Nova Scotia was not applied to this peninsula
+until 1621, by the British Government. It was at first included with
+New Brunswick under the Spanish name of Norumbega, and after 1603 was
+called by the French "Acadie".]
+
+From Cape North he crossed over to the south coast of Newfoundland,
+and followed this more or less till he came to Cape Race. Newfoundland
+was a "very cold and savage land", and Gomez decided it was no use
+prosecuting any farther his enquiry as to a water passage across North
+America, because, if it existed, it must lie in latitudes of frozen
+sea and be unnavigable.
+
+At different places along the east coast of North America he kidnapped
+natives, and eventually returned to Spain (via Florida and Cuba) with
+a cargo of Amerindian slaves.
+
+He had been preceded, by seven or eight months, in his explorations
+along the same coast by GIOVANNI DA VERRAZANO, a native of Florence,
+who as a navigator and explorer had visited the East, and had
+associated himself a good deal with the shipowners of Dieppe. Ever
+since the issue of Cabot's voyages was known--at any rate from
+1504--ships from Brittany and Normandy had made their way to Cape
+Breton Island and Newfoundland for the cod fisheries. In 1508 a Norman
+named Aubert was sent out by Jean Ango--a great merchant of Dieppe of
+that day--to found a colony in Newfoundland. Aubert failed to do this,
+but he captured and brought away at least seven of the natives, no
+doubt of the Beothik tribe, from Newfoundland to Rouen, with their
+canoe, clothing, and weapons. A good many ships also went out from La
+Rochelle on the west coast of France, and took part in the fishing off
+the coast of Newfoundland: together with the ships of Brittany and
+Dieppe there may have been a French fishing fleet of seventy to eighty
+ships plying every summer season between France, Newfoundland, and
+Cape Breton. So that when "John from Verrazano" offered his services
+to Francis I to make discoveries across the ocean, which should become
+possessions of the French Crown, he was quickly provided with the
+requisite funds and ships.
+
+Verrazano started on the 17th of January, 1524, for the coast of
+North America, but I shall say little about his expedition here,
+because it resulted chiefly in the discovery and mapping of what is
+now the east coast of the United States. He reached as far as the
+south coast of Newfoundland, it is true; he also gave the names of
+Nova Gallia and Francesca to the coast regions of eastern North
+America, and distinctly intended to take possession of these on behalf
+of the French Crown. But his work in this direction did not lead
+directly to the creation of the French colony of Canada, because, when
+he returned from America, Francis I was at war with Spain, and could
+pay no attention to Verrazano's projects. His voyage is worth
+recording in the present volume only for these two reasons: he
+certainly put it into the minds of French people that they might found
+an empire in North America; and he inspired geographers for another
+hundred years with the false idea that the great North American
+Continent had a very narrow waist, like the Isthmus of Panama, and
+that the Pacific Ocean covered the greater part of what is now called
+the United States. This mistake arose from his looking across the
+narrow belts or peninsulas of sand in North Carolina and Virginia, and
+seeing vast stretches of open water to the west. These were found, a
+hundred years afterwards, to be merely large shallow lagoons of sea
+water, but Verrazano thought they were an extension of the Pacific
+Ocean.
+
+Nevertheless, Verrazano's voyage developed into the French
+colonization of Canada, just as Cabot drew the British to
+Newfoundland, Columbus the Spaniards to Central and South America, and
+Amerigo Vespucci showed the Portuguese the way to Brazil. The modern
+nations of western Europe owe the inception of their great colonies in
+America to four Italians.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Jacques Cartier
+
+
+Verrazano and Gomez, and probably the English captain, John Rut, had
+all sought for the opening of a strait of salt water--like Magellan's
+Straits in the far south--which should lead them through the great
+North-American continent to the regions of China and Japan. Yet in
+some incomprehensible way they overlooked the two broad passages to
+the north and south of Newfoundland--the Straits of Belle Isle and of
+Cabot--which would at any rate lead them into the vast Gulf of St.
+Lawrence, and thence to the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes; a
+natural system of waterways connected each with the other and all with
+the Mississippi and Missouri, the Arctic Ocean, and Hudson's Bay; nay,
+more, with the North Pacific also; so that with a few "portages", or
+carryings of canoes from one watershed to another, a traveller of any
+enterprise, accompanied by a sturdy crew, can cross the broad
+continent of North America at its broadest from sea to sea without
+much walking.
+
+Estevao Gomez noticed Cabot Straits between Cape Breton and
+Newfoundland, but thought them only a very deep bay. John Rut and
+others discerned the Straits of Belle Isle as a wide recess in the
+coast rather than the mouth of a channel leading far inland. And yet,
+after thirty years of Breton, English, and Portuguese fishing
+operations in these waters, there must have been glimmerings of the
+existence of the great Gulf of St. Lawrence behind Newfoundland: and
+JACQUES CARTIER (or Quartier), who had probably made already one
+voyage to Newfoundland (besides a visit to Brazil), suspected that
+between Newfoundland and Labrador there lay the opening of the great
+sea passage "leading to China". He proposed himself to Philippe de
+Chabot, the Admiral of France, as the leader of a new French adventure
+to find the North-west Passage, was accepted by King Francis, and at
+the age of forty-three years set out, with two ships, from St. Malo in
+Brittany, on April 20, 1534, ten years after Verrazano's voyage, and
+reached the coast of Newfoundland after a voyage of only twenty days.
+As he sailed northwards, past the deeply indented fiords and bays of
+eastern Newfoundland (the shores of which were still hugged by the
+winter ice), he and his men were much impressed with the incredible
+numbers of the sea fowl settled for nesting purposes on the rocky
+islands, especially on Funk Island.[1] These birds were guillemots,
+puffins, great auks,[2] gannets (called by Cartier _margaulx_), and
+probably gulls and eider duck. To his sailors--always hungry and
+partly fed on salted provisions, as seamen were down to a few years
+ago--this inexhaustible supply of fresh food was a source of great
+enjoyment. They were indifferent, no doubt, to the fishy flavour of
+the auks and the guillemots, and only noticed that they were
+splendidly fat. Moreover, the birds attracted Polar bears "as large as
+cows and as white as swans". The bears would swim off from the shore
+to the islands (unless they could reach them by crossing the ice), and
+the sailors occasionally killed the bears and ate their flesh, which
+they compared in excellence and taste to veal.
+
+[Footnote 1: Funk Island--called by Cartier "the Island of Birds"--is
+only about 3 miles round, and 46 feet above the sea level. It is 3
+miles distant from the coast.]
+
+[Footnote 2: The Great Auk (_Alca impennis_), extinct since about 1844
+in Europe and 1870 in Labrador, once had in ancient times a
+geographical range from Massachusetts and Newfoundland to Iceland,
+Ireland, Scotland, N.E. England, and Denmark. Perhaps nowhere was it
+found so abundantly as on the coasts of Eastern Newfoundland and on
+Funk Island hard by. The Great Auk was in such numbers on the
+north-east coast of Newfoundland that the Amerindians of that country
+and of southern Labrador used it as fuel in the winter time, its body
+being very full of oil and burning with a splendid flame. The French
+seamen called it _pingouin_ ("penguin") from its fatness, and this
+name was much later transferred to the real penguins of the southern
+seas which are quite unrelated to the auks.]
+
+Passing through the Straits of Belle Isle, Cartier's ships entered
+the Gulf of St. Lawrence. They had previously visited the adjoining
+coast of Labrador, and there had encountered their first "natives",
+members of some Algonkin tribe from Canada, who had come north for
+seal fishing (Cartier is clever enough to notice and describe their
+birch-bark canoes). After examining the west coast of Newfoundland,
+Cartier's ships sailed on past the Magdalen Islands (stopping every
+now and then off some islet to collect supplies of sea birds, for the
+rocky ground was covered with them as thickly as a meadow with
+grass).[3] He reached the north coast of Prince Edward Island, and
+this lovely country received from him an enthusiastic description. The
+pine trees, the junipers, yews, elms, poplars, ash, and willows, the
+beeches and the maples, made the forest not only full of delicious and
+stimulating odours, but lovely in its varied tints of green. In the
+natural meadows and forest clearings there were red and white
+currants, gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries, a vetch which
+produced edible peas, and a grass with a grain like rye. The forest
+abounded in pigeons, and the climate was pleasant and warm.
+
+[Footnote 3: On the shores of these islands they noticed "several
+great beasts like oxen, which have two tusks in the mouth similar to
+those of the elephant". These were walruses.]
+
+Later on he coasted New Brunswick, and paused for a time over Chaleur
+Bay, hoping it might be the opening to the strait across the continent
+of which he was in search; but finding it was not, he continued
+northwards till he had almost rounded the Gaspe Peninsula, a course
+which would have led him straight away into the wonderful discovery of
+the St. Lawrence River, but that, being forced by bad weather into
+Gaspe Bay, and perhaps hindered by fog, instead of entering the St.
+Lawrence he sailed right across to Anticosti Island. After that,
+being baffled by bad weather and doubtful as to his resources lasting
+out, he decided to return to France through the Strait of Belle Isle.
+
+So far he had failed to realize two of the most important things in
+the geography of this region: the broad southern entrance into the
+Gulf of St. Lawrence (subsequently called Cabot Strait), which
+separates Newfoundland on the north from Cape Breton Island on the
+south, and the broad entrance into the River St. Lawrence between
+Anticosti Island and the Gaspe Peninsula.
+
+Yet, whilst staying in Gaspe Bay, he had a very important meeting with
+Amerindian natives of the Huron-Iroquois stock, who had come down the
+River St. Lawrence from the neighbourhood of Quebec, fishing for
+mackerel. These bold, friendly people welcomed the French heartily,
+greeting them with songs and dances. But when they saw Cartier erect a
+great cross on the land at the entrance to Gaspe Bay (a cross bearing
+a shield with the arms of France and the letters "Vive le Roi de
+France"), they were ill at ease. It is certain that not one word could
+be understood in language between the two parties, for there were as
+yet no interpreters; but the Amerindians were probably shrewd enough
+to perceive that Cartier was making some claim on the land, and they
+explained by signs that they considered all this country belonged to
+themselves. Nevertheless, Cartier persuaded two youths, the sons of
+one of the chiefs, to go back with him to France on his ship, to learn
+the French language, to see what France looked like, and to return
+afterwards as interpreters. The boys, though they were practically
+kidnapped at first, were soon reconciled to going, especially when
+they were dressed in French clothes!
+
+[Illustration: JACQUES CARTIER]
+
+When Cartier was on his way home he sailed in a north-easterly
+direction in such a way as to overlook the broad channel between the
+Gaspe Peninsula and Anticosti Island, but having rounded the
+easternmost extremity of that large island, he coasted along its
+northern shores until he caught sight of the opening of the Canadian
+channel to the west. He believed then that he had discovered the
+long-looked-for opening of the trans-continental passage, and sailed
+for France with his wonderful news.
+
+On the 19th of May, 1535, Cartier started again from St. Malo with
+three ships, the biggest of which was only 120 tons, while the others
+were respectively 60 and 40 tons capacity. The crew consisted of about
+112 persons, and in addition there were the two Indian youths who had
+been kidnapped on the previous voyage, and were now returning as
+interpreters. Instead, however, of reaching Newfoundland in twenty
+days, he spent five weeks crossing the Atlantic before he reached his
+rendezvous with the other ships at Blanc Sablon, on the south coast of
+Labrador; for the easy access to the Gulf of St. Lawrence through
+Cabot Strait (between Newfoundland and Cape Breton) was not yet
+realized. Once past Anticosti Island, the two Huron interpreters began
+to recognize the scenery.[4] They now explained to Cartier that he had
+entered the estuary of a vast river. This they said he had only to
+pursue in ships and boats and he would reach "Canada" (which was the
+name they gave to the district round about Quebec), and that beyond
+"Canada" no man had ever been known to reach the end of this great
+water; but, they added, it was fresh water, not salt, and this last
+piece of information much disheartened Cartier, who feared that he had
+not, after all, discovered the water route across North America to the
+Pacific Ocean. He therefore turned about and once more searched the
+opposite coast of Labrador most minutely, displaying, as he did so, a
+seamanship which was little else than marvellous, for it is a very
+dangerous coast, the seas are very stormy, and the look-out often
+hampered by a sudden rising of dense fog; there are islands and rocks
+(some of them almost hidden by the water) and sandbanks; but Cartier
+made this survey of southern Labrador without an accident.
+
+[Footnote 4: Anticosti Island received from Cartier the name of "the
+Island of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin", in consequence of his
+having discovered it to be an island on the feast day of that name. It
+did not receive its present title until the late seventeenth century.]
+
+At this period, some three hundred and seventy-five years ago, the
+northern coasts of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and of Anticosti Island
+swarmed with huge walruses, which were described by Cartier as sea
+horses that spent the night on land and the day in the water. They
+have long since been exterminated by the English and French seamen and
+settlers.
+
+At last Cartier set sail for the south-west, intending to explore this
+wonderful river and to reach the kingdom of Canada. According to his
+understanding of the Amerindian interpreters, the waters of the St.
+Lawrence flowed through three great states: _Saguenay_, which was the
+mountainous Gaspe Peninsula and the opposite coast; _Canada_, Quebec
+and its neighbourhood; and _Hochelaga_, the region between Montreal
+and Lake Ontario. At the mouth of the Saguenay River, where Tadoussac
+is now situated, he encountered large numbers of white whales--the
+Beluga. These are really huge porpoises, allied to the narwhals, but
+without the narwhal's exaggerated tusk. When he reached the vicinity
+of the modern Quebec,[5] and his Amerindian interpreters found
+themselves at their actual home (for they were far away from home on a
+fishing expedition when he caught them in Gaspe Bay) there was great
+rejoicing; for they were able to tell their relations of the wonderful
+country to which they had been across the ocean. Cartier was delighted
+with the surroundings of "Canada" (Quebec), near which at that time
+was a large settlement (Stadacona) of Huron Indians under a chief
+named Donnacona. He decided to lay up his ships here for the winter,
+and to pursue the rest of his western explorations in his boats.
+
+[Footnote 5: Then called "Canada". The word Quebec (pronounced
+_Kebek_) means the narrow part of a river.]
+
+But the Amerindians for some reason were not willing that he should go
+any farther, and attempted to scare him from his projects by arranging
+for three of their number to come down river in a canoe, dressed in
+dogs' skins, with their faces blackened, and with bisons' horns
+fastened to their heads. These devils pretended to take no notice of
+the French, but to die suddenly as they reached the shore, while the
+rest of the natives gave vent to howlings of despair and
+consternation. The three devils were pretending to have brought a
+message from a god to these Hurons of "Canada" that the country up
+river (Hochelaga) was so full of ice and snow that it would be death
+for anyone to go there.
+
+However, this made little or no impression on Cartier; but he consented
+to leave a proportion of his party behind with the chief Donnacona as
+hostages, and then started up country in his boats with about seventy
+picked officers and men. On the 2nd of October, 1535, they reached the
+vicinity of the modern Montreal, the chief settlement of Hochelaga.
+The Huron town at the foot of the hills was circular in outline,
+surrounded by a stockade of three rows of upright tree trunks, which
+rose to its highest point in the middle, where the timbers of the
+inner and outward sides sloped to meet one another, the height of the
+central row being about 8 feet above the ground. All round the inside
+there was a platform or rampart on which were stored heavy stones to
+be hurled at any enemy who should attempt to scale the fence. The town
+was entered by only one doorway, and contained about fifty houses
+surrounding an open space whereon the towns-people made their
+bonfires. Each house was about 50 feet long by 12 to 15 feet wide.
+They were roofed with bark, and usually had attics which were
+storerooms for food. In the centre of each of these long houses there
+was a fireplace where the cooking for the whole of the house
+inhabitants was done. Each family had its own room, but each house
+probably contained five families. Almost the only furniture, except
+cooking pots, was mats on which the people sat and slept. The food of
+the people consisted, besides fish and the flesh of beavers and deer,
+of maize and beans. Cartier at once recognized the maize or Indian
+corn as the same grain ("a large millet") as that which he had seen in
+Brazil.
+
+He gives a description of how they made the maize into bread (or
+rather "dampers", "ashcakes"); but as this is not altogether clear, it
+is better to combine it with Champlain's description, written a good
+many years later, but still at a time when the Hurons were unaffected
+by the white man's civilization. According to both Cartier and
+Champlain, the women pounded the corn to meal in a wooden mortar, and
+removed the bran by means of fans made of the bark of trees. From this
+meal they made bread, sometimes mixing with the meal the beans
+(_Phaseolus vulgaris_), which had been boiled and mashed. Or they
+would boil both Indian corn and beans into a thick soup, adding to the
+soup blueberries,[6] dried raspberries, or pieces of deer's fat. The
+meal derived from the corn and beans they would make into bread,
+baking it in the ashes.
+
+[Footnote 6: The Canada Blueberry (_Vaccinium canadense_), called by
+the French _blues_ or _bluets_. These blues were collected and dried
+by the Amerindians, and made a sweet nutriment for eating in the
+winter.]
+
+Or they would take the pounded Indian corn without removing the bran,
+and put two or three handfuls of it into an earthen pot full of water,
+stirring it from time to time, when it boiled, so that it might not
+adhere to the pot. To this was added a small quantity of fish, fresh
+or dry, according to the season, to give a flavour to the _migane_ or
+porridge. When the dried fish was used the porridge smelt very badly
+in the nostrils of Europeans, but worst of all when the porridge was
+mixed with dried venison, which was sometimes nearly putrid! If fish
+was put into this porridge it was boiled whole in the mealy water,
+then taken out without any attempt to remove the fins, scales, or
+entrails, and the whole of the boiled fish was pounded up and put back
+into the porridge. Sometimes a great birch-bark "kettle" would be
+filled with water, fish, and meat, and red-hot stones be dropped in
+till it boiled. Then with a spoon they would collect from the surface
+the fat and oil arising from the fish or meat. This they afterwards
+mixed with the meal of roasted Indian corn, stirring it with this fat
+till they had made a thick soup. Sometimes, however, they were content
+to eat the young corn-cobs freshly roasted, which as a matter of fact
+(with a little salt) is one of the most delicious things in the world.
+Or they would take ears of Indian corn and bury them in wet mud,
+leaving them thus for two or three months; then the cobs would be
+removed and the rotted grain eaten with meat and fish, though it was
+all muddy and smelt horribly. Cartier also noticed that these Huron
+Indians had melons and pumpkins, and described their wampum or shell
+money.[7]
+
+[Footnote 7: Cartier, in Hakluyt's translation, is made to say (I
+modernize the spelling): "They dig their grounds with certain pieces
+of wood as big as half a sword, on which ground groweth their corn,
+which they call 'offici'; it is as big as our small peason.... They
+have also great store of musk melons, pompions, gourds, cucumbers,
+peas, and beans of every colour, yet differing from ours."
+
+Wampum, or shell money (which recalls the shell money of the Pacific
+Islands), consisted either of beads made from the interior parts of
+sea shells or land shells, or of strings of perforated sea shells. The
+most elaborate kind of wampum was that of the Amerindians of Canada
+and the eastern United States, the shell beads of which were generally
+white. The commoner wampum beads were black and violet. Wampum belts
+were made which illustrated events, dates, treaties of peace, &c, by a
+rude symbolism (figures of men and animals, upright lines, &c), and
+these were worked neatly on string by employing different-coloured
+beads.]
+
+From the eminence on which the Huron city stood, Cartier obtained a
+splendid view of rivers and mountains and magnificent forests, and
+called the place then and there, in his Norman French, Mont Real, or
+Royal Eminence, a name which it will probably bear for all time,
+though the actual city of Montreal lies a few miles below.
+
+Montreal was the limit of Cartier's explorations on this journey. He
+returned thence to "Canada" or Stadacona, where his men built a fort
+armed with artillery, and where his ships were anchored. Here he had
+to stay from the middle of November, 1535, to the middle of April,
+1536, his ships being shut in by the ice. The experiences of the
+French during these five months were mostly unhappy. At first Cartier
+gave himself up to the collecting of information. He noticed for the
+first time the smoking of tobacco,[8] and collected information about
+the products and features of "Canada". The Indians told him of great
+lakes in the far west, one of which was so vast that no man had seen
+the end of it. They told him that anyone travelling up the Richelieu
+River (as it was called sixty years later) would eventually reach a
+land in the south where in the winter there was no ice or snow, and
+where fruit and nut trees grew in abundance. Cartier thought that they
+were talking to him of Florida, but their geographical information can
+scarcely have stretched so far; they probably referred to the milder
+regions of New Jersey and Virginia, which would be reached by
+following southwards the valley of the Hudson and keeping to the
+lowlands of the eastern United States.
+
+[Footnote 8: "There groweth also a certain kind of herb whereof in
+summer they make a great provision for all the year, making great
+account of it, and only men use it; and first they cause it to be
+dried in the sun, then wear it about their necks wrapped in a little
+beast's skin made like a bag, together with a hollow piece of stone or
+wood like a pipe. Then when they please they make powder of it and put
+it in one of the ends of the said cornet or pipe, and laying a coal of
+fire upon it at the other end, suck so long that they fill their
+bodies full of smoke, till that it cometh out of their mouth and
+nostrils, even as out of the tunnel of a chimney. They say that this
+doth keep them warm and in health: they never go without some of it
+about them. We ourselves have tried the same smoke, and having put it
+in our mouths, it seemed almost as hot as pepper." The foregoing is
+one of the earliest descriptions of tobacco smoking in any European
+language, the original words being in Cartier's Norman French.]
+
+As the winter set in with its customary Canadian severity the real
+trouble of the French began. They did not suffer from the cold, but
+they were dying of scurvy. This disease, from which the natives also
+suffered to some extent, was due to their eating nothing but salt or
+smoked provisions--forms of meat or fish. They lived, of course, shut
+up in the fort, and Cartier's fixed idea was to keep the Hurons from
+the knowledge of his misfortune, fearing lest, if they realized how
+the garrison was reduced, they might treacherously attack and massacre
+the rest; for in spite of the extravagant joy with which their arrival
+had been greeted, the Amerindians--notably the two interpreters who
+had been to France and returned--showed at intervals signs of disquiet
+and a longing to be rid of these mysterious white men, whose coming
+might involve the country in unknown misfortunes. In January and
+February, also, Donnacona and these two interpreters and many of the
+Huron men had been absent hunting in the forests, so that there was no
+one among the Amerindians to whom the French could turn for
+information regarding this strange disease. At last 25 out of the 112
+who had left France were dead, and of the remainder only 10 men,
+including Cartier, were not grievously ill. Those who were living
+found it sometimes beyond their strength to bury the dead in the
+frozen ground, and simply placed their bodies in deep snow. Once or
+twice, when Cartier left the fort to go out to the ships, he met
+Domagaya, one of the two interpreters, and found that he also was
+suffering from this mysterious disease, though not nearly so badly as
+the French people. On the body of one young man who died of scurvy
+Cartier and his officers, shuddering, made investigations, opening the
+corpse and examining the organs to try and find the cause of death.
+This was on the afternoon of a day on which they had held a solemn
+service before a statue erected to the Virgin Mary on the shore
+opposite to the ships. All who were fit to walk went in procession
+from the fort to the statue, singing penitential psalms and the Litany
+and celebrating Mass.
+
+Some days after this religious service Cartier met the interpreter,
+Domagaya, and to his surprise found him perfectly well and strong. He
+asked him for an explanation, and was told that the medicine which
+cured this disease was made from the leaves and bark of a tree called
+ameda.[9] Cartier then ventured to say that one of his servants was
+sick of this unknown disease, and Domagaya sent for two women, who
+taught the French people how to make an extract from the balsam fir
+for drinking, and how to apply the same liquid to the inflamed skin.
+The effect on the crews was miraculous. In six days all the sick were
+well and strong.
+
+[Footnote 9: This tree was the balsam fir, _Abies balsamea_.]
+
+Then came the sudden spring. Between April 15th and May 1st the ice on
+the river was all melted, and on the 6th May, 1536, Cartier started
+from the vicinity of Quebec to return to France. But before leaving he
+had managed to kidnap Donnacona, the chief of the Huron settlement,
+and six or seven other Amerindians, amongst them Tainyoanyi, one of
+the two interpreters who had already been to France. He seized these
+men, it appears, partly because he wanted hostages and had good reason
+to fear that the Indians meditated a treacherous attack on his ships
+before they could get away. He also wished for native witnesses at
+Court, when he reached France, to testify to the truth of his
+discoveries, and even more to convince the King of France that there
+was great profit to be obtained from giving effect to Cartier's
+explorations. The chief, Donnacona, was full of wonderful stories of
+the Saguenay region, and of the great lakes to the northwards of
+Quebec. Probably he was only alluding to the wealth of copper now
+known to exist in northern Canada, but to Cartier and the other
+Frenchmen it seemed as though he spoke of gold and silver, rubies, and
+other precious stones.
+
+Donnacona's people howled and wept when their chief was seized; but
+Cartier obliged the chief to reassure them, and to say that the French
+had promised to bring him back after he had paid a visit to their
+great king, who would return him to his country with great presents.
+As a matter of fact, not one of these Indians rapt away by Cartier
+ever saw Canada again. But this was not the fault of Cartier, but of
+the distractions of the times which turned away the thoughts of King
+Francis I from American adventures. The Indians were well and kindly
+treated in France, but all of them died there before Cartier left St.
+Malo to return to Canada in 1541.
+
+One advantage he derived from sailing away with these hostages was (no
+doubt) that they could give him geographical information of importance
+which materially shortened the return journey. For the first time he
+made use of the broad strait between Anticosti Island and Gaspe
+Peninsula, and, better still, entered the Atlantic, not by the
+dangerous northern route through the straits of Belle Isle, but by
+means of Cabot Strait, between Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island. Of
+these discoveries he availed himself on his third and last voyage in
+1541.
+
+When in that year he once more anchored his ships near Quebec he found
+the attitude of the Hurons changed. They enquired about their friends
+and relations who had been carried off five years before, and although
+they pretended to be reconciled to their fate when they heard (not
+altogether truly) that one or two were dead, and the others had become
+great lords in France and had married French women, they really felt a
+disappointment so bitter and a hostility so great that Cartier guessed
+their expressions of welcome to be false. However, he sent back to
+France two of the ships under his command and beached the other three,
+landed his stores, built two forts at Cap Rouge, above and below, and
+then started off with a few of his men and two boats to revisit the
+country of Hochelaga. Here he intended to examine the three rapids or
+"saults"--interruptions to the navigation of the St. Lawrence--which
+he had observed on his previous journey, and which were later named
+the La Chine Rapids (in the belief that they were obstacles on the
+river route to China). But these falls proved insuperable obstacles to
+his boats, and he gave up any further idea of westward exploration,
+returned to his forts and ships near Quebec, and there laid the
+foundations of a fortified town, which he called Charlesbourg Royal.
+Here he spent a very difficult winter, the Hurons in the neighbourhood
+becoming increasingly hostile, and at last, when the spring came, as
+he had received no relief from France, he took to his three ships,
+abandoned Charlesbourg Royal (having probably to do some fighting
+before he could get safely away) and thence sailed for France. Off the
+Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland he met the other ships of the
+expedition which was to have occupied Canada for France. These were
+under the command of the Sieur de Roberval, a French nobleman, who had
+really been made head of the whole enterprise, with Cartier as a
+subordinate officer, but who, the year before, had allowed Cartier to
+go off to Canada and prepare the way, promising to follow immediately.
+The interview between Cartier and Roberval, near where the capital of
+Newfoundland (St. John's) now stands, was a stormy one. Roberval
+ordered Cartier to return at once to Charlesbourg and await his
+arrival. However, in the middle of the night which followed this
+interview, Cartier took advantage of a favourable wind and set sail
+for France, arriving soon afterwards at St. Malo.
+
+But Roberval arrived at Charlesbourg (going the roundabout way through
+the straits of Belle Isle, for Cartier had told him nothing of the
+convenient passage through Cabot Strait), and there spent the winter
+of 1542-3, sending his ships back to France. This winter was one of
+horrors. Roberval was a headstrong, passionate man, perfectly reckless
+of human life. He maintained discipline by ferocious sentences,
+putting many of his men in irons, whipping others cruelly, women as
+well as men, and shooting those who seemed the most rebellious. Even
+the Indians were moved to pity, and wept at the sight of the woes of
+these unhappy French men and women under the control of a bloodthirsty
+tyrant, and many of them dying of scurvy, or miserably weak from that
+disease.[10]
+
+[Footnote 10: A story was subsequently told of Roberval's stern
+treatment which had a germ of truth in it, though it has since been
+the foundation of many a romance. On the journey out from France it is
+said that Roberval took with him his niece Marguerite, a high-born
+lady, who was accompanied by an old companion or nurse. Marguerite was
+travelling with her uncle because, unknown to him, she had a lover who
+had sailed with him on this expedition and whom she hoped to marry. As
+they crossed the Atlantic these facts leaked out, and Roberval
+resolved to bide his time and punish his niece for her deception. As
+they passed the coast of Southern Labrador Marguerite and her old
+nurse were seized and put into a boat, Roberval ordering his sailors
+to row them ashore to an island, and leave them to their fate. They
+were given four guns with ammunition and a small supply of provisions.
+But, as the boat was leaving the ship, Marguerite's lover threw
+himself into the sea and swam to the island. Here, according to the
+story which Marguerite is supposed to have told afterwards, they
+endeavoured to live by killing the wild animals and eating their
+flesh; but her lover-husband died, so also did her child soon after it
+was born, and then the old nurse, and the unhappy Marguerite was left
+alone with the wild beasts, especially the white Polar bears, who
+thronged round her hut. Nevertheless she kept them at bay with her
+arquebus, and managed somehow to support an existence, until after
+nineteen months' isolation the ascending smoke of her fire was seen by
+people on one of the many fishing vessels which, by this time,
+frequented the coasts of Newfoundland. She was taken off the island
+and restored to her home in France. The island to which this tradition
+more especially relates is now called Grand Meccatina.]
+
+However, when the weather was warm again, in June, 1543, Roberval
+started up the St. Lawrence River in boats to reach the wonderful
+country of Saguenay. Apparently he met with little success, and, being
+relieved by French ships in the late summer of 1543, he returned to
+France.
+
+Thus the splendid work achieved by Cartier seemed to have come to
+nothing, for neither he nor Roberval revisited America. The French
+settlement near Quebec was abandoned, so far as the officers of the
+French king were concerned, and between 1545 and about 1583, if any
+other Frenchman or European visited Canada it was some private
+adventurer who traded with the natives in furs, or Basques from France
+and Spain who frequented the waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence on
+account of the abundance of whales, walruses, and seals. In fact, at
+the close of the sixteenth century, the Spanish Basques had
+established themselves on shore at Tadoussac and other places, and
+seemed likely to colonize the country.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Elizabethan Pioneers in North America
+
+
+Except that the ships of Bristol still no doubt continued to resort to
+the banks of Newfoundland for fishing, and that even the captains of
+these ships were occasionally elected admirals of the French, Basque,
+Portuguese, and English fishing fleets during the summer, the English,
+as a nation, took no part in claiming political dominion over North
+America after the voyage of Captain John Rut in 1527. This was the
+fault of Sebastian Cabot, the son of the man who founded British
+America, and who had returned to England long afterwards as the Grand
+Pilot appointed by Edward VI to further the discovery of a northern
+sea passage to China. Through him the attention of adventurers for a
+time was diverted from America to the "discovery" of Russia (as it has
+been called). The efforts of Sebastion Cabot were directed towards the
+revelation of a north-east passage by way of Arctic Russia to the
+Pacific, rather than past Newfoundland and Labrador and across Arctic
+America.
+
+But as soon as Elizabeth came to the throne the sea adventurers of
+Britain, freed from any subservience to Spanish wishes, developed
+maritime intercourse between England, Morocco, and West Africa on the
+one hand, and Tropical and North America on the other. Once more the
+discovery of the North-west Passage across America to China came into
+favour. MARTIN FROBISHER[1] offered himself as a discoverer, and the
+Earl of Warwick found the means which provided him with two small
+sailing vessels of 25 and 20 tons each, besides a pinnace of 10
+tons.[2] Queen Elizabeth confined herself, in the way of
+encouragement, to waving her lily hand from her palace of Greenwich as
+these three little boats dropped down the Thames on the 8th of June,
+1576. She also sent them "an honourable message", which no doubt
+reached them at Tilbury.
+
+[Footnote 1: The name was also spelt Furbusher, and in other ways. He
+became Sir Martin Frobisher over the wars of the Armada, and died Lord
+High Admiral of England in 1592.]
+
+[Footnote 2: It may be of interest to set forth the kind of rations
+shipped in those Elizabethan times for the food of the sailors.
+According to Frobisher's accounts these consisted of salted beef, salt
+pork, salt fish, biscuit, meal for making bread, dried peas, oatmeal,
+rice, cheese, butter, beer, and wine, with brandy for emergencies. As
+regards beer, the men were to have a ration of 1 gallon a day each.
+Altogether it may be said that these rations were superior in
+variety--and no doubt in quality--to the food given to seamen in the
+British merchant marine in the nineteenth century.]
+
+But the pinnace was soon swallowed up in the high seas; the seamen in
+the vessel of 20 tons lost heart and turned their ship homewards.
+Frobisher alone, in his 25-ton bark, sailed on and on across the
+stormy Atlantic, past the south end of Greenland, and over the great
+gulf that separates Greenland from Labrador. He missed the entrance to
+Hudson's Bay, but reached a great "island" which he named Meta
+Incognita[3]. Here he gathered up stones and, as he believed,
+minerals, besides capturing at least one Eskimo, and then returned.
+
+[Footnote 3: We now know Meta Incognita to be the southernmost
+peninsula of the vast Baffin Island.]
+
+One of his stones was declared by the refiners of London to contain
+gold. There was at once--as we should say in modern slang--a boom for
+these Arctic regions. Queen Elizabeth took part in it, and on the 27th
+of May, 1577, a considerable fleet, under the command of Frobisher,
+sailed past the Orkneys for the south end of Greenland. It did not
+reach as far as Meta Incognita, but it brought back large heaps of
+earth and pieces of rock, probably from northern Labrador, which
+almost certainly contained mica schist, and were therefore believed
+to be full of gold. The following year 1578, Frobisher started on his
+third American voyage with a fleet of fifteen vessels, mainly financed
+by Queen Elizabeth, and manned to a great extent by the sons of the
+aristocracy, besides a hundred persons who were going out as
+colonists. For this region of ice and snow which was believed to be a
+mass of gold-bearing rocks! But the result was one of bitter
+disappointment. The captains were bewildered by the immense icebergs,
+"so vast that, as they melted, torrents poured from them in sparkling
+waterfalls". One iceberg toppled over on to a ship and crushed it,
+though most of the sailors were picked up in the sea and saved. In the
+thick mists the greater part of the fleet blundered into Hudson's
+Straits, yet did not realize that they had found a passage into the
+heart of Canada. At last, disgusted with this land of bare rocks, ice,
+and snow, they filled up the ships with cargoes of stones supposed to
+contain gold, and straggled back to England. No gold was extracted,
+however, from these cargoes, and much discouragement ensued.
+
+SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT, one of the brilliant figures of Elizabeth's
+reign--scholar, poet, courageous adventurer, and man of
+chivalry--stimulated by the discoveries of Frobisher, obtained a
+patent or charter in 1578, and, after several unsuccessful attempts,
+led an expedition of small sailing ships to Newfoundland, where he
+entered St. John's Bay, and in the presence of the Basque, Portuguese,
+and Breton fishermen took formal possession of the country for Queen
+Elizabeth, raising a pillar on which the arms of England were engraved
+as a token. He then proceeded to grant lands to the fishermen to
+reassure them, and loaded his ships with rocks brought from the
+interior mountains and supposed to contain minerals. But in his
+further explorations of the southern coast of Newfoundland one of the
+ships was lost and nearly a hundred men intended as colonists were
+drowned.
+
+Gilbert then determined to return to England in his small frigate of
+10 tons named the _Squirrel_. He was accompanied by a larger vessel,
+the _Golden Hinde_, but refused to leave the men on the _Squirrel_ to
+their fate. Consequently, between the Azores and the north coast of
+Spain, when the _Squirrel_ was overwhelmed by the heavy seas, Sir
+Humphrey Gilbert perished together with all on board.
+
+In spite, however, of the disappointing results of Gilbert's attempt
+to found a colony in Newfoundland, the importance of the cod fishery
+and the ivory tusks and oil of the walruses drew ever more and more
+ships from Bristol and Devonshire to the coasts of that great island
+and to the Gulf of St. Lawrence beyond. In 1592 the English
+adventurers got as far west as Anticosti Island (in a ship from
+Bristol), and in 1597 there is the first record of English ships (from
+London--the _Hopewell_ and the _Chancewell_) sailing up the St.
+Lawrence River, perhaps as far west as Quebec.
+
+In 1602, stimulated by Sir Walter Raleigh,[4] Bartholomew Gosnold
+sailed direct to the coast of North America south of the Newfoundland
+latitudes, and anchored his bark off the coast of Massachusetts on the
+26th of March, 1602. Failing to find a good harbour here, he stood out
+for the south and definitely discovered and named Cape Cod, not far
+from the modern city of Boston. From Cape Cod he made his way to the
+Elizabeth Islands in Buzzard's Bay, and here he built a storehouse and
+fort, and may be said to have laid the foundations of the future
+colony of New England. He brought back with him a cargo of sassafras
+root, which was then much esteemed as a valuable medicine and a remedy
+for almost all diseases.
+
+[Footnote 4: In 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh, the half-brother of Sir
+Humphrey Gilbert, financed an expedition to sail to the coast of North
+America in a more southerly direction. In this way was founded the
+(afterwards abandoned) colony of Roanoke, in North Carolina. It was to
+this region that Queen Elizabeth applied the title of Virginia, which
+some years afterwards was transferred to the first English colony on
+the James River.]
+
+Subsequent expeditions of English ships explored and mapped the coast
+of Maine, and took on board Amerindians for exhibition in England.
+Their adventures, together with those of the colonists farther south,
+led to the creation of chartered companies, and to the great British
+colonies of New England, New York, Virginia, the Carolinas, and
+Georgia, which were to become in time the United States of America--a
+vast field of adventure which we cannot follow farther in this book.
+
+As regards Newfoundland, James I, in 1610, granted a patent to a
+Bristol merchant for the foundation there of a colony, and although
+this attempt, and another under Sir George Calvert (Lord Baltimore) in
+1616, came almost to nothing through the attacks of the French and the
+dislike of the crews of the fishing vessels to permanent settlers who
+might interfere with the fishing industry, the English colonization of
+Newfoundland to some extent caught hold, so that in 1650 there were
+about two thousand colonists of English descent along the east and
+south-east coasts of the island. But settlement was prohibited within
+six miles of the shore, to please the fishermen, and this regulation
+checked for more than two hundred years the colonization of
+Newfoundland.
+
+Nova Scotia as a British colony also came into being as another result
+of these adventurous British expeditions to North America in the reign
+of James I. Under the name of Acadie this region had been declared to
+be a portion of New France by De Monts and Champlain in 1604-14. But
+the English colonists in 1614 drove the French out of the peninsula of
+Nova Scotia on the plea that it was a part of the discoveries made by
+the Cabots on behalf of the British Crown. In 1621 James I gave a
+grant of all this territory to Sir William Alexander under the name of
+Nova Scotia, and both Charles I and Cromwell encouraged settlement in
+this beautiful region. When Charles II ceded it to France in 1667 the
+English and Scottish colonists who were residing there, and the
+English settlers of New England, refused to recognize the effects of
+the Treaty of Breda, and so harassed the French in the years which
+followed that in 1713 Nova Scotia was, together with Newfoundland,
+recognized as belonging to Great Britain. The French colonists were
+allowed to remain, but during the course of the eighteenth century
+they combined with the Amerindians (who liked the French and disliked
+the British) and made the position of the British colonists so
+precarious that they were finally expelled and obliged to transfer
+themselves to Louisiana and Canada. This was the departure of the
+Acadians so touchingly described by Longfellow.
+
+The British had become tenacious of their rights over the east coast
+of Newfoundland, because from the middle of the seventeenth century
+onwards they were becoming increasingly interested in the whale
+fisheries and the fur trade of the lands bordering on Hudson's Bay,
+and would not tolerate any blocking of the sea route thither by the
+French.
+
+In the explorations of Arctic America, Frobisher's expeditions had
+been succeeded by those of JOHN DAVIS, who in the course of three
+voyages, beginning in June, 1585, passed the entrance of Hudson's
+Straits and reached a point as far north as 72 deg. 41', a lofty granite
+island, which he named Sanderson's Hope. He saw beyond him a great
+sea, free, large, very salt, and blue, unobstructed by ice and of an
+unsearchable depth, and believed that he had completely discovered the
+eastern entrance of the North-West Passage.
+
+[Illustration: ICEBERGS AND POLAR BEARS]
+
+HENRY HUDSON, the great English navigator, who had made two voyages
+(1607-8) for the English-Moscovy Company to discover a north-east
+passage to India, past Siberia, commanded a third experiment in 1609
+at the expense of the Dutch East India Company. He was to discover the
+North-West Passage. For this purpose he entered the river now named
+the Hudson, but soon found it was only a river; though he returned to
+Holland with such an encouraging account of the surrounding country
+that the Dutch a little later on, founded on the banks of the Hudson
+River their colony of New Amsterdam (afterwards the State of New
+York). In 1610 Hudson accepted a British commission to sail beyond
+where Davis and Frobisher had passed, and once more seek for the
+north-west passage to China. Instead he found the way into Hudson's
+Bay. Here his men, alarmed at the idea of being lost in these regions
+of ice and snow, mutinied against him, placed him and those who were
+faithful to him in a boat, and cast them off, themselves returning to
+England with the news of his discovery. Hudson was never heard of
+again, and, strange to say, the mutineers apparently received no
+punishment.
+
+Between 1602 and 1668, English adventurers from London and Bristol,
+notable amongst whom were WILLIAM BAFFIN, LUKE FOX, and CAPTAIN JAMES,
+mapped the coasts of Hudson's Bay and Baffin's Bay and brought to the
+notice of merchants in England the abundance of whales in these Arctic
+waters, and of fur-bearing beasts and fur-trading Indians in the
+region of Hudson's Bay.
+
+This last point was most forcibly presented to Charles II and his
+Government by a disappointed French Canadian, Pierre Esprit Radisson,
+whose adventures will later on be described. Radisson, conceiving
+himself to be badly treated by the French Governor of Canada, crossed
+over to England with his brother-in-law, Chouart, and the two were
+warmly taken up by Prince Rupert of Bavaria, the cousin of Charles II.
+They were sent out by Prince Rupert in command of an expedition
+financed by him and a number of London merchants, and in 1669 the New
+England captain, Gillam, returned to England with Chouart and the
+first cargo of furs from Hudson's Bay. This cargo so completely met
+the expectations of those who had promoted the venture that it led in
+1670 to the foundation of the Governor and Company of Adventurers of
+England trading into Hudson's Bay, a company chartered by Charles II
+and presided over by Prince Rupert, and an association which proved to
+be the germ of British North America, of the vast three-quarters of
+the present Dominion of Canada.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Champlain and the Foundation of Canada
+
+
+From the first voyage of Cartier onwards, Canada was called
+intermittently New France, and its possibilities were not lost sight
+of by a few intelligent Frenchmen on account of the fur trade. Amongst
+these was Amyard de Chastes, at one time Governor of Dieppe, who got
+into correspondence with the adventurers who had settled as fur
+traders at Tadoussac, prominent amongst whom was Du Pont-Grave. De
+Chastes dispatched with Pont-Grave a young man whose acquaintance he
+had just made, SAMUEL CHAMPLAIN.[1] This was the man who, more than
+any other, created French Canada.
+
+[Footnote 1: Afterwards the Sieur de Champlain. The title of _Sieur_
+(from the Latin _Senior_) is the origin of the English "sir", and is
+about equivalent to an English baronetcy.]
+
+Champlain had had already a most adventurous life. He was born about
+1567, at Brouage, in the Saintonge, opposite to the Island of Heron,
+on the coast of western France. From his earliest years he had a
+passion for the sea, but he also served as a soldier for six years.
+His father had been a sea captain, and his uncle as an experienced
+navigator was commissioned by the King of Spain to transport by sea to
+that country the remainder of the Spanish soldiers who had been
+serving in Brittany. The uncle took his nephew with him. Young
+Champlain when in Spain managed to ingratiate himself so much with the
+Spanish authorities that he was actually commissioned as a captain to
+take a king's ship out to the West Indies. No sooner did he reach
+Spanish America than he availed himself of the first chance to
+explore it. For two years he travelled over Cuba, and above all
+Mexico. He visited the narrowest part of Central America and conceived
+the possibility of making a trans-oceanic canal across the Panama
+isthmus.
+
+When he got back to France he placed before Henry IV a report on
+Spanish Central America, together with a project for making a canal at
+Panama. Henry IV was so pleased with his work and enterprise that he
+gave him a pension and the title of Geographer to the King. Shortly
+afterwards he met Governor de Chastes at Dieppe, and was by him sent
+out to Canada. The ship which carried Champlain, PONT-GRAVE,[2] the
+SIEUR DE MONTS,[3] and other French adventurers (together with two
+Amerindian interpreters whom Pont-Grave had brought from Canada to
+learn French) arrived at Tadoussac on May 24, 1603.
+
+[Footnote 2: Correctly written this was Francois Grave, Sieur du
+Pont.]
+
+[Footnote 3: The full name was Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts.
+Including de Champlain and de Poutrincourt, who will be described
+later, we have here the four great heroes who founded French Canada.]
+
+Champlain lost no time in commencing his explorations. Tadoussac was
+at the mouth of an important river, called by the French the Saguenay,
+a name which they also applied to the mysterious and wonderful country
+through which it flowed in the far north; a country rich in copper and
+possibly other precious metals. Champlain ascended the Saguenay River
+for sixty miles as far as the rapids of Chicoutima. The Amerindians
+whom he met here told him of Lake St. John, lying at a short distance
+to the west, and that beyond this lake and the many streams which
+entered it there lay a region of uplands strewn with other lakes and
+pools; and farther away still began the sloping of the land to the
+north till the traveller sighted a great arm of the salt sea, and
+found himself amongst tribes (probably the Eskimo) who ate raw flesh,
+and to the Indians appeared absolute savages.[4] This was probably
+the first allusion, recorded by a European, to the existence of
+Hudson's Bay, that huge inlet of the sea, which is one of the leading
+features in the geography of British North America.
+
+[Footnote 4: The real name for this remarkable people, the Eskimo, is,
+in Alaska and Arctic North America, _Innuit_, and in Labrador and
+Greenland, _Karalit_. Eskimo (in French, _Esquimaux_) is said to be a
+corruption of the Montagnais-Indian word, Eskimantsik, meaning "eaters
+of raw flesh".]
+
+The Montagnais Indians round about Tadoussac received Champlain with
+great protestations of friendship, and at the headquarters of their
+principal chief or "Sagamore" celebrated this new friendship and
+alliance with a feast in a very large hut. The banquet, as usual, was
+preceded by a long address from the Sagamore in answer to the
+description of France, given by one of the Indian interpreters. The
+address was accompanied by the solemn smoking of tobacco, and at every
+pause in this grave oration the natives present shouted with one
+voice: "Ho! ho! ho!" The repast consisted of elk's meat (which struck
+the Frenchmen as being like beef), also the flesh of bear, seal,
+beaver, and wild fowl. There were eight or ten stone boilers or
+cauldrons full of meats in the middle of the great hut, separated each
+six feet from each other, and each one having its own fire. Every
+native used a porringer or vessel made of birch bark. When the meat
+was cooked a man in authority distributed it to each person. But
+Champlain thought the Indians ate in a very filthy manner. When their
+hands were covered with fat or grease they would rub them on their own
+heads or on the hair of their dogs. Before the meat was cooked each
+guest arose, took a dog, and hopped round the boilers from one end of
+the great hut to the other. Arriving in front of the chief, the
+Montagnais Indian feaster would throw his dog violently to the ground,
+exclaiming: "Ho! ho! ho!" after which he returned to his place.
+
+At the close of the banquet every one danced, with the skulls of
+their Iroquois enemies slung over their backs. As they danced they
+slapped their knees with their hands, and shouted: "Ho! ho! ho!" till
+they were out of breath.
+
+The huts of these Indians were low and made like tents, being covered
+with the bark of the birch tree. An opening about a foot of the top
+was left uncovered to admit light and to allow the smoke to escape.
+Though low, the huts were sometimes quite large, and would accommodate
+ten families. These slept higgledy-piggledy on skins, with their dogs
+amongst them. The dogs in appearance were something like what we know
+as Eskimo dogs, and also rather resembled the Chinese chow, with broad
+heads and rather short muzzles, prick ears, and a tail inclined to
+curl over the back. "All these people have a very cheerful
+disposition, laughing often, yet at the same time they are somewhat
+phlegmatic. They talk very deliberately, as if desiring to make
+themselves well understood, and, stopping suddenly, they reflect for a
+long time, when they resume their discourse."
+
+They were agile, well-proportioned people, who in the summertime went
+about nearly naked, but in the winter were covered with good furs of
+elk, otter, beaver, bear, seal, and deer. The colour of their skin was
+usually a pale olive, but the women for some reason made themselves
+much darker-skinned than the men by rubbing their bodies with pigments
+which turned them to a dark brown. At times they suffered very much
+from lack of food, being obliged then to frequent the shore of the
+river or gulf to obtain shellfish. When pressed very hard by famine
+they would eat their dogs (their only domestic animal) and even the
+leather of the skins with which they clothed themselves. In the autumn
+they were much given to fishing for eels, and they dried a good deal
+of eel flesh, to last them through the winter. During the height of
+the winter they hunted the beaver, and later on the elk. Though they
+ate wild roots and fruits whenever they could obtain them, they do
+not seem to have cultivated any grain or vegetables. In the early
+spring they were sometimes dying of hunger, and looked so thin and
+haggard that they were mere walking skeletons. They were then ready to
+eat carrion that was putrid, so that it is little wonder that they
+suffered much from scurvy.
+
+Yet the rivers and the gulf abounded in fish, and as soon as the
+waters were unlocked by the melting of the ice in April, the surviving
+Indians rapidly grew fat and well, and of course the late summer and
+the autumn brought them nuts (hickory and other kinds of walnut, and
+hazel nuts), wild cherries, wild plums, raspberries, strawberries,
+gooseberries, blackberries, currants,[5] cranberries, and grapes.
+
+[Footnote 5: The wild currants so often mentioned by the early
+explorers of Canada are often referred to as red, green, and blue. The
+blue currants are really the black currant, now so familiar to our
+kitchen gardens (_Ribes nigrum_). This, together with the red currant
+(_Ribes rubrum_), grows throughout North America, Siberia, and eastern
+Europe. The unripe fruit may have been the green currants alluded to
+by Champlain, or these may have been the white variety of our gardens.
+The two species of wild strawberry which figure so frequently in the
+stories of these early explorers are _Fragaria vesca_ and _F.
+virginiana_. From the last-named is derived the cultivated strawberry
+of Europe. The wild strawberries of North America were larger than
+those of Europe. Champlain does not himself allude to gooseberries
+(unless they are his _groseilles vertes_), but later travellers do.
+Three or more kinds of gooseberry grow wild in Canada, but they are
+different from the European species. The blueberry so often Mentioned
+by Champlain (bluets or blues) was _Vaccinium canadense_.]
+
+Champlain observed amongst them for the first time the far-famed
+Amerindian snowshoes, which he compares very aptly for shape to a
+racquet used in tennis.
+
+Champlain next visited the site of Stadacona, but there was no longer
+any settlement of Europeans at that place, nor were the native
+Amerindians the descendants of the Hurons that had received Jacques
+Cartier. For the first time the name Quebec (pronounced Kebek) is
+applied to this point where the great River St. Lawrence narrows
+before dividing to encircle the Isle of Orleans. In fact, Quebec meant
+in the Algonkin speech a place where a river narrows; for a tribe of
+the great Algonkin family, _the_ Algonkins, allied to the tribes of
+Maine and New Brunswick, had replaced the Hurons as the native
+inhabitants of this region.
+
+On the shore of Quebec he noticed "diamonds" in some slate rocks--no
+doubt quartz crystals. Proceeding on up the River St. Lawrence he
+observed the extensive woods of fir and cypress (some kind of _Thuja_
+or _Juniper_), the undergrowth of vines, "wild pears", hazel nuts,
+cherries, red currants and green currants, and "certain little
+radishes of the size of a small nut, resembling truffles in taste,
+which are very good when roasted or boiled". As they advanced towards
+the interior the country became increasingly mountainous on the south
+(the green mountains of New Hampshire), and was more and more
+beautiful--"the pleasantest land yet seen". Landing on the south bank
+of the St. Lawrence, west of the entrance of the river of the Iroquois
+(the Richelieu), he found magnificent forests, which, besides the
+trees already mentioned, included oaks, chestnuts, maples, pines,
+walnut-like nut trees,[6] aspens, poplars, and beeches; with climbing
+hops and vines, strawberries trailing over the ground, and raspberry
+canes and currant bushes "growing in the thick grass". These splendid
+woods on the islands and banks of the broad river were full of game:
+elks,[7] wapiti deer, Virginian deer, bears, porcupines, hares, foxes,
+beavers, otters, and musk rats, besides many animals he could not
+recognize.
+
+[Footnote 6: Of the genera _Juglans_ and _Carya_.]
+
+[Footnote 7: The huge deer of the genus _Alces_. Elk is the old
+Scandinavian name. _Moose_, derived from the Kri language, is the
+Canadian term, "Elk" being misapplied to the wapiti (red) deer.
+Champlain calls the elk _orignac_, its name in Algonkin.]
+
+At last his little expedition in "a skiff and canoe" had to draw into
+the bank, warned by the noise that they were approaching a great fall
+of water--the La Chine or St. Louis Rapids. Champlain wrote: "I saw,
+to my astonishment, a torrent of water descending with an impetuosity
+such as I have never before witnessed.... It descends as if in steps,
+and at each descent there is a remarkable boiling, owing to the force
+and swiftness with which the water traverses the fall, which is about
+a league in length.... The territory on the side of the fall where we
+went overland consists, so far as we saw it, of very open wood, where
+one can go with his armour without much difficulty."
+
+From the Algonkin Indians in the neighbourhood of these St. Louis
+Rapids, and also from those living near Quebec, Champlain obtained a
+good deal of geographical information to add to his own observations.
+He was given an idea, more or less correct, of Lake Ontario, the Falls
+of Niagara, Lake Erie and Lake Huron, and perhaps also of Lake
+Superior, a sea so vast, said the Amerindians, that the sun set on its
+horizon. This sheet of water, Champlain calculated, must be 1200 miles
+distant to the west, and therefore identical with the "Mer du sud"
+(Pacific Ocean), which all North-American explorers for three
+centuries wished to reach.
+
+After collecting much information about possible copper mines in the
+regions north and south of the Lower St. Lawrence, and of silver[8] in
+New Brunswick or Nova Scotia, and a terrible story which he more than
+half believed about a monster of prodigious size, the _Gougou_,[9]
+Champlain set sail for France at the end of August, 1603.
+
+[Footnote 8: Or lead mixed with silver. The local natives used this
+ore, which was white when beaten, for their arrowheads.]
+
+[Footnote 9: The Gougou dwelt on the small island of Miscon, to the
+east of the Bay of Chaleurs. It had the form of a woman but was about
+a hundred feet high. Its habit was to catch and devour men and women,
+whom it first placed in a pocket capacious enough to hold a small
+ship. Its roarings and hissings could be heard at times coming from
+the island of Miscon, where the Gougou lay concealed. Even a
+Frenchman, the Sieur Prevert, had heard these noises. Probably this
+islet had a whirlpool communicating with a cavern into which fishermen
+were sucked by the current.]
+
+In April, 1604, Champlain accompanied the Sieur de Monts (who had
+succeeded the dead Amyard de Chastes as head of a chartered
+fur-trading association) in a fresh expedition to North America,
+together with a hundred and twenty artisans and several noblemen.
+They were to occupy the lands of "Cadie" (Acadia, Nova Scotia),
+Canada, and other places in New France. De Monts thought Tadoussac and
+Quebec too cold in wintertime, and preferred the sunnier east coast
+regions. He aimed indeed at colonizing what is now New England.
+
+On the way to Nova Scotia, the expedition was nearly wrecked on Sable
+Island, about one hundred and twenty miles south of Cape Breton
+Island, and noticed there the large red cattle run wild from the bulls
+and cows landed on Sable Island by the Portuguese some sixty years
+earlier. (The Portuguese of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
+deserved well of humanity for the generous way in which they left
+cattle, goats, pigs, and rabbits to run wild on desert islands and
+serve as provender for shipwrecked mariners like Robinson Crusoe.)
+Champlain also speaks of the "fine large black foxes" which he and
+other voyagers noticed on Sable Island. How they came there is a
+mystery, unless the island had once been part of the mainland.
+
+This same Sable Island had been the scene of an extraordinary
+experiment at the end of the previous century. In 1598 the Marquis de
+la Roche, given a commission to colonize New France, sailed in a small
+ship for North America with sixty convicts from French prisons as
+colonists. He landed them on Sable Island, and went away to look for
+some good site for his colony. But then a storm arose, and his little
+ship was literally blown back to France. The convicts, abandoned thus,
+built themselves shelters out of the driftwood of wrecks; killed and
+ate the cattle and caught fish. They made themselves warm clothes out
+of the skins of the seals which frequented the island coast in
+thousands. But these convicts quarrelled and fought among themselves
+so fiercely that when at last a ship from Normandy came to take them
+away, there were only twelve left--twelve shaggy men with long tangled
+hair and beards; and, a legend says, in addition a Franciscan monk
+who had been landed on the island with them as a kind of missionary or
+chaplain, and who had been so heartbroken at their bloody quarrels and
+horrible deeds that when the Norman ship arrived to take the castaways
+back to France, the Franciscan refused to go with them, believing
+himself to be dying and wishing to end his life undisturbed. So he was
+left behind. But after the ship had sailed away he slowly mended, grew
+well and strong, and cultivated eagerly his little garden. For food he
+ate the whelks, mussels, and oysters that were so abundant on the
+shore. Occasionally ships (then as now) were wrecked on Sable Island
+in stormy weather, and the good monk ministered to the mariners who
+reached the shore. Also he was visited, ever and again, by the Breton
+fishing boats, which brought him supplies of necessaries and the bread
+and wine for celebrating Mass. Long after his death his spirit was
+thought to haunt the desolate island.
+
+Champlain and his companions passed on from Sable Island to the
+south-east coast of Nova Scotia, noticing as they landed here and
+there the abundance of rabbits[10] and sea birds, especially the Great
+Auk, of which they killed numbers with sticks, cormorants (whose fishy
+eggs they ate with enjoyment), puffins, guillemots, gulls, terns,
+scissorbills, divers, ospreys, buzzards, and falcons; and no doubt the
+typical American white-tailed sea eagles, ravens, ducks, geese,
+curlews, herons, and cranes. Here and there they found the shore
+"completely covered with sea wolves"--seals, of course, probably the
+common seal and the grey seal. Of these they captured as many as they
+wanted, for the seals, like most of the birds, were quite unafraid of
+man.
+
+[Footnote 10: There are no real rabbits in America. This was probably
+the Polar Hare (_Lepus timidus glacialis_), or the common small
+varying hare (_L. americanus_).]
+
+They then explored the Bay of Fundy, and, after zig-zagging about,
+decided to fix on the harbour of St. John's (New Brunswick) as the
+site for their colony. The future capital of New France, therefore,
+was begun on La Sainte Croix (Dochet) Island, near the mouth of the
+wonderful tidal estuary of the Uigudi (Ouygoudy) River.
+
+Here they passed the winter, but suffered so badly from scurvy[11]
+that, when in the spring of 1605 Du Pont Grave arrived from Brittany
+with supplies, the remnant of the colony was removed to the opposite
+coast of Nova Scotia to Port Royal (afterwards named by the English
+Annapolis[12]). The French seem to have fallen in love with this place
+from the very first. Nevertheless here they suffered from scurvy
+during the winter as elsewhere. Before moving over here, however,
+Champlain, together with De Monts, had explored the west of New
+England south of New Brunswick as far as Plymouth, just south of
+Boston.
+
+[Footnote 11: How awful was this "mal de terre" or scurvy amongst the
+French settlers may be seen from this description of Champlain: "There
+were produced in the mouths of those who had it great pieces of
+superfluous and drivelling flesh, which got the upper hand to such an
+extent that scarcely anything but liquid could be taken. Their teeth
+became very loose and could be pulled out with the fingers without its
+causing them pain.... Afterwards a violent pain seized their arms and
+legs, which remained swollen and very hard, all spotted as if with
+fleabites; and they could not walk on account of the contraction of
+the muscles.... They suffered intolerable pains in the loins, stomach,
+and bowels, and had a very bad cough and short breath.... Out of
+seventy-nine who composed our party, thirty-five died and twenty were
+on the point of death (when spring began in May)."
+
+Scurvy is said to be a disease of the blood caused by a damp, cold,
+and impure atmosphere combined with absence of vegetable food and a
+diet of salted or semi-putrid meat or fish, such as was so often the
+winter food of Amerindians and of the early French pioneers in Canada.
+We have already noted Cartier's discovery of the balsam remedy.]
+
+[Footnote 12: From Queen Anne.]
+
+Off the coast of Maine (Richmond's Island) they encountered
+agricultural Amerindians of a new tribe, the Penobskot probably, who
+cultivated a form of rank narcotic tobacco (_Nicotiana rustica_),
+which they called _Petun_. (A variety of this has produced the
+handsome garden flower _Petunia_, whose Latin name is derived from
+this native word Petun.) They also grew maize or Indian corn, planting
+very carefully three or four seeds in little mounds three feet apart
+one from the other, the soil in between being kept clear of weeds. The
+American farmers of to-day cannot adopt any better method.
+
+The islands round about Portland (Maine) were matted all over with
+wild red currants, so that the eye could scarcely discern anything
+else. Attracted by this fruit, clouds of wild pigeons had
+assembled[13]. They manifested hardly any fear of the French, who
+captured large numbers of them in snares, or killed them with guns.
+The natives of southern Maine fled with dismay on sighting the French
+ships, for they had never before seen sailing vessels, but later on
+they timidly approached the French ships in a canoe, then landed and
+went through a wild dance on the shore to typify friendliness.
+Champlain took with him some drawing paper and a pencil or crayon,
+together with a quantity of knives and ship's biscuit. Landing alone,
+he attracted the natives towards him by offering them biscuits, and
+having gathered them round him (being of course as much unable to
+understand their speech as they were French), he proceeded to ask
+questions by means of certain drawings, chiefly the outlines of the
+coast. The savages at once seized his idea, and taking up his pencil
+drew on the paper an accurate outline of Massachusetts Bay, adding
+also rivers and islands unknown to the French. They went on by further
+intelligent signs to supply information. For instance, they placed six
+pebbles at equal distances to intimate that Massachusetts Bay was
+occupied by six tribes and governed by as many chiefs. By drawings of
+growing maize and other plants they intimated that all these people
+lived by agriculture.
+
+[Footnote 13: The pigeons referred to by Champlain were probably the
+Passenger pigeon (_Ectopistes_) which at one time was extraordinarily
+abundant in parts of North America, though it has now been nearly
+killed out by man. It would arrive in flocks of millions on its
+migratory journeys in search of food.]
+
+Champlain thought Massachusetts (in his first voyage) a most
+attractive region in the summer, what with the blue water of the
+enclosed arms of the sea, the lofty forest trees, and the fields of
+Indian corn and other crops.
+
+When these French explorers reached the harbour of Boston, the islands
+and mainland were swarming with the native population. The Amerindians
+were intensely interested in the arrival of the first sailing vessel
+they had ever seen. Although it was only a small barque, its size was
+greater than any canoe known to them. As it seemed to spread huge
+white wings and to glide silently through the water without the use of
+paddles or oars, it filled them with surprise and admiration. They
+manned all their canoes[14] and came out in a flotilla to express
+their honour and reverence for the wonderful white men. But when the
+French took their leave, it was equally obvious that the natives
+experienced a sense of relief, for they were disquieted as well as
+filled with admiration at the arrival of these wonderful beings from
+an unknown world.
+
+[Footnote 14: It is interesting to learn from his accurate notes that
+in Massachusetts (and from thence southwards) there were no more bark
+canoes, but that the canoes were "dug-outs"--trunks of tall trees
+burnt and chipped till they were hollowed into a narrow vessel of
+considerable length.]
+
+Champlain describes the wigwams or native huts as being cone-shaped,
+heavily thatched with reeds, with an opening at the top of the roof
+for the smoke to escape. Inside the huts was a low bed raised a foot
+from the ground and made of short posts driven into the ground, with a
+surface made of boards split from trees. On these boards were laid
+either the dressed skins of deer or bear, or thick mattresses made of
+reeds or rushes. The beds were large enough for several people to lie
+on. Champlain describes the huts as being full of fleas, and likewise
+the persons of the nearly naked Indians, who carried these fleas out
+with them into the fields when they were working, so that the
+Frenchmen by stopping to talk to the natives became covered with
+fleas to such an extent that they were obliged to change their
+clothes.
+
+In the fields were cultivated not only maize, but beans similar to the
+beans grown by the natives of Brazil, vegetable marrows or pumpkins,
+Jerusalem artichokes[15], radishes, and tobacco. The woods were filled
+with oaks, walnut trees[16], and the red "cedar" of North America,
+really a very large juniper, the foliage of which in the summertime
+often assumes a reddish colour, together with the trunk. This
+Virginian juniper or "red cedar" is now quite a common tree in
+England. In warm weather it exhales a delicious aromatic scent.
+
+[Footnote 15: This tuber, which is a well-known and very useful
+vegetable in England, comes from the root of a species of sunflower
+(_Helianthus tuberosus_). It has nothing to do with the real
+artichoke, which is a huge and gorgeous thistle, and it has equally
+nothing to do with Jerusalem. The English people have always taken a
+special delight in mispronouncing and corrupting words in order to
+produce as much confusion as possible in their names for things.
+Jerusalem is a corruption of _Girasole_, which is the Italian name
+given to this sunflower with the edible roots, because its flower is
+supposed always to turn towards the sun. The Jerusalem artichoke was
+originally a native of North America.]
+
+[Footnote 16: These walnut trees were afterwards known in modern
+American speech as hickories, butter-nuts, and pig-nuts, all of which
+are allied to, but distinct from, the European walnut.]
+
+All these natives of the Massachusetts coast were described by
+Champlain as being almost naked in the summertime, wearing at most a
+small piece of leather round the waist, and a short robe of spun hemp
+which hung down over the shoulders. Their faces were painted red,
+black and yellow. The men pulled out any hairs which might come on the
+chin, and thus were beardless. They were armed with pikes, clubs,
+bows, and arrows. The pikes were probably made of wood with the ends
+hardened by being burnt to a point in the fire, and the arrow tips
+were made of the sharp termination of the tail of the great
+king-crab[17].
+
+[Footnote 17: _Limulus polyphemus_. This extraordinary crustacean is
+one of the oldest of living animals in its history, as it is closely
+related to the Xiphosura and even the Trilobites of the Primary Epoch,
+which existed millions of years ago. In a rough way it is a kind of
+connecting link between the Crustacea, or crabs and lobsters, and the
+Scorpions and spiders.]
+
+These Massachusetts "Indians" described to Champlain a wonderful bird
+which at some seasons of the year they caught in snares and ate. This
+Champlain at once guessed was the wild turkey, now, of course, quite
+extinct in that region. This wild turkey of the eastern half of North
+America (including southern Canada) was quite a distinct form from the
+Mexican bird, which last is the origin of our domestic turkey.
+
+In July, 1606, as De Monts had not returned from France, and the
+little colony at Port Royal was without supplies, they decided to
+leave two Frenchmen in charge of the local chief of the Mikmak
+Indians, and find their way along the coast to Cape Breton, where they
+might get a fishing vessel to take them back to France. But after
+travelling in an open boat--a chaloupe--round the coast of Nova Scotia
+they met another small boat off Cape Sable, under the charge of the
+secretary of De Monts, and learnt that Lieutenant-General DE
+POUTRINCOURT[18] (one of the great names amongst the pioneers of
+Canada, and the man who had really chosen Port Royal for the French
+headquarters at Nova Scotia) had already returned from France with
+fresh supplies. Consequently, Champlain and his companions returned to
+Port Royal, and all set to work with eagerness to develop the
+settlement. Champlain relates in his book how he created vegetable
+gardens, trout streams and ponds, and a reservoir of salt water for
+sea fish; but he was soon off again on a fresh journey of exploration,
+because De Monts was not satisfied with Nova Scotia on account of the
+cold in winter. Accordingly Champlain examined the whole coast round
+the Bay of Fundy, and down to Cape Cod, and the islands of Martha's
+Vineyard and Nantucket. But in this region, already visited in past
+times by French, Spanish, and English ships, they found the natives
+treacherous and hostile. An unprovoked attack was made on the French
+after they landed, and several of the seamen were killed with arrows.
+
+[Footnote 18: Jean de Biencourt, the Sieur de Poutrincourt and Baron
+de Saint-Just, were his full titles.]
+
+On the 24th of May, 1607, a small barque of six or seven tons burden
+(fancy crossing the wide Atlantic from Brittany to Nova Scotia in a
+ship of that size at the present day!) arrived outside Port Royal from
+France, with an abrupt notification that De Monts' ten years' monopoly
+and charter were _cancelled_ by Henry IV, and that all the colony was
+to be withdrawn and brought back to France. Henry IV took this action
+simply because De Monts attempted to make his monopoly a real one,[19]
+and stop the ships of fur traders who were trading with the
+Amerindians of Cape Breton without his licence. These fur traders of
+Normandy then complained bitterly that because De Monts was a
+Protestant he was allowed not only to have this monopoly, but to
+endanger the spiritual welfare of the savages by spreading his false
+doctrines! So King Henry IV, volatile and capricious, like most of the
+French kings, cancelled a charter which had led to such heroic and
+remarkable results.
+
+[Footnote 19: You will observe that neither the French nor the English
+sovereigns of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries went to much
+personal expense over the creation of colonies. They simply gave a
+charter or a monopoly, which cost them nothing, but which made other
+people pay.]
+
+The greater part of the little colony had to leave Port Royal and make
+its way in small boats along the Nova Scotia coasts till they reached
+Cape Breton Island. Here fishing vessels conveyed them back to
+Brittany. It was in this boat journeying along the coast of Nova
+Scotia that Champlain discovered Halifax Harbour, then called by the
+Indian name of Shebuktu. As they passed along this coast with its many
+islands, they feasted on ripe raspberries, which grew everywhere "in
+the greatest possible quantity".
+
+Poutrincourt, however, had succeeded in taking back with him samples
+of the corn, wheat, rye, barley, and oats which had been so
+successfully grown on the island of Sainte Croix and at Port Royal,
+and also presented to that monarch five brent-geese[20] which he had
+reared up from eggs hatched under a hen. The king was so delighted at
+these presents that he once more veered about and gave to De Monts the
+monopoly of the fur trade for one more year, in order to enable him to
+renew his colonies in New France.
+
+[Footnote 20: _Branta canadensis_, a handsome black-and-brown goose
+with white markings, which the French pioneers in Canada styled
+"outarde" or "bustard", and whose eggs were considered very good
+eating.]
+
+
+The Sieur de Monts was again appointed by Henry IV Lieutenant-General
+in New France. The latter engaged Champlain as his lieutenant, and
+also sent out Du Pont Grave in command of the second vessel, as head
+of the trading operations. This time, on the advice of Champlain, the
+expedition made its way directly to the St. Lawrence River, stopping
+first at Tadoussac, where Du Pont Grave proceeded to take very strong
+measures with the Basque seamen, who were infringing his monopoly by
+trading with the natives in furs. Apparently they were still allowed
+to continue their whale fishery.
+
+Once more Champlain heard from the Montagnais Indians of the great
+Salt Sea to the north of Saguenay, in other words, the southern
+extension of Hudson's Bay; and in his book he notes that the English
+in these latter years "had gone thither to find their way to China".
+However, he kept his intent fixed on the establishment of a French
+colony along the St. Lawrence, and may be said to have founded the
+city of Quebec (the site of which was then covered with nut trees) on
+the 4th of July, 1608. Then his enterprise was near being wrecked by a
+base conspiracy got up between a surgeon and a number of French
+artisans, who believed that by seizing and killing Champlain, and then
+handing over the infant settlement to the Spanish Basques, they might
+enable these traders and fishermen with their good strong ships to
+overcome Du Pont Grave, and seize the whole country. Naturally (they
+believed) the Basques would reward the conspirators, who would thus at
+a stroke become rich men. They none of them wished to go to France,
+but would live here independent of outside interference. A
+conspirator, however, revealed the plot to Champlain as he was
+planting one of the little gardens which he started as soon as he had
+been in a place a few days. He went about his business very
+discreetly, arrested all the leading conspirators, gave them a fair
+trial, had the ringleader executed by Pont Grave, and sent three
+others back to France. After this he settled down at Quebec for the
+winter, taking care, however, in the month of October, to plant seeds
+and vines for coming up in the spring.
+
+In the summer of 1609 Champlain, apparently with the idea of thus
+exploring the country south of the St. Lawrence, decided to accompany
+a party of Algonkins and Hurons from Georgian Bay and the
+neighbourhood of Montreal, who were bent on attacking the Iroquois
+confederacy in the Mohawk country at the headwaters of the Hudson
+River. He was accompanied by two French soldiers--Des Marais and La
+Routte--and by a few Montagnais Indians from Tadoussac.
+
+The Hurons[21] were really of the same group (as regards language and
+descent) as the Iroquois (Irokwa), but in those days held aloof from
+the five other tribes who had formed a confederacy[22] and alliance
+under the name of _Ongwehonwe_--"Superior Men". The Iroquois
+(Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Kayugas, and Senekas) dominated much of
+what is now New York State, and from the mountain country of the
+Adirondaks and Catskills descended on the St. Lawrence valley and the
+shores of Lakes Ontario and Huron to rob and massacre.
+
+[Footnote 21: Huron was a French name given to the westernmost group
+of the Iroquois family (see p. 159). The Huron group included the
+Waiandots, the Eries or Erigas, the Arendaronons, and the Atiwandoronk
+or "neutral" nation. The French sometimes called all these Huron
+tribes "the good Iroquois". Iroquois was probably pronounced "Irokwa",
+and seems to have been derived from a word like Irokosia, the name of
+the Adirondack mountain country.]
+
+[Footnote 22: The confederacy was founded about 1450 by the great
+Hiawatha (of Longfellow's Poem), himself an Onondaga from south of
+Lake Ontario, but backed by the Mohawks only, in the beginning of his
+work.]
+
+
+The route into the enemy's country lay along the Richelieu River and
+across Lake Champlain to its southern end, in sight of the majestic
+snow-crowned Adirondak Mountains. On the way the allies stopped at an
+island, held a kind of review, and explained their tactics to
+Champlain. They set no sentries and kept no strict watch at night,
+being too tired; but during the daytime the army advanced as follows:
+The main body marched in the centre along the warpath; a portion of
+the troops diverged on either side to hunt up food for the expedition;
+and a third section was told off for "intelligence" work, namely, they
+ran on ahead and roundabout to locate the enemy, looking out
+especially along the rivers for marks or signals showing whether
+friends or enemies had passed that way. These marks were devised by
+the chiefs of the different tribes, and were duly communicated to the
+war leaders of tribes in friendship or alliance, like our cipher
+codes; and equally they were changed from time to time to baffle the
+enemy. Neither hunters nor main body ever got in front of the advance
+guard, lest they should give an alarm. Thus they travelled until they
+got within two days or so of the enemies' headquarters; thenceforward
+they only marched by night, and hid in the woods by day, making no
+fires or noise, and subsisting only on cooked maize meal.
+
+At intervals the soothsayers accompanying the army were consulted for
+signs and omens; and when the war-chiefs decided on their plan of
+campaign they summoned all the fighting men to a smooth place in a
+wood, cut sticks a foot long (as many as there were warriors), and
+each leader of a division "put the sticks in such order as seemed to
+him best, indicating to his followers the rank and order they were to
+observe in battle. The warriors watched carefully this proceeding,
+observing attentively the outline which their chief had made with the
+sticks. Then they would go away and set to placing themselves in such
+order as the sticks were in. This manoeuvre they repeated several
+times, and at all their encampments, without needing a sergeant to
+maintain them in the proper order they were able to keep accurately
+the positions assigned to them" (Champlain).
+
+The Hurons who were accompanying Champlain frequently questioned him
+as to his dreams, they themselves having a great belief in the value
+of dreams as omens and indications of future events. One day, when
+they were approaching the country of the Iroquois, Champlain actually
+did have a dream. In this he imagined that he saw the Iroquois enemies
+drowning in a lake near a mountain. Moved to pity in his dream he
+wished to help them, but his savage allies insisted that they must be
+allowed to die. When he awoke he told the Amerindians of his dream,
+and they were greatly impressed, as they regarded it as a good omen.
+
+Near the modern town of Ticonderoga the Hurons and Algonkins of
+Georgian Bay and Ottawa met a party of Iroquois, probably of the
+Mohawk tribe. The Iroquois had built rapidly a stockade in which to
+retreat if things should go badly with them, but the battle at first
+began in the old heroic style with as much ceremony as a French duel.
+First the allies from the St. Lawrence asked the Iroquois what time it
+would suit them to begin fighting the next day; then the latter
+replied: "When the sun is well up, if you don't mind? We can see
+better then to kill you all." Accordingly in the bright morning the
+Hurons and Algonkins advanced against the circular stockade of the
+Iroquois, and the Iroquois marched out to fight in great pomp, their
+leaders wearing plumed headdresses. With this exception both parties
+fought quite naked, and armed only with bows and arrows.
+
+"I marched twenty paces in advance of the rest" (wrote Champlain)
+"till I was within about thirty paces of the Iroquois.... I rested my
+musket against my cheek, and aimed directly at one of the three
+chiefs. With the same shot two fell to the ground, and one of their
+men was so wounded that he died some time afterwards. I had loaded my
+musket with four balls. When they saw I had shot so favourably for
+them, they (the Algonkins and Hurons) raised such loud cries that one
+could not have heard it thunder.
+
+"Meantime the arrows flew on both sides. The Iroquois were greatly
+astonished that two men had been so quickly killed, though they were
+equipped with armour woven from copper thread and with wood, which was
+proof against their arrows."
+
+Whilst Champlain was loading to fire again one of his two companions
+fired a shot from the woods, whereupon the Iroquois took to flight,
+abandoning their camp and fort. As they fled they threw off their
+armour of wooden boards and cotton cloth.
+
+As to the way in which the Hurons tortured their Iroquois prisoners,
+Champlain writes of one instance.
+
+"They commanded him (the prisoner) to sing, if he had courage, which
+he did, but it was a very sad song." The Hurons kindled a fire, and
+when it was well alight they each took a brand from the blaze, the end
+of which was red-hot, and with this burnt the bodies of their
+prisoners tied to stakes. Every now and then they stopped and threw
+water over them to restore them from fainting. Then they tore out
+their finger nails and applied fire to the extremities of the fingers.
+After that they tore the scalps off their heads, and poured over the
+raw and bleeding flesh a kind of hot gum. Then they pierced the arms
+of the prisoners near the wrists, and drew up their sinews with sticks
+inserted underneath, trying to tear them out by force, and, if
+failing, cutting them. One poor wretch "uttered such terrible cries
+that it excited my pity to see him treated in this manner, yet at
+other times he showed such firmness that one would have said he
+suffered scarcely any pain at all".
+
+In this case Champlain, seeing that the man could not recover from his
+injuries, drew apart and shot him dead, "thus putting an end to all
+the tortures he would have suffered".
+
+But the savage Hurons were not yet satisfied. They opened the corpse
+and threw its entrails into the lake. Then they cut off head, arms,
+and legs, and cut out the heart; this they minced up, and endeavoured
+to force the other prisoners to eat it.
+
+With those of his allies who were Montagnais Indians from Tadoussac,
+Champlain returned to that place. As they neared the shore the
+Montagnais women undressed themselves, jumped into the river, and swam
+to the prows of the canoes, from which they took the heads of the
+slain Iroquois. These they hung about their necks as if they had been
+some costly chain, singing and dancing meanwhile.
+
+However, in spite of these and other horrors, Champlain had "separated
+from his Upper Canadian allies with loud protestations of mutual
+friendship", promising to go again into their country and assist them
+with continued "fraternal" relations.
+
+From this expedition Champlain learned much regarding the geography of
+eastern North America, and he brought back with him to France, to
+present to King Henry IV, two scarlet tanagers--one of the commonest
+and most beautiful birds of the eastern United States--a girdle of
+porcupine quills made from the Canadian porcupine, and the head of a
+gar-pike caught in Lake Champlain.[23]
+
+[Footnote 23: Unconsciously, no doubt, he brought away with him to the
+King of France one of the most remarkable freshwater fish living on
+the North-American continent, for the gar-pike belongs, together with
+the sturgeon and its allies, to an ancient type of fish the
+representatives of which are found in rock formations as ancient as
+those of the Secondary and Early Tertiary periods. Champlain may be
+said to have discovered this remarkable gar-pike (_Lepidosteus
+osseus_), which is covered with bony scales "so strong that a poniard
+could not pierce them". The colour he describes as silver-grey. The
+head has a snout two feet and a half long, and the jaws possess double
+rows of sharp and dangerous teeth. These teeth were used by the
+natives as lancets with which to bleed themselves when they suffered
+from inflammation or headache. Champlain declares that the gar-pike
+often captures and eats water birds. It would swim in and among rushes
+or reeds and then raise its snout out of the water and keep perfectly
+still. Birds would mistake this snout for the stump of a tree and
+would attempt to alight on it; whereupon the fish would seize them by
+the legs and pull them down under the water.]
+
+On Champlain's return from France in 1610 (he and other Frenchmen and
+Englishmen of the time made surprisingly little fuss about crossing
+the North Atlantic in small sailing vessels, in spite of the storms of
+spring and autumn) he found the Iroquois question still agitating the
+minds of the Algonkins, Montagnais, and Hurons. Representatives of
+these tribes were ready to meet this great captain of the _Mistigosh_
+or _Matigosh_[24] (as they called the French), and implored him to
+keep his promise to take part in another attack on the dreaded enemy
+of the Adirondak heights. Apparently the Iroquois (Mohawks) this time
+had advanced to meet the attack, and were ensconced in a round
+fortress of logs built near the Richelieu River.[25] The Algonkins and
+their allies on this expedition were armed with clubs, swords, and
+shields, as well as bows and arrows. The swords of copper(?) were
+really knife blades attached to long sticks like billhooks. Before the
+barricade, as usual, both parties commenced the fight by hurling
+insults at each other till they were out of breath, and shouting "till
+one could not have heard it thunder". The circular log barricade,
+however, would never have been taken by the Algonkins and their
+allies but for the assistance of Champlain and three or four
+Frenchmen, who with their musketry fire at short range paralysed the
+Iroquois. Champlain and one other Frenchman were wounded with arrows
+in the neck and arm, but not seriously. The victory of the allies was
+followed by the usual torture of prisoners, which Champlain made a
+slight--only slight--attempt to prevent.
+
+[Footnote 24: Spelt by Champlain with a "ch" instead of _sh_.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Then called the Riviere des Iroquois.]
+
+But results far more serious arose from these two skirmishes with the
+Iroquois in 1609 and 1610. The Confederacy of the Five Nations
+(afterwards six) realized that they had been attacked unprovoked by
+the dominant white men of the St. Lawrence, called by the Montagnais
+_Mistigosh_, and by the Iroquois _Adoreset[-u]i_ ("men of iron", from
+their armour). They became the bitter enemies of the French, and
+tendered help first to the Dutch to establish themselves in the valley
+of the Hudson, and secondly to the English. In the great Colonial wars
+of the early eighteenth century the Iroquois were invaluable allies to
+the British forces, Colonial and Imperial, and counted for much in the
+struggle which eventually cost France Nova Scotia, New Brunswick,
+Maine, the two Canadas, and Louisiana. On the other hand, the French
+alliance with the Hurons, Algonkins, and Montagnais, begun by this
+brotherhood-in-arms with Champlain, secured for France and the French
+such widespread liking among the tribes of Algonkin speech, and their
+allies and friends, that the two Canadas and much of the Middle West,
+together with Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois, became French in
+sympathy without any war of conquest. When the French dominion over
+North America fell, in 1759, with the capture of Quebec by Wolfe's
+army, tribes of Amerindians went on fighting for five years afterwards
+to uphold the banner and the rule of the beloved French king.
+
+On Champlain's next visit to Canada, in 1610, he handed over to the
+Algonkin Indians a French youth named Etienne Brule (see p. 88), to
+be taught the Algonkin language (the use of which was spread far and
+wide over north-east America), and, further, sent a Huron youth to
+France to be taught French. Between 1611 and 1616 he had explored much
+of the country between Montreal (the foundations of which city he may
+be said to have laid on May 29, 1611, for his stockaded camp is now in
+the centre of it) and Lakes Huron and Ontario, especially along the
+Ottawa River, that convenient short cut (as a water route) between the
+St. Lawrence at Sault St. Louis (Montreal) and Lakes Huron and
+Superior. With short portages you can get in canoes from Montreal to
+the waters of Hudson Bay, or to Lake Winnipeg and the base of the
+Rocky Mountains.
+
+In exploring this "River of the Algonkins" (as he called it),
+Champlain was nearly drowned between two rocks, and much hurt, from
+over bravery and want of knowledge of how to deal with a canoe on
+troubled water; but on June 4, 1613, he stood on the site of the
+modern city of Ottawa--the capital of the vast Canadian Dominion--and
+gazed at the marvellous Rideau or Curtain Fall, where the Rideau River
+enters the Ottawa. But the air was resonant with the sound of falling
+water. Three miles above the falls of the Gatineau and the Rideau, the
+main Ottawa River descended with a roar and a whirl of white foam and
+rainbow-tinted mist into the chasm called the Chaudiere or Kettle. On
+a later occasion he describes the way in which the Algonkins
+propitiated the Spirit of the Chasm:
+
+"Continuing our way, we came to the Chaudiere Falls, where the savages
+carried out their customary ceremony. After transporting their canoes
+to the foot of the fall they assemble in one spot, where one of them
+takes up a collection on a wooden platter, into which each person puts
+a bit of tobacco. The collection having been made, the plate is placed
+in the midst of the troop, and all dance about it, singing after
+their style. Then one of the captains makes an harangue, setting forth
+that for a long time they have been accustomed to make this offering,
+by which means they are ensured protection against their enemies, that
+otherwise misfortune would befall them from the evil spirit. This
+done, the maker of the harangue takes the plate and throws the tobacco
+into the midst of the cauldron (the chasm of foaming water), whereupon
+they all together raise a loud cry. These poor people are so
+superstitious, that they would not believe it possible for them to
+make a prosperous journey without observing this ceremony at this
+place; for sometimes their enemies (Iroquois) await them at this
+portage, not venturing to go any farther on account of the difficulty
+of the journey. Consequently they are occasionally surprised and
+killed by the Iroquois at this place (the south bank of the Ottawa)."
+
+Above the Chaudiere Champlain met the Algonkin chief, Tessouat, and
+thus described the burial places of his tribe:
+
+"On visiting the island I observed their cemeteries, and was struck
+with wonder as I saw sepulchres of a shape like shrines, made of
+pieces of wood fixed in the ground at a distance of about three feet
+from each other, and intersecting at the upper end. On the
+intersections above they place a large piece of wood, and in front
+another upright piece on which is carved roughly, as would be
+expected, the figure of the male or female interred. If it is a man,
+they add a shield, a sword attached to a handle after their manner, a
+mace, and bow and arrows. If it is a chief, there is a plume on his
+head, and some other _matachia_ or embellishment. If it is a child,
+they give it a bow and arrow, if a woman or girl, a boiler, an earthen
+vessel, a wooden spoon, and an oar. The entire sepulchre is six or
+seven feet long at most, and four wide; others are smaller. They are
+painted yellow and red, with various ornaments as neatly done as the
+carving. The deceased is buried with his dress of beaver or other
+skins which he wore when living, and they lay by his side all his
+possessions, as hatchets, knives, boilers, and awls, so that these
+things may serve him in the land whither he goes; for they believe in
+the immortality of the soul, as I have elsewhere observed. These
+carved sepulchres are only made for the warriors, for in respect to
+others they add no more than in the case of women, who are considered
+a useless class, accordingly but little is added in their case."
+
+In the summer of 1615 Champlain, returning from France, made his way
+up the Ottawa River, and, by a short portage, to Lake Nipissing,
+thence down French River to the waters of Lake Huron. On the banks of
+the French River he met a detachment of the Ottawa tribe (of the
+Algonkin family). These people he styled the _Cheveux Releves_,
+because the men's hair was gathered up and dressed more carefully and
+becomingly on the top of the head than (he says) could at that time be
+done by a hairdresser in France. This arrangement of the hair gave the
+men a very handsome appearance, but here their toilet ended, for they
+wore no clothes whatever (in the summertime), making up for this
+simplicity by painting their faces in different colours, piercing
+their ears and nostrils and decorating them with shell beads, and
+tattooing their bodies and limbs with elaborate patterns.
+
+These Ottawas carried a club, a long bow and arrows, and a round
+shield of dressed leather, made (wrote Champlain) "from the skin of an
+animal like the buffalo".[26] The chief of the party explained many
+things to the white man by drawing with a piece of charcoal on the
+white bark of the birch tree. He gave him to understand that the
+present occupation of his band of warriors was the gathering of
+blueberries, which would be dried in the sun, and could then be
+preserved for eating during the winter.
+
+[Footnote 26: This was the first intimation probably that any European
+sent home for publication regarding the existence of the bison in
+North America, though the Spanish explorers nearly a hundred years
+before Champlain must have met with it in travelling through
+Louisiana, Texas, and northern Mexico. The bison is not known ever to
+have existed near Hudson Bay, or in Canada proper (basin of the St.
+Lawrence). South of Canada it penetrated to Pennsylvania and the
+Susquehanna River, but not farther eastward.]
+
+From French River, Champlain passed southwards to the homeland of the
+Hurons, which lay to the east of what Champlain called "the Fresh
+Water Sea" (Lake Huron). This country he describes in enthusiastic
+terms. The Hurons, like the other Iroquois tribes (and unlike the
+hunting races to the north of them), were agriculturists, and
+cultivated pumpkins, sunflowers,[27] beans and Indian corn.
+
+[Footnote 27: The Amerindians of the Lake regions made much use of the
+sunflowers of the region (_Helianthus multiflorus_). Besides this
+species of sunflower already mentioned, which furnishes tubers from
+its roots (the "Jerusalem" artichoke) others were valued for their
+seeds, and some or all of these are probably the originals of the
+cultivated sunflower in European gardens. The largest of these was
+called _Soleille_ by the French Canadians. It grew in the cultivated
+fields of the Amerindians to seven or eight feet in height, with an
+enormous flower. The seeds were carefully collected and boiled. Their
+oil was collected then from the water and was used to grease the hair.
+This same Huron country (the Simcoe country of modern times) was
+remarkable for its wild fruits. There was the Canada plum (_Prunus
+americana_), the wild black cherry (_Prunus serotina_), the red
+cherries (_P. pennsylvanica_), the choke cherry (_P. virginiana_),
+wild apples (_Pyrus coronaria_), wild pears (a small berry-like pear
+called "poire" by the French: _Pyrus canadensis_), and the may-apple
+(_Podophyllum peltatum_). Champlain describes this may-apple as of the
+form and colour of a small lemon with a similar taste, but having an
+interior which is very good and almost like that of figs. The
+may-apples grow on a plant which is two and a half feet high, with not
+more than three or four leaves like those of the fig tree, and only
+two fruits on each plant.]
+
+The Hurons persuaded Champlain to go with them to attack the Iroquois
+tribe of the Senekas (Entuhonorons) on the south shores of Lake
+Ontario. On the way thither he noticed the abundance of stags and
+bears, and, near the lake, of cranes, white and purple-brown.[28]
+
+[Footnote 28: The cranes of Canada--so often alluded to by the French
+explorers as "Grues"--are of two species, _Grus canadensis_, with its
+plumage of a purple-grey, and _Grus americanus_, which is pure white
+(see p. 139).]
+
+On the southern shores of the lake[29] were large numbers of chestnut
+trees, "whose fruit was still in the burr. The chestnuts are small but
+of a good flavour." The southern country was covered with forests,
+with very few clearings. After crossing the Oneida River the Hurons
+captured eleven of the Senekas, four women, one girl, three boys, and
+three men. The people had left the stockade in which their relations
+were living to go and fish by the lake shore. One of the Huron
+chiefs--the celebrated Iroquet, who had been so much associated with
+Champlain from the time of his arrival--proceeded at once to cut off
+the finger of one of these women prisoners. Whereupon Champlain,
+firmer than in years gone by, interposed and reprimanded him, pointing
+out that it was not the act of a warrior such as he declared himself
+to be, to conduct himself with cruelty towards women "who had no
+defence but their tears, so that one should treat them with humanity
+on account of their helplessness and weakness". Champlain went on to
+say that this act was base and brutal, and that if he committed any
+more of such cruelties he, Champlain, "would have no heart to assist
+or favour them in the war". To this Iroquet replied that their enemies
+treated them in the same manner, but that since this was displeasing
+to the Frenchmen he would not do anything more to women, but he would
+not promise to refrain from torturing the men.
+
+[Footnote 29: Lakes Ontario and Huron were probably first actually
+reached by Father Le Caron, a Recollett missionary who came out with
+Champlain in 1615 (see p. 90), and by Etienne Brule, Champlain's
+interpreter.]
+
+However, in the subsequent fighting which occurred when they reached
+the six-sided stockade of the Senekas (a strong fortification which
+faced a large pond on one side, and was surrounded by a moat
+everywhere else except at the entrance), the Hurons and Algonkins
+showed a great lack of discipline. Champlain and the few Frenchmen
+with him, by using their arquebuses, drove the enemy back into the
+fort, but not without having some of their Indian allies wounded or
+killed. Champlain proposed to the Hurons that they should erect what
+was styled in French a _cavalier_--a kind of box, with high, loopholed
+sides, which was erected on a tall scaffolding of stout timbers. This
+was to be carried by the Hurons to within a pike's length of the
+stockade. Four French arquebusiers then scrambled up into the
+_cavalier_ and fired through the loopholes into the huts of the Seneka
+town. Meantime the Hurons were to set fire, if possible, to the wooden
+stockade. They managed the whole business so stupidly that the fire
+produced no effect, the flames being blown in the opposite direction
+to that which was desired. The brave Senekas threw water on to the
+blazing sticks and put out the fire. Champlain was wounded by an arrow
+in the leg and knee. The reinforcement of the five hundred Hurons
+expected by the allies did not turn up. The Hurons with Champlain lost
+heart, and insisted on retreating. Only the dread of the French
+firearms prevented the retreat being converted into a complete
+disaster. Whenever the Senekas came near enough to get speech with the
+French they asked them "why they interfered with native quarrels".
+
+Champlain being unable to walk, the Hurons made a kind of basket,
+similar to that in which they carried their wounded. In this he was so
+crowded into a heap, and bound and pinioned, that it was as impossible
+for him to move "as it would be for an infant in his swaddling
+clothes". This treatment caused him considerable pain after he had
+been carried for some days; in fact he suffered agonies while fastened
+in this way on to the back of a savage.
+
+He was afterwards obliged to pass the winter of 1615-6 in the Huron
+country. At that time it swarmed with game. Amongst birds, there were
+swans, white cranes, brent-geese, ducks, teal, the redbreasted thrush
+(which the Americans call "robin"), brown larks (_Anthus_), snipe, and
+other birds too numerous to mention, which Champlain seems to have
+brought down with his fowling-piece in sufficient quantities to feed
+the whole party whilst waiting for the capture of deer on a large
+scale.
+
+Meanwhile, many of the Indians were catching fish, "trout and pike of
+prodigious size". When they desired to secure a large number of deer,
+they would make an enclosure in a fir forest in the form of the two
+converging sides of a triangle, with an open base. The two sides of
+these traps were made of great stakes of wood closely pressed
+together, from 8 to 9 feet high; and each of the sides was 1000 yards
+long. At the point of the triangle there was a little enclosure. The
+Hurons were so expeditious in this work that in less than ten days
+these long fences and the "pound" or enclosure at their convergence
+were finished. They then started before daybreak and scattered
+themselves in the woods at a considerable distance behind the
+commencement of these fences, each man separated from his fellow by
+about 80 yards. Every Huron carried two pieces of wood, one like a
+drumstick and the other like a flat, resonant board. They struck the
+flat piece of wood with the drumstick and it made a loud clanging
+sound. The deer who swarmed in the forest, hearing this noise, fled
+before the savages, who drove them steadily towards the converging
+fences. As they closed up, the Hurons imitated very cleverly the
+yapping of wolves. This frightened the deer still more, so that they
+huddled at last into the final enclosure, where they were so tightly
+packed that they were completely at the men's mercy. "I assure you,"
+writes Champlain, "there is a singular pleasure in this chase, which
+takes place every two days, and has been so successful that in
+thirty-eight days one hundred and twenty deer were captured. These
+were made good use of, the fat being kept for the winter to be used as
+we do butter, and some of the flesh to be taken to their homes for
+their festivities."
+
+Champlain himself, in the winter of 1615, pursuing one day a
+remarkable bird "which was the size of a hen, had a beak like a parrot
+and was entirely yellow, except for a red head and blue wings, and
+which had the flight of the partridge"--a bird I cannot
+identify--lost his way in the woods. For two days he wandered in the
+wilderness, sustaining himself by shooting birds and roasting them.
+But at last he found his way back to a river which he recognized, and
+reached the camp of the Hurons, who were extremely delighted at his
+return. Had they not found him, or had he not come back of himself,
+they told him that they could never again have visited the French for
+fear of being held responsible for his death.
+
+By the month of December of this year (1615) the rivers, lakes, and
+ponds were all frozen. Hitherto, Champlain had had to walk when he
+could not travel in a canoe, and carry a load of twenty pounds, while
+the Indians carried a hundred pounds each. But now the water was
+frozen the Hurons set to work and made their sledges. These were
+constructed of two pieces of board, manufactured from the trunks of
+trees by the patient use of a stone axe and by the application of
+fire. These boards were about 6 inches wide, and 6 or 7 feet long,
+curved upwards at the forward end and bound together by cross pieces.
+The sides were bordered with strips of wood, which served as brackets
+to which was fastened the strap that bound the baggage upon the
+sledge. The load was dragged by a rope or strap of leather passing
+round the breast of the Indian, and attached to the end of the sledge.
+The sledge was so narrow that it could be drawn easily without
+impediment wherever an Indian could thread his way over the snow
+through the pathless forests.
+
+The rest of the winter and early spring Champlain spent alone, or in
+company with Father Joseph Le Caron (one of the Recollet
+missionaries), visiting the Algonkin and Huron tribes in the region
+east of Lake Huron. He has left this description of the modern country
+of Simcoe, the home, three hundred years ago, of the long-vanished
+Hurons[30]; and gives us the following particulars of their home
+life. The Huron country was a pleasant land, most of it cleared of
+forest. It contained eighteen villages, six of which were enclosed and
+fortified by palisades of wood in triple rows, bound together, on the
+top of which were galleries provided with stores of stones, and
+birch-bark buckets of water; the stones to throw at an enemy, and the
+water to extinguish any fire which might be put to the palisades.
+These eighteen villages contained about two thousand warriors, and
+about thirty thousand people in all. The houses were in the shape of
+tunnels, and were thatched with the bark of trees. Each lodge or house
+would be about 120 feet long, more or less, and 36 feet wide, with a
+10-foot passage-way through the middle from one end to the other. On
+either side of the tunnel were placed benches 4 feet high, on which
+the people slept in summer in order to avoid the annoyance of the
+fleas which swarmed in these habitations. In winter time they slept on
+the ground on mats near the fire. In the summer the cabins were filled
+with stocks of wood to dry and be ready for burning in winter. At the
+end of each of these long houses was a space in which the Indian corn
+was preserved in great casks made of the bark of trees. Inside the
+long houses pieces of wood were suspended from the roof, on to which
+were fastened the clothes, provisions, and other things of the
+inmates, to keep them from the attacks of the mice which swarmed in
+these villages. Each hut might be inhabited by twenty-four families,
+who would maintain twelve fires. The smoke, having no proper means of
+egress except at either end of the long dwelling, and through the
+chinks of the roof, so injured their eyes during the winter season
+that many people lost their sight as they grew old.
+
+[Footnote 30: They were almost completely exterminated by the Iroquois
+confederacy between thirty and forty years after Champlain's visit.]
+
+"Their life", writes Champlain, "is a miserable one in comparison
+with our own, but they are happy amongst themselves, not having
+experienced anything better, nor imagining that anything more
+excellent could be found."
+
+These Amerindians ordinarily ate two meals a day, and although
+Champlain and his men fasted all through Lent, "in order to influence
+them by our example", that was one of the practices they did _not_
+copy from the French.
+
+The Hurons of this period painted their faces black and red, mixing
+the colours with oil made from sunflower seed, or with bears' fat. The
+hair was carefully combed and oiled, and sometimes dyed a reddish
+colour; it might be worn long or short, or only on one side of the
+head. The women usually dressed theirs in one long plait. Sometimes it
+was done up into a knot at the back of the head, bound with eelskin.
+The men were usually dressed in deerskin breeches, with gaiters of
+soft leather. The shoes ("Moccasins") were made of the skin of deer,
+bears, or beavers. In addition to this the men in cold weather wore a
+great cloak. The edges of these cloaks would often be decorated with
+bands of brown and red colour alternating with strips of a
+whitish-blue, and ornamented with bands of porcupine quills. These,
+which were originally white or grey in colour, had been previously
+dyed a fine scarlet with colouring matter from the root of the
+bed-straw (_Galium tinctorum_). The women were loaded with necklaces
+of violet or white shell beads, bracelets, ear-rings, and great
+strings of beads falling below the waist. Sometimes they would have
+plates of leather studded with shell beads and hanging over the back.
+
+[Illustration: SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN; ALEXANDER HENRY THE ELDER]
+
+In 1616 Champlain returned to France, but visited Quebec in 1617 and
+1618. During the years spent at Quebec, which followed his
+explorations of 1616, he was greatly impeded in his work of
+consolidating Canada as a French colony by the religious strife
+between the Catholics and Huguenots, and the narrow-minded greed of
+the Chartered company of fur-trading merchants for whom he worked. But
+in 1620 he came back to Canada as Lieutenant-Governor (bringing his
+wife with him), and after attending to the settlement of a violent
+commercial dispute between fur-trading companies he tried to compose
+the quarrel between the Iroquois and the Algonkins, and brought about
+a truce which lasted till 1627.
+
+In 1628 came the first English attack on Canada. A French fleet was
+defeated and captured in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and in the
+following year Champlain, having been obliged to surrender Quebec (he
+had only sixteen soldiers as a garrison, owing to lack of food),
+voyaged to England more or less as a prisoner of state in the summer
+of 1629. He found, on arriving there, that the cession of Quebec was
+null and void, peace having been concluded between Britain and France
+two months before the cession. Charles I remained true to his compact
+with Louis XIII, and Quebec and Nova Scotia were restored to French
+keeping. In 1633 Champlain returned to Canada as Governor, bringing
+with him a considerable number of French colonists. _It is from 1633
+that the real French colonization of Canada begins_: hitherto there
+had been only one family of settlers in the fixed sense of the word;
+the other Frenchmen were fur traders, soldiers, and missionaries. But
+Champlain only lived two years after his triumphant return, and died
+at Quebec on Christmas Day, 1635.
+
+His character has been so well summed up by Dr. S.E. Dawson, in his
+admirable book on the _Story of the St. Lawrence Basin_, that I cannot
+do better than quote his words:
+
+"Champlain was as much at home in the brilliant court of France as in
+a wigwam on a Canadian lake, as patient and politic with a wild band
+of savages on Lake Huron as with a crowd of grasping traders in St.
+Malo or Dieppe. Always calm, always unselfish, always depending on
+God, in whom he believed and trusted, and thinking of France, which he
+loved, this single-hearted man resolutely followed the path of his
+duty under all circumstances; never looking for ease or asking for
+profit, loved by the wild people of the forest, respected by the
+courtiers of the king, and trusted by the close-fisted merchants of
+the maritime cities of France."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+After Champlain: from Montreal to the Mississippi
+
+
+A very remarkable series of further explorations were carried out as
+the indirect result of Champlain's work. In 1610 he had allowed a
+French boy of about eighteen years of age, named ETIENNE BRULE, to
+volunteer to go away with the Algonkins, in order to learn their
+language. Brule was taken in hand by Iroquet,[1] a chief of the
+"Little Algonkins", whose people were then occupying the lands on
+either side of the Ottawa River, including the site of the now great
+city of Ottawa. After four years of roaming with the Indians, Brule
+was dispatched by Champlain with an escort of twelve Algonkins to the
+headwaters of the Suskuehanna, far to the south of Lake Ontario, in
+order to warn the Andastes[2] tribe of military operations to be
+undertaken by the allied French, Hurons, and Algonkins against the
+Iroquois. This enabled Brule to explore Lake Ontario and to descend
+the River Suskuehanna as far south as Chesapeake Bay, a truly
+extraordinary journey at the period. This region of northern Virginia
+had just been surveyed by the English, and was soon to be the site of
+the first English colony in North America.[3]
+
+[Footnote 1: Mentioned on p. 80.]
+
+[Footnote 2: The Andastes were akin to the Iroquois, but did not
+belong to their confederacy; they lived in Pennsylvania.]
+
+[Footnote 3: The inaccurate statement has frequently been written
+about Newfoundland being "the first British American colony".
+Newfoundland was reached by the ship in which John Cabot sailed on his
+1497 voyage of discovery, and a few years afterwards its shores were
+sought by the English in common with the French and the Portuguese,
+and later on the Spaniards and Basques, for the cod fishery. But no
+definite British settlement, such as subsequently grew into an actual
+colony, was founded in Newfoundland until the year 1624; the island
+was not recognized as definitely British till 1713, and no governor
+was appointed till 1728. The first permanent English colonial
+settlement in America was founded at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607; and
+in the Bermudas and Barbados (West Indies) soon afterwards.]
+
+In attempting to return to the valley of the St. Lawrence in 1616,
+with his Andaste guides, Brule lost his way, and to avoid starvation
+surrendered himself to the Seneka Indians (the westernmost clan of the
+Iroquois) against whom the recent warlike operations of the French
+were being directed. Discovering his nationality, the Senekas decided
+to torture him before burning him to death at the stake. As they tore
+off his clothes they found that he was wearing an _Agnus Dei_ medal
+next his skin. Brule told them to be careful, as it was a medicine of
+great power which would certainly kill them. By a coincidence, at that
+very moment a terrific thunderstorm burst from a sky which until
+recently had been all sunshine. The Senekas were so scared by the
+thunder and lightning that they believed Brule to be a person of
+supernatural powers. They therefore released him, strove to heal such
+slight wounds as he had incurred, and carried him off to their
+principal town, where he became a great favourite. After a while they
+gave him guides to take him north into the country of the Hurons.
+
+His further adventures led him to discover Lake Superior and the way
+thither through the Sault Ste. Marie, and to reach a place probably
+not far from the south coast of Hudson Bay, in which there was a
+copper mine. Then he explored the Montagnais country north of Quebec,
+and even at one time (in 1629) entered the service of the English, who
+had captured Quebec and Tadoussac from the French. When the English
+left this region Brule travelled again to the west and joined the
+Hurons once more.
+
+His licentious conduct amongst his Indian friends seems to have
+roused them to such a pitch of anger that in 1632 they murdered him,
+then boiled and ate his body. But immediately afterwards misfortune
+seemed to fall on the place. The Hurons were terrified at what they
+had done, and thought they heard or saw in the sky the spirits of the
+white relations of Brule--some said the sister, some the
+uncle--threatening their town (Toanche), which they soon afterwards
+burnt and deserted.
+
+In 1615 Champlain, returning from France, had brought out with him
+friars of the Recollet order.[4] These were the pioneer missionaries
+of Canada, prominent amongst whom was FATHER LE CARON, and these
+Recollets traversed the countries in the basin of the St. Lawrence
+between Lake Huron and Cape Breton Island, preaching Christianity to
+the Amerindians as well as ministering to the French colonists and fur
+traders. One of these Recollet missionaries died of cold and hunger in
+attempting to cross New Brunswick from the St. Lawrence to the Bay of
+Fundy, and another--Nicholas Viel--was the first martyr in Canada in
+the spread of Christianity, for when travelling down the Ottawa River
+to Montreal he was thrown by the pagan Hurons (together with one of
+his converts) into the waters of a rapid since christened Sault le
+Recollet. Another Recollet, Father d'Aillon, prompted by Brule,
+explored the richly fertile, beautiful country known then as the
+territory of the Neutral nation, that group of Huron-Iroquois
+Amerindians who strove to keep aloof from the fierce struggles between
+the Algonkins and Hurons on the one hand and the eastern Iroquois
+clans on the other. This region, which lies between the Lakes
+Ontario, Erie, and Huron, is the most attractive portion of western
+Canada. Lying in the southernmost parts of the Dominion, and nearly
+surrounded by sheets of open water, it has a far milder climate than
+the rest of eastern Canada.
+
+[Footnote 4: The Recollet (properly Recollect) friars were a strict
+branch of the Franciscan order that were sometimes called the
+Observantines. They were also known as "Recollects" (pronounced in
+French _recollet_) because they were required to be constantly keeping
+guard over their thoughts. This development of the Franciscan order of
+preaching missionary friars was originally a Spanish one, founded
+early in the sixteenth century, and becoming well established in the
+Spanish Netherlands. Many of them were Flemings or Walloons.]
+
+In 1626 the Jesuit order supplanted the Recollets, and commenced a
+campaign both of Christian propaganda and of geographical exploration
+which has scarcely finished in the Canada of to-day.
+
+In 1627 the war between the Iroquois Confederacy and the Huron and
+Algonkin tribes recommenced, and this, together with the British
+capture of Quebec and other portions of Canada, put a stop for several
+years to the work of exploration. This was not resumed on an advanced
+scale till 1634, when Champlain, unable himself, from failing health,
+to carry out his original commission of seeking a direct passage to
+China and India across the North-American continent, dispatched a
+Norman Frenchman named JEAN NICOLLET to find a way to the Western Sea.
+Nicollet, as a very young man, had lived for years amongst the
+Amerindian tribes, especially amongst the Nipissings near the lake of
+that name. Being charged, amongst other things, with the task of
+making peace between the Hurons and the tribes dwelling to the west of
+the great lakes, Nicollet discovered Lake Michigan. He was so
+convinced of the possibility of arriving at the Pacific Ocean, and
+thence making his way to China, that in the luggage which he carried
+in his birch-bark canoe was a dress of ceremony made of Chinese damask
+silk embroidered richly with birds and flowers. He was on his way to
+discover the Winnebago Indians, or "Men of the Sea", of whom Champlain
+had heard from the Hurons, with whom they were at war. But the great
+water from which they derived their name was not in this instance a
+sea, but the Mississippi River. The Winnebago Indians were totally
+distinct from the Algonkins or the Iroquois, and belonged to the
+Dakota stock, from which the great Siou confederation[5] was also
+derived.
+
+[Footnote 5: See p. 160.]
+
+Nicollet advanced to meet the Winnebagos clad in his Chinese robe and
+with a pistol in each hand. As he drew near he discharged his pistols,
+and the women and children fled in terror, for all believed him to be
+a supernatural being, a spirit wielding thunder and lightning.
+However, when they recovered from their terror the Winnebagos gave him
+a hearty welcome, and got up such lavish feasts in his honour, that
+one chief alone cooked 120 beavers at a single banquet.
+
+Nicollet certainly reached the water-parting between the systems
+of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, and under that
+name--Misi-sipi--"great water"--he heard through the Algonkin Indians
+of a mighty river lying three days' journey westward from his last
+camp. Winnebago (from which root is also derived the names of the
+Lakes Winnipeg and Winnipegosis much farther to the north-west) meant
+"salt" or "foul" water. Both terms might therefore be applied to the
+sea, and also to the lakes and rivers which, in the minds of the
+Amerindians, were equally vast in length or breadth.
+
+From 1648 to 1653 the whole of the Canada known to the French settlers
+and explorers was convulsed by the devastating warfare carried on by
+the Iroquois, who during that period destroyed the greater part of the
+Algonkin and Huron clans. The neutral nation of Lake Erie (the Erigas)
+was scattered, and between the shores of Lakes Michigan and Huron and
+Montreal the country was practically depopulated, except for the
+handfuls of French settlers and traders who trembled behind their
+fortifications. Then, to the relief and astonishment of the French,
+one of the Iroquois clans--the Onondaga--proposed terms of peace,
+probably because they had no more enemies to fight of their own
+colour, and wished to trade with the French.
+
+The fur trade of the Quebec province had attracted an increasing
+number of French people (men bringing their wives) to such settlements
+as Tadoussac and Three Rivers. Amongst these were the parents of
+PIERRE ESPRIT RADISSON. This young man went hunting near Three Rivers
+station and was captured in the woods by Mohawks (Iroquois) who
+carried him off to one of their towns and intended to burn him alive.
+Having bound him at a stake, they proceeded to tear out some of his
+finger nails and shoot arrows at the less vital parts of his body. But
+a Mohawk woman was looking on and was filled with pity at the
+sufferings of this handsome boy. She announced her intention of
+adopting him as a member of her family, and by sheer force of will she
+compelled the men to release him. After staying for some time amongst
+the Mohawks he escaped, but was again captured just as he was nearing
+Three Rivers. Once more he was spared from torture at the intercession
+of his adopted relations. He then made an even bolder bid for freedom,
+and fled to the south, up the valley of the Richelieu and the Hudson,
+and thus reached the most advanced inland post of Dutch America--then
+called Orange, now Albany--on the Hudson River. From this point he was
+conveyed to Holland, and from Holland he returned to Canada.
+
+Soon after his return he joined two Jesuit fathers who were to visit a
+mission station of the Jesuits amongst the Onondagas (Iroquois) on a
+lakelet about thirty miles south-east of the present city of
+Rochester. The Iroquois (whose language Radisson had learnt to speak)
+received them with apparent friendliness, and there they passed the
+winter. But in the spring Radisson found out that the Onondaga
+Iroquois were intending to massacre the whole of the mission.
+Instructed by him, the Jesuits pretended to have no suspicions of the
+coming attack, but all the while they were secretly building canoes at
+their fort. As soon as they were ready for flight, and the sun of
+April had completely melted the ice in the River Oswego, the French
+missionaries invited the Onondagas to a great feast, no doubt making
+out that it was part of the Easter festivities sanctioned by the
+Church. They pointed out to their guests that from religious motives
+as well as those of politeness it was essential that the _whole_ of
+the food provided should be eaten, "nothing was to be left on the
+plate". They set before their savage guests an enormous banquet of
+maize puddings, roast pigs, roast ducks, game birds, and fish of many
+kinds, even terrapins, or freshwater turtles. The Iroquois ate and ate
+until even _their_ appetites were satisfied. Then they began to cry
+off; but the missionaries politely insisted, and even told them that
+in failing to eat they were neglecting their religious duties. To help
+them in this respect they played hymn and psalm tunes on musical
+instruments. At last the Onondagas were gorged to repletion, and sank
+into a stertorous slumber at sunset. Whilst they slept, the Jesuits,
+their converts, and Radisson got into the already prepared canoes and
+paddled quickly down the Oswego River far beyond pursuit.
+
+Radisson next joined his brother-in-law, Medard Chouart, and after
+narrowly escaping massacre by the Iroquois (once more on the warpath
+along the Ottawa River) reached the northern part of Lake Huron, and
+Green Bay on the north-west of Lake Michigan. From Green Bay they
+travelled up the Fox River and across a portage to the Wisconsin,
+which flows into the Mississippi. Down this river they sped, meeting
+people of the great Siou confederation and Kri (Cree) Indians, these
+last an Algonkin nation roaming in the summertime as far north as
+Hudson's Bay, until at length they reached the actual waters of the
+Mississippi, first of all white men. Returning then to Lake Michigan,
+the shores of which seemed to them an earthly paradise with a climate
+finer than Italy, they journeyed northwards into Lake Huron, and
+thence north-westwards through the narrow passages of St. Mary's River
+into Lake Superior. The southern coast of Lake Superior was followed
+to its westernmost point, where they made a camp, and from which they
+explored during the winter (in snowshoes) the Wisconsin country and
+collected information regarding the Mississippi and its great western
+affluent the Missouri. The Mississippi, they declared, led to Mexico,
+while the other great forked river in the far west was a pathway,
+perhaps, to the Southern Sea (Pacific).
+
+The Jesuits, on the other hand, were convinced that Hudson's Bay (or
+the "Bay of the North") was at no great distance from Lake Superior
+(which was true) and that it must communicate to the north-west with
+the Pacific Ocean or the sea that led to China.
+
+In 1661, without the leave of the French Governor of Canada, who
+wanted them to take two servants of his own with them and to give him
+half the profits of the venture, Chouart and Radisson hurried away to
+the west, picked up large bodies of natives who were returning to the
+regions north of Lake Huron, with them fought their way through the
+ambushed Iroquois, and once more navigated the waters of Lake
+Superior. Once again they started for the Mississippi basin and
+explored the country of Minnesota, coming thus into contact with
+native tribes which lived on the flesh of the bison. In Minnesota they
+met a second time the Kri or Kinistino Indians of north-central
+Canada, and joined one of their camps in the spring of 1662, somewhere
+to the west of Lake Superior. With Kri guides they started away to the
+north and north-east, no doubt by way of the Lake of the Woods, the
+English River, Lake St. Joseph, and the Albany River, thus reaching
+the salt sea at James Bay, the southernmost extension of Hudson Bay.
+Or they may have proceeded by an even shorter route, though with
+longer portages for canoes, through Lake Nipigon to the Albany.
+
+The summer of 1662 they passed on the islands and shores of James Bay
+hunting "buffalo"[6] with the Indians. Then, in 1663, travelling back
+along the same route they had followed in the previous year, they
+regained Lake Superior, and so passed by the north of Lake Huron to
+the Ottawa River and the St. Lawrence. But on their return to Three
+Rivers they were arrested by the French Governor, D'Avaugour, who
+condemned them to imprisonment and severe fines. The courts of France
+gave them no redress, and in their furious anger Chouart and Radisson
+went over to the English, offered their services to England, and so
+brought about the creation of the Hudson Bay Company.
+
+[Footnote 6: More probably musk oxen.]
+
+Radisson's journey from England to Hudson Bay has been treated of in
+an earlier chapter: it is preferable to follow out to its finish the
+great, western impulse of the French, which led them to neglect for a
+time the doings of the British on the east coast of North America and
+in the sub-Arctic regions of Hudson Bay.
+
+From 1660 onwards the Jesuit missionaries again took up vigorously
+that work of Christianizing the Amerindians which had been so
+completely checked by the frightful ravages of the Iroquois between
+1648 and 1654.
+
+By 1669 the Jesuits had three permanent stations in western Canada.
+The first was the mission station at Sault Ste. Marie, the second was
+the station of Ste. Esprit, on Lake Superior (not far from the modern
+town of Ashland), and the third was the station of St. Francois Xavier
+at the mouth of the Fox River, on Green Bay, Lake Michigan.
+
+As regards some of the sufferings which these missionaries had to go
+through when travelling across Canada in the winter, I quote the
+following from _The Relations of the Jesuits_ (p. 35):--
+
+"I [Father de Crepieul] set out on the 16th of January, 1674, from the
+vicinity of Lake St. John, near the Saguenay River, with an Algonkin
+captain and two Frenchmen. We started after Mass, and walked five long
+leagues on snowshoes with much trouble, because the snow was soft and
+made our snowshoes very heavy. At the end of five leagues, we found
+ourselves on a lake four or five leagues long all frozen over, on
+which the wind caused great quantities of snow to drift, obscuring the
+air and preventing us from seeing where we are going. After walking
+another league and a half with great difficulty our strength began to
+fail. The wind, cold, and snow were so intolerable that they compelled
+us to retrace our steps a little, to cut some branches of fir which
+might in default of bark serve to build a cabin. After this we tried
+to light a fire, but were unable to do so. We were thus reduced to a
+most pitiful condition. The cold was beginning to seize us to an
+extraordinary degree, the darkness was great, and the wind blew
+fearfully. In order to keep ourselves from dying with cold, we resumed
+our march on the lake in spite of our fatigue, without knowing whither
+we were going, and all were greatly impeded with the wind and snow.
+After walking a league and a half we had to succumb in spite of
+ourselves and stop where we were. The danger we ran of dying from cold
+caused me to remember the charitable Father de Noue, who in a similar
+occasion was found dead in the snow, kneeling and with clasped
+hands.... We therefore remained awake during the rest of the night....
+On the following morning two Frenchmen arrived from Father Albanel's
+cabin very opportunely, and kindled a great fire on the snow.... After
+this we resumed our journey on the same lake, and at last reached the
+spot where Father Albanel was.... A serious injury, caused by the fall
+of a heavy load upon his loins, prevented him from moving, and still
+more, from performing a missionary's duties."
+
+One of the Jesuit fathers, Allouez, in founding the station of St.
+Francois Xavier on Green Bay, Lake Michigan, had gained further
+information about the wonderful Mississippi, which he called "Messi
+Sipi". He also thoroughly explored Lake Nipigon, to the north of Lake
+Superior. In 1669 two missionaries, named Dollier de Casson and
+Galinee, started from the seminary of St. Sulpice (Montreal) to reach
+the great tribes of the far west, supposed to be eager to learn of
+Christianity and known to be much more tractable than the Iroquois.
+These two missionaries, in their expedition of seven canoes and
+twenty-one Amerindians, were accompanied by a remarkable young man
+commonly known as La Salle, but whose real name was Robert
+Cavalier.[7]
+
+[Footnote 7: La Salle was the name of his property in France.]
+
+Before leaving Lake Ontario, they actually passed the mouth of the
+Niagara River and heard the falls, but had not sufficient curiosity to
+leave their canoes and walk a short distance to see them. The
+wonderful cascades of Niagara, where the St. Lawrence leaving Lake
+Erie plunges 328 feet down into Lake Ontario (which is not much above
+sea level), remained nearly undiscovered and undescribed until the
+year 1678, when they were visited by Father Hennepin. Near the western
+end of Lake Ontario the two Sulpician missionaries met another
+Frenchman, Jolliet, who had come down to Lake Superior by way of the
+Detroit passage, which is really the portion of the St. Lawrence
+connecting Lake Huron with Lake Erie. Jolliet told the missionary de
+Casson of a great tribe in the far west, the Pottawatomies, who had
+asked for missionaries, and who were of Algonkin stock. La Salle, on
+the other hand, was determined to make for the rumoured Ohio River,
+which lay somewhere to the south-west of Lake Erie.
+
+The two Sulpicians wintered in "the earthly paradise" to the north of
+Lake Erie, passing a delightful six months there in the amazing
+abundance of game and fish. They then met with various disasters to
+their canoes, and consequently gave up their western journey, passing
+northwards through Detroit and Lake St. Clair into Lake Huron, and
+thence to the Jesuit mission station of the Sault Ste. Marie. Here
+they were received rather coldly, as being rivals in the mission field
+and in exploration. They in their turn accused the Jesuits of thinking
+mainly, if not entirely, of the foundation of French colonies, and
+very little of evangelizing the natives.
+
+JOLLIET, a Canadian by birth,[8] was dispatched by the Viceroy of
+Canada in 1672 to explore the far west. Two years--1670--previously
+the French Government had for the first time adopted a really definite
+policy about Canada, and had taken formal possession of the Lake
+region and of all the territories lying between the lakes and the
+Mississippi. A great assembly of Indians was held at Sault Ste. Marie,
+near the east end of Lake Superior; and here a representative of the
+French Government, accompanied by numerous missionaries and by
+Jolliet, read a proclamation of the sovereignty of King Louis XIV of
+France and Navarre. Below a tall cross was erected a great shield
+bearing the arms of France. Father Allouez addressed the Indians in
+the Algonkin language, and told them of the all-powerful Louis XIV,
+who "had ten thousand commanders and captains, each as great as the
+Governor of Quebec". He reminded them how the troops of this king had
+beaten the unconquerable Iroquois, of how he possessed innumerable
+soldiers and uncountable ships; that at times the ground of France
+shook with the discharge of cannon, while the blaze of musketry was
+like the lightning. He pictured the king covered with the blood of his
+enemies and riding in the middle of his cavalry, and ordering so many
+of his enemies to be slain that no account could be kept of the number
+of their scalps, whilst their blood flowed in rivers. The Amerindians
+being what they were, addicted to warfare, and only recognizing the
+right of the strongest, it may be that this gospel of force was not
+quite so shocking and unchristian as it reads to us nearly 250 years
+afterwards, though it jars very much as coming from the lips of a
+missionary of Christianity. However, it must be remembered that but
+for the valour of the French soldiers in the awful period between 1648
+and 1666 (when the Mohawks received a thorough and well-deserved
+thrashing) many of the tribes addressed on this occasion by the Jesuit
+missionaries would have been completely exterminated; the Iroquois
+would have depopulated much of north-eastern America. It is obvious,
+indeed, from our study of the conditions of life amongst the
+Amerindians, that one reason why the New World was so poorly populated
+at the time of its discovery by Europeans was the wars of
+extermination between tribe and tribe; for America between the Arctic
+regions and Tierra del Fuego is marvellously well supplied with
+natural food products--game, fish, fruits, nuts, roots, and
+grain--much more so than any area of similar extent in the Old World.
+
+[Footnote 8: Born at Quebec in 1645.]
+
+Jolliet was to be accompanied on his westward expedition by Father
+JACQUES MARQUETTE,[9] a Jesuit missionary who had become well
+acquainted with the tribes visiting Lake Superior, and had learnt the
+Siou dialect of the Illinois people. On May 17, 1673, Jolliet and
+Marquette started from the Straits of Michili-Makinak with only two
+bark canoes and five Amerindians. They coasted along the north coast
+of Lake Michigan, passed into Green Bay, and thence up the River Fox.
+They were assisted by the Maskutins, or Fire Indians, and were given
+Miami guides. Thence the natives assisted them to transport their
+canoes and baggage over the very short distance that separates the
+upper waters of the Fox River from the Wisconsin River, and down the
+Wisconsin they glided till they reached the great Mississippi. The
+Governor of Quebec, who had sent Jolliet on this mission, believed
+that the Great River of the west would lead them to the Gulf of
+California, which was then called the Vermilion Sea by the Spaniards,
+because it resembled in shape and colour the Red Sea.
+
+[Footnote 9: Father Jacques Marquette was born in the province of
+Champagne, eastern France. He came to Canada when he was twenty-nine
+years old, having already been prepared by the Jesuits for priesthood
+and missionary work since his seventeenth year. He spent nine years in
+Canada, and died at the age of thirty-eight. He has left an enduring
+memory for goodness, courage, and purity of life.]
+
+"On the 17th of June (1673)", writes Father Marquette, "we safely
+entered the Mississippi with a joy that I cannot express. Its current
+is slow and gentle, the width very unequal. On its banks there are
+hardly any woods or mountains. The islands are most beautiful, and
+they are covered with fine trees. We saw deer and cattle (bison),
+geese, and swans. From time to time we came upon monstrous fish, one
+of which struck our canoe with such violence that I thought it was a
+great tree. On another occasion we saw on the water a monster with the
+head of a tiger, a sharp nose like that of a wild cat, with whiskers
+and straight erect ears. The head was grey, and the neck quite black
+(possibly a lynx).... We found that turkeys had taken the place of
+game, and the _pisikiou_, or wild cattle, that of the other animals."
+
+Father Marquette, of course, by his wild cattle means the bison, of
+which he proceeds to give an excellent description. He adds: "They are
+very fierce, and not a year passes without their killing some savages.
+When attacked, they catch a man on their horns if they can, toss him
+in the air, throw him on the ground, then trample him under foot and
+kill him. If a person fires at them from a distance with either a bow
+or a gun, he must immediately after the shot throw himself down and
+hide in the grass, for if they perceive him who has fired they run at
+him and attack him."
+
+Soon after entering the Mississippi, Marquette noticed some rocks
+which by their height and length inspired awe. "We saw upon one of
+them two painted monsters which at first made us afraid, and upon
+which the boldest savages dare not long rest their eyes. They are as
+large as a calf; they have horns on their heads like those of deer, a
+horrible look, red eyes, a beard like a tiger's, a face somewhat like
+a man's, a body covered with scales, and so long a tail that it winds
+all round the body and ends like that of a fish. Green, red, and black
+are the three colours composing the picture. Moreover, these two
+monsters are so well painted that we cannot believe that any savage is
+their author, for good painters in France would find it difficult to
+paint so well, and, besides, they are so high up on the rock that it
+is difficult to reach that place conveniently to paint them."[10]
+
+[Footnote 10: These remarkable rock pictures were situated immediately
+above the present city of Alton, Illinois. In 1812 they still remained
+in a good state of preservation, but the thoughtless Americans had
+gradually destroyed them by 1867 in quarrying the rock for building
+stone.]
+
+As the Jolliet expedition paddled down the Mississippi--ever so easily
+and swiftly--a marvellous panorama unfolded itself before the
+Frenchmen's fascinated gaze. Immense herds of bison occasionally
+appeared on the river banks, flocks of turkeys flew up from the glades
+and roosted in the trees and on the river bank. Everywhere the natives
+seemed friendly, and Father Marquette was usually able to communicate
+with them through his knowledge of the Illinois Algonkin dialect,
+which the Siou understood.
+
+[Illustration: INDIANS HUNTING BISON]
+
+On their first meeting with the Mississippi Indians, the French
+explorers were not only offered the natives' pipes to smoke in token
+of peace, but an old man amongst the latter uttered these words to
+Jolliet: "How beautiful the sun is, O Frenchman, when thou comest to
+visit us. Our village awaits thee, and thou shalt enter all our cabins
+in peace."... "There was a crowd of people," writes Marquette; "they
+devoured us with their eyes, but nevertheless preserved profound
+silence. We could, however, hear these words addressed to us from time
+to time in a low voice: 'How good it is, my brothers, that you should
+visit us'.
+
+"... The council was followed by a great feast, consisting of four
+dishes, which had to be partaken of in accordance with all their
+fashions. The first course was a great wooden platter full of
+sagamite, that is to say, meal of Indian corn boiled in water, and
+seasoned with fat. The Master of the Ceremonies filled a spoon with
+sagamite three or four times, and put it to my mouth as if I were a
+little child. He did the same to Monsieur Jollyet. As a second course
+he caused a second platter to be brought, on which were three fish. He
+took some pieces of them, removed the bones therefrom, and, after
+blowing upon them to cool them, he put them in our mouths as one would
+give food to a bird. For the third course, they brought a large dog
+that had just been killed, but, when they learned that we did not eat
+this meat, they removed it from before us. Finally, the fourth course
+was a piece of wild ox, the fattest morsels of which were placed in
+our mouths.... We thus pushed forward and no longer saw so many
+prairies, because both shores of the river are bordered with lofty
+trees. The cotton wood, elm and bass wood are admirable for their
+height and thickness. There are great numbers of wild cattle whom we
+hear bellowing. We killed a little parroquet, with a red and yellow
+head and green body.... We have got down to near the 33 deg. of
+latitude.... We heard from afar savages who were inciting one another
+to attack us by their continual yelling. They were armed with bows and
+arrows, hatchets, clubs, and shields.... Part of them embarked in
+great wooden canoes, some to ascend, others to descend the river in
+order to surround us on all sides.... Some young men threw themselves
+into the water and seized my canoe, but the current compelled them to
+return to land. One of them hurled his club, which passed over without
+striking us. In vain I showed the calumet (pipe of peace), and made
+them signs that we were not coming to war against them. The alarm
+continued; they were already preparing to pierce us with arrows from
+all sides when God suddenly touched the hearts of the old men who were
+standing at the water's edge, who checked the ardour of their young
+men.... Whereon we landed, not without fear on our part. First we had
+to speak by signs, because none of them understood the six languages
+which I spoke. At last we found an old man who could speak a little
+Illinois. We informed them that we were going to the sea.
+
+"The next day was spent in feasting on Indian corn and dogs' flesh.
+The people here had an abundance of Indian corn, which they sowed at
+all seasons. They cook it in great earthen jars which are very well
+made, and also have plates of baked earth. The men go naked and wear
+their hair short; they pierce their noses, from which, as well as from
+their ears, hang beads.... Their cabins are made of bark, and are long
+and wide. They sleep at the two ends, which are raised two feet above
+the ground. They know nothing of the beaver, and their wealth consists
+in the skins of wild cattle. They never see snow in their country, and
+recognize the winter only through the rains."
+
+The expedition had passed the confluence of the Missouri and that of
+the Ohio, and had finally reached the place where the Arkansas River
+enters the Mississippi. Here the Frenchmen gathered from the natives
+that the sea was only ten days distant, and this sea they knew (for
+Jolliet was able to take astronomical observations and to make a rough
+survey) could only be the Gulf of Mexico. Jolliet feared if he
+prosecuted his journey any farther, he and his people would fall into
+the hands of the Spaniards and be imprisoned, if not killed.
+Therefore, at this point on the Lower Mississippi, the expedition
+turned back. Its return journey was a weary business, for the current
+was against the canoes as they were propelled northwards up the Great
+River. But Jolliet learnt from the natives of a better homeward route,
+that of following the Illinois River upstream until the expedition
+came within a very short distance of Lake Michigan, near where Chicago
+now stands. The canoes were carried over a low ridge of ground,
+launched again in the Chicago River, and so passed into Lake Michigan.
+(There is, in fact, at this point the remains of an ancient water
+connection between Lake Michigan and the Illinois River, and a canal
+now connects the two systems.) Jolliet, in describing this region,
+realized that by cutting a canal through two miles of prairie it would
+be possible to go "in a small ship" from Lake Erie or Lake Superior
+"to Florida".
+
+Father Marquette remained at his new mission on the Fox River (he died
+two years afterwards on the shores of the Straits of Michili-makinak).
+Jolliet, on returning by way of the Ottawa River to Quebec, was nearly
+drowned in the La Chine Rapids (Montreal), and all his papers and maps
+were lost. The natives with him also perished, but he struggled to
+shore with difficulty, and went on his way to Quebec to report his
+wonderful discoveries to the Governor, Frontenac. Fortunately Father
+Marquette had also kept a journal and had made maps, and these
+reaching the superior of his mission arrived in time to confirm
+Jolliet's statements.
+
+Jolliet married at Quebec, and proceeded to explore and develop the
+regions along the north coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, travelling
+in this work as far as Hudson's Bay. He was given by the French
+Government the Island of Anticosti as a reward for his achievements,
+but the work and capital which he put into the development of this
+long-neglected island came to nothing; for it was captured by the
+English, and Jolliet died a poor man whilst attempting to explore the
+coast of Labrador.
+
+As to ROBERT CAVALIER DE LA SALLE, he had, after all, discovered the
+Ohio, and had descended that river as far as the site of the present
+town of Louisville. Then he interested the Governor (Frontenac) of
+Canada in his enterprises. A fort, called Fort Frontenac, was built at
+what is now Kingston, at the point where the St. Lawrence leaves Lake
+Ontario. La Salle returned to France, and obtained the grant of the
+lordship of this fort and the surrounding country on conditions of
+maintaining the whole cost of the establishment, and making a
+settlement of colonists. Another visit to France in 1677-8 secured him
+further support and capital, and he returned from France with a
+companion, Henry de Tonty.
+
+La Salle, with de Tonty, started from Fort Frontenac in September,
+1678, so intensely anxious to commence his discoveries that he
+disregarded the difficulties of the winter season. On his way to
+Niagara he paid a visit to the Iroquois to conciliate them, and
+cleverly got from them permission to build a vessel on Lake Erie and
+also to erect a blacksmith's forge, near where Niagara now stands. The
+blacksmith's forge grew rapidly into a fort before the Indians were
+aware of what was being done. By August, 1679, he had built and
+launched (in spite of extraordinary calamities and misfortunes) on the
+Upper Niagara River the first sailing boat which ever appeared on the
+four great upper lakes of the St. Lawrence basin.
+
+In this ship he sailed through Lake Erie and past Detroit into Lake
+Huron, and thence to Green Bay (Lake Michigan), stopping at intervals
+amongst the canoes of the amazed natives, who for the first time heard
+the sound of cannon, for he had armed his vessel with guns. At Green
+Bay he collected a large quantity of furs, which had been obtained in
+trade by the men he had sent on in advance. He loaded up his sailing
+boat, the _Griffon_, and sent her on a voyage back to the east to
+transport this splendid load of furs to the merchants with whom he had
+become deeply indebted. Unhappily the _Griffon_ foundered in a storm
+on Lake Michigan, and was never heard of again. Meantime La Salle,
+with de Tonty and Father HENNEPIN, the discoverer of Niagara, had
+travelled in canoes to the south-east end of Lake Michigan, had passed
+up the Joseph River, and thence by portage into the Kankaki, which
+flows into the Illinois. This river he descended till he stopped near
+the site of the modern Peoria. Below this place he built a fort--for
+it was winter time--and although the natives were not very friendly he
+collected enough information from them to satisfy himself that he
+could easily pass down the Illinois to the Mississippi.
+
+He sent one of the Frenchmen, Michel Accault, together with Father
+Hennepin, to explore the Illinois down to the Mississippi; de Tonty he
+placed in charge of the fort with a small garrison; and then himself,
+on the last day of February, 1680, started to walk overland from Lake
+Michigan to Detroit. Eventually, by means of a canoe, which he
+constructed himself, he regained Fort Frontenac and Montreal. When he
+returned to Fort Crevecoeur, on the Illinois River,[11] it was to meet
+with the signs of a horrible disaster. The Iroquois in his absence had
+descended on the place with a great war party. They had massacred the
+Illinois people dwelling in a big settlement near the fort, and the
+remains of their mutilated bodies were scattered all over the place.
+Their town had been burnt; the fort was empty and abandoned. There
+were no traces of the Frenchmen, however, amongst the skulls and
+skeletons lying around him; for the skulls retained sufficient hair to
+show that they belonged to Amerindians. Nevertheless, he deposited his
+new stock of goods and most of his men in the ruins of the Fort
+Crevecoeur, and descended the River Illinois to the Mississippi. But
+he was obliged to turn back. On the west bank of the river were the
+scared Illinois Indians, on the east the raging Iroquois. Whenever La
+Salle could safely visit a deserted camp he would examine the remains
+of the tortured men tied to stakes to see if amongst them there was a
+Frenchman.
+
+[Footnote 11: He had named this place "Heartbreak" because when
+building it he had learnt of the loss of his sailing ship _Griffon_,
+with the splendid supply of furs which was to have paid off his debts,
+with all his reserve supplies and his men. This was not the limit of
+his troubles; for, after the overland journey of appalling hardships
+through a country of melting ice, flood, swamp, and hostile
+Iroquois--the Iroquois being furious with La Salle for having
+outwitted them in the building of this fort, and seeking him
+everywhere to destroy him--when he got to Montreal it was only to
+learn that a ship, coming from France with further supplies for his
+great journey had been wrecked at the mouth of the St. Lawrence!]
+
+But de Tonty was not dead. After incredible adventures he had escaped
+the raids of the Iroquois and had reached the Straits of
+Michili-makinak, between Lakes Michigan and Huron, and there met La
+Salle, who was once more on his way to Montreal.
+
+Again de La Salle and de Tonty, in the winter of 1681, returned to the
+south end of Lake Michigan, and made their way over the snow to the
+Illinois River. On the 6th February, 1682, they left the junction of
+the Illinois and the Mississippi to trace that great river to its
+outlet in the sea. La Salle reached the delta on the 6th April, 1682,
+having on the way taken possession of the country in the name of the
+King of France. Accault and Father Hennepin had meantime paddled up
+the Northern Mississippi as far as its junction with the Wisconsin. At
+this place their party was surrounded and captured by a large band of
+Siou warriors.
+
+The Frenchmen were at first in danger of being killed, as the Sious
+refused to smoke with them the pipe of peace. But being much less
+bloodthirsty than the Iroquois, they soon calmed down and treated
+their captives with a certain rough friendliness. All their goods were
+taken from them, even the vestments worn by Father Hennepin. But they
+were well supplied with food such as the country produced--bison,
+beef, fish, wild turkeys, and the grain of the wild rice, which made
+such excellent flour. They were gradually conveyed by the Siou[12] to
+a large settlement of that tribe on the shore of Mille Lacs, a sheet
+of water not far distant from the westernmost extremity of Lake
+Superior. Whilst staying at this Siou town Hennepin conversed with
+Indians from the far north and north-west, and from what they told him
+came to the conclusion that there was no continuous waterway or
+"Strait of Anian" across the North-American continent, but that
+the land extended to the north-west till it finally joined the
+north-eastern part of Asia--a guess that was not very far wrong. But
+he also surmised that there were rivers in the far west which led to
+an ocean--the Pacific--across which ships might go to Japan and China
+without passing to the southward of the Equator.
+
+[Footnote 12: The real name of the Siou, as far as we can arrive at it
+through the records of the French pioneers, was Issati or Naduessiu.]
+
+Whilst moving up and down the northern Mississippi, bison-hunting with
+the Indians, the Frenchmen were met near the site of St. Paul by one
+of the great French pioneers of the seventeenth century, the Sieur
+DANIEL DE GREYSOLON DU L'HUT. This remarkable man, who was an officer
+of the French army, had already planted the French arms at the
+Amerindian settlement of Mille Lacs in 1679, and had established
+himself as a powerful authority at the west end of Lake Superior. He
+had also summoned a great council of Amerindian tribes--the Siou from
+the Upper Mississippi, the Assiniboins from the Lake of the Woods
+(between Lake Superior and Lake Winnipeg), and the Kri Indians from
+Lake Nipigon. He had further discovered, in 1679, the water route of
+the St. Croix River from near Lake Superior to the Mississippi.
+
+Du L'Hut soon persuaded the Siou to let his fellow countrymen return
+with him to Lake Superior. Accault remained behind with the Siou,
+delighted with their wild, roving life, and no doubt married an Indian
+wife and became the father of some of those bold half-breeds who
+played such a great part in the subsequent history of innermost
+Canada. But Father Hennepin returned to Montreal, and made his way
+eventually to France, where he fell into great disgrace and was
+unfrocked. He had richly merited this treatment, for after he heard of
+the death of La Salle he impudently claimed the discovery of the whole
+course of the Mississippi River for himself, and for a long time was
+believed. He will certainly go down in history as the man who
+discovered and described Niagara Falls (in 1678), and he also assisted
+greatly to clear up the geography of the time by the information he
+collected from the Amerindians as to the vast extent of the
+North-American continent; but he was a boastful, unscrupulous man.
+
+Du L'Hut, who came to the rescue of Accault and Hennepin, was of noble
+family, and a member of the king's bodyguard. He decided, however, to
+seek his fortune in Canada, and obtained a commission as captain. It
+was his cousin, Henri de Tonty, who had accompanied La Salle. After
+returning to France to fight in the wars then going on, he came back
+to Canada with a younger brother, Claude. He had in him the spirit of
+great adventurers, and longed to visit the unknown countries of the
+upper Mississippi. In the early part of these journeys he rescued his
+fellow countrymen from the keeping of the Sious in the manner
+described. After that he spent _thirty_ years travelling and trading
+about North America, from the northern Mississippi into what we
+should now call Manitoba, and from the vicinity of Lake Winnipeg to
+Hudson Bay. He brought the great Amerindian nation of the Dakotas into
+direct relations with the French. He was absolutely fearless, and in
+no period of Canadian history has France been more splendidly
+represented in the personality of any of her officers than she was by
+Daniel de Greysolon du L'Hut. His was a tiresome name for English
+scribes and speakers. It was therefore written by them "Duluth" and
+pronounced D[)a]l[)a]th (instead of "Dueluet"). It is the name given to
+the township near the southernmost extremity of Lake Superior.
+
+When the journeys of du L'Hut came to an end--he died at Montreal in
+1710--and after the era of great French explorations in North America
+drew to a close, the French power was beginning to be eclipsed by that
+of the British, who were building up the foundations of a colony on
+the shores of Hudson's Bay, and were taking steps to acquire
+Newfoundland and to colonize New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
+
+Nevertheless, in 1720, the King of France, or rather the regent acting
+for the king, decided that a serious attempt must be made to discover
+the Western Sea, or Pacific Ocean, from the French posts which had
+been established in what is now known as Manitoba. The French had
+already discovered the Missouri, and had heard from several Indian
+tribes that it was possible to cross the Rocky Mountains and descend
+by other rivers to the waters of a great ocean, the coasts of which
+were visited by Spaniards. Several expeditions were sent out, more or
+less under the control of Jesuits, but did not accomplish much.
+
+The really great discoveries which link the "Great North-West" for all
+time in history with France and French names were initiated by PIERRE
+GAULTIER DE LA VERENDRYE, who was born in 1685 at the town of Three
+Rivers, in Lower Canada, where his father was Governor. He entered
+the army at the age of twelve, and took part in the French campaigns
+in Flanders, winning the rank of lieutenant at the battle of
+Malplaquet, where he received nine wounds and was left for dead on the
+field. He then returned to Canada, not having the necessary means with
+which to support the position of a lieutenant; and then, as France
+seemed to have entered upon a period of protracted peace, he
+determined to become an explorer. In 1728, when he was commandant of
+the trading post of Nipigon, to the north of Lake Superior, he heard
+from an Indian that there was a great lake beyond Lake Superior, out
+of which flowed a river towards the west, which ultimately led to a
+great salt lake where the water ebbed and flowed. As a matter of fact,
+these stories simply referred to Lake Winnipeg, but the importance of
+them lay in the fact that they acted as a powerful incentive to La
+Verendrye to push his explorations westwards, and perhaps discover a
+route to the Pacific Ocean.[13]
+
+[Footnote 13: The water of Lake Winnipeg--whatever it may be now--was
+frequently stated by Amerindians in earlier days to be "stinking
+water", or salt, brackish water, disagreeable to drink, and this lake
+exhibits a curious phenomenon of a regular rise and fall, reminding
+the observer of a tide, a phenomenon by no means confined to Lake
+Winnipeg, but occurring on sheets of water of much smaller extent.]
+
+La Verendrye afterwards went to Quebec, where he discussed his plans
+for Western exploration with the Governor of New France, the Marquis
+de Beauharnais, who was a distant connection of the Beauharnais family
+from which sprang the first husband of the Empress Josephine, the
+grandfather of Napoleon III.
+
+This Governor entered into his scheme with enthusiasm, though he could
+obtain little or no money from the ministers of Louis XVI. But a way
+out of the difficulty was found by the Governor giving La Verendrye
+the monopoly of the fur trade in the far North-West.[14] This
+monopoly enabled La Verendrye to obtain the funds for his expenditure
+from the merchants of Montreal, and in the summer of 1731 he started
+out on his explorations, accompanied by three of his sons, his nephew,
+fifty soldiers and French Canadian canoe men, and a Jesuit missionary.
+For a guide they had the Indian, Oshagash, who had first told La
+Verendrye of the western river and the salt water. After many delays,
+necessitated by the need for trading in furs to satisfy the merchants
+of Montreal, La Verendrye and his expedition skated on snowshoes down
+the ice of the Winnipeg River and reached the shores of Lake Winnipeg.
+They were probably the first white men to arrive there. La Verendrye
+established forts and posts along his route from Lake Nipigon, but his
+expedition had not been a commercial success. There was a deficit of
+L1700 between the amount realized in furs and the cost of the
+equipment and wages of the French and French Canadians. De Beauharnais
+made a fresh appeal to the French Court; he urged that the expenditure
+to convey La Verendrye's expedition to the Pacific Ocean would not be
+a large one--perhaps only L1500.
+
+[Footnote 14: What we should call to-day a "concession".]
+
+But the French Court was obdurate; it would not furnish a penny. Thus
+La Verendrye, in all probability, was prevented from forestalling the
+British explorers of sixty and seventy years later, besides the
+expeditions of Captain Cook and Captain Vancouver, which secured for
+Great Britain a foothold on the Pacific seaboard of British Columbia.
+
+La Verendrye in his fort on Lake Winnipeg was in a desperate position.
+He made a hasty journey back to Montreal and even Quebec, to beat up
+funds and to pacify the capitalists of his fur-trading monopoly. He
+painted in glowing colours the prospects of cutting off the trade of
+the Hudson's Bay Company and the building up of an immense commerce in
+valuable furs, and these men agreed once again to furnish the funds
+for the extension of the expedition. On his return he took back with
+him his youngest son, Louis, a boy of eighteen. Whilst he had been
+absent from Fort St. Charles (a post which he had built on the Lake of
+the Woods, in communication by water with the Winnipeg River), on Lake
+Winnipeg, that place was visited by a party of Siou Indians. They
+found the fort occupied in the absence of the French by a number of
+Kri or "Knistino" Indians in French service. These Kris were
+frightened at the arrival of the Sious and fired guns at them. "Who
+fired on us?" demanded these haughty Indians from Dakota, and the Kris
+replied, "The French". Then the Sious withdrew, but vowed to be
+completely revenged on the treacherous white man.
+
+When La Verendrye reached Fort St. Charles its little garrison was
+almost at the point of starvation. He had travelled himself ahead of
+his party, and the immense stock of supplies and provisions he was
+bringing up country were a long way behind him when he reached the
+fort. He therefore sent back his son Jean, together with the most
+active of his Canadian voyageurs and the Jesuit missionary, in order
+that they might meet the heavily laden canoes and hurry them up
+country as fast as possible. But this party was met by the Sious on
+Rainy River, who massacred them to a man. They were afterwards found
+lying in a circle on the beach, decapitated and mutilated. The heads
+of most of them were wrapped ironically in beaver skins, and La
+Verendrye's son, Jean, was horribly cut and slashed, and his
+mutilated, naked body decorated with garters and bracelets of
+porcupine quills.
+
+Meantime, during his absence in Lower Canada, two of his sons in
+charge of Fort Maurepas, on Lake Winnipeg, had been very active. They
+had discovered the great size of this lake, and also the entrance of
+the Red River on the south. They then proceeded to explore both the
+Red River and its western tributary the Assiniboin. On the Assiniboin
+was afterwards built the post of Fort La Reine, and from this place in
+1738 La Verendrye started with two of his sons, several other
+Frenchmen, a few Canadian voyageurs, and twenty-five Assiniboin
+Indians. Leaving the Assiniboin River, they crossed the North Dakota
+prairies on foot. Owing to the timidity of his Indian guides, La
+Verendrye was not led direct to the Missouri River, the "Great River
+of the West", but along a zigzag route which permitted his guides to
+reinforce their numbers at Assiniboin villages, and every now and then
+join in a bison hunt. All the party were on foot, horses not then
+having reached the Assiniboin tribe. But on the 28th of November,
+1738, they drew near to the Missouri and were met by a chief of the
+great Mandan tribe, who was accompanied by thirty of his warriors, and
+who presented La Verendrye with young maize cobs and leaves of native
+tobacco, these being regarded as emblems of peace and friendship.
+
+The Mandan tribe differed materially in its habits and customs from
+the Indians to the north, who supported themselves mainly, if not
+entirely, by hunting, who cared very little for agriculture, and moved
+continually like nomads over great stretches of country, living
+chiefly in tents or temporary villages. The Mandans, on the other
+hand, were a people who practised agriculture, and had permanent and
+well-constructed towns. In fact, their civilization and demeanour made
+such an impression on the Assiniboin and other northern tribes that
+they had been considered a sort of "white people", somewhat akin to
+Europeans, and La Verendrye was a little disappointed to find them
+only Amerindians in race and colour.
+
+The six hundred Assiniboins who had gathered about La Verendrye's
+expedition proved to be a great trouble to him, as they were
+constantly picking quarrels with the Mandans, who were very dishonest.
+Accordingly, La Verendrye arranged with the Mandans to frighten them
+away by pretending that the Siou Indians were on the warpath. The six
+hundred Assiniboins bolted, but took with them La Verendrye's
+interpreter, so that he was henceforth obliged to communicate with the
+Mandans by means of signs and gestures. This and other reasons decided
+him to return--even though it was the depth of winter, to Fort La
+Reine, but not before he had given the head chief of the Mandans a
+flag and a leaden plate which (unknown to the Mandans) meant taking
+possession of their country in the name of the French king.
+
+The journey back to Fort La Reine, over the plains of the Assiniboin,
+was a terrible experience. The party had to travel in the teeth of an
+almost unceasing north-east wind which was freezingly cold. Night
+after night they were obliged to dig deep holes in the snow for their
+sleeping places. La Verendrye nearly died of agonizing pain and
+fatigue during this journey, and was a long time recovering from its
+effects.
+
+As they continued to receive friendly messages from the Mandans,
+inviting them to make further discoveries, LA VERENDRYE'S sons, PIERRE
+and FRANCOIS, set out in the spring of 1742, and, after some checks
+and disappointments, managed with a single Mandan guide to reach Broad
+Lands on the Little Missouri River, where they noticed the earths of
+different colours, blue, green, red, black, white, and yellow, which
+are so characteristic of this region. They reached the village of the
+Crow Indians, passed through a portion of the friendly tribe, the
+Cheyennes (the name was probably pronounced Shian) and got into the
+country which was constantly being ravaged by the Snake Indians, or
+Shoshones. Here, on the 1st of January, 1743, when the mists of
+morning cleared away, they saw upon the horizon the outline of huge
+mountains. As they travelled westwards or south-westwards, day after
+day, the jagged blue wall resolved itself into towering snow-capped
+peaks, glittering in the sun and provoking the appellation of "the
+Mountains of Bright Stones", a name probably given to the Rocky
+Mountains by the Amerindians, but used in all the earlier French and
+English maps until the end of the eighteenth century.[15]
+
+[Footnote 15: The term Rocky Mountains was probably first officially
+applied by the American expedition, under Lewis and Clarke, sent out
+by the United States Government in 1804 to take possession of the
+coast of Oregon, but it was used twenty or thirty years earlier by
+British explorers of Western Canada.]
+
+On the 12th of January they reached the very foot of the mountains,
+the slopes of which they saw were thickly covered with magnificent
+forests of pine and fir--forests, that have since suffered to an
+appalling extent from annual bush fires, which so far the United
+States Government seems unable to check. Here they were to meet with a
+bitter disappointment. They were travelling with a very large war
+party of the Bow Indians for the purpose, if need be, of attacking and
+routing the Shoshones; but a Shoshone camp at the base of the
+mountains was found to be deserted, and the Bow Indians jumped to the
+conclusion that the Shoshones had turned back through the forest
+unseen, and were now making with all speed for the principal war camp
+of the Bow Indians, where they would massacre the women and children.
+They would listen to no remonstrances from the two Frenchmen, who
+perforce had also to travel back, either alone or with the Bow
+Indians, in the direction of their war camp, where the idea of a
+Shoshone attack was found to be baseless. Eventually, the two La
+Verendrye brothers were obliged to make their way to the Missouri
+River, and abandon any idea of finding a way to the Western Ocean
+across the Rocky Mountains.
+
+The French pioneers had already heard of the Spaniards in California,
+and the possibility of getting into touch with them. They had now
+discovered, first of all Europeans, the Rocky Mountains--that great
+snowy range of North America which extends from Robson Peak on the
+eastern borders of British Columbia to Baldy Peak in New Mexico.
+
+Afterwards the La Verendryes directed their attention more to the
+opportunities of reaching the Far West through the streams that flowed
+into the system of Lake Winnipeg, and in this way discovered, in or
+about 1743, the great River Saskatchewan. This river La Verendrye's
+sons followed up till they reached the junction between the North and
+the South Rivers, and then they probably learnt a good deal more of
+the Southern Saskatchewan, on which they may have built one or two
+posts. La Verendrye himself thought that this would prove to be the
+best route by which the French could reach the Western Sea.
+
+By this time the French Government was becoming alive to the
+importance of these discoveries, and it conferred a decoration on La
+Verendrye, and allowed him to hope that he might be furnished with
+means for further exploration. But he died soon afterwards, at the
+close of 1749, and after his death his sons were treated with gross
+ingratitude and neglect. The self-seeking Governor of New France
+endeavoured to secure the fur trade for his own friends, and sent an
+officer with a terribly long name--Captain Jacques Repentigny Le
+Gardeur de Saint Pierre--to continue the exploration towards the
+Pacific. From 1750 to 1763 the French occupation of this region of the
+two Saskatchewan Rivers was extended till in all probability the
+French got within sight of the northern Rocky Mountains in the
+vicinity of Calgary. Then came the English conquest of Canada to stop
+all further enterprise in this direction, and the story was next to be
+taken up by English, Scottish, and Canadian explorers.
+
+It will be men with English and Scottish names, mainly, who will
+henceforth complete the work begun and established so magnificently by
+Cartier, Brule, Nicollet, Jolliet, La Salle, du L'Hut, and La
+Verendrye, though the French Canadians will also play a notable part,
+together with "Americans", from New England.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+The Geographical Conditions of the Canadian Dominion
+
+
+Before we continue to follow the adventures of the pioneers of British
+North America, I think--even if it seems wearisome and discursive--my
+readers would better understand this story if I placed before them a
+general description of what is now the Dominion of Canada, more
+particularly as it was seen and discovered by the earliest European
+explorers.
+
+The most prominent feature on the east, and that which was nearest to
+Europe, was the large island of NEWFOUNDLAND, 42,000 square miles in
+extent, that is to say, nearly as large as England without Wales. It
+seems to bar the way of the direct sea access by the Gulf of St.
+Lawrence to the very heart of North America; and, until the Straits of
+Belle Isle and of Cabot were discovered, did certainly arrest the
+voyages of the earliest pioneers. Newfoundland, as you can see on the
+map, has been cut into and carved by the forces of nature until it has
+a most fantastic outline. Long peninsulas of hills alternate with
+deep, narrow gulfs, and about the south-east and east coasts there are
+innumerable islets, most of which in the days of the early discoverers
+were the haunt of millions of sea birds who resorted there for
+breeding purposes. The heart of Newfoundland, so to speak, is an
+elevated country with hills and mountains rising to a little over 2000
+feet. A great deal of the country is, or was, dense forests, chiefly
+consisting of fir trees. As numerous almost as the sea birds were the
+seals and walruses which frequented the Newfoundland coasts. Inland
+there were very large numbers of reindeer, generally styled nowadays
+by the French-Canadian name of _Caribou_[1]. Besides reindeer there
+were wolves, apparently of a smaller size than those of the mainland.
+There were also lynxes and foxes, besides polar bears, martens,
+squirrels, &c. The human inhabitants of Newfoundland, whom I shall
+describe in the next chapter, were known subsequently by the name of
+Beothuk, or Beothik, a nickname of no particular meaning. They had
+evidently been separated for many centuries from contact with the
+Amerindians of the mainland, though they may have been visited
+occasionally on the north by the Eskimo. They had in fact been so long
+separated from the other Amerindians of North America that they were
+strikingly different from them in their habits, customs, and language.
+
+[Footnote 1: The first Frenchmen visiting North America, and seeing
+the caribou without their horns, thought they were a kind of wild ass.
+The reindeer of Newfoundland is a sub-species peculiar to this
+island.]
+
+The climate of Newfoundland is not nearly so cold as that of the
+mainland, nor so hot in summer, but it is spoilt at times by fogs and
+sea mists which conceal the landscape for days together. In the
+wintertime, and quite late in the spring, quantities of ice hang about
+the shores of the islands, and when the warm weather comes, these
+accumulations of ice slip away into the Atlantic in the form of
+icebergs and are most dangerous to shipping.
+
+To the south-east of Newfoundland the sea is very shallow for hundreds
+of miles, the remains no doubt of a great extension of North America
+in the direction of Europe which had sunk below the surface ages ago.
+In this shallow water--the "Banks" of Newfoundland--fish, especially
+codfish, swarmed in millions, and still continue to swarm with little,
+if any, diminution from the constant toll of the fishing fleets.
+Another creature found in great abundance on these coasts is the true
+lobster,[2] which filled as important a part in the diet of the
+Beothuk natives, before the European occupation, as the salmon did in
+the dietary of the British Columbian tribes.
+
+[Footnote 2: _Homarus americanus_. The lobster of Newfoundland and the
+coasts of North-east America is closely related to the common lobster
+of British waters. These true lobsters resemble the freshwater
+crayfish in having their foremost pair of legs modified into large,
+unequal-sized claws. The European rock-lobster of the Mediterranean
+and French coasts (the _langouste_ of the French) has no large claws.]
+
+The next most striking feature in the geography of Eastern North
+America is NOVA SCOTIA. AS you look at it on the map this province
+seems to be a long peninsula connected with the mainland by the narrow
+isthmus of Chignecto; but its northernmost portion--Cape
+Breton--really consists of two big and two little islands, only
+separated from Nova Scotia by a very narrow strait--the Gut of Canso.
+On the north of Nova Scotia lies the large Prince Edward Island, and
+north of this again the small group of the Magdalen Islands,
+discovered by Cartier, the resort of herds of immense walruses at one
+time. Due west of Nova Scotia the country, first flat (like Nova
+Scotia itself) and at one time covered with magnificent forests, rises
+into a very hilly region which culminates on the north in the Shikshok
+Mountains of the Gaspe Peninsula (nearly 4000 feet in height) and the
+White Mountains (over 6000 feet) and the Adirondak Mountains (over
+5000 feet). The White, the Green, and the Adirondak Mountains lie just
+within the limits of the United States.
+
+North of the Gaspe Peninsula, in the great Gulf of St. Lawrence, is
+Anticosti Island, which rises on the south in a series of terraces
+until it reaches an altitude of about 2000 feet. This island, which is
+well wooded, was said to have swarmed with reindeer at one time, and
+perhaps other forms of deer also, and to have possessed grizzly bears
+which fed on the deer, besides Polar bears visiting it in the winter.
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF CANADA]
+
+Newfoundland is separated from the mainland of LABRADOR on the north
+by the Strait of Belle Isle, and from Cape Breton Island on the south
+by Cabot Strait. Labrador is an immense region on the continent, where
+the coast (except for the deep inlet of Melville Lake) soon rises into
+an elevated plateau 2000 feet in height, which is strewn with almost
+uncountable lakes, out of which rivers flow north, south, east, and
+west. On the north-east corner of Labrador there are mountains from
+3000 to 4000 feet, overlooking the sea. The whole of this vast
+Labrador or Ungava Peninsula, which is bounded on the south by the
+River and Gulf of St. Lawrence, and on the north by Hudson's Bay and
+Hudson's Straits, is an inhospitable land, at no time with much
+population.
+
+"The winter of Labrador is long and severe; one would need to have
+blood like brandy, a skin of brass, and an eye of glass not to suffer
+from the rigours of a Labrador winter. In the summer the frequent fogs
+render the air damp, and the constant breezes from the immense fields
+of ice floating in the gulf keep the land very cool, and make any
+alteration in the winter dress almost unnecessary" (James M'Kenzie).
+Labrador and the lands farther north on the continent of North America
+are separated from Greenland on the east by the broad straits--a great
+branch of the Atlantic--named after Davis and Baffin, who first
+explored them. Passing up Davis Strait, along the coast of Labrador to
+beyond 60 deg. N. lat., the voyager comes to Hudson's Straits, which, if
+followed up first to the northwards and then to the south-west, would
+lead him into the great expanse of Hudson's Bay, one of the most
+important features in the geography of North America.
+
+HUDSON'S BAY, which is a great inland sea with an area of about
+315,000 square miles, has a southern loop or extension called James
+Bay, the shores of which are not at a very great distance either from
+Lake Superior to the south-west, or from the source of the River
+Saguenay on the south. The Saguenay flows into the Lower St. Lawrence
+River. It is therefore not surprising that as soon as the French began
+to settle in Lower Canada they heard of a vast northern inland sea of
+salt water--Hudson's Bay. But the people who discovered and surveyed
+Hudson's Bay during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth
+centuries were always on the search for a passage out of its waters
+into the Arctic Sea, which would enable them to get right round
+America into the Pacific Ocean.
+
+In Arctic North America Nature really seems to have been preparing
+during millions of years a grim joke with which to baffle exploring
+humanity! It is easy enough to pass from Davis Straits into Hudson's
+Bay, but to get out of Hudson's Bay in the direction of the Arctic
+Ocean is like getting out of a very cleverly arranged maze. There are
+innumerable false exits, which have disappointed one Arctic explorer
+after another. When they had discovered that Hudson's Bay to the south
+was only like a great bottle, and had no outlet, they explored its
+northern waters; and when they found Chesterfield Inlet on the
+north-west, which leads into Baker Lake, they thought perhaps here was
+the passage through into the Arctic Sea. But no; that was no good. To
+the north of Chesterfield Inlet was a broad channel called Roe's
+Welcome, which led into Wager Bay and through frozen straits into
+Fox's Channel, and this again into Ross Bay. Here only a very narrow
+isthmus separates Hudson's Bay from the Arctic Sea; but still it is an
+isthmus of solid land. Turning to the north-east and north there are
+the broad waters of Fox's Channel leading into Fox's Basin; but the
+north-west corner of this inland sea was so blocked with ice and
+islands that it was not until the year 1822 that the _real_ northern
+outlet of Hudson's Bay was discovered by Captain EDWARD PARRY to be
+the narrow Fury and Hecla Straits (the discovery was not completed
+until 1839 by the Hudson's Bay Company's explorers T. SIMPSON and W.
+DEASE).
+
+Here you have found the way out into the Gulf of Boothia, which
+communicates in the north with Barrow Strait and Baffin's Bay. But
+across the supposed peninsula of Boothia there were discovered, in
+1847, by Dr. JOHN RAE (also an officer of the Hudson's Bay Company)
+the narrow Bellot Straits, which lead into Franklin Straits and so
+into M'Clintock Channel and the Arctic Ocean. After this you might
+theoretically (if the ice permitted it) sail or steam your ship
+through Victoria Straits and Coronation Gulf till you got into
+Beaufort Sea (part of the open Arctic Ocean), or, by turning round
+Prince Albert Land, pass through the Prince of Wales' Straits or
+M'Clure Straits into the same Beaufort Sea.
+
+The North-West Passage across the Arctic extremity of North America,
+therefore, _did_ exist after all, and the directest route would be up
+Davis Straits, through Hudson's Straits into Fox's Basin, then through
+the Fury and Hecla Straits into the Gulf of Boothia, then through the
+Bellot Straits and Franklin Straits (past Victorialand and Kemp
+Peninsula) and out through the Dolphin and Union Straits into the
+Arctic Ocean, and so on round the north coast of Alaska, past Bering's
+Straits into Bering Sea and the Pacific. But of course the
+accumulations of ice completely block continuous navigation.
+
+The huge jagged island of BAFFIN'S LAND differs from much of Arctic
+America in that it has high land rising into mountains. This is so
+completely covered with ice that it is of little interest under
+present circumstances to the world of civilization, though the large
+herds of musk oxen which it once supported were of much use to Arctic
+explorers as a food supply in winter. The coasts are inhabited by a
+few thousand Eskimo, and Davis Straits and Baffin's Bay possess a
+certain amount of commercial importance owing to the whale fisheries
+which are carried on there by the British, the Danes, the Americans,
+and the Eskimo. In fact the importance of these whale fisheries have
+of late made the Americans of the United States a little inclined to
+challenge the British possession of these great Arctic islands. North
+Devon, North Somerset, Prince of Wales' Land, Melville Island, Banks
+Land, Prince Albert Land, &c. &c, are names of other great Arctic
+islands completely within the grip of the ice. The nature of their
+interior is almost unknown. They are at present of use to no form of
+man unless it be to a few wandering Eskimo, who come to their coasts
+in the summer to kill seals.
+
+The great NORTH-WEST TERRITORIES of the Canadian Dominion extend from
+the American frontier of Alaska (which is the 141 deg. of W. long.) to the
+Ungava Peninsula, which abuts on Labrador. Where this vast region
+slopes to the Arctic Ocean and Hudson's Bay it is rather low and flat,
+except between Alaska and the Mackenzie River, and between the
+Mackenzie and the watershed of Hudson's Bay. The principal river
+system in the far North-West is that of the great Mackenzie River,
+which flows into the Arctic Ocean (Beaufort Sea) through an immense
+delta, and is one of the longest rivers in the world. The southernmost
+sources of the Mackenzie (such as the Peace River and the Athabaska
+River) rise in the Rocky Mountains to the east of British Columbia.
+These waters are stored for a time in Lake Athabaska, and then under
+the name of Slave River flow northwards into the Great Slave Lake, and
+out of this, under the name of Mackenzie River, into Beaufort Sea,
+through an immense delta. The Great Bear Lake is also a feeder of the
+Mackenzie.
+
+Two other Arctic rivers at one time thought to be of great importance
+as means of communication with the Arctic Ocean, are the Great Fish
+River, which flows into Elliot Bay, and the Coppermine River, which
+enters Coronation Gulf. The other northward-flowing rivers (passing
+through innumerable lakes and lakelets) enter Hudson's Bay.
+
+West of the great Mackenzie River rises the northernmost extension of
+the Rocky Mountains. All this easternmost part of Alaska, which is
+under British control, is a region of great elevation, something like
+parts of Central Asia. The streams which rise here unite in the great
+Yukon River, and this has its outlet in Bering's Sea. Some points of
+the great mountains within the limits of British territory in this
+direction reach to nearly 20,000 feet (Mount Logan).
+
+But the climate of the northern parts of the Canadian Dominion differs
+very greatly in the west as compared to the east. For instance, the
+northern parts of Labrador are cruelly Arctic, hopelessly frozen,
+though they are in the same latitude as St. Petersburg (the capital of
+European Russia) and as the splendidly forested northern parts of
+British Columbia. Eastern Labrador is a region in which explorers have
+frequently perished from cold and starvation. Although in the lofty
+parts of the Yukon country (three hundred and fifty miles north of
+treeless Labrador) the winter is intensely cold, and the ground is
+frozen for a considerable depth downwards, all the year round, there
+are still great forests; and a white and Amerindian population find it
+possible to live there all the year round, while animal life is
+extremely abundant. On the other hand, a good deal of the territory
+between Mackenzie River and Hudson's Bay is almost uninhabitable,
+except during the summertime, owing to the depth of the snow and the
+bare rocky nature of the ground.
+
+The treeless area north of Lake Athabaska (the "barren lands" of the
+Canadian Dominion) seems to consist of nothing but slabs of rock and
+loose stones. Yet this region is far from being without vegetation.
+The rock is often covered with a thin or thick sod of lichen
+("reindeer moss", in some districts three feet deep) intermixed with
+the roots of the wishakapakka herb (_Ledum palustre_, from which
+Labrador tea is made), of cranberries, gooseberries, heather (with
+white bell flowers), and a dwarf birch. This last, in sheltered places
+where a little vegetable soil has been formed, grows into a low
+scrubby bush. As to the gooseberries--here and farther south--Hearne
+describes them as "thriving best on the stony or rocky ground, open
+and much exposed to the sun". They spread along the ground like vines.
+The small red fruit is always most plentiful and fine on the under
+side of the branches, probably owing to the reflected heat of the
+stones. In the bleaker places a hard, black, crumply lichen--the
+"Tripe de roche" of the French Canadians (_Gyrophoreus_) grows on the
+rocks and stones, and is of great service to the Amerindians, as it
+furnishes them with a temporary subsistence when no animal food can be
+procured. This lichen, when boiled, turns to a gummy consistence
+something like sago. Hearne describes it as being remarkably good when
+used to thicken broth; but some other pioneers complained that it made
+them and their Indians seriously ill. Another lichen, "reindeer moss"
+(_Cladina_), is also eaten by men as well as deer. The _muskegs_, or
+bogs and marshes, produce in the summertime a very rapid growth of
+grass (as well as breeding swarms of mosquitoes!), and thus furnish
+food for the geese and swans which throng them between June and
+October.
+
+In the summertime all these northern territories of Canada--from the
+basin of Lake Winnipeg, with its white pelicans, to the Arctic
+circle--swarm with birds, wild swans, geese, ducks, plovers, grouse,
+cranes, eagles, owls of several kinds--especially the great snowy
+eagle-owl--red-breasted thrushes, black and white snow-buntings,
+scarlet grosbeaks (the female green and grey), crested jays, and
+ravens "of a beautiful glossy black, richly tinged with purple", but
+smaller in size than those of Europe.
+
+This is also the country for bears. Some grizzlies still linger here.
+Their range at one time extended to near the Arctic circle. In
+Alaska (British as well as United States) there is an enormous
+chocolate-coloured bear, the biggest in the world. The Polar bear,
+usually creamy white along the seacoast, is stated to range inland
+during the summer over the "barren grounds", and to develop either a
+permanent local variety or a seasonal change of coat, which is
+greyish-brown or blue-grey.
+
+The black bear in northern Canada is said to give birth at times to
+cubs which are cinnamon-brown in colour.
+
+"In the early summer the black bears swim up and down the northern
+rivers with their mouths open, swallowing the immense number of water
+insects which have come into being at that season." Hearne goes on to
+state that bears which have subsisted on this food for some days, when
+cut open emit a stench that is intolerable, and which taints their
+flesh to a sickening degree. The insects on which they feed are mostly
+of two kinds: one a sort of grasshopper with a hard black skin, and
+the other a soft, brown, sluggish fly. "This last is the most
+numerous. In some of the lakes such quantities are forced into the
+bays when the wind blows hard, that they are pressed together in dead
+multitudes and remain a great nuisance. I have several times, in my
+inland voyages from York Fort (Hudson's Bay), found it scarcely
+possible to land in some of those bays for the intolerable stench of
+those insects, which in some places were lying in putrid masses to the
+depth of two or three feet." It is more than probable that the bears
+occasionally feed on these dead insects. After the middle of July,
+when they take to a diet of berries, they are excellent eating, and
+continue to be so to the end of the winter.
+
+The Arctic foxes of this region when young are sooty black all over,
+and gradually change to a light ash-grey in colour, with a dark,
+almost blue, tint on the head, legs, and back. In winter they usually
+become white all over, with or without a black tip to the tail; but it
+is recorded by some travellers that not all the foxes of the _Canis
+lagopus_ species turn white; some keep their dark-grey colour all the
+year round. The common fox (_C. vulpes fulvus_) in Northern Canada is
+sometimes black, with white-tipped hairs. Wolves in these far northern
+regions do not seem to have been so abundant as farther south.
+
+The deer tribe are represented (north of the Athabaska region) by the
+reindeer and the elk (called by the Canadians "Moose"). The wapiti or
+red deer (for which the common Amerindian name in the north was
+_Waskesiu_) seldom ranged farther north than the vicinity of Lake
+Winnipeg. The reindeer of the "barren ground" sub-species extended to
+the Arctic seacoast, and were at one time especially abundant in
+Labrador. Here they were so tame, down to a hundred years ago, that
+fishermen were often known to shoot many of them from the windows of
+their huts near the seashore. This type (_Rangifer tarandus arcticus_)
+might possibly be domesticated; not so the larger and much wilder
+Caribou woodland reindeer of the more southern and western parts of
+the Dominion, which dislikes the neighbourhood of man. The elk or
+moose, east of the Rocky Mountains, was not found northward of about
+50 deg. to 55 deg.; but west of that range extended over all British
+Columbia and Alaska, in which latter country it grows to a giant
+size and develops enormous antlers.
+
+Hearne says of the elk in northern Canada: "In summer, when they
+frequent the margins of rivers and lakes, they are often killed by the
+Indians in the water while they are crossing rivers or swimming from
+the mainland to islands, &c. When pursued in this manner, they are
+the most inoffensive of all animals, never making any resistance; and
+the young ones are so simple that I remember to have seen an Indian
+paddle his canoe up to one of them and take it by the poll without the
+least opposition; the poor, harmless animal seeming at the same time
+as contented alongside the canoe as if swimming by the side of its
+dam, and looking up in our faces with the same fearless innocence that
+a house lamb would; making use of its fore foot almost every instant
+to clear its eyes of mosquitoes, which at that time were remarkably
+numerous.... The moose are also the easiest to tame and domesticate of
+any of the deer kind. I have repeatedly seen them at Churchill as tame
+as sheep, and even more so; for they would follow their keeper any
+distance from home, and at his call return with him without the least
+trouble, or ever offering to deviate from the path."
+
+The most northern range of the elk would seem to be the region round
+Lake Athabaska.
+
+The musk ox (_Ovibos_) is perhaps the most remarkable beast of Arctic
+Canada.[3] Samuel Hearne is my principal source for the following
+notes as to its habits and appearance: The number of bulls is very few
+in proportion to the cows, for it is rare to see more than two or
+three full-grown bulls with the largest herd; and from the number of
+the males that are found dead, the Indians are of opinion that they
+kill each other in contending for the females. In the rutting season
+they are so jealous of the cows that they run at either man or beast
+who offers to approach them, and have been observed to run and bellow
+even at ravens and other large birds which chanced to alight near
+them. They delight in the most stony and mountainous parts of the
+"barren ground", but are seldom found at any great distance from the
+woods. Though they are a beast of great magnitude, and apparently of a
+very unwieldy inactive structure, yet they climb the rocks with ease
+and agility, and are nearly as surefooted as a goat. Like it, too,
+they will feed on anything; and though they seem fondest of grass, yet
+in winter, when grass cannot be had in sufficient quantity, they will
+eat moss or any other herbage they can find, as also the tops of
+willows and the tender branches of the pine tree.
+
+[Footnote 3: The musk ox, which is not an ox, but a creature about
+midway in structure and affinities between cattle on the one hand and
+sheep and goats on the other, is a large beast comparatively, being
+the size of a small ox, but appearing very much larger than it is on
+account of the extremely thick coat of hair and wool. Both sexes have
+horns, and the horns, after meeting in the middle and making more or
+less of a boss over the forehead, droop down at the sides of the
+cheeks and then turn up with sharp points. The musk ox once ranged
+right across the northern world, from England and Scandinavia, through
+Germany, Russia, and Siberia, to Alaska and North America. Many
+thousands of years ago, during one of the Glacial periods, it
+inhabited southern England. At the present day it is extinct
+everywhere, excepting in the eastern parts of Arctic America, not
+going west of the Mackenzie River nor south of Labrador. It is also
+found in Greenland.]
+
+"The musk ox, when full grown, is as large as the generality of
+English black cattle; but their legs, though thick, are not so long,
+nor is their tail longer than that of a bear; and, like the tail of
+that animal, it always bends downward and inward, so that it is
+entirely hid by the long hair of the rump and hind quarters. The hunch
+on their shoulders is not large, being little more in proportion than
+that of a deer. Their hair is in some parts very long, particularly on
+the belly, sides, and hind quarters; but the longest hair about them,
+particularly the bulls, is under the throat, extending from the chin
+to the lower part of the chest between the fore legs. It there hangs
+down like a horse's mane inverted, and is fully as long, which gives
+the animal a most formidable appearance. It is of the hair from this
+part that the Eskimo make their mosquito wigs (face screens or masks).
+In winter the musk oxen are provided with a thick fine wool or fur
+that grows at the root of the long hair, and shields them from the
+intense cold to which they are exposed during that season; but as the
+summer advances this fur loosens from the skin, and by frequently
+rolling themselves on the ground it works out to the end of the hair,
+and in time drops off, leaving little for their summer clothing except
+the long hair. This season is so short in these high latitudes, that
+the new fleece begins to appear almost as soon as the old one drops
+off, so that by the time the cold becomes severe they are again
+provided with a winter dress."
+
+According to Hearne, the flesh of the musk ox does not resemble that
+of the bison, but is more like the meat of the moose or wapiti. The
+fat is of a clear white, "slightly tinged with a light azure". The
+calves and young heifers are good eating, but the flesh of the bulls
+both smells and tastes so strongly of musk as to be very disagreeable;
+"even the knife that cuts the flesh of an old bull will smell so
+strongly of musk that nothing but scouring the blade quite bright can
+remove it, and the handle will retain the scent for a long time".
+
+Bisons of the "wood" variety are (or were) found far up the heights of
+the Rocky Mountains and in the regions south-west of the Great Slave
+Lake. These "wood buffaloes" delight in mountain valleys, and never
+resort to the plains. And higher than anything, of course, range the
+great white mountain goat-antelopes (_Oreamnus montanus_) from
+northern Alaska to the Columbia River.
+
+The north and the north-west were, of course, pre-eminently the great
+fur-trading regions, though all parts of the vast Dominion have at one
+time or another yielded furs for commerce with the white man. The
+principal fur-bearing smaller mammals of the north and north-west were
+wolves, foxes, lynxes, gluttons (wolverene), otters, martens (sables)
+and black fishing martens, mink (a kind of polecat), ermine-stoats,
+weasels, polar hares (_Lepus timidus_), beavers, musquash, lemming,
+gopher or pouched ground-squirrels, and the common red squirrel of
+North America. The grey squirrel and striped chipmunk are only found
+in southern Canada.
+
+The musquash (_Fiber zibethicus_) is such a characteristic animal of
+northern Canada that it is worth while to give Hearne's description of
+it (I would mention it is really a huge _vole_, and no relation of the
+beaver):--
+
+"The musk rat or musquash builds a dwelling near the banks of ponds or
+swamps to shelter it from the bitter cold of the winter, but never on
+land, always on the ice, as soon as it is firm enough, taking care to
+keep a hole open to admit it to dive for its food, which chiefly
+consists of the roots of grass or arums. It sometimes happens in very
+cold winters that the holes communicating with their dwellings under
+the water are so blocked by ice that they cannot break through them.
+When this is the case, and they have no provisions left in the house,
+they begin to eat one another. At last there may be only one rat left
+out of a whole lodge. They occasionally eat fish, but in general feed
+very cleanly, and when fat are good eating. They are easily tamed and
+soon grow fond of their owner. They are very cleanly and playful, and
+'smell exceedingly pleasant of musk', but their resemblance to the rat
+is so great that few are partial to them, though of course they are
+much larger in size, and have webbed hind feet and a flat scaly tail.
+In Canadian regions farther south the musquash no longer builds on the
+ice, but in swamps, where it raises heaps of mud like islands in the
+surrounding water. On the top of these mounds they build their nests,
+and on the top of the musquash nest, or 'lodge', wild geese frequently
+lay their eggs and bring forth their young brood without any fear of
+being molested by foxes."
+
+The YUKON territories of the Dominion, and above all the State of
+BRITISH COLUMBIA, constitute a very distinct region from the rest of
+British North America, not only in their tribes of Amerindians but in
+their fauna, flora, and climate. British Columbia is one of the most
+beautiful and richly endowed countries in the world. Here, in spite
+of northern latitudes, the warm airs coming up from the Pacific Ocean
+act somewhat in the same way as the Gulf Stream on north-west Europe,
+and favour the growth of magnificent forests.
+
+All this north-western part of British Columbia is very mountainous,
+and the rocks are rich in minerals, especially gold in the Fraser and
+Columbia Rivers, far north in the upper valley of the Yukon, and
+copper and coal in Vancouver Island.
+
+The rainfall in British Columbia is considerable, and the
+flora--trees, plants, ferns--richer than anywhere else in North
+America, with many resemblances to the trees and plants of Japan and
+northern China. In British Columbia more than in any other part of the
+world are found the noblest developments of the pines, firs, and
+junipers (_Coniferae_).
+
+The coast rivers swarm with salmon, and perhaps because of the
+abundance of sea fish close in shore there have been developed in the
+course of ages those remarkable aquatic mammals, the sea lions or fur
+seals (_Otaria_), whose relationship to the true seals is a very
+distant one. On the Alaskan coasts and islands is _Otaria ursina_, the
+creature which provides the sealskin fur of commerce. There is also
+the much larger sea lion (_Otaria stelleri_), on the coasts of British
+Columbia and Vancouver Island. Alexander Henry, jun., gives some
+interesting facts about this remarkable beast.
+
+"The natives at Oak Point, during the time Mr. Keith was there, killed
+five very large sea lions by spearing them at night. Two canoes being
+lashed together, they approach very softly, and throw their spears,
+which are fastened by a long, strong cord, with a barb so fixed in a
+socket that, when it strikes the animal and pierces the flesh, it is
+detached from the shaft of the spear, but remains fastened to the
+cord. This is instantly made fast between the canoes; the animal
+dives and swims down river, dragging the canoes with such velocity
+that they may be in danger of filling, and require great skill in
+steering. In this manner they are carried down some miles before the
+animal becomes exhausted with loss of blood, makes for the shore, and
+lies on the beach, where they dispatch it and cut it up. The price of
+a sea lion among the natives is one slave and an assortment of other
+articles. Mr. Keith bought the flesh of one of these animals, and we
+had some roasted; it resembles bear's meat. The hair is like that of a
+horse, in summer of a chestnut colour. The natives, and also the
+Russians, are particularly fond of marine animals, such as whales,
+&c.; they drink the oil like milk."
+
+Another notable water beast of the British Columbia coast was the sea
+otter (_Enhydris_), described on p. 305. Such an immense value was set
+on its fur that it is now nearly extinct within British limits.
+
+The huge chocolate-coloured bear of the Yukon valley has already been
+mentioned; also the very large, blackish-brown wild dog (_Canis
+pambasileus_), which from one or two passages in the writings of
+Canadian pioneers may also be found as far south as the British
+Columbian Rocky Mountains. In the Yukon country the elk (which was
+formerly very common in British Columbia) grows to gigantic
+proportions with longer and larger antlers than elsewhere. In the
+forested mountains of British Columbia (as well as farther north) are
+the wood bison, the white mountain goat, grizzly bears, black bears,
+two kinds of lynx, the wapiti red deer, and the large bighorn sheep.
+
+These (_Ovis montana_) sheep are of a grey or leaden colour; the rump
+and the inner side of the legs are white; the hoofs black, about one
+inch long. "The hair is rather soft, and at the roots is mixed with
+exceedingly fine white wool, which seems to grow only in certain
+patches. The neck is relatively much thicker than that of other
+animals of the same size; the legs and hoofs are also strongly built,
+like the neck." The horns of the female are comparatively small,
+flat, and have only a small bend backward; they are of a
+dirty-yellowish white, marked with closely connected annulations to
+the very tip. The legs are brown, as are also the ends of the hairs
+about the neck; the hoofs are black. "A ewe will weigh about 100 lb.
+when in full flesh, with only the entrails taken out. The head bears
+every resemblance to that of our European sheep." The colour of the
+males is nearly the same as that of the females, only rather browner;
+they are much larger and more strongly built, with a pair of enormous
+horns, which incline backward. As they grow they bend downward, and in
+the course of time form a complete curve and project forward. At the
+root the horns are nearly three inches square, the flat sides
+opposite; they are marked with closely connected ridges and end in a
+tapering flat point.
+
+When the horns grow to a great length, forming a complete curve, the
+tips project on both sides of the head so as to prevent the ram from
+feeding. This, with their great weight, causes the sheep to dwindle to
+a mere skeleton and die. The bighorn sheep feed much in the caverns of
+the Rocky Mountains, eating a kind of moss and grass growing on the
+floors of these caves, and also a peculiar soft, sweet-tasting "clay",
+of which the natives also are fond.
+
+The southern part of British Columbia contains the mule deer of
+western North America (_Mazama macrotis_), and a very strange rodent,
+the sewellel or mountain beaver (_Haplodon_), a creature distantly
+allied to squirrels, marmots, and beavers, but restricted in its
+distribution to a few parts of California, Oregon, and British
+Columbia. Amongst the birds noteworthy in the landscape are the
+white-headed sea eagles and Californian condors (_Pseudogryphus
+californianus_). Humming-birds range through British Columbia and
+Vancouver Island between mid-April and October.
+
+In the regions about the upper Kootenay River (Eastern British
+Columbia), before the railway was constructed, there were wild horses,
+descended, no doubt, from those which had escaped from the Spaniards
+in New Mexico and California. They went in large herds, and in the
+winter when the snow was deep the natives would try to catch them by
+running them down with relays of fresh horses, or driving them up the
+mountains into the deepest snow or some narrow pass. A noose would
+then be thrown about the exhausted animal, which would be instantly
+mounted by an Indian and broken immediately to the saddle. Some of
+these wild horses were exceedingly swift, well-proportioned, and
+handsome in shape, but they seldom proved as docile as those born in
+captivity. When in a wild condition they would snort so loudly through
+the nostrils on descrying an enemy that they could be heard at a
+distance of five hundred yards.
+
+The provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba--the MIDDLE
+WEST--represent mainly the great prairie region of the Canadian
+Dominion. Nearly all the streams here flow from the eastern side of
+the Rocky Mountains and direct their course to the basin of Lake
+Winnipeg and to Hudson's Bay. A few turn south-west to the Missouri
+and Mississippi. The landscapes here remind one more of the middle
+part of the United States. The climate is severe in winter but very
+warm and dry in summer. In the extreme south, within the basin of the
+upper Missouri, the "prickly pear" (_Opuntia_) cactus grows in
+sheltered places, and suggests affinities with distant Colorado and
+California.
+
+These great plains and river courses of the middle West were, until
+about fifty years ago, one of the world's great natural parks or
+zoological gardens. Large numbers of wapiti deer, of the smaller
+Virginian deer,[4] and of the prongbuck "antelope"[5] thronged the
+grassy flats, and elk browsed on the foliage of the thickets along the
+river banks. Grizzly bears and black bears,[6] large grey wolves, the
+small coyote wolf, the pretty little kit fox and large red fox preyed
+on these herbivores, as did also pumas and lynxes. Marmots and prairie
+hares (_Lepus campestris_)--often called rabbits by the pioneers, who
+also named the marmots "wood-chucks"--frolicked in the herbage, and
+formed the principal prey of the numerous rattlesnakes. By the shores
+of streams and lakes stood rows of stately cranes: the whooping crane,
+of large size, pure white, with black quill feathers, the crown of the
+head crimson scarlet and the long legs black; and the purple-brown
+crane, somewhat smaller in size. On hot, calm days in the region of
+Lake Winnipeg the cranes soar to an amazing height, flying in circles,
+till by degrees they are almost out of sight. Yet their loud note
+sounds so distinct and near that the spectator might fancy they were
+close to him.
+
+[Footnote 4: _Mazama americana_, similar to, but quite distinct from,
+the larger mule deer of British Columbia.]
+
+[Footnote 5: The prongbuck (_Antilocapra americana_) is not a true
+antelope, though in outward appearance it resembles a large gazelle.
+It was called "cabri" by the French Canadians.]
+
+[Footnote 6: "Bears make prodigious ravages in the brush and willows;
+the plum trees, and every tree that bears fruit share the same fate.
+The tops of the oaks are also very roughly handled, broken, and torn
+down, to get the acorns. The havoc they commit is astonishing...."
+--Alex. Henry, jun.]
+
+The air at this season is full of great birds--eagles, buzzards,
+hawks, and falcons--soaring in circles to look out for prey among the
+flocks of wild swans, white geese, bernicle geese and brent geese,
+duck and teal, which cover the backwaters and the marshes and shallow
+lagoons. Turkey buzzards, coming up from the south, act as scavengers
+during the summer months. Immense flocks of passenger pigeons,
+buntings, grosbeaks, attack the ripening fruits and the wild rice of
+the swamps. Grouse in uncountable numbers inhabit the drier tablelands
+and open moors.[7]
+
+[Footnote 7: Nowhere in the world are there so many kinds of grouse as
+in North America. In the more northern regions are several species of
+ptarmigan or snow partridges (_Lagopus_), which turn white in winter,
+and the spruce partridges (_Canachites_); in the more genial climate
+of the great plains of eastern Canada and in the Far West the ruffled
+grouse and hazel grouse (_Bonasa_), the sage cocks (_Centrocercus_),
+the prairie hens (_Tympanuchus_), and the blue or pine grouse
+(_Dendrapagus_).
+
+"To snare grouse requires no other process than making a few little
+hedges across a creek, or a few short hedges projecting at right
+angles from the side of an island of willows, which those birds are
+found to frequent. Several openings must be left in each hedge, to
+admit the birds to pass through, and in each of them a snare must be
+set; so that when the grouse are hopping along the edge of the willows
+to feed, which is their usual custom, some of them soon get into the
+snares, where they are confined till they are taken out. I have caught
+from three to ten grouse in a day by this simple contrivance, which
+requires no further attendance than going round them night and
+morning" (Hearne).]
+
+[Illustration: INDIANS LYING IN WAIT FOR MOOSE]
+
+But--a hundred years ago and more--the dominant features in the
+fauna of the Middle West was the bison. Between the Athabaska and
+Saskatchewan Rivers on the north, the Rocky Mountains on the west, and
+Lake Superior on the east the bison passed backwards and forwards over
+the great plains and prairies in millions, when white explorers first
+penetrated these lands. They moved in herds which concealed the ground
+from sight for miles. Here are some word pictures selected from the
+writings of the pioneers between 1770 and 1810:
+
+"The buffaloes chiefly delight in wide open plains, which in those
+parts produce very long coarse grass, or rather a kind of small flags
+and rushes, upon which they feed; but when pursued they always take to
+the woods. They are of such an amazing strength, that when they fly
+through the woods from a pursuer, they frequently brush down trees as
+thick as a man's arm; and be the snow ever so deep, such is their
+strength and agility, that they are enabled to plunge through it
+faster than the swiftest Indian can run in snowshoes. To this I have
+been an eyewitness many times, and once had the vanity to think that I
+could have kept pace with them; but though I was at that time
+celebrated for being particularly fleet of foot in snowshoes, I soon
+found that I was no match for the buffaloes, notwithstanding they were
+then plunging through such deep snow, that their bellies made a
+trench in it as large as if many sacks had been hauled through it. Of
+all the large beasts in those parts the buffalo is easiest to kill,
+and the moose are the most difficult; neither are the (red) deer very
+easy to come at, except in windy weather: indeed it requires much
+practice and a great deal of patience to slay any of them, as they
+will by no means suffer a direct approach, unless the hunter be
+entirely sheltered by woods or willows.
+
+"The flesh of the buffalo is exceedingly good eating, and so entirely
+free from any disagreeable smell or taste, that it resembles beef as
+nearly as possible."
+
+"The spots of wood along the Park River are ravaged by buffaloes
+(bison); none but the large trees are standing, the bark of which is
+rubbed perfectly smooth, and heaps of hair and wool lie at the bottom
+of the trees ... and even the grass is not permitted to grow.... The
+ground is trampled more by these cattle than about the gate of a
+farmyard."
+
+"The Kris informed me they had seen a calf as white as snow in a herd
+of buffalo. White buffalo are very scarce. They are of inestimable
+value among the nations of the Missouri.... There were also some of a
+dirty-grey colour, but these are very rare."
+
+"I brought home two buffalo calves alive; they no sooner lost sight of
+the herd than they followed my horse like dogs, directly into the
+fort. On chasing a herd at this season the calves follow it until they
+are fatigued, when they throw themselves down in high grass and lie
+still, hiding their heads if possible. But seeing only a man and his
+horse they remain quiet and allow themselves to be taken. Having been
+a little handled, they follow like dogs."
+
+In the spring, when the ice melted, innumerable buffaloes were killed
+through attempting to cross the rivers on the melting ice. They would
+drift by an observer (such as Alexander Henry, jun.) in entire herds
+of drowned corpses. Vast numbers perished. They formed one continuous
+line on the current for two days and two nights.
+
+"By this time the river was crowded with them, swimming across,
+bellowing and grunting terribly. The bulls really looked fierce; all
+had their tails up, and each appeared eager to land first. The scene
+would have struck terror to one unaccustomed to such innumerable
+herds. From out in the plains, as far as the eye could reach, to the
+middle of the river, they were rushing toward us, and soon began to
+land about ten yards off. I shot one dead on the spot, my ball having
+broken his neck; my hunter and guide only wounded theirs. This
+discharge suddenly halted those on the south side, and turned those
+that were still in the water."
+
+In the autumn:--"Plains burned in every direction and blind buffalo
+seen every moment wandering about. The poor beasts have all the hair
+singed off; even the skin in many places is shrivelled up and terribly
+burned, and their eyes are swollen and closed fast. It was really
+pitiful to see them staggering about, sometimes running afoul of a
+large stone, at other times tumbling down hill and falling into creeks
+not yet frozen over. In one spot we found a whole herd lying dead."
+
+Throughout British North America, from the Yukon to Newfoundland, and
+from Labrador to Vancouver's Island, the rivers and freshwater lakes
+swarm with fish, and fish that in most cases is exceedingly good to
+eat. Salmon are most strikingly abundant in the rivers of British
+Columbia and Newfoundland, but they also ascend most of the rivers
+flowing into the Atlantic and Hudson's Bay. In the great lakes of
+Canada and of the middle west there are trout and white fish
+(_Coregonus_), pike, bass, chub, barbel, and five species of sturgeon.
+In the rivers and lakes of the far north-west is found the blackfish
+(_Dallia_).
+
+Hearne writes of Lake Athabasca that it swarms with fish, such as
+pike, trout, perch, barbel, and other kinds not easily identified.
+Apparently there is also a form of gar-pike found here (see p. 74);
+this is described as having scales of a very large and stiff kind, and
+being a beautiful bright silver in colour. The size of these gar-pike
+range from two feet to four feet in length. Their flesh was delicately
+white and soft, but so foul and rank in taste that even the Indians
+would not eat it. The trout in Lake Athabaska seem to have been
+enormous, weighing from 35 to 40 pounds, while pike were of about the
+same weight.
+
+The Amerindian tribes and the early European explorers lived mainly on
+fish, which was a palatable and easily obtained food. Yet it must be
+admitted that they had a splendid array of large and small game from
+which to take their toll.
+
+Nor was the whole Dominion, from west to east and up to the Arctic
+zone, wanting in wild vegetable produce fit for man's consumption. The
+sugar maple (_Acer saccharinum_) and its ally the _Negundo_ maple
+provided a delicious syrup; the bark of certain poplars and the bast
+of the sugar pine were chewed for their well-flavoured sweetness; the
+wild rice of the marshes will be further described in the next
+chapter. The wild fruits included delicious strawberries, cherries,
+gooseberries, currants, black currants, grapes (in the south only),
+blackberries of many kinds, whortleberries, cranberries, pears of the
+service tree (_Pyrus canadensis_[8]), and raspberries of various
+types--red, yellow, and black. Southern Canada and Nova Scotia
+contained various nut trees of the walnut order (hickories,
+butter-nuts, &c.), and hazel nuts were found everywhere except in the
+north.
+
+[Footnote 8: Sometimes called _Amelanchier canadensis_.]
+
+We have left undescribed what is still politically the most important
+part of the whole of British North America--UPPER and LOWER CANADA.
+These regions lie within the basin of the great St. Lawrence River,
+beyond all doubt the most important waterway of North America, more
+important even than the Mississippi. The main origin of the St.
+Lawrence in the west is Lake Superior, the largest sea of fresh water
+in the world, which is connected with Lake Nipigon on the north. The
+waters of Lake Superior are carried over the Sault Ste. Marie rapids
+into Lake Huron and find a huge backwater in Lake Michigan.[9] Out of
+Lake Huron again they flow past Detroit into Lake Erie. From Duluth,
+at the westernmost extremity of Lake Superior, to Buffalo, on the
+easternmost point of Lake Erie, including all Lake Michigan and Lake
+Huron, with its bays and channels, a steamer can pass with just the
+one difficulty (easily surmounted) of the rapids at Sault Ste. Marie
+between Lake Superior and Lake Huron. But after you have left Lake
+Erie on the east you find yourself in the Niagara River, which at the
+Niagara Falls plunges several hundred feet downwards into Lake
+Ontario. From Lake Ontario to the sea along the St. Lawrence there is
+uninterrupted navigation, though there are rapids that require careful
+steering both with steamers and boats. Quebec marks the place where
+the St. Lawrence River suddenly broadens from a river into a tidal
+gulf of brackish or salt water. Ocean steamers from all over the world
+can come (except during the height of the winter, when the water
+freezes) to Quebec. But for the ice in wintertime Quebec would be
+_the_ great sea-port of eastern Canada.
+
+[Footnote 9: The south shore of Lake Superior, the whole of Lake
+Michigan, the west shore of Lake Huron, and the south coasts of Lake
+Erie and Lake Ontario are within the territories of the United
+States.]
+
+"If pitiless rock is commonly understood by an 'iron-bound shore',
+then the coasts of the River St. Lawrence along the northern side of
+the Gulf may truly be so styled, as nothing scarcely is to be seen
+for hundreds of leagues but bare rocky mountains, capes and cliffs in
+various shapes and figures, some of which are dotted with a few spruce
+firs, while others present their bald pates deprived of covering by
+the unmerciful hand of time." (James M'Kenzie).
+
+The winters of the Quebec province are extremely cold, but the summer
+and autumn are warm and sunny. The best winter climate, possibly, in
+all Canada (though not as good as that of Vancouver Island, British
+Columbia) is to be found in the small peninsula region, on the shores
+of Lakes Erie and Huron, between Toronto and Detroit. This is the
+district which the Jesuit missionaries described as "an earthly
+paradise" even during the winter-time.
+
+The following extracts, mostly from the journals of Alex. Henry, jun.,
+give a good idea of the difference in climate and temperature between
+the western and the central parts of the Canadian Dominion.
+
+The late spring of northern Canada (Lake Nipigon, 50 deg. N. lat.):--About
+May 15, the tops of the poplars begin to appear green, with fresh
+buds; the hills are changing their hue from a dry straw colour to a
+delightful verdure, and fragrant odours greet us.
+
+"Early in March, 1800, in the Assiniboin country (Manitoba, about 29 deg.
+N. lat.) the snow was entirely gone, for this winter had been an
+abnormally mild one for central Canada. The birds soon realized the
+openness of the season, for, on the 7th of March, turkey-buzzards
+began to arrive from the south, and cormorants, ducks, swans, and
+other spring birds; indeed, by the 24th of March not only had the snow
+quite melted, but the meadows had grown so dry with the hot sun that
+some accidents set them on fire. By April the 11th the weather had
+become excessively hot, and immense flocks of the traveller-pigeon
+(_Ectopistes_) flew northwards over the country."
+
+In somewhat similar latitudes (50 deg.) the spring bursts on the Pacific
+coast region of British Columbia towards the end of February. "The
+tall raspberry bushes were in blossom with a beautiful red flower,
+which appeared more forward than the leaf (_Rubus spectabilis_). The
+elder had sprouts an inch long, the alder was also beginning to
+sprout, and willows were budding."
+
+Although nowhere in Upper and Lower Canada (or in the maritime
+provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia) are the forests so
+splendid as in parts of British Columbia, yet nevertheless when this
+region was first discovered the magnificence of its woodlands greatly
+impressed even the explorers of the sixteenth and seventeenth
+centuries, who were not as much given to praise of landscape beauty as
+are we of later times. These Canadian forests include oaks, elms,
+pines and firs, chestnuts and beeches, birch trees and sycamores,
+maples and poplars, willows, alders, and hazelnuts (these last
+sometimes growing into tall trees with thick trunks). The trees and
+low-growing plants are partly like those of the north-eastern United
+States, and partly resemble those of northern and central Europe.
+
+Nowadays, owing to two centuries of incessant killing, the beasts and
+birds of Upper and Lower Canada are not nearly so abundant as they
+were a hundred years ago. When Canada proper was first discovered, the
+wapiti red deer was still found in the basin of the St. Lawrence; it
+has long since been extinct. There are, however, still lingering,
+reindeer in the north, and elk in the forests of the east. There are
+also Virginian deer (_Mazama_), but there is no bison (and, so far as
+we know, never has been). There is no prongbuck, and many other
+creatures characteristic of the United States and British Columbia are
+not found in Upper and Lower Canada or in the maritime provinces. The
+tree porcupine (_Erethizon dorsatus_), which the Canadians call
+"Urson", or "Little Bear" is found still in the well-wooded regions
+of eastern and southern Canada, as well as in British Columbia and
+Alaska. In southern Canada there is the wood hare (_Lepus
+sylvaticus_), and in the east and north the varying hare (_L.
+americanus_) which turns white in winter.
+
+Perhaps the most characteristic animal of this region was and is still
+the beaver, though the beaver is found all over British North America
+as far north as the Saskatchewan province and westwards into British
+Columbia.
+
+It is curious that the Indians of central Canada had a belief
+(recorded by French and English pioneers) that occasionally in the
+dusk, or at night, they have seen an enormously large beaver in the
+water, so large that at first sight they have taken it for a moose.
+Travellers who have related this have surmised that the Indian perhaps
+saw a bear swimming, or a female moose, and in the dim light mistook
+it for a giant beaver. But as we know that there were once giant
+beavers (_Trogontherium_) as large as a bear, existing in England, it
+is just possible there may have been a gigantic type of beaver
+lingering in Canada before the opening up of the country by Europeans.
+
+The beaver of North America is a very similar animal to the beaver
+which used to exist wild in Wales, England, France, Germany, and
+central Europe, and which still lingers in some parts of the Rhine
+valley, Poland, Russia, and Siberia; but the American form is
+classified as a separate species--_Castor canadensis_.
+
+Beavers were sometimes exterminated or diminished in numbers by an
+epidemic disease, which, according to JAMES TANNER[10], destroyed vast
+quantities of them.
+
+[Footnote 10: A remarkable eighteenth-century pioneer who joined the
+Indians when a boy and lived as one of them.]
+
+"I found them dead or dying in the water, on the ice, and on the land;
+sometimes I found one that, having cut a tree half down, had died at
+its roots; sometimes one who had drawn a stick of timber halfway to
+his lodge was lying dead by his burthen. Many of them which I opened
+were red and bloody about the heart. Those in large rivers and running
+water suffered less; almost all of those that lived in ponds and
+stagnant water, died. Since that year the beaver have never been so
+plentiful in the country of Red River and Hudson's Bay as they used
+formerly to be."
+
+The great attraction which Canada offered to France and England as a
+field of adventure lay in its wonderful supply of furs. The beaver
+skins were perhaps the commonest article of export, and were generally
+regarded as a unit of value, such as a shilling might be. Other skins
+were valued at "so many beavers," or the smaller ones at half or a
+quarter of a beaver each. Besides beaver skins, which were used for
+making hats, as well as capes and coats, the following furs and skins
+were formerly, or are still, exported from Canada. "Buffalo"
+robes--the carefully rubbed-down hides of the bison, rendered, by
+shaving and rubbing, so thin and supple that they could be easily
+folded; reindeer and musk-ox skins treated in the same way; marten or
+sable skins; mink (a kind of polecat); ermine (the white winter dress
+of the stoat); the fishing marten, or pekan; otter skins; black bear
+and white polar bear skins; raccoon, muskwash, squirrel, suslik, and
+marmot skins, and the soft white fur of the polar hare; the white
+skins of the Arctic fox, the skins of the blue fox, black fox, and red
+fox;[11] wolf skins, and the furs of the wolverene or glutton, and of
+the skunk--a handsome black-and-white creature of the weasel family,
+which emits a most disgusting smell from a gland in its body. (The
+skunk only comes from the south-central parts of the Canadian
+Dominion). At one time a good many swans' skins were exported for the
+sake of the down between the feathers, also the skins of grebes.
+
+[Footnote 11: The blue fox is the Arctic fox (_Canis lagopus_) in its
+summer dress; the black fox is a beautiful variety or sub-species of
+the common fox (_C. vulpes_); so also is the red or "cross" fox. There
+is also common throughout the Canadian Dominion the pretty little kit
+fox (_Canis velox_).]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A general fact that must not be forgotten in studying the adventures
+of the pioneers of Canada was the means which Nature and savage man
+had provided or invented for quickly traversing in all directions this
+enormous area of nearly half North America. These means consisted (1)
+of the distribution of salt and fresh water in such a way that by
+means of ocean-sailing ships explorers coming from the east could
+enter through straits and bays of the sea into the heart of Canada;
+and (2) the facility, on quitting the seashore, of passing up
+navigable rivers in boats or canoes into big lakes, and from these
+lakes into other rivers leading to other lakes. Moreover, the
+different river systems approached so closely to one another that even
+the Amerindians and the Eskimo, long before the white man, had
+realized that they had only to pick up their light canoes and carry
+them a few miles, to launch them on fresh waters which might provide
+hundreds or even thousands of miles of continuous travel. These are
+the celebrated "portages" of Canadian history, from the French word
+_porter_, to carry, transport. Sometimes the portages were made still
+easier for loaded canoes by a road being cleared through the scrub and
+over the rocks, and wooden rollers placed across it. Strong men could
+then easily haul a loaded canoe over these wooden rollers until it
+could be launched again in the water. Often these portages were made
+to circumvent dangerous rapids or waterfalls. The Indians and the
+French Canadians soon learnt how to steer canoes down rushes of
+water--rapids--which we should think very dangerous on an English
+river; but of course many of the rivers were obstructed at intervals
+by descents of water which no canoe could traverse up or down, and in
+these cases a path was cut from one smooth part of the river to
+another, and the canoe carried or hauled overland.
+
+In this way the great French and British explorers found it possible
+to travel by water from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean across a
+width of land of something like 2500 miles. The only serious walking
+that had to be done was the crossing somewhere or other of the Rocky
+Mountains, where the streams, of course, were far too precipitate in
+descent to be navigable. In the hot, dusty plains of Assiniboia and
+the upper Missouri region the Amerindians had introduced horses,
+obtained indirectly from Spanish Mexico, and these were of great
+service to the white pioneers, especially in their pursuit of the
+bison.
+
+So much for the summer season, when the rivers were full and
+overflowing, and the ground consisted of bare rock, sand, or soil
+covered with vegetation; the abundance of navigable streams and the
+suitability of the country to horses rendered very little walking
+necessary for those who wished to traverse the Canadian Dominion from
+end to end.
+
+But the winter changed these conditions, the rivers became coated with
+thick ice, and the ground was covered, except in steep places, with an
+unvarying mantle of snow. Yet transport became just as easy as in the
+summertime, though perhaps a trifle more fatiguing. Men and women put
+on snowshoes shaped like tennis rackets, and flew over the hard snow
+quicker than a canoe could travel, dragging after them small sledges
+on which their luggage was packed; or, if they had not much luggage,
+carrying it slung round the shoulders and scurrying away on their
+snowshoes even swifter for the weight they carried; or they travelled
+over the smooth ice of the rivers and lakes.
+
+Winter travellers, however, were sometimes troubled with a disorder
+known as the snowshoe evil. This arose from the placing of an unusual
+strain on the tendons of the leg, occasioned by the weight of the
+snowshoe. It often resulted in severe inflammation of the lower leg.
+The local remedy was a drastic one: it was to place a piece of lighted
+touchwood on the most inflamed part, and to leave it there till the
+flesh was burnt to the nerve!
+
+In the north and the regions round Hudson's Bay, and also in the far
+west--British Columbia and Alaska--there were dogs, more or less of
+the Eskimo breed, trained by Eskimo or by Amerindians to drag the
+sledges. In the months of December and January it is true that the
+daylight in Arctic Canada (north of Lake Athapaska) became so short
+that the sun at its greatest altitude only appeared for two or three
+hours a short distance above the horizon. But there were
+compensations. The brilliancy of the Aurora Borealis, even without the
+assistance of the moon and the stars, made some amends for that
+deficiency, for it was frequently so light all night that travellers
+could see to read a very small print (Samuel Hearne). The importance
+of these "Northern lights" must not be overlooked in forming an
+opinion on the habitability of the far north in the "dark" winter
+months. The display was frequent and brilliant.
+
+The Athapaskan Indians called this phenomenon _Edthin_, that is to
+say, "reindeer". When the Aurora Borealis was particularly bright in
+the sky they would say that deer were plentiful in that part of the
+heavens. Their fancy in this respect was not quite so silly as one
+might think. They had learnt from experience that the Aurora Borealis
+was in some way connected with electricity, and experience had equally
+shown them that the skin of the reindeer, if briskly stroked by the
+hand on a dark night, would emit as many electric sparks as the back
+of a cat. On the other hand, the Amerindians in the southern and more
+temperate regions thought the Aurora Borealis was a vast concourse of
+"spirits of the happy day" dancing in the clouds.
+
+Thus there were no climatic reasons why, both in summer and in winter,
+immense distances should not be quickly covered in Canada between the
+Rocky Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean. This is how a mere hundred of
+white pioneers opened up Canada to the knowledge of the civilized
+world far quicker than the same area could have been discovered in
+Africa or Asia. Sometimes, for about a month, between the melting of
+the snow and ice and the steady flowing of the rivers in the late
+spring, or between the uncertain autumn of November and the confirmed
+winter of December, there might be an interval of a few weeks in which
+journeys had to be made on foot under conditions of great hardship,
+through mud, swamp, and over sharp stones or slippery rocks.
+
+"The plains are covered with water from the melting of the snow so
+suddenly, and our men suffer much, as they are continually on the
+march, looking after Indians in every creek and little river. The
+water is commonly knee deep, in some places up to the middle, and in
+the morning is usually covered with ice, which makes it tedious and
+even dangerous travelling. Some of our men lose the use of their legs
+while still in the prime of life", wrote one eighteenth-century
+pioneer, in the Canadian spring.
+
+Severe as were the winter conditions of climate, the explorers were
+just as willing to travel through the winter as the summer, because in
+the winter they were spared the awful plague of mosquitoes and midges
+which still renders summer and early-autumn travel throughout the
+whole of Canada, from the United States borders on the south to the
+Arctic Ocean on the north, a severe trial, and even an unbearable
+degree of physical suffering.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+The Amerindians and Eskimo: the Aborigines of British North America
+
+
+I have already attempted to describe in the first chapter the ancient
+peopling of America from north-eastern Asia, but it might be useful if
+I gave here some description of the Eskimo and Amerindian tribes of
+the Canadian Dominion at the time of its gradual discovery by
+Europeans, especially during the great explorations of the eighteenth
+and early nineteenth centuries.
+
+It is evident that the ESKIMO--who are quite distinct from the
+Amerindians in physical type, language, customs, and industries--have
+been for thousands of years the only inhabitants of Arctic America.
+When the Norsemen came to the New World they seem to have met with
+Eskimo as far south as New England, but in more recent times the
+Eskimo have only been found inhabiting the extreme north and
+north-east: in Greenland, on the Labrador coast, on Baffin's Land, and
+along the Arctic coast of the North-American continent, between the
+Coppermine River and the westernmost extremity of Alaska, as well as
+on the opposite islands and promontories of Asia.
+
+Their name for themselves as a people is usually "Innuit" (in
+Greenland, "Karalit"). Eskimo is a corruption of _Eskimantsik_, a
+northern Algonkin word meaning "eaters of raw flesh". Although their
+geographical range extends over a distance of about three thousand
+five hundred miles--from north-easternmost Asia to the east coast of
+Greenland--the difference in their dialects is little more than that
+between French and Italian; whereas the difference between the speech
+of one Amerindian tribe and another--even where they belong to the
+same language group--is very great--not less than that between German
+and Latin, or English and French, or even between Russian and
+Hindustani. This fact--of the widespread Eskimo language--makes some
+authorities suppose that the presence of the Eskimo in Arctic America
+cannot be such a very ancient event as, from other evidence, one might
+believe. Perhaps the bold travelling habits of the Eskimo--which makes
+them range over vast distances of ice and snow when hunting seals,
+walruses, whales, musk ox, or reindeer--enables them to keep in touch
+with their far-away relations.
+
+The canoes or _kayaks_ in which they travel (first described by the
+Norsemen in the tenth century) are made out of the hide of the seal or
+walrus. The leather is stretched over a framework constructed from
+driftwood or whales' bones. There is a hole in the middle for the man
+or woman to insert their legs. This hole they fill up with their
+bodies. If the canoe capsizes, the Eskimo cannot fall out, but bobs up
+immediately. He and the canoe are really "one-and-indivisible" when he
+is navigating the seas and lakes, plying deftly a large paddle.
+
+In regard to food they were certainly not particular or squeamish.
+They loved best of all whales' blubber, or to drink the fishy-tasting
+oil from bodies of whales, seals, or walruses. Besides the meat of
+Polar bears and of any fur animals they could catch, or the musky beef
+of the musk ox, they devoured eagerly sea birds' eggs, Iceland moss,
+and even the parasitic insects of their own heads and bodies! Hearne
+relates that they will eat with a relish whole handfuls of maggots
+that have been produced in meat by the eggs of the bluebottle fly! On
+the other hand, they held cannibalism in horror, whereas for two-two's
+their Amerindian neighbours on the west and south would eat human
+flesh without repugnance.
+
+The Eskimo, though occasionally tall, are as a rule stumpy and
+thickset, with very small hands and feet, broad faces, and projecting
+cheekbones, a narrow nose without the aquiline bridge of the
+Amerindian, slanting narrow eyes, and long heads containing large
+well-developed brains. In disposition the Eskimo are nearly always
+merry, affectionate to one another, honest, and modest. Modern
+travellers in the Arctic regions give them invariably a high
+character; but Frobisher, Davis, and the explorers of the sixteenth
+and seventeenth centuries accused them of treachery and an inclination
+to steal. Iron in any shape or form they could hardly resist taking.
+Moreover, if they are the same people as the Skraellings of the Norse
+traditions they must have been of a fiercer disposition a thousand
+years ago.
+
+The Amerindians who inhabited (more or less) the rest of the Canadian
+Dominion, and the whole remainder of the New World, differed in
+physical appearance from the Eskimo mainly in being taller and better
+proportioned, with shorter and rounder heads, larger, fuller eyes, a
+bigger nose, and a handsomer personal appearance. The skin colour, as
+a rule, was darker and browner than the greyish- or pinkish-yellow of
+the Eskimo.
+
+The various human types that went to form the Amerindian race (beside
+the Eskimo element in them) seem to have entered north-west America
+from Asia, and first to have peopled the Pacific slopes of the Rocky
+Mountains, after which they wandered farther and farther south till
+they got into a warmer climate. Then they crossed the Rocky Mountains
+and peopled the centre and east of what is now the United States. As
+they pushed their way north up the valleys of the great rivers, they
+no doubt killed, mingled with, or pushed back the Eskimo. At last
+their northernmost extensions reached to the Mackenzie River, the
+vicinity of Hudson's Bay, Labrador, and Newfoundland. But in all the
+middle, west, and even east of Canada they seem to have been
+_relatively recent arrivals_,[1] not to have inhabited the country for
+a great many centuries before the white man came, and all their
+recorded and legendary movements in North America have been from the
+south-west towards the north-east (after they had got across the Rocky
+Mountains). The few cultivated plants they had, such as maize (Indian
+corn), tobacco, and pumpkins, they brought with them or received from
+the south.
+
+[Footnote 1: There may have been an earlier race inhabiting north-east
+America which was killed out or driven away by the last Glacial
+period.]
+
+The only domestic animal possessed by either Eskimo or Amerindian was
+the dog. We are most of us by now familiar with the type of the Eskimo
+dog--a large, wolf-like animal with prick ears and a bushy tail curled
+over its back. In this carriage of the tail the Eskimo and most other
+true dogs differ from wolves, with whom the tail droops between the
+hind quarters. But there is a small wild American wolf--the
+coyote--which carries its tail more upright, like that of the true
+dog; and the coyote seems indeed an intermediate form between the wolf
+and the original wild dog. Most of the domestic dogs of the
+Amerindians[2] (as distinguished from those of the Eskimo) seem to
+have been derived from the coyote or small wolf of central North
+America.
+
+[Footnote 2: "The dogs of the Northern Indians are of various sizes
+and colours, but all of them have a foxy or wolf-like appearance,
+sharp noses, bushy tails, and sharp ears standing erect." (Samuel
+Hearne).
+
+Hearne also remarks that the northern Indians had a superstitious
+reverence and liking for the wolf. They would frequently go to the
+mouth of the burrows where the female wolves lived with their young,
+take out the puppies and play with them, and even paint the faces of
+the young wolves with vermilion or red ochre.
+
+When first observed by Europeans the unhappy Beothiks (of
+Newfoundland) had apparently no domestic dogs, only "tame wolves",
+whom they distinguished from the wild wolves by marking their ears.
+They were made more angry by the European seamen attacking and killing
+the wolves than by anything else they did. Apparently some kind of
+alliance had been struck up between the Beothiks--a nation of
+hunters--and the wolf packs which followed in their tracks; and the
+Newfoundland wolves were on the way to becoming domesticated "dogs".
+Later on it was realized that the island _did_ produce a special
+breed--the celebrated Newfoundland dog--the original type of which was
+much smaller than the modern type, nearly or entirely black in colour,
+with a sharper muzzle and less pendulous ears. But its feet were as
+strongly webbed and its habits as aquatic as those of the
+"Newfoundland" of the modern breed. Some people have noticed the
+resemblance between the farmers' dogs in Norway and the Newfoundland
+type, and have thought that the latter may not be altogether of wolf
+extraction, but be descended from the dogs brought from Norway and
+Iceland by the Norse adventurers who visited Newfoundland in the tenth
+and eleventh centuries.]
+
+On the Pacific coast there were other types of domestic dog,
+resembling greatly breeds that are found in eastern Asia and the
+Pacific islands. Some of these were naked, and others grew silky hair,
+which was woven by the natives into cloth (see p. 323). The Eskimo dog
+almost certainly has been derived from northern Asia, and is closely
+related to the well-known Chinese breed--the chow dog--and the
+domestic breeds of ancient Europe. Even the commonest type of house
+dog in the Roman Empire was very much like an Eskimo or a chow in
+appearance. There is a true wild dog, however, in the Yukon province
+of the Canadian Dominion and in Alaska--_Canis pambasileus_--a dark,
+blackish-brown in colour. This may have been a parent of the Eskimo
+dog, but it is also doubtless closely allied to the original (extinct)
+wild dog of northern Asia, from which the chow and many other breeds
+are directly descended. The Eskimo never under ordinary circumstances
+ate their dogs; on the other hand, the Amerindians were fond of dog's
+flesh, and in some tribes simply bred dogs for the table.
+
+When Europeans first reached America all these Amerindian tribes, and
+also the Eskimo, were still, for all practical purposes, in the Stone
+Age. Those who lived in the north had discovered the use of copper and
+had shaped for themselves knives and spear blades out of copper, but
+not even this metal was in use to any great extent, and for the most
+part they relied, down to the end of the eighteenth century, for their
+implements and weapons, on polished and sharpened stones, on deer's
+antlers, buffalo horns, sticks, sharp shells, beavers' incisor
+teeth,[3] the claws or spines of crustaceans, flints, and suchlike
+substances--in short, they were leading the same life and using almost
+exactly the same tools as the long-since-vanished hunter races of
+Europe of five thousand to one hundred thousand years ago--the people
+who pursued the mammoth, the bison, the Irish "elk", and the other
+great beasts of prehistoric Europe. Indeed, North America represented
+to some extent, as late as a hundred years ago, what Europe must have
+looked like in the days of palaeolithic Man.
+
+[Footnote 3: Of which they made very serviceable chisels.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The AMERINDIANS of the Canadian Dominion (when the country first
+became known to Europeans) belonged to the following groups and
+tribes. The order of enumeration begins in the east and proceeds
+westwards. I have already mentioned the peculiar _Beothiks_ of
+Newfoundland.[4] In Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick,
+and the Gaspe Peninsula there were the _Mikmak_ Indians belonging to
+the widespread ALGONKIN family or stock. West and south of the
+Mikmaks, in New Brunswick and along the borders of New England, were
+other tribes of the Algonkin group: the Etchemins, Abenakis,
+Tarratines, Penobscots, _Mohikans_, and Adirondacks. North of these,
+in the eastern part of the Quebec province, on either side of the Gulf
+of St. Lawrence, were the _Montagnais_. This name, though it looks
+like a French word meaning "mountaineers", was also spellt Montagnet,
+and in various other ways, showing that it was originally a native
+name, pronounced Montanye. The Montagnais in various clans extended
+northwards across Labrador until they touched the Eskimo, with whom
+they constantly fought. The interior of Labrador was inhabited by
+another Algonkin tribe, the _Naskwapi_, living in a state of rude
+savagery. The _Algonkins_ proper, whose tribe gave their name to the
+whole stock because the French first became acquainted with them as a
+type, dwelt in the vicinity of Montreal, Lake Ontario, and the valley
+of the St. Lawrence. In upper Canada, about the great lakes and the
+St. Lawrence valley, were the Chippeways, or _Ojibwes_, and the
+Ottawas. West and north of Lake Michigan were the Miamis, the
+Potawatomis, and the Fox Indians (the Saks or Sawkis). Between Lake
+Winnipeg and Lake Superior were the _Cheyennes_ (Shians); between
+North and South Saskatchewan, the _Blackfeet_ or Siksika Indians
+(sections of which were also called Bloods, Paigans, Piegans, &c).
+North of Lake Winnipeg, as far as Lake Athabaska, and almost from the
+Rocky Mountains to the shores of Hudson's Bay, were the widespread
+tribe of the _Kris_, or _Knistino_.[5] The Gros Ventres or Big
+Bellies--properly called _Atsina_--inhabited the southern part of the
+middle west, between the Saskatchewan and the Missouri basins; and the
+Monsoni or Maskegon were found in eastern Rupert Land.
+
+[Footnote 4: See also pp. 156, 164, 186, and 199. In this list I have
+put in italics the names of the tribes more important in history, and
+in capitals the principal group names.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Kinistino, Kiristineaux, Kilistino; called "Crees" or
+"Kris" for short.]
+
+All the above-enumerated tribes, except the Beothik indigenes of
+Newfoundland, belong to the great and widespread ALGONKIN group.
+(Algonkin is a word derived from the "Algommequin" of Champlain.) In
+the valley of the St. Lawrence the French first encountered those
+Indians whom they called _Huron_. This was a French word meaning
+"crested", because these people wore their hair in a great crest over
+the top and back of the head, which reminded the French of the
+appearance of a wild boar (_Hure_). The real name of the Hurons, who
+dwelt at a later date between Lakes Huron, Erie, Ontario, and the
+neighbourhood of Montreal, was _Waiandot_ (Wyandot); but they went
+under a variety of other names, according to the clans, such as the
+Eries and the Atiwandoran or Neutral Nation. They were also called the
+"Good" Iroquois, to distinguish them from the six other nations, the
+IROQUOIS proper of the French Canadians, who signalized themselves by
+fiendish and frightful warfare against the French and the various
+tribes of Algonkin Indians. The Hurons and the rest of the six tribes
+grouped under the name of IROQUOIS[6] were of the same stock
+originally, forming a separate group like that of the Algonkins,
+though they are supposed to be related distantly to the Dakota or
+Siou. Amongst the "Six Nations" or tribes banded together in warfare
+and policy were the celebrated "Mohawks" who dwelt on the southern
+borders of the St. Lawrence basin and near Lake Champlain. As the
+others of the six nations (including the Senekas and Onondagas)
+inhabited the eastern United States, well outside the limits of
+Canada, they need not be referred to here.
+
+[Footnote 6: "Iroquois" was a name invented by Champlain (see p. 69).
+Apparently this confederation called themselves _Hodenosauni_. The
+termination "ois" in all French-American names is pronounced
+"wa"--Irokwa.]
+
+Between the South Saskatchewan, the Rocky Mountains, and Lake
+Superior, nearly outside the limits of the Canadian Dominion, was the
+great DAKOTA, or Siou group,[7] divided into the distinct tribe of
+_Assiniboin_ or "Stone" Indians (because they used hot stones in
+cooking), the "Crows" or Absaroka, the Hidatsa or Minitari (also
+called Big Bellies, like the quite distinct Atsina of the Algonkin
+family), the Menomini (the most north-eastern amongst the Siouan
+tribes, and the first met with by the British and French Canadians
+south-west of Lake Superior), the Winnebagos on the southern borders
+of Manitoba, the Yanktons or Yanktonnais, the "_Santi Siou_"
+proper--generally calling themselves _Dakota_ or Mdewakanton--and the
+"Tetons" along the northern Dakota frontier and into the Rocky
+Mountains--also known as _Blackfeet_, Sans Arcs ("without bows"),
+"Two-kettles", "Brules" or "Burnt" Indians, &c.
+
+[Footnote 7: The far-famed term _Siou_ is said to have been an
+abbreviation of one of the original French names for this type of
+Amerindian, _Nadouessiou_. In early books they are often called the
+Nadouessies.]
+
+Next must be mentioned the very important and widespread ATHAPASKAN or
+Dene (Tinne) group, named after Lake Athapaska (or Athabaska), because
+that sheet of water became a great rallying place for these northern
+tribes. The Athapaskan group of Indians indeed represents the
+"Northern Indians" of the Hudson's Bay Company's reports and
+explorers. They drew a great distinction between the Northern Indians
+(the Athapaskan tribes) and the Southern Indians, which included all
+the other Amerindian groups dwelling to the south of the Athapaskan
+domain. But although nowadays so much associated with the far north
+and north-west of America, the Athabaskan group evidently came from a
+region much farther south, and has been cut in half by other tribal
+movements, wars, and migrations; for the Athapaskan family also
+includes the Apaches and the Navaho of the south-western portions of
+the United States and the adjoining territories of Mexico. The
+northern and southern divisions of the Athapaskan group are separated
+by something like twelve hundred miles. The following are the
+principal tribes into which the Northern ATHAPASKAN group was divided
+at the time of the first explorations of the north-west. There were
+the _Chippewayan_ Indians[8] round about Lake Athapaska, and the
+Caribou Eaters or Ethen-eldeli between Lake Athapaska and Reindeer
+Lake. The "_Slaves_", or Slave Indians of the Great Slave Lake and the
+upper Mackenzie River; the Beaver and Sarsi Indians (known also as the
+Tsekehn), about the Peace River and the northern part of Alberta
+province; and the _Yellow Knives_, or Totsan-ottine (so called from
+their being found with light-coloured copper knives when first
+discovered by Europeans), north-east of the Great Slave Lake and along
+the Coppermine River: the _Dogribs_ between the Great Slave Lake and
+Great Bear Lake, perhaps (except in Alaska) the most northern
+extension of the Amerindian type towards the Arctic regions. West of
+the Dogribs dwelt--and still dwell--the interesting tribe of _Hare_
+Indians, or Kawcho-Tinne. They extend northwards to the Anderson
+River, on the verge of the Arctic Ocean. West of the lower Mackenzie
+River, and stretching thence to the Porcupine or Yukon Rivers, are the
+Squinting Indians ("Loucheux", or Kuchin), who in former times were
+met with much farther to the south-east than at the present day.
+Finally, there are the Nahani Indians, who have penetrated through the
+Rocky Mountains to the Stikine River, reaching thus quite close to the
+Pacific Ocean. This penetration northwards of groups of Athapaskan
+Indians into districts inhabited for the most part by Amerindian
+tribes differing widely in language and customs from all those _east_
+of the Rocky Mountains, explains the way in which stories of the great
+western sea--the Pacific--reached, by means of trading intercourse,
+those Amerindian tribes of the middle-west and upper Canada, and so
+stirred up the French and English explorers of the seventeenth and
+eighteenth centuries to make the marvellous journeys which are
+recounted in this book.
+
+[Footnote 8: These northern Indians are described by Hearne as having
+very low foreheads, small eyes, high cheekbones, Roman noses, broad
+cheeks, and long, broad chins. Their skins were soft, smooth and
+polished, somewhat copper-coloured, and inclining towards a dingy
+brown. The hair of the head was black, strong, and straight. They were
+not in general above middle size, though well proportioned.]
+
+_West_ of the Rocky Mountains, in British Columbia and Vancouver
+Island (besides southern Alaska), the Amerindian tribes form the
+N[-u]tka-Columbian group, which is markedly distinct from the
+Amerindians _east_ of the Rocky Mountains, from whom they differ
+_widely_ in language, type, and culture. They are divided into quite a
+large number of small separate groups--the Wakashan or _N[-u]tkas_ of
+Vancouver Island and south-western British Columbia, the Shahaptian or
+"Nez perces" Indians of the Columbia basin, and the Chin[-u]ks of
+the lower Columbia River, the _Salishan_ or "Flathead" group
+(including the Atn[-a]s) of the Fraser and Thompson Rivers and central
+British Columbia; and the _Haida_ Indians of Queen Charlotte's Islands
+and the north-west coast of British Columbia. It must be remembered
+that these different groups are only based on the relationships of
+their component tribes in language or dialect, and do not always imply
+that the tribes belonging to them had the same customs and
+dispositions; but they were generally able to communicate with one
+another in speech, whereas if they met the Indians of another group
+the language might be so totally different that they could only
+communicate by means of signs.
+
+[Illustration: AN AMERINDIAN TYPE OF BRITISH COLUMBIA]
+
+Sign and gesture language[9] was extraordinarily developed amongst all
+the Amerindian races from the Arctic Ocean to the Antarctic. Not only
+that, but they were quick to understand the purpose of pictures. They
+could draw maps in the sand to explain the geography of their country,
+and Europeans could often make them understand what they required by
+rough drawings. They themselves related many events by means of a
+picture language--the beginning of hieroglyphics; and in the
+south-eastern parts of Canada, as in the United States, these signs or
+pictographs were recorded in bead-shell work--the celebrated "wampum".
+
+[Footnote 9: "It is surprising how dexterous all these natives of the
+plains are in communicating their ideas by signs. They hold
+conferences for several hours, upon different subjects, during the
+whole of which time not a single word is pronounced upon either side,
+and still they appear to comprehend each other perfectly well. This
+mode of communication is natural to them; their gestures are made with
+the greatest ease, and they never seem to be at a loss for a sign to
+express their meaning" (Alex. Henry the Younger, 1800). But it should
+also be noted that during the last hundred years the peoples belonging
+to the N[-u]tka-Columbian group have developed a trade language which
+they use in common. This is a mixture of Chin[-u]k, English, French,
+Chinese, and Hawaaian.]
+
+All these tribes, of course, varied very much in personal appearance,
+though not in disposition. The vanished Beothiks of Newfoundland are
+described as having been a good-looking tall people, with large black
+eyes and a skin so light, when washed free from dirt or paint, that
+the Portuguese compared them to gipsies; and the writer of Fabian's
+_Chronicle_, who saw two of them (brought back by Cabot) at Henry
+VII's Court, in 1499, took them for Englishmen when they were dressed
+in English clothes. It was these people--subsequently killed out by
+the British settlers on Newfoundland--who originated the term "Red
+Indians", or, in French, _Peaux Rouges_, because their skins, like
+those of so many other Amerindians, were painted with red ochre.
+
+Many of the British Columbian peoples made themselves artificially
+ugly by flattening the sides of the head. To press the skull whilst it
+was soft, they squeezed the heads of their children between boards;
+others, such as the warlike tribes of the upper Missouri, had a
+passion for submitting themselves to mutilation by the medicine man of
+the clan, in order to please the sun god. Such would submit to large
+strips being cut from the flesh of their shoulders, arms, or legs, or
+having their cheeks slashed. The result, of course, was to leave their
+limbs and features horribly scarred when they healed up. In some
+tribes, however, a young man could not obtain--or retain--a wife
+unless he had shown his bravery by submitting to this mutilation.
+Women often cut off one or more joints of their fingers to show their
+grief for the death of children.
+
+In some tribes, especially of the far north-west and of the Rocky
+Mountains, the personal habits of men and women, or of the women only,
+were so filthy, and their dislike to bathing so pronounced, that they
+became objects of loathing to white men; in other tribes personal
+cleanliness was highly esteemed, especially on the seacoast of British
+Columbia or along the banks of the great rivers. Usually the men were
+better looking and better developed than the women--for one reason,
+because they were better fed.
+
+Here is a description by PETER GRANT--a pioneer of the North-West
+Company--of the Ojibwe Indians dwelling near the east end of Lake
+Superior at the beginning of the nineteenth century:--
+
+"Their complexion is a whitish cast of copper colour, their hair
+black, long, straight, and of a very strong texture. The young men
+allow several locks of the hair to fall down over the face, ornamented
+with ribbons, silver brooches, &c. They gather up another lock from
+behind the head into a small clump, and wrap it up with very thin
+plates of silver, in which they fix the tail feathers of the eagle or
+any other favourite bird with the wearing of which they have
+distinguished themselves in war. They are very careful with their
+hair, anointing it with bears' oil, which gives it a smooth and glossy
+appearance. The teeth are of a beautiful ivory white, the cheeks
+rather high and prominent, the eyes black and lively. Their
+countenances are generally pleasant, and they might often be called
+handsome. The ears are pierced in infancy, and the lobe is extended to
+an unnatural size by suspending lead or any other heavy metal from the
+outer rim, which in time brings them down near the shoulder. The nose
+ornaments hang down half an inch, and nearly touch the upper lip.
+
+"The men are bold, manly, and graceful in their gait, always carrying
+their bodies erect and easy. On the other hand, the women, by walking
+with the toes of their feet turned inwards, have a disagreeable and
+lame appearance. The men are specially fond of painting their faces
+and bodies with vermilion, white and blue clay, charcoal or soot mixed
+with a little grease or water. With this colour they daub the body,
+legs, and thighs in bars and patches, and take the greatest pains
+about painting the face, usually with red and black. Their skins are
+generally tattooed with figures representing the sun, stars, eagles,
+serpents, &c, especially objects which have appeared to them in their
+dreams. The women's faces are much less painted, usually a spot of red
+on each cheek and a circle of red round the roots of the hair or
+eyes."
+
+Here is a summary of what Alexander Henry, sen., wrote of the _Kri_ or
+_Knistino_ Indians of Lake Athabaska about 1770:--
+
+"The men in general tattoo their bodies and arms very much. The women
+confine this ornamentation to the chin, having three perpendicular
+lines from the middle of the chin to the lip, and one or more running
+on each side, nearly parallel with the corner of the mouth. Their
+dress consists of leather; that of the men is a pair of leggings,
+reaching up to the hip and fastened to the girdle. Between the legs is
+passed a strip of woollen stuff, but when this cannot be procured they
+use a piece of dressed leather about nine inches broad and four feet
+long, whose ends are drawn through the girdle and hang down before and
+behind about a foot.... The shirt is of soft dressed leather, either
+from the prong-buck or young red deer, close about the neck and
+hanging to the middle of the thigh; the sleeves are of the same, loose
+and open under the arms to the elbows, but thence to the wrist sewed
+tight. The cap is commonly a piece of leather, or skin with the hair
+on, shaped to fit the head, and tied under the chin; the top is
+usually decorated with feathers or other ornament. Shoes are made of
+buffalo (bison) hide, dressed in the hair, and mittens of the same.
+Over the whole a buffalo robe is thrown, which serves as covering day
+and night.
+
+"Such is their common dress, but on particular occasions they appear
+to greater advantage, having their cap, shirt, leggings, and shoes
+perfectly clean and white, trimmed with porcupine quills and other
+ingenious work of their women, who are supposed to be the most skilful
+hands in the country at decorations of this kind. The women's dress
+consists of the same materials as the men's. Their leggings do not
+reach above the knee, and are gathered below that joint; their shoes
+always lack decoration. The shift or body garment reaches down to the
+calf, where it is generally fringed and trimmed with quillwork; the
+upper part is fastened over the shoulders by strips of leather; a flap
+or cape hangs down about a foot before and behind, and is ornamented
+with quillwork and fringe. This covering is quite loose, but tied
+around the waist with a belt of stiff parchment fastened on the side,
+where also some ornaments are suspended. The sleeves are detached from
+the body garment; from the wrist to the elbow they are sewed, but
+thence to the shoulder they are open underneath and drawn up to the
+neck, where they are fastened across the breast and back.
+
+"Their ornaments are two or three coils of brass wire twisted around
+the rim of each ear, in which incisions are made for that purpose;
+blue beads, brass rings, quillwork, and fringe occasionally answer.
+Vermilion (a red clay) is much used by the women to paint the face.
+
+"Their hair is generally parted on the crown and fastened behind each
+ear in large knots, from which are suspended bunches of blue beads or
+other ingenious work of their own. The men adjust their hair in
+various forms; some have it parted on top and tied in a tail on each
+side, while others make one long _queue_ which hangs down behind, and
+around which is twisted a strip of otter skin or dressed buffalo
+entrails. This tail is frequently increased in thickness and length by
+adding false hair, but others allow it to flow loose naturally. Combs
+are seldom used by the men, and they never smear the hair with grease,
+but red earth is sometimes put upon it. White earth daubed over the
+hair generally denotes mourning. The young men sometimes have a bunch
+of hair on the crown, about the size of a small teacup, and nearly in
+the shape of that vessel upside down, to which they fasten various
+ornaments of feathers, quillwork, ermine tails, &c. Red and white
+earth and charcoal are much used in their toilets; with the former
+they usually daub their robes and other garments, some red and others
+white. The women comb their hair and use grease on it."
+
+The Slave Indians (a tribe of the Athapaskan family) tattooed their
+cheeks with charcoal inserted under the skin, also daubed their
+bodies, robes, and garments profusely with red earth (generally
+called, in the text of travellers, vermilion), but they had another
+favourite pigment, procured from the regions on the west of the Rocky
+Mountains, some kind of graphite, like the lead of lead pencils. With
+this they marked their faces in black lead after red earth has been
+applied, and thus gave themselves a ghastly and savage appearance.
+Their dress consists of a leather shirt trimmed with human hair and
+porcupine-quill work, and leggings of leather. Their shoes and caps
+were made of bison leather, with the hair outside. Their necklaces
+were strings of grizzly-bear claws, and a "buffalo" robe was thrown
+over all occasionally. Some of them occasionally had quite light
+skins--when free of dirt or paint--and grey eyes, and their hair,
+instead of being black, was greyish-brown. These last features (grey
+eyes and brown hair) characterized many individuals among the northern
+British-Columbian tribes.
+
+The Naskwapis of inland Labrador--allied in speech to the Kris and the
+Montagnais, but in blood to the Eskimo--are described as above the
+middle size in height, slender, and long-legged, their cheeks being
+very prominent, eyes black, nose rather flat, mouth large, lips thick,
+teeth white, hair rough and black, and the complexion a yellowish
+"frog" colour. They were dressed in elaborate and warm garments made
+of reindeer skin. The ordinary covering for the head of the men was
+the skin of a bear's head. "Thus accoutred, with the addition of a
+bow and quiver, a stone axe, and a bone knife, a Naskwapi man
+possessed no small degree of pride and self-importance" (James
+M'Kenzie).
+
+The handsomest tribes of Amerindians encountered by the Canadian
+pioneers seem to have been the Ojibwes of Lake Superior, the Iroquois
+south of the St. Lawrence, and the Mandans of the upper Missouri.
+
+Until well on in the nineteenth century none of the Canadian
+Amerindians were particular about wearing clothes if the weather was
+hot. The men, especially, were either quite oblivious of what was
+seemly in clothing (except perhaps the Iroquois) or thought it
+necessary to go naked into battle, or to remove all clothing before
+taking part in religious ceremonies.
+
+It is commonly supposed that the Red Man was a rather glum person,
+seldom seen to smile and averse to showing any emotion. That is not
+the impression one derives from the many pen portraits of Amerindians
+in the journals of the great pioneers. Here, on the contrary, you see
+the natives laughing, smiling, kissing eagerly their wives and
+children after an absence, displaying exuberant and cordial friendship
+towards the white man who treated them well, having love quarrels and
+fits of raging jealousy, moods of deep remorse after a fight, touching
+devotion to their comrades or chiefs, and above all to their children.
+They are most emotional, indeed, and, apart from this chapter you will
+find frequent descriptions of how they wept at times over the
+remembrance of their dead relations and friends.
+
+Hearne remarked, in 1772, that when two parties of Athapaska Indians
+met, the ceremonies which passed between them were very formal. They
+would advance within twenty or thirty yards of each other, make a full
+halt, and then sit or lie down on the ground, not speaking for some
+minutes. At length one of them, generally an elderly man, broke
+silence by acquainting the other party with every misfortune that had
+befallen him and his companions from the last time they had seen or
+heard of each other, including all deaths and other calamities which
+had happened to any other Indians during the same period. When he
+finished, another orator, belonging to the other party, related in
+like manner all the bad news that had come to _his_ knowledge. If
+these orations contained any news that in the least affected either
+party, it would not be long before some of them began to sigh and sob,
+and soon after to break out into a loud cry, which was generally
+accompanied by most of the grown persons of both sexes; and sometimes
+it was common to hear them all--men, women, and children--joining in
+one universal howl. When the first transports of grief had subsided,
+they advanced by degrees, and both parties mixed with each other, the
+men with the men, the women with the women. They then passed round
+tobacco pipes very freely, and the conversation became general. They
+had now nothing but good news left to tell, and in less than half an
+hour probably nothing but smiles and cheerfulness would be seen on
+every face.
+
+One direction in which the Amerindians did not shine was in their
+treatment of women. This perhaps was worse than in other uncivilized
+races. Woman was very badly used, except perhaps for the first year of
+courtship and marriage. Courtship began by the young man throwing
+sticks at the girl[10] who pleased his fancy, and if she responded he
+asked her in marriage. But not long after she had become a mother she
+sank into the position of a household drudge and beast of burden. For
+example, amongst the Beaver Indians, an Athapaskan tribe of the far
+north-west, it is related by Alexander Mackenzie that the women are
+permanently crippled and injured in physique by the hardships they
+have to undergo. "Having few dogs for transport in that country, the
+women alone perform that labour which is allotted to beasts of burden
+in other countries. It is not uncommon whilst the men carry nothing
+but a gun, that their wives and daughters follow with such weighty
+burdens that if they lay them down they cannot replace them; nor will
+the men deign to perform the service of hoisting them on to their
+backs. So that during their journeys they are frequently obliged to
+lean against a tree for a small degree of temporary relief. When they
+arrive at the place which their tyrants have chosen for their
+encampment, they arrange the tent in a few minutes by forming a curve
+of poles meeting at the top and expanding into a circle of twelve or
+fifteen feet in diameter at the bottom, covered with dressed skins of
+the moose sewn together. During these preparations the men sit down
+quietly to the enjoyment of their pipes, if they happen to have any
+tobacco."
+
+[Footnote 10: The manner of courtship among the Ojibwes seemed to
+Peter Grant not only singular, but rude. "The lover begins his first
+addresses by gently pelting his mistress with bits of clay, snowballs,
+small sticks, or anything he may happen to have in his hand. If she
+returns the compliment, he is encouraged to continue the farce, and
+repeat it for a considerable time, after which more direct proposals
+of marriage are made by word of mouth."]
+
+Among the Ojibwe and Huron Indians of the Great Lakes the men
+sometimes obliged their wives to bring up and nourish young bears
+instead of their own children, so that the bears might eventually be
+fattened for eating. If food was scarce, the women went without before
+even the male slaves of the tribe were unprovided with food. Women
+might never eat in the society of males, not even if these males were
+slaves or prisoners of war. If food was very scarce, the husband as
+likely as not killed and ate a wife; perhaps did this before slaying
+and eating a valuable dog. (On the other hand, Mackenzie instances the
+case of a woman among the Slave Indians who, in a winter of great
+scarcity, managed to kill and devour her husband and several
+relations.) So terrible was the ill-treatment of the women in some
+tribes that these wretched beings sometimes committed suicide to end
+their tortures. Even in this, however, they were not let off lightly,
+for the Siou men invented as a tenet of their religion the saying that
+"Women who hang themselves are the most miserable of all wretches in
+the other world".
+
+On the other hand, the kind treatment of children by fathers as well
+as mothers is an "Indian" trait commented on by writer after writer.
+Here is a typical description by Alexander Henry the Elder, concerning
+the children of the Ojibwe tribe:
+
+"As soon as the boys begin to run about, they are provided with bows
+and arrows, and acquire, as it were 'by instinct', an astonishing
+dexterity in shooting birds, squirrels, butterflies, &c. Hunting in
+miniature may be justly said to comprise the whole of their education
+and childish diversion. Such as excel in this kind of exercise are
+sure of being particularly distinguished by their parents, and seldom
+punished for any misbehaviour, but, on the contrary, indulged in every
+degree of excess and caprice. I have often seen grown-up boys of this
+description, when punished for some serious fault, strike their father
+and spit in his face, calling him 'bad dog', or 'old woman', and,
+sometimes, carrying their insolence so far as to threaten to stab or
+shoot him, and, what is rather singular, these too-indulgent parents
+seem to encourage such unnatural liberties, and even glory in such
+conduct from their favourite children. I heard them boast of having
+sons who promised at an early age to inherit such bold and independent
+sentiments.... Children of nine or ten years of age not only enjoy
+the confidence of the men, but are generally considered as companions
+and very deliberately join in their conversations."
+
+When death overtook anybody the grief of the female relations was
+carried to great excess. They not only cut their hair, cried and
+howled, but they would sometimes, with the utmost deliberation,
+employ some sharp instrument to separate the nail from the finger and
+then force back the flesh beyond the first joint, which they
+immediately amputated. "Many of the old women have so often repeated
+this ceremony that they have not a complete finger remaining on either
+hand" (Mackenzie).
+
+[Illustration: CARIBOU SWIMMING A RIVER]
+
+The Amerindians of North America were religious and superstitious, and
+had a firm faith in a world of spiritual agencies within or outside
+the material world around us. Most of them believed in the existence
+of "fairies",--woodland, earth, mountain, or water spirits--whom they
+declared they could see from time to time in human semblance. Or such
+spirit or demi-god might assume for a time or permanently the form of
+an animal. To all such spirits of earth, air, and water, or to the
+sacred animals they inhabited, sacrifices would be offered and prayers
+made. Great importance was attributed to dreams and visions. They
+accustomed themselves to make long fasts, so that they might become
+light-headed and see visions, or hear spirit voices in a trance. To
+prepare their minds for this state they would go four or five days
+without food, and even abstain from drinking.
+
+Undoubtedly their "medicine men" developed great mesmeric powers, and
+this force, combined with rather clumsy juggling and ventriloquism,
+enabled them to perform a semblance of "miracles". The Iroquois
+offered much opposition to Christianity, thinking it would tame their
+warriors too quickly and affect their national independence; but by
+the greater part of the Amerindians the message of the Gospel brought
+by the French priests was eagerly received, and the converts became
+many and most sincere. Their reverence for the missionaries and belief
+in them was increased when they saw how effectually they were able to
+protect them from too-rapacious white adventurers, fierce soldiers,
+and unscrupulous traders.
+
+The Miamis of Lake Michigan held the symbol of the cross in great
+respect. A young Frenchman who was trading with them got into a
+passion and drew his sword to avenge himself for a theft committed on
+his goods. The Miama chieftain, to appease him, showed him the cross,
+which was planted in the ground at the end of his lodge, and said to
+him: "Behold the tree of the Black Gown; he teaches us to pray and not
+to lose our temper,"--of course, referring to the missionary in the
+black gown who had been amongst them. Before the cross was planted
+here these Miamis kept in their houses one or more bogies, to which
+they appealed in times of distress or sickness. One of these was the
+skull of the bison with its horns. Another was the skin of the bear
+raised on a pole in the middle of the hut and retaining the head,
+which was usually painted green. The women sometimes died of terror
+from the stories told them by the men about these idols, and the
+Jesuits did a great deal of good by getting them abolished in many
+places.
+
+The Supreme Being of the Eskimos was a goddess rather than a god: a
+mother of all things who lived under the sea. On the other hand, most
+of the Amerindian tribes believed in one great God of the Sky--Manito,
+as He was called by the peoples of Algonkin stock, Nainubushan by the
+Siou and their kindred. This Being was usually kindly disposed towards
+man; but they also (in most cases) believed in a _bad_ Manito, who was
+responsible for most of the harm in the world. But sometimes the Great
+Manito was capricious, or apparently made many mistakes which he had
+afterwards to rectify. Thus the Siou tribes of Assiniboia believed
+that the Supreme Being (whom they called Eth-tom-e) first created
+mankind and all living things, and then, through some oversight or
+mistake, caused a great flood to cover the earth's surface. So in a
+hurry he was obliged to make a very large canoe of twigs and
+branches, and into this he put a pair of every kind of bird and beast,
+besides a family of human beings, who were thus saved from drowning,
+and began the world afresh when the waters subsided. This legend was
+something like the story of Noah's ark, but seems in some form or
+another to have existed in the mind of all the North-American peoples
+before the arrival of Christian missionaries. Much the same story was
+told by the Ojibwes about the Great Hare-God, Nainiboju.
+
+The Siou and the Ojibwe (and other tribes also) believed that after
+death the soul lay for a time in a trance, and then found itself
+floating towards a River which must be crossed. Beyond the River lay
+the Happy Hunting Grounds, the Elysian fields; but to oppose the weary
+soul anxious to reach this paradise there ramped on the other side a
+huge, flaming-red bison bull, if it had been ordained by the Great
+Spirit that the soul's time was not yet come, this red bison pushed it
+back, and the soul was obliged to re-enter the body, which then awoke
+from its trance or swoon and resumed its worldly activities.
+
+Suicide was regarded as the most heinous of crimes. Any man killing
+himself deliberately, fell into the river of the ghost world and was
+never heard of again, while women who hanged themselves "were regarded
+as the most miserable of all wretches in the other world".
+
+Their belief in spirits--even ancestral spirits--taking up an abode in
+the bodies of beasts, birds, or reptiles, or even in plants or stones,
+caused them to view with respect of a superstitious kind many natural
+objects. Some one thing--a beast, bird, reptile, fish, plant, or
+strange stone had been fixed on as the abode of his tutelary spirit by
+some father of a family. The family grew into a clan, and the clan to
+a tribe, and the object sacred in the eyes of its father and founder
+became its "totem", crest, or symbol. As a rule, whatever thing was
+the _totem_ of the individual or the clan was held sacred in their
+eyes, and, if it was an animal, was not killed, or, if killed, not
+eaten. Many of the northern Indians would refrain from killing the
+wolf or the glutton, or if they did so, or did it by accident, they
+would refuse to skin the animal. The elder people amongst the
+Athapaskan Indians, in Hearne's day, would reprove the young folk for
+"speaking disrespectfully" of different beasts and birds.
+
+Their ideas of medicine and surgery were much mixed up with a belief
+in magic and in the mysterious powers of their "medicine men". This
+person, who might be of either sex, certainly knew a few simple
+medicines to be made from herbs or decoctions of bark, but for the
+most part he attempted to cure the sick or injured by blowing lustily
+on the part affected or, more wisely, by massage. A universal cure,
+however, for all fevers and mild ailments was sweating. Sweating huts
+were built in nearly every settlement. They were covered over in a way
+to exclude air as much as possible. The inside was heated with red-hot
+stones and glowing embers, on to which from time to time water was
+poured to fill the place with steam. The Amerindians not only went
+through these Turkish baths to cure small ailments but also with the
+idea of clearing the intelligence and as a fitting preliminary to
+negotiations--for peace, or alliance, or even for courtship. In many
+tribes if a young "brave" arrived with proposals of marriage for a
+man's daughter he was invited to enter the sweating house with her
+father, and discuss the bargain calmly over perspiration and the
+tobacco pipe.
+
+Tobacco smoking indeed was almost a religious ceremony, as well as a
+remedy for certain maladies or states of mind. The "pipe of peace" has
+become proverbial. Nevertheless tobacco was still unknown in the
+eighteenth century to many of the Pacific-coast and far-north-west
+tribes, as to the primitive Eskimo. It was not a very old practice in
+the Canadian Dominion when Europeans first arrived there, though it
+appeared to be one of the most characteristic actions of these
+red-skinned savages in the astonished eyes of the first pioneers. They
+used pipes for smoking, however, long before tobacco came among them,
+certain berries taking the place of tobacco.
+
+The Amerindians of the southern parts of Canada and British Columbia
+were more or less settled peoples of towns or villages, of fixed homes
+to which they returned at all seasons of the year, however far afield
+they might range for warfare, trade, or hunting. But the more northern
+tribes were nomads: people shifting their abode from place to place in
+pursuit of game or trade. Unlike the people of the south and west
+(though these only grew potatoes) they were not agriculturists: the
+only vegetable element in their food was the wild rice of the marshes,
+the sweet-tasting layer between the bark and the wood of certain
+trees, and the fruits or fungi of the forest or the lichen growing on
+the rocks. Though these people might in summertime build some hasty
+wigwam of boughs and moss, their ordinary dwelling place was a tent.
+
+The Wood Indians, or Opimitish Ininiwak, of the Athapaskan group
+(writes Alexander Henry, sen.) had no fixed villages; and their lodges
+or huts were so rudely fashioned as to afford them very inadequate
+protection against the weather. The greater part of their year was
+spent in travelling from place to place in search of food. The animal
+on which they chiefly depended was the _hare_--a most prominent animal
+in Amerindian economy and tradition. This they took in springes. From
+its skin they made coverings with much ingenuity, cutting it into
+narrow strips and weaving this into the shape of a blanket, which was
+of a very warm and agreeable quality.
+
+The Naskwapi Algonkins of inland Labrador were savages that led a
+wandering life through the bare, flat parts of that country,
+subsisting chiefly upon flesh, and clothing themselves with the skin
+of the caribou, which they caught in pitfalls or shot with the bow
+and arrow. "Very few sights, I believe, can be more distressing to the
+feelings of humanity than a Labrador savage, surrounded by his wife
+and five or six small children, half-famished with cold and hunger in
+a hole dug out of the snow and screened from the inclemency of the
+weather by the branches of the trees. Their whole furniture is a
+kettle hung over the fire, not for the purpose of cooking victuals,
+but for melting snow" (James M'Kenzie).
+
+A description of the tents of the Kris or Knistino (Algonkins of the
+Athabaska region), written by Alexander Henry, sen., applies with very
+little difference to all the other tribes dwelling to the east of the
+Rocky Mountains.[11]
+
+[Footnote 11: See also p. 249.]
+
+These tents were of dressed leather, erected with poles, generally
+seventeen in number, of which two were tied together about three feet
+from the top. The first two poles being erected and set apart at the
+base, the others were placed against them in a slanting position,
+meeting at the top, so that they all formed nearly a circle, which was
+then covered with the leather. This consisted of ten to fifteen
+dressed skins of the bison, moose, or red deer, well sewed together
+and nicely cut to fit the conical figure of the poles, with an opening
+above, to let out smoke and admit the light. From this opening down to
+the door the two edges of the tent were brought close together and
+well secured with wooden pegs about six inches long, leaving for the
+door an oval aperture about two feet wide and three feet high, below
+which the edges were secured with similar pegs. This small entrance
+did well enough for the natives, who would be brought up to it from
+infancy, but a European might be puzzled to get through, as a piece of
+hide stretched upon a frame of the same shape as the door, but
+somewhat larger, hung outside, and must be first raised by the hand of
+the incomer.
+
+Such tents were usually spacious, measuring twenty feet in diameter.
+The fire was always made in the centre, around which the occupants
+generally placed a range of stones to prevent the ashes from
+scattering and to keep the fire compact. New tents were perfectly
+white; some of them were painted with red and black figures. These
+devices were generally derived from the dreams of the Amerindians,
+being some mythical monster or other hideous animal, whose description
+had been handed down from their ancestors. A large camp of such tents,
+pitched regularly on a level plain, had a fine effect at a distance,
+especially when numerous bands of horses were seen feeding in all
+directions.
+
+The "lodges" or long houses made of poles, fir branches, moss, &c.,
+wherein, among the Iroquois, Algonkin, and Siou peoples, several
+families made a common habitation, are described here and there in the
+course of the narrative. The houses of the coast tribes of British
+Columbia were bigger, more elaborate, and permanent, and in this
+region the natives had acquired some idea of carpentry, and had learnt
+to make planks of wood by splitting with wedges or hewing with adzes.
+
+One of these British Columbian houses was measured, and found to be
+seventy feet long by twenty-five feet wide; the entrance in the gable
+end was cut through a plank five and a half feet wide, and nearly
+oval. A board suspended on the outside answered for a door; on the
+other side of the broad plank was rudely carved a large painted figure
+of a man, between whose legs was the passage. But other houses on the
+Pacific coast, visited by Cook or Vancouver, are said to have been
+large enough to accommodate seven hundred people. These houses of the
+Pacific coast region were exceedingly filthy, sturgeon and salmon
+being strewn about in every direction. The men inhabiting them were
+often disgusting in their behaviour, while the women are declared to
+have been "devoid of shame or decency".
+
+According to Mackenzie, such habitations swarmed with fleas, and even
+the ground round about them "was alive with this vermin". The
+Alexander Henrys, both uncle and nephew, complain of the flea plague
+(partly due to the multitude of dogs) in every Indian village or
+encampment.
+
+The domestic implements of the Amerindians were few. Pottery seems to
+have been unknown amongst the northern tribes to the east and north of
+the Mississippi valley, but earthen jars and vessels were made by the
+Dakota-Siou group in the valley of the Mississippi. Amongst these
+agricultural Indians the hoe was made of a buffalo's blade bone
+fastened to a crooked wooden handle. The Ojibwes manufactured chisels
+out of beavers' teeth. The Eskimo and some of the neighbouring
+Amerindian tribes used oblong "kettles" of stone--simply great blocks
+of stone chipped, rubbed, and hollowed out into receptacles, with
+handles at both ends. (It is suggested that they borrowed the idea of
+these stone vessels for cooking from the early Norse settlers of
+Greenland; see p. 18.)
+
+The Amerindians of the regions west of the Rocky Mountains made
+kettles or cooking vessels out of blocks of "cedar" (_Juniper_) wood;
+east of the Rocky Mountains the birch-bark kettle was universal. Of
+course these vessels of wood or bark could not be placed on the fire
+or embers to heat or boil the contents, as was possible with the
+"kettles" of stone or the cooking pots of clay. So the people using
+them heated the water in which the food or the soup was boiled by
+making stones red-hot in the fire and then dropping them into the
+birch-bark or cedar-wood tubs. Many of the northern Indians got into
+the way of eating their food raw because of the difficulty of making a
+fire away from home.
+
+In regard to food, neither Amerindian nor Eskimo was squeamish. They
+were almost omnivorous, and specially delighted in putrid or noisome
+substances from which a European would turn in loathing, and from the
+eating of which he might conceivably die.
+
+It was only in the extreme south of Canada or in British Columbia
+(potatoes only) that any agriculture was carried on and that the
+natives had maize, pumpkins, and pease to add to their dietary; but
+(as compared to the temperate regions of Europe and Asia) Nature was
+generous in providing wild fruits and grain without trouble of
+husbandry. The fruits and nuts have been enumerated elsewhere, but a
+description might be given here of the "wild oats" (_Avena fatua_) and
+the "wild rice" of the regions of central Canada and the middle west.
+The wild oats made a rough kind of porridge, but were not so important
+and so nourishing as the wild rice which is so often mentioned in the
+stories of the pioneers, who liked this wild grain as much as the
+Indians did.
+
+This wild rice (_Zizania aquatica_) grew naturally in small rivers and
+swampy places. The stems were hollow, jointed at intervals, and the
+grain appeared at the extremity of the stalk. By the month of June
+they had grown two feet above the surface of the shallow water, and
+were ripe for harvesting in September. At this period the Amerindians
+passed in canoes through the water-fields of wild rice, shaking the
+ears into the canoes as they swept by. The grain fell out easily when
+ripe, but in order to clean it from the husk it was dried over a slow
+fire on a wooden grating. After being winnowed it was pounded to flour
+in a mortar, or else boiled like rice, and seasoned with fat. "It had
+a most delicate taste", wrote Alexander Henry the Elder.
+
+Fish was perhaps the staple of Amerindian diet, because in scarcely
+any part of the Canadian Dominion is a lake, river, or brook far away.
+In the region of the Great Lakes fish were caught in large quantities
+in October, and exposed to the weather to be frozen at nighttime. They
+were then stored away in this congealed state, and lasted good--more
+or less--till the following April.
+
+Pemmican--that early form of potted meat so familiar to the readers of
+Red-Indian romances--was made of the lean meat of the bison. The
+strips of meat were dried in the sun, and afterwards pounded in a
+mortar and mixed with an equal quantity of bison fat. Fish "pemmican"
+was sun-dried fish ground to powder.
+
+A favourite dish among the northern Indians was blood mixed with the
+half-digested food found in the stomach of a deer, boiled up with a
+sufficient quantity of water to make it of the consistency of pease
+porridge. Some scraps of fat or tender flesh were shredded small and
+boiled with it. To render this dish more palatable they had a method
+of mixing the blood with the contents of the stomach in the paunch
+itself, and hanging it up in the heat and smoke of the fire for
+several days--in other words, the Scotch haggis. The kidneys of both
+moose and buffalo were usually eaten _raw_ by the southern Indians,
+for no sooner was one of those beasts killed than the hunter ripped up
+its belly, snatched out the kidneys, and ate them warm, before the
+animal was quite dead. They also at times put their mouths to the
+wound the ball or the arrow had made, and sucked the blood; this, they
+said, quenched thirst, and was very nourishing.
+
+The favourite drink of the Ojibwe Indians in the wintertime was hot
+broth poured over a dishful of pure snow.
+
+The Amerindians of the Nipigon country (north of Lake Superior) and
+the Ojibwes and Kris often relapsed into cannibalism when hard up for
+food. Indeed some of them became so addicted to this practice that
+they simply went about stalking their fellow Indians with as much
+industry as if they were hunting animals. "These prowling ogres caused
+such terror that to sight the track of one of them was sufficient to
+make twenty families decamp in all the speed of their terror"
+(Alexander Henry). It was deemed useless to attempt any resistance
+when these monsters were coming to kill and eat. The people would even
+make them presents of clothes and provisions to allow them and their
+children to live. There were women cannibals as well as men (see p.
+171).
+
+As the greater part of their food came from the chase, and their only
+articles of commerce likewise, they devoted themselves more entirely
+to hunting and fishing than to any other pursuit. The women did most
+of the fishing (and all the skin-curing for the fur market and for
+their own dress), while the men pursued with weapons the beasts of the
+chase, trapped them in pitfalls or snares, or drove them into "pounds"
+(excavated enclosures).
+
+Illustrating the wonderful sagacity of the Amerindians as game
+trackers, Alexander Henry the Elder tells the following story in the
+autumn of 1799:--
+
+"We had not gone far from the house before we fell upon the fresh
+tracks of some red deer (wapiti), and soon after discovered the herd
+in a thicket of willows and poplars; we both fired, and the deer
+disappeared in different directions. We pursued them, but to no
+purpose, as the country was unfavourable. We then returned to the spot
+where we had fired, as the Indian suspected that we had wounded some
+of them. We searched to see if we could find any blood; on my part, I
+could find tracks, but no blood. The Indian soon called out, and I
+went to him, but could see no blood, nor any sign that an animal had
+been wounded. However, he pointed out the track of a large buck among
+the many others, and told me that from the manner in which this buck
+had started off he was certain the animal had been wounded. As the
+ground was beaten in every direction by animals, it was only after a
+tedious search that we found where the buck had struck off. But no
+blood was seen until, passing through a thicket of willows, he
+observed a drop upon a leaf, and next a little more. He then began to
+examine more strictly, to find out in what part of the body the
+animal had been wounded; and, judging by the height and other signs,
+he told me the wound must have been somewhere between the shoulder and
+neck. We advanced about a mile, but saw nothing of the deer, and no
+more blood. I was for giving up the chase; but he assured me the wound
+was mortal, and that if the animal should lie down he could not rise
+again. We proceeded two miles farther, when, coming out upon a small
+open space, he told me the animal was at no great distance, and very
+probably in this meadow. We accordingly advanced a few yards, and
+there we found the deer lying at the last gasp. The wound was exactly
+as I had been told. The sagacity of the Saulteurs [Ojibwes] in tracing
+big wood animals is astonishing. I have frequently witnessed
+occurrences of this nature; the bend of a leaf or blade of grass is
+enough to show the hunter the direction the game has taken. Their
+ability is of equally great service to war parties, when they discover
+the footsteps of their enemies."
+
+The Assiniboin Indians (a branch of the Sious) down to about fifty
+years ago captured the bison of the plains in hundreds at a time by
+driving them into large excavated areas below the level of the ground.
+
+Alexander Henry, jun., gives the following description of this
+procedure in 1810:--
+
+"The pounds are of different dimensions, according to the number of
+tents in one camp. The common size is from sixty to one hundred paces
+or yards in circumference, and about five feet in height. Trees are
+cut down, laid upon one another, and interwoven with branches and
+green twigs; small openings are left to admit the dogs to feed upon
+the carcasses of the (old) bulls, which are generally left as useless.
+This enclosure is commonly made between two hummocks, on the declivity
+or at the foot of rising ground. The entrance is about ten paces wide,
+and always fronts the plains. On each side of this entrance commences
+a thick range of fascines, the two ranges spreading asunder as they
+extend to the distance of one hundred yards, beyond which openings are
+left at intervals; but the fascines soon become more thinly planted,
+and continue to spread apart to the right and left until each range
+has been extended about three hundred yards from the pound. The labour
+is then diminished by only placing at intervals three or four cross
+sticks, in imitation of a dog or other animal (sometimes called 'dead
+men'); these extend on the plain for about two miles, and double rows
+of them are planted in several other directions to a still greater
+distance. Young men are usually sent out to collect and bring in the
+buffalo--a tedious task, which requires great patience, for the herd
+must be started by slow degrees. This is done by setting fire to dung
+or grass. Three young men will bring in a herd of several hundred from
+a great distance. When the wind is aft it is most favourable, as they
+can then direct the buffalo with great ease. Having come in sight of
+the ranges, they generally drive the herd faster, until it begins to
+enter the ranges, where a swift-footed person has been stationed with
+a buffalo robe over his head, to imitate that animal; but sometimes a
+horse performs this business. When he sees buffaloes approaching he
+moves slowly toward the pound until they appear to follow him; then he
+sets off at full speed, imitating a buffalo as well as he can, with
+the herd after him. The young men in the rear now discover themselves,
+and drive the herd on with all possible speed. There is always a
+sentinel on some elevated spot to notify the camp when the buffalo
+appear; and this intelligence is no sooner given than every man,
+woman, and child runs to the ranges that lead to the pound to prevent
+the buffalo from taking a wrong direction. Then they lie down between
+the fascines and cross sticks, and, if the buffalo attempt to break
+through, the people wave their robes, which causes the herd to keep
+on, or turn to the opposite side, where other persons do the same.
+When the buffalo have been thus directed to the entrance of the pound,
+the Indian who leads them rushes into it and out at the other side,
+either by jumping over the enclosure or creeping through an opening
+left for that purpose. The buffalo tumble in pell-mell at his heels,
+almost exhausted, but keep moving around the enclosure from east to
+west, and never in a direction against the sun. What appeared
+extraordinary to me on those occasions was that, when word was given
+to the camp of the near approach of the buffalo, the dogs would skulk
+away from the pound and not approach until the herd entered. Many
+buffaloes break their legs and some their necks in jumping into the
+pound, as the descent is generally six or eight feet, and stumps are
+left standing there. The buffalo being caught, the men assembled at
+the enclosure, armed with bows and arrows; every arrow has a
+particular mark of the owner, and they are let fly until the whole
+herd is killed. Then the men enter the pound, and each claims his own;
+but commonly there is what they term the master of the pound, who
+divides the animals and gives each tent an equal share, reserving
+nothing for himself. But in the end he is always the best provided
+for; everyone is obliged to send him a certain portion, as it is in
+his tent that the numerous ceremonies relating to the pound are
+observed. There the young men are always welcome to feast and smoke,
+and no women are allowed to enter, as that tent is set apart for the
+affairs of the pound. Horses are sometimes used to collect and bring
+in buffalo, but this method is less effectual than the other; besides,
+it frightens the herds and soon causes them to withdraw to a great
+distance. When horses are used the buffalo are absolutely driven into
+the pound, but when the other method is pursued they are in a manner
+enticed to their destruction."
+
+A somewhat similar method was adopted by the northern Kris and
+Athapascans for the capture of reindeer.
+
+As regards means of transport, the use of dogs as draught animals was
+by no means confined to the Eskimo: they were used in wintertime to
+draw sledges over the snow or ice by nearly all the northern Indian
+tribes, and by the people of the Rocky Mountains and Pacific coast.
+After the Amerindians of the prairies and plains received horses
+(indirectly through the Spaniards of Mexico)[12] they sometimes
+employed the smaller and poorer kind of ponies as pack animals; but
+for the most part throughout the summer season of the Canadian
+Dominion--from May to October--transport and travel by canoe was the
+favourite method.
+
+[Footnote 12: See p. 150.]
+
+There were four very well marked types of canoe or boat in British
+North America. There was the already-described Eskimo _kayak_, made of
+leather stretched over a framework of wood or bone; the Amerindians of
+the Dominion, south of the Eskimo and east of the Rocky Mountains,
+used the familiar "birch-bark" canoe;[13] the peoples of the Pacific
+coast belt possessed something more like a boat, made out of a
+hollowed tree trunk and built up with planks; and the tribes of the
+Upper Mississippi used round coracles. Here are descriptions of all
+three kinds of Amerindian canoe from the pens of eighteenth-century
+pioneers: The birch-bark canoe used on the Great Lakes was about
+thirty-three feet long by four and a half feet broad, and formed of
+the smooth rind or bark of the birch tree fastened outside a wooden
+framework. It was lined with small splints of juniper cedar, and the
+vessel was further strengthened with ribs of the same wood, of which
+the two ends were fastened to the gunwales. Several bars rather than
+seats were laid across the canoe from gunwale to gunwale, the small
+roots of the spruce fir afforded the fibre with which the bark was
+sewn or stitched, and the gum of the pine tree supplied the place of
+tar and oakum. Bark, some spare fibre, and gum were always carried in
+each canoe for repairs, which were constantly necessary (one
+continually reads in the diaries of the pioneers of "stopping to gum
+the canoe"). The canoes were propelled with paddles, and occasionally
+a sail.
+
+[Footnote 13: In the far north-west, on the rivers of the Pacific
+slope, the natives used spruce-fir bark instead of birch.]
+
+The aborigines of Newfoundland--the Beothiks--are said to have known
+the birch-bark canoe, framework canoe, but to have employed
+"dug-outs"--hollowed tree trunks. The canoes of the Mandans of the
+upper Missouri basin were like coracles, of circular form, made of a
+framework of bent willow branches over which was stretched a raw
+bison-hide with the hair inside. This was sewn tightly round the
+willow rim. In lieu of a paddle they use a pole about five feet long,
+split at one end to admit a piece of board about two feet long and
+half a foot broad, which was lashed to the pole and so formed a kind
+of cross. There was but one for each canoe. The paddler of this
+coracle made directly for the opposite shore; every stroke he gave
+turned his "dish" almost entirely round; to recover his position and
+go on his intended route, he must give a stroke on the other side,
+which brought him up again; and so on till he got over, not without
+drifting down sometimes nearly a mile.
+
+Alexander Henry, jun., thus describes a canoe of the Clatsop people on
+the Lower Columbia (Pacific coast, opposite Vancouver Island): "This
+was a war canoe--the first of the kind I had seen. She was about
+thirty-six feet long and wide in proportion, the stem rising upright
+about six feet, on top of which was a figure of some imaginary monster
+of uncouth sculpture, having the head of a carnivorous animal with
+large erect ears but no body, clinging by arms and legs to the upper
+end of the canoe, and grinning horribly. The ears were painted green,
+the other parts red and black. The stern also rose about five feet in
+height, but had no figure carved on it. On each side of both stem and
+stern broad strips of wood rose about four feet, having holes cut in
+them to shoot arrows through. She had a high sprit-sail made of
+handkerchiefs and pieces of gunny-cloth or jute, forming irregular
+stripes, I am told these Indians commonly have pieces of squared
+timber, not unlike a three-inch plank, high and broad, perforated to
+shoot arrows through; this is fixed on the bow of the war canoe to
+serve as bulwarks in battle."
+
+Canoe voyages were mainly embarked on for trading; but in all
+probability before the coming of the European there was little trading
+done between one tribe and another, except in the region _west_ of the
+Rocky Mountains, in which--especially to the north--the Amerindians
+were so different in their habits and customs from those dwelling east
+of the mountains as to suggest that they must very occasionally have
+been in touch with some world outside America, such as Hawaii,
+Kamschatka, or Japan. In these Pacific coastlands they used a white
+seashell as a currency and a medium of exchange. So also did the
+Iroquois people and the southern Algonkin tribes, in the form of
+"wampum". The principal articles of barter were skins of fur animals,
+porcupine quills, dogs, slaves, and women.
+
+First Hunting (to supply food), then Trading in the products of the
+chase, and lastly War were the main subjects which occupied the
+Amerindian's thoughts before the middle of the nineteenth century.
+They usually went to war to turn other tribes out of profitable
+hunting grounds or productive fisheries; or because they wanted slaves
+or more wives; or because a chief or a medicine man had a dream; or
+because some other notability felt he had given way too much to tears
+over some personal or public sorrow, and must show his manliness by
+killing the people of another tribe. In their wars they knew no mercy
+when their blood was up, and frequently perpetrated frightful
+cruelties for the sheer pleasure of seeing human suffering. Yet these
+devilish moods would alternate with fits of sentimentality. A man or a
+woman would suddenly take a war prisoner, or a person who was wounded
+or half-tortured to death, under their protection, and a short time
+afterwards the whole war party would be greeting this rescued wretch
+(usually a man--they were far more pitiless towards women) as brother,
+son, or friend, and even become quite maudlin over a scratch or a
+bruise; whereas an hour or so before they were on the point of
+disembowelling, or of driving splinters up the nails and setting them
+on fire. In warfare they often gave way to cannibalism.
+
+Though extremely fond of singing--they sang when they were merry; when
+they thought they were going to die; when they were victorious in
+hunting, love, or war; when they were defeated; when they were
+paddling a canoe or sewing a moccasin--they had but a poor range of
+musical instruments. Most of the tribes used flutes made out of the
+wing bones of cranes or out of reeds, and some had small trumpets of
+wood, bark, or buffalo horn. The Pacific coast Indians made gongs or
+"xylophones" out of blocks or slabs of resonant wood.
+
+Here is a specimen of Amerindian singing. It is the song which
+accompanied the famous Calumet dance in celebration of the peacemaking
+qualities of tobacco-smoking. It was taken down by the Jesuit
+missionaries in the seventeenth century from the Ilinwa (Illinois)
+Algonkin Indians of the middle west, and its notation reminds one of
+Japanese music.
+
+  [Musical notation and words:
+
+     THE CALUMET OR TOBACCO-PIPE DANCE
+
+     Ni-na-ha-ni,  ni-na-ha-ni,  ni-na-ha-ni
+     na-ni  on-go;  Ni-na-ha-ni,  ni-na-ha-ni,
+     ni-na-ha-ni  ho-ho; ni-na-ha-ni,  ni-na-ha-ni,
+     ni-na-ha-ni, Ka-wa ban-no-ge  at-chi-cha
+     Ko-ge  a-ke  a-w[-a]; Ba-no-ge  a-chi-cha
+     sha-go-be  he, he,  he! Min-tin-go  mi-ta-de
+     pi-ni,  pi-ni  he!  A-chi-cha  le  ma-chi
+     mi nam ba mik-tan-de, mik-tan-de  pi-ni, pini he!]
+
+
+     Ninahani, &c, ongo; ninahani, &c, hoho; ninahani, &c.
+     Kawa bannoge atchicha Koge ake aw[-a];
+     Banoge atchicha shagobe he he he! Mintingo mitade
+     Pini pini he! Atchicha le machi mi nam ba miktande,
+     Miktande pini pini he!
+
+Dancing was little else than posturing and jumping in masks--usually
+made to look like the head of a wild beast. But the men were usually
+very athletic. Wrestling competitions were almost universal,
+especially as a means of winning a wife. The conqueror in a wrestling
+match took the wife or wives of the defeated man. Their running powers
+for endurance and speed became justly celebrated.
+
+"Their principal and most inveterate game is that of the hoop," writes
+Alexander Henry, sen., "which proves as ruinous to them as the platter
+does to the Saulteurs (Ojibwe)." This game was played in the following
+manner. A hoop was made about two feet in diameter, nearly covered
+with dressed leather, and trimmed with quillwork, feathers, bits of
+metal, and other trinkets, on which were certain particular marks. Two
+persons played at the same time, by rolling the hoop and accompanying
+it, one on each side; when it was about to fall, each gently threw one
+arrow in such a manner that the hoop might fall upon it, and according
+to that mark on the hoop which rested on the arrows they reckoned the
+game. They also played another game by holding some article in one
+hand, or putting it into one of two shoes, the other hand or shoe
+being empty. They had another game which required forty to fifty small
+sticks, as thick as a goose quill and about a foot long; these were
+all shuffled together and then divided into two bunches, and according
+to the even or odd numbers of sticks in the bunch chosen, the players
+lost or won.
+
+A favourite game amongst the Ojibwe is described as "the hurdle",
+which is another name for the Canadian national game of La Crosse.
+When about to play, the men, of all ages, would strip themselves
+almost naked, but dress their hair in great style, put ornaments on
+their arms, and belts round their waists, and paint their faces and
+bodies in the most elaborate style. Each man was provided with "a
+hurdle", an instrument made of a small stick of wood about three feet
+long, bent at the end to a small circle, in which a loose piece of
+network is fixed, forming a cavity big enough to receive a leather
+ball about the size of a man's fist. Everything being prepared, a
+level plain about half a mile long was chosen, with proper barriers or
+goals at each end. Having previously formed into two equal parts, they
+assembled in the very middle of the field, and the game began by
+throwing up the ball perpendicularly in the air, when instantly both
+parties (writes an eyewitness) "formed a singular group of naked men,
+painted in different colours and in the most comical attitudes
+imaginable, holding their rackets elevated in the air to catch the
+ball". Whoever was so fortunate as to catch it in his net ran with it
+to the barrier with all his might, supported by his party; whilst the
+opponents were pursuing and endeavouring to knock the ball out of the
+net. He who succeeded in doing so ran in the same manner towards the
+opposite barrier, and was, of course, pursued in his turn. If in
+danger of being overtaken, he might throw it with his hurdle towards
+any of his associates who happened to be nearer the barrier than
+himself. They had a particular knack of throwing it a great distance
+in this manner, so that the best runners had not always the advantage;
+and, by a peculiar way of working their hands and arms while running,
+the ball never dropped out of their "hurdle".
+
+"The best of three heats wins the game, and, besides the honour
+acquired on such occasions, a considerable prize is adjudged to the
+victors. The vanquished, however, generally challenge their
+adversaries to renew the game the next day, which is seldom refused.
+The game then becomes more important, as the honour of the whole
+village is at stake, and it is carried on with redoubled impetuosity,
+every object which might impede them in their career is knocked down
+and trodden under foot without mercy, and before the game is decided,
+it is a common thing to see numbers sprawling on the ground with
+wounded legs and broken heads, yet this never creates any disputes or
+ill-will after the play is decided" (Alexander Henry, sen.).
+
+It has been computed that in the middle of the eighteenth century the
+Amerindian population of the vast territories now known as the
+Dominion of Canada numbered about 300,000. It now stands at an
+approximate 110,000. The chief diminution has taken place in
+Newfoundland, Lower and Upper Canada, New Brunswick, Assiniboia, and
+British Columbia. There may even have been an increase in the north
+and north-west. The first great blow to the Amerindians of these
+regions was the smallpox epidemic of 1780. The next was the effect of
+the strong drink[14] introduced by the agents of the Hudson's Bay and,
+still more, the two North-west Companies. Phthisis or pulmonary
+consumption also seems to have been introduced from Europe (though
+Hearne thought that the Northern Indians had it before the white man
+came). In fact, before the European invaded America neither Eskimo nor
+Amerindian seem to have had many diseases. They suffered from ulcers,
+scurvy, digestive troubles, rheumatism, headache, bronchitis, and
+heart complaints, but from few, if any, "germ" diseases.
+
+[Footnote 14: Before the white man came to _North_ America the natives
+had no form of intoxicating drink.]
+
+Some of the agents of the North-west Company apologize in their
+writings for the amount of rum that was circulated among the
+Amerindians at the orders of that company to stimulate trade, by
+saying that it was seven parts water. Nevertheless it excited them to
+madness, as the following extracts show. These are mostly taken from
+the journals of Alexander Henry the Younger, but they are typical of
+what was recorded by many other writers who describe the far interior
+of British North America between 1775 and 1835.
+
+"To see a house full of drunken Indians, consisting of men, women, and
+children, is a most unpleasant sight; for, in that condition, they
+often wrangle, pull each other by the hair, and fight. At times, ten
+or twelve of both sexes may be seen fighting each other promiscuously,
+until at last they all fall on the floor, one upon another, some
+spilling rum out of a small kettle or dish which they hold in their
+hands, while others are throwing up what they have just drunk. To
+add to this uproar, a number of children, some on their mothers'
+shoulders, and others running about and taking hold of their clothes,
+are constantly bawling, the elder ones, through fear that their
+parents may be stabbed, or that some other misfortune may befal them
+in the fray. These shrieks of the children form a very unpleasant
+chorus to the brutal noise kept up by their drunken parents."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"In a drinking match at the Hills yesterday, Gros Bras (Thick Arms) in
+a fit of jealousy stabbed Aupusoi to death with a hand-dague (dagger);
+the first stroke opened his left side, the second his belly, and the
+third his breast; he never stirred, although he had a knife in his
+belt, and died instantly. Soon after this Aupusoi's brother, a boy
+about ten years of age, took the deceased's gun, loaded it with two
+balls, and approached Gros Bras's tent. Putting the muzzle of the gun
+through the door the boy fired the two balls into his breast and
+killed him dead, just as he was reproaching his wife for her affection
+for Aupusoi, and boasting of the revenge he had taken. The little
+fellow ran into the woods and hid. Little Shell (Petite Coquille)
+found the old woman, Aupusoi's mother, in her tent; he instantly
+stabbed her. Ondainoiache then came in, took the knife, and gave her a
+second stab. Little Shell, in his turn taking the knife, gave a third
+blow. In this manner did these two rascals continue to murder the old
+woman, as long as there was any life in her. The boy escaped into
+Langlois' house, and was kept hid until they were all sober. Next
+morning a hole was dug in the ground, and all three were buried
+together. This affair kept the Indians from hunting, as Gros Bras was
+nearly related to the principal hunters."
+
+     *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Grand' Gueule stabbed Perdrix Blanche with a knife in six places.
+Perdrix Blanche fighting with his wife, fell in the fire and almost
+roasted, but had strength enough left notwithstanding his wounds to
+bite her nose off."
+
+     *       *       *       *       *
+
+"In the first drinking match a murder was committed in an Assiniboine
+tent, but fortunately it was done by an Ojibwe. L'Hiver stabbed
+Mishewashence to the heart three times, and killed him instantly. The
+wife and children cried out, and some of my people ran to the tent
+just as L'Hiver came out with the bloody knife in his hand, expecting
+we would lay hold of him. The first person he met was William Henry,
+whom he attempted to stab in the breast; but Henry avoided the stroke,
+and returned the compliment with a blow of his cudgel on the fellow's
+head. This staggered him; but instantly recovering he made another
+attempt to stab Henry. Foiled in this design, and observing several
+coming out of the fort, he took to his heels and ran into the woods
+like a deer. I chased him with some of my people, but he was too fleet
+for us. We buried the murdered man, who left a widow and five
+helpless orphans, having no relations on this river. The behaviour of
+two of the youngest was really piteous while we were burying the body;
+they called upon their deceased father not to leave them, but to
+return to the tent, and tried to prevent the men from covering the
+corpse with earth, screaming in a terrible manner; the mother was
+obliged to take them away."
+
+     *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Men and women have been drinking a match for three days and nights,
+during which it has been drink, fight--drink, fight--drink, and fight
+again--guns, axes, and knives being their weapons--very disagreeable."
+
+     *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Mithanasconce was so troublesome (in drink) that we were obliged to
+tie him with ropes to prevent his doing mischief. He was stabbed in
+the back in three different places about a month ago. His wounds were
+still open, and had an ugly appearance; in his struggling to get loose
+they burst out afresh and bled a great deal. We had much trouble to
+stop the blood, as the fellow was insensible to pain or danger; his
+only aim was to bite us. We had some narrow escapes, until we secured
+his mouth, and then he fell asleep."
+
+     *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Some Red Lake Indians having traded here for liquor which they took
+to their camp, quarrelled amongst themselves. One jumped on another
+and bit his nose off. It was some time before the piece could be
+found; but, at last, by tumbling and tossing the straw about, it was
+recovered, stuck on, and bandaged, as best the drunken people could,
+in hopes it would grow again" (Alexander Henry, jun.).
+
+     *       *       *       *       *
+
+As regards drunkenness, several authors among the early explorers
+declared that the French Canadian voyageurs were more disagreeable
+when drunk even than the Amerindians, for their quarrels were noisier
+and more deadly. "Indeed I had rather have fifty drunken Indians in
+the fort than sixty-five drunken Canadians", writes Alexander Henry in
+1810. And yet the extracts I have given from his journal show that it
+would be hard to beat the Amerindians for disagreeable ferocity when
+intoxicated.
+
+Henry, summing up his experiences before leaving for the Pacific coast
+in 1811, writes these remarks in his diary:--
+
+"What a different set of people they would be, were there not a drop
+of liquor in the country! If a murder is committed among the Saulteurs
+(Ojibwes), it is always in a drinking match. We may truly say that
+liquor is the root of all evil in the north-west. Great bawling and
+lamentation went on, and I was troubled most of the night for liquor
+to wash away grief."
+
+As a rule, the treatment of the Amerindians by the British and French
+settlers was good, except the thrusting of alcohol on them. But in
+Newfoundland a great crime was perpetrated. Between the middle of the
+seventeenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries the British
+fishermen and settlers on the coasts of Newfoundland had _destroyed_
+the native population of Beothik Indians.
+
+Before the English arrived on the coasts of Newfoundland the Beothiks
+lived an ideal life for savages. They were well clothed with beasts'
+skins, and in the winter these were supplemented by heavy fur robes.
+Countless herds of reindeer roamed through the interior, passing from
+north to south in the autumn and returning in the spring. Vast flocks
+of willow grouse (like ptarmigan) were everywhere to be met with; the
+many lakes were covered with geese, swans, and ducks. The woods were
+full of pigeons; the salmon swarmed up the rivers to breed; the sea
+round the coasts was--except in the wintertime--the richest fishery in
+the world. They caught lobsters in the rock pools, and speared or
+clubbed seals and great walruses for their flesh and oil. An
+occasional whale provided them with oil, blubber, and meat. The Great
+Auk--which could not fly--swarmed in millions on the cliffs and
+islets. So abundant was this bird, and so fat, that its body was
+sometimes used as fuel, or as a lamp. In the summertime their fish and
+flesh diet could be varied by the innumerable berries growing
+wild--strawberries, raspberries, currants, cranberries, and
+whortleberries. The _capillaire_ plant yielded a lusciously sweet,
+sugary substance.[15]
+
+[Footnote 15: This was the Moxie plum or creeping snowberry
+(_Chiogenes hispidula_).]
+
+[Illustration: GREAT AUKS, GANNETS, PUFFINS, AND GUILLEMOTS]
+
+The Beothiks were a tall, good-looking people, with large black eyes
+and a light-coloured skin. The early French and Biscayan seamen, who
+resorted to the coasts of Newfoundland for the whale fisheries,
+reported these "Red Indians" to be "an ingenious and tractable people,
+if well used, who were ready to help the white men with great labour
+and patience in the killing, cutting-up, and boiling of whales, and
+the making of train oil, without other expectation of reward than a
+little bread or some such small hire".
+
+Yet from the beginning of the seventeenth century the Beothiks--then
+about four thousand in number--were ill-treated by the European
+fishermen who frequented the Newfoundland coasts. They soon greatly
+decreased in numbers, and became very shy of white men. The French,
+when they occupied the south coast of Newfoundland, brought over
+Mikmak Indians to chase and kill the Beothiks or "Red" Indians. The
+Eskimo attacked them from Labrador. Finally, when Newfoundland became
+British in the eighteenth century, the English fishermen settlers and
+fur hunters attacked and slew the harmless Beothiks with a wanton
+ferocity (described by horror-struck officers of the British navy)
+which is as bad as anything attributed to the Spaniards in Cuba and
+Hispaniola. By about 1830 they were all extinct. As late as 1823 the
+following anecdote is recorded of two English settlers whose names are
+hidden behind the initials C and A. "When near Badger Bay they fell in
+with an Indian man and woman, who approached, apparently soliciting
+food. The man was first killed, and the woman, who was afterwards
+found to be his daughter, in despair remained calmly to be fired at,
+when she was also shot through the chest and immediately expired. This
+was told Mr. Cormack by the man who did the deed." Even English women
+in the late eighteenth century were celebrated for their skill "in
+shooting Red Indians and seals".
+
+"For a period of nearly two hundred years this barbarity had
+continued, and it was considered meritorious to shoot a Red Indian.
+'To go to look for Indians' came to be as much a phrase as to look for
+partridges (ptarmigan). They were harassed from post to post, from
+island to island; their hunting and fishing stations were
+unscrupulously seized by the invading English. They were shot down
+without the least provocation, or captured to be exposed as
+curiosities to the rabble at the fairs of the western towns of
+Christian England at twopence a piece."[16]
+
+[Footnote 16: These are the remarks of an English chaplain in the
+island, quoted by the Rev. George Patterson, who contributed a most
+interesting article on the vanished Beothiks of Newfoundland to the
+Royal Society of Canada in 1891.]
+
+Too late--when the worry and anxiety of the Napoleonic wars were
+over--the British Government sent a commission of naval officers to
+enquire into the treatment of the Beothiks by the settlers. One woman
+alone remained, as a frightened semi-captive, to be consoled and
+soothed. There are Indians in the south of Newfoundland at the present
+day, but they are Mikmaks who come over from the adjoining regions of
+Cape Breton and Nova Scotia. So tender, indeed, is the modern
+government of the island towards these (out of compunction for the
+past) that they are allowed to kill the reindeer and other wild
+animals without the licence which is exacted from white people, and so
+are actually injuring Newfoundland's resources!
+
+Since the great Dominion of Canada was brought into existence in 1871
+as a unified, responsible government, the treatment of the remaining
+Amerindian natives of British North America has been admirable; and
+splendid work has been done in reclaiming them to a wholesome
+civilization by the Moravian, Roman Catholic, and Church of England
+missionaries.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The Hudson Bay Explorers and the British Conquest of all Canada
+
+
+In a general way the discovery of the main features of the vast
+Canadian Dominion may be thus apportioned amongst the different
+European nations. First came the British, led by an Italian pilot.
+They discovered Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland.
+Then came the Portuguese, who discovered the north-east of
+Newfoundland and the coast of Labrador, while a French expedition
+under an Italian captain reached to Nova Scotia and southern
+Newfoundland. A Spanish expedition under a Portuguese leader shortly
+afterwards reached the coast of New Brunswick. After that the French
+from Brittany, Normandy, and the west coast of France laid bare the
+_west_ coast of Newfoundland, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the River St.
+Lawrence, and the Great Lakes.
+
+Sir Francis Drake led the way in the exploration of the north-west
+coast of North America. He reached, in 1579, as far north on that side
+as the country of Oregon, which he christened New Albion. This action
+stirred up the Spaniards, who explored the coast of California, and in
+1591-2 sent an Ionian Island pilot, Apostolos Valeriano (commonly
+called Juan de Fuca), in charge of an expedition to discover the
+imagined Straits of Anian. He gave strength to this idea of a
+continuous water route across temperate North America by entering (in
+1592) the straits, since called Juan de Fuca, between Vancouver Island
+and the modern State of Washington, and passing thence into the
+Straits of Georgia, which bear a striking resemblance in their
+features to the Straits of Magellan.
+
+French explorers and adventurers, as we have seen, penetrated from the
+basin of the St. Lawrence to the north and west until they touched the
+southern extension of Hudson Bay (James's Bay), discovered Lake
+Winnipeg and the Saskatchewan Rivers, the upper Missouri and the whole
+course of the Mississippi, and finally recorded the existence of the
+Rocky Mountains.
+
+Parallel with these movements the British discovered the broad belt of
+sea between Greenland and North America and the whole area of Hudson
+Bay. After the French had ceased to reign in North America, the
+British were to reveal the great rivers flowing into the Arctic Ocean,
+the coasts and islands of the Arctic Ocean, the Yukon River, and the
+coasts and islands of British Columbia and Alaska.
+
+The first Europeans, however, to reach Alaska were Russians led by
+Vitus Bering, a great Danish sea captain in the Russian service.
+Bering was born in 1680 at Horsens, in the province of Aarhuus, E.
+Denmark, and entered the service of Peter the Great, who was desirous
+of knowing where Asia terminated and America began. Bering discovered
+the straits which bear his name in 1728, and in 1741 was wrecked and
+died on Bering's Island. Captain James Cook, the British discoverer of
+Australia and of so many Pacific islands, completed the work of Bering
+in 1788 in charting the north-west American coast right into the
+Arctic Ocean.
+
+It has already been related in Chapter III how the Hudson's Bay
+Chartered Company came to be founded. Soon after their first pioneers
+were established, in 1670, at Fort Nelson, on the west coast of Hudson
+Bay, near where York Factory now stands, there was born--or brought
+out from England as an infant--a little boy named Henry Kellsey, who
+as a child took a great fancy to the Amerindians who came to trade at
+Fort Nelson. As he played with them, and they returned his affection,
+he learnt their language, and--for some inconceivable reason--this
+gave great offence to the stupid governor of the fort (indeed, when
+Kellsey as a grown man, some years afterwards, compiled a vocabulary
+of the Kri language for the use of traders, the Hudson's Bay Company
+ordered it to be suppressed). Stupid Governor Geyer not only objected
+to Kellsey picking up the Kri language, but punished him most severely
+for that and for his boyish tricks and jokes; so much so, that
+Kellsey, when he was about ten years old, ran away with the returning
+Indians, some of whom had grown very fond of him whilst they stayed at
+Fort Nelson.
+
+Six years afterwards an Indian brought to the governor of the fort a
+letter written by Kellsey in charcoal on a piece of white birch bark.
+In this he asked the governor's pardon for running away, and his
+permission to return to the fort. As a kind reply was sent, Kellsey
+appeared not long afterwards grown into a young man, accompanied by an
+Indian wife and attended by a party of Indians. He was dressed exactly
+like them, but differed from them in the respect which he showed to
+his native wife. She attempted to accompany her husband into the
+factory or place of business, and the governor stopped her; but
+Kellsey at once told him in English that he would not enter himself if
+his wife was not suffered to go with him, and so the governor
+relented. After this Kellsey (who must then have been about seventeen)
+seems to have regularly enrolled himself in 1688 in the service of the
+Company, and he was employed as a kind of commercial traveller who
+made long journeys to the north-west to beat up a fur trade for the
+Company and induce tribes of Indians to make long journeys every
+summer to the Company's factory with the skins they had secured
+between the autumn and the spring. In this way Kellsey penetrated
+into the country of the Assiniboines, and he finally reached a more
+distant tribe or nation called by the long name of Newatamipoet.[1]
+Kellsey first of all made for Split Lake, up the Nelson River, and
+thence paddled westwards in his canoe for a distance of 71 miles. Here
+he abandoned the canoe, and, for what he estimated as 316 miles, he
+tramped through a wooded country, first covered with fir and pine
+trees, and farther on with poplar and birch. Apparently he then
+reached a river flowing into Reindeer Lake. In a general way his steps
+must have taken him in the direction of Lake Athapaska.
+
+[Footnote 1: Spelt in the documents of the Hudson's Bay Company,
+Naywatame-poet.]
+
+On the way he had much trouble with the Assiniboin Indians and Kris,
+with whom he had caught up, and with whom he was to travel in the
+direction of these mysterious Newatamipoets. The last-named tribe, who
+were probably of the Athapaskan group, had killed, a few months
+previously, three of the Kri women, and the Kri Indians who belonged
+to Kellsey's party were bent, above all things, on attacking the
+Newatamipoets and punishing them for this outrage. Kellsey only wished
+to open up peaceful relations with them and create a great trade in
+furs with the Hudson's Bay Company, so he kept pleading with the
+Indians not to go to war with the Newatamipoets. On this journey,
+however, one of the Kri Indians fell ill and died. The next day the
+body was burnt with much ceremony--first the flesh, and then the
+bones--and after this funeral the companions of the dead man began to
+reason as to the cause of his death, and suddenly blamed Kellsey.
+Kellsey had obstructed them from their purpose of avenging their slain
+women, therefore the gods of the tribe were angry and claimed this
+victim in the man who had died. Kellsey was very near being sent to
+the other world to complete the sacrifice; but he arranged for "a
+feast of tobacco"--in other words, a calm deliberation and the smoking
+of the pipe of peace. He explained to the angry Indians that his
+Company had not supplied him with guns and ammunition with which to go
+to war, but to induce them to embark on the fur trade and to kill wild
+animals for their skins. If, instead of this, they went to war, or
+injured him, they need never again go down to Fort Nelson for any
+further trade or supplies. Four days afterwards, however, the
+attention of the whole party was concentrated on bison.
+
+Bison could now be seen in abundance. Kellsey was already acquainted
+with the musk ox, which he had seen in the colder regions near to
+Hudson Bay; but the bison seemed to him quite different, with horns
+growing like those of an English ox, black and short. In the middle of
+September he reached the country of the Newatamipoets, and presented
+to their chief, on behalf of the Hudson's Bay Company, a present of
+clothes, knives, awls, tobacco, and a gun, gunpowder, and shot. On
+this journey Kellsey encountered the grizzly bear, a more common
+denizen of the western regions of North America. According to his own
+account, he and one of the Indians with him were attacked by two
+grizzly bears and obliged to climb into the branches of trees. The
+bears followed them; but Kellsey fired and killed one, and later on
+the other also. For this feat he was greatly reverenced by the
+Indians, and received the name of Mistopashish, or "little giant".
+Kellsey afterwards rose to be governor of York Fort, on the west coast
+of Hudson Bay.
+
+The next great explorer ranging westward from Hudson Bay was Anthony
+Hendry.[2] Anthony Hendry left York factory in 1754, with a company of
+Kri Indians, to make a great journey of exploration to the west, and
+with the deliberate intention of wintering with the natives and not
+returning for that purpose to Hudson Bay. By means of canoe travel and
+portages he reached Oxford Lake. From here he gained Moose Lake, and
+soon afterwards "the broad waters of the Saskatchewan--the first
+Englishman to see this great river of the western plains".[3]
+Twenty-two miles upstream from the point where it reached the
+Saskatchewan he came to a French fort which had only been standing for
+a year, and which represented probably the farthest advance northwards
+of the French Canadians.
+
+[Footnote 2: The young or old reader of this and other books dealing
+with the exploration of the Canadian Dominion will be indeed puzzled
+between the various Hendrys and Henrys. The last-named was a prolific
+stock, from which several notable explorers and servants of the
+fur-trading companies were drawn. In this book a careful distinction
+must be made between the _Anthony_ Hendrey or Hendey, who commenced
+his exploration of the west in 1754; the unrelated _Alexander_ Henry
+the Elder, who journeyed between 1761 and 1776; and the nephew of the
+last-named, Alexander Henry the Younger, whose pioneering explorations
+occurred between 1799 and 1814.]
+
+[Footnote 3: _The Search for the Western Sea_, by Lawrence J. Burpee.]
+
+[Illustration: Map of EASTERN CANADA and NEWFOUNDLAND]
+
+The situation was a rather delicate one, for the Hudson's Bay Company
+was a thorn in the side of French Canada. However, in this
+year--1754--the two nations were not actually at war, and the two
+Frenchmen in charge of the fort received him "in a very genteel
+manner", and invited him into their home, where he readily accepted
+their hospitality. At first they spoke of detaining him till the
+commandant of the fort returned, but abandoned this idea after
+reflection, and Hendry continued his journey up the Saskatchewan. He
+then left the river and marched on foot over the plains which separate
+the North and the South Saskatchewan Rivers. The South Saskatchewan
+was found to be a high stream covered with birch, poplar, elder, and
+fir. He and his Indian guides were searching for the horse-riding
+Blackfeet Indians.[4] All the Amerindians known to the Hudson's Bay
+Company hitherto travelled on foot, using snowshoes in the winter; but
+vague rumours had reached the Company that in the far south-west there
+were great nations of Indians which did all their hunting on
+horseback.
+
+[Footnote 4: See p. 159.]
+
+Hendry had now found them, and he also met a small tribe of
+Assiniboins--the Mekesue or Eagle Indians--who differed from the
+surrounding tribes by going about, at any rate in the summertime,
+absolutely naked. Here, too, between the two Saskatchewans, they saw
+herds of bison on the plains grazing like English cattle. But they
+also found elk (moose), wapiti or red deer, hares, grouse, geese, and
+ducks. He records in his journal: "I went with the young men
+a-buffalo-hunting, all armed with bows and arrows; killed several;
+fine sport. We beat them about, lodging twenty arrows in one beast. So
+expert were the natives that they will take the arrows out of the
+buffalo when they are foaming and raging with pain and tearing up the
+ground with their feet and horns until they fall down." The
+Amerindians killed far more of these splendid beasts than they could
+eat, and from these carcasses they merely took the tongues and a few
+choice pieces, leaving the remainder to the wolves and the grizzly
+bears.
+
+At last they arrived at the temporary village of the Blackfeet. Two
+hundred tents or _tipis_ were pitched in two parallel rows, and down
+this avenue marched Anthony Hendry, gazed at silently by many
+Blackfeet Indians until he reached the large house or lodge of their
+great chief, at the end of the avenue of tents. This lodge was large
+enough to contain fifty persons. The chief received him seated on the
+sacred skin of a white buffalo. The pipe of peace was then produced
+and passed round in silence, each person taking a ceremonial puff.
+Boiled bison beef was then brought to the guests in baskets made of
+willow branches. Hendry told the great chief of the Blackfeet that he
+had been sent by the great leader of the white men at Hudson Bay to
+invite the Blackfeet Indians to come to these eastern waters in the
+summertime, and bring with them beaver and wolf skins, for which they
+would get, in return, guns, ammunition, cloth, beads, and other trade
+goods. But this chief, though he listened patiently, pointed out that
+this fort on Hudson Bay was situated at a very great distance, that
+his men only knew how to ride horses, and not how to paddle canoes.
+Moreover, they could not live without bison beef, and disliked fish.
+
+After leaving the headquarters of the Blackfeet, Hendry rambled over
+the beautiful country of fir woods and pine woods until he must have
+got within sight of the Rocky Mountains, though these are not
+mentioned in his journal. Then, after passing the winter (which did
+not begin as regards cold weather till the 2nd of December, and was
+over at the end of March) he returned to the French fort on the
+Saskatchewan, where he was received by the Commandant, de La Corne,
+with great kindness and hospitality. These Frenchmen, he found, were
+able to speak in great perfection several Indian languages; they were
+well dressed, and courtly in manners, and led a civilized life in
+these distant wilds. They had excellent trade goods and were sincerely
+liked by the Indians, but for some reason or other they lacked
+Brazilian tobacco, which seems to have been a commodity much in favour
+amongst the Indians. With this the Hudson's Bay Company were kept well
+supplied, and that alone enabled them in any degree to compete with
+the French. But in ten years more this French fort would be abandoned
+owing to the cession of Canada to Britain.
+
+The British, in fact, all through the first half of the eighteenth
+century, by their superiority in sea power, were steadily strangling
+the French empire in North America. Acadia, or Nova Scotia, and New
+Brunswick had been, as we have seen, recognized as British in 1713,
+and Newfoundland, also, subject to certain conditions, giving France
+the exclusive right to fish on the _western_ and _northern_ coasts of
+Newfoundland. The result was that when "New France", or Canada and
+Louisiana combined, was at its greatest extent of conquered and
+administered territory, France held but a very limited seacoast from
+which to approach it--just the mouth of the Mississippi, and a little
+bit of Alabama on the south and Cape Breton Island on the east. Cape
+Breton Island was commanded by the immensely strong fortress of
+Louisburg, and the possession of this place gave the French some
+security in entering the Gulf of St. Lawrence through Cabot Straits.
+But Louisburg was captured by the British colonists of New England
+(United States) in 1745; and although it was given back to France
+again, it was reoccupied in 1758, and served as a basis for the
+armaments which were directed against Quebec in 1759, and which
+resulted at the close of that year in the surrender of that important
+city. In 1763 all Canada was ceded to the British, and Louisiana
+(which had become the western barrier of the about-to-be-born United
+States) was ceded to Spain; the French flag flew no more on the
+Continent of North America, save in the two little islands of St.
+Pierre and Miquelon adjoining Newfoundland, wherein it still remains
+as a reminder of the splendid achievements of Frenchmen in America.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+The Pioneers from Montreal: Alexander Henry the Elder
+
+
+After 1763, when the two provinces of Canada were definitely ceded to
+Great Britain, the exploring energies of the Hudson's Bay Fur-trading
+Company revived. But before this rather sluggish organization could
+take full advantage of the cessation of French opposition, independent
+British pioneers were on their way to explore the vast north-west and
+west, soon carrying their marvellous journeys beyond the utmost limits
+reached by La Verendrye and his sons. Eventually these pioneers, who
+had Montreal for their base and who wisely associated themselves in
+business and exploration with French Canadians, founded in 1784 a
+great trading association known as the North-west Trading Company. A
+few years later certain Scottish pioneers brought a rival exploration
+and trading corporation into existence and called it the "X.Y.
+Company". In 1804 these rival Montreal fur-trading associations were
+fused into a new North-west Trading Company. Between this and the old
+Hudson's Bay Company an intensely bitter rivalry and enmity--almost at
+times a state of war--arose, and continued until 1821, when the
+North-west Company and that of Hudson's Bay amalgamated. It is
+necessary that these dry details should be understood in order that
+the reader may comprehend the motives and reasons which prompted the
+journeys which are about to be described.
+
+Jonathan Carver, of Boston, U.S.A., was perhaps the pioneer of all
+the British traders into the far west of Canada, beyond Lake Superior,
+after Canada had been handed over to the British.[1] In 1766-7 he
+reached the Mississippi at its junction with the St. Peter or
+Minnesota River, and journeyed up it to the land of the Dakota. Thomas
+Currie, of Montreal, in 1770 travelled as far as Cedar Lake,[2] where
+there had been established the French post of Fort Bourbon. He was
+succeeded the next year by James Finlay, who extended his explorations
+to the Saskatchewan, whither he was followed by Alexander Henry the
+Elder in 1775.
+
+[Footnote 1: Carver was not so remarkable for his actual journeys as
+for his confident predictions of a feasible transcontinental route
+being found to the Pacific coast.]
+
+[Footnote 2: The white-barked conifer, which gives its name to this
+lake, is _Thuja occidentalis_. There are no real "cedars" in America.]
+
+Alexander Henry (styled The Elder to distinguish him from his famous
+nephew of the same name) was a native of New Jersey (U.S.A.), where he
+was born in 1739. His parents were well-to-do people of the middle
+class who are believed to have emigrated at the beginning of the
+eighteenth century from the West of England, and to have been related
+to Matthew Henry, the Bible commentator. Their son, Alexander,
+received a good education, and after some commercial apprenticeship at
+Albany (New York) came to Quebec when Canada was occupied by the
+British in 1760; at which period he was about twenty-one years old. He
+was in such a hurry to try a trading adventure in the country of the
+great lakes that he ventured into central Canada before it was
+sufficiently calmed down and reconciled to British rule. The
+hostility, curiously enough, manifested itself much more among the
+Amerindians than the settlers of French blood. These white men had not
+been so well treated by the arrogant French officers and officials as
+much to mind the change to the greater freedom of British government.
+But the Indian chiefs and people loved the French, largely owing to
+the goodness and solicitude of the missionaries.
+
+"The hostility of the Indians", wrote Henry in his journal, travelling
+along the coast of Lake Huron, "was exclusively against the English.
+Between them and my Canadian attendants, there appeared the most
+cordial goodwill. This circumstance suggested one means of escape, of
+which, by the advice of my friend, Campion, I resolved to attempt
+availing myself; namely, that of putting on the dress usually worn by
+such of the Canadians as pursue the trade into which I had entered,
+and assimilating myself, as much as I was able, to their appearance
+and manners. To this end I laid aside my English clothes and covered
+myself only with a cloth passed about the middle; a shirt, hanging
+loose; a 'molton', or blanket coat, and a large, red worsted cap. The
+next thing was to smear my face and hands with dirt and grease; and,
+this done, I took the place of one of my men, and, when the Indians
+approached, used the paddle with as much skill as I possessed. I had
+the satisfaction to find, that my disguise enabled me to pass several
+canoes without attracting the smallest notice."
+
+When he reached Fort Michili-makinak[3] he wrote: "At two o'clock in
+the afternoon, the Chipeways came to my house, about sixty in number,
+and headed by Minavavana, their chief. They walked in single file,
+each with his tomahawk in one hand and scalping knife in the other.
+Their bodies were naked from the waist upward, except in a few
+examples, where blankets were thrown loosely over the shoulders. Their
+faces were painted with charcoal, worked up with grease; their bodies,
+with white clay, in patterns of various fancies. Some had feathers
+thrust through their noses, and their heads decorated with the
+same.... It is unnecessary to dwell on the sensations with which I
+beheld the approach of this uncouth, if not frightful assemblage.
+
+"The chief entered first, and the rest followed without noise. On
+receiving a sign from the former, the latter seated themselves on the
+floor.
+
+"Minavavana appeared to be about fifty years of age. He was six feet
+in height, and had, in his countenance, an indescribable mixture of
+good and evil.... Looking steadfastly at me, where I sat in ceremony,
+with an interpreter on either hand and several Canadians behind me, he
+entered at the same time into conversation with Campion, enquiring how
+long it was since I left Montreal, and observing that the English, as
+it would seem, were brave men, and not afraid of death, since they
+dared to come, as I had done, fearlessly among their enemies."
+
+[Footnote 3: The famous place of call (the name means "Turtle Island")
+in the narrow strait between Lakes Huron and Michigan, and near Lake
+Superior. (See p. 230.) But some authorities declare that
+Michili-makinak means "Island of the great wounded person".]
+
+The Indians now gravely smoked their pipes, whilst Henry inwardly
+endured tortures of suspense. At length, the pipes being finished, a
+long pause of silence followed. Then Minavavana, taking a few strings
+of wampum in his hand, began a long speech, of which it is only
+necessary to give a few extracts:--
+
+"Englishman, it is to you that I speak, and I demand your attention!
+
+"Englishman, although you have conquered the French, you have not yet
+conquered us! We are not your slaves. These lakes, these woods and
+mountains, were left to us by our ancestors. They are our inheritance,
+and we will part with them to none. Your nation supposes that we, like
+the white people, cannot live without bread--and pork--and beef! But,
+you ought to know, that He, the Great Spirit and Master of Life, has
+provided food for us in these spacious lakes, and on these woody
+mountains.
+
+"Englishman, our father, the King of France, employed our young men to
+make war upon your nation. In this warfare many of them have been
+killed, and it is our custom to retaliate, until such time as the
+spirits of the slain are satisfied. But the spirits of the slain are
+to be satisfied in either of two ways. The first is by the spilling of
+the blood of the nation by which they fell; the other by covering the
+bodies of the dead, and thus allaying the resentment of their
+relations. This is done by making presents.
+
+"Englishman, your king has never sent us any presents, nor entered
+into any treaty with us, wherefore he and we are still at war; and,
+until he does these things, we must consider that we have no other
+father, nor friend, among the white men, than the King of France; but,
+for you, we have taken into consideration, that you have ventured your
+life among us in the expectation that we should not molest you. You do
+not come armed with an intention to make war; you come in peace, to
+trade with us, and supply us with necessaries, of which we are in
+want. We shall regard you, therefore, as a brother, and you may sleep
+tranquilly, without fear of the Chipeways.... As a token of our
+friendship, we present you with this pipe to smoke."
+
+When Minavavana had finished his harangue, an Indian presented Henry
+with a pipe, the which, after he had drawn smoke through it three
+times, was carried back to the chief, and after him to every person in
+the room. This ceremony ended, the chief arose, and gave the
+Englishman his hand, in which he was followed by all the rest.
+
+At the Sault Ste Marie, on the river connecting Lake Superior and
+Huron, Henry spent part of the spring of 1763-4, and engaged with a
+few French Canadians and Indians in making maple sugar, the season for
+which--April--was now at hand.
+
+A temporary house for eight persons was built in a convenient part of
+the maple woods, distant about three miles from the fort. The men
+then gathered the bark of white birch trees, and made out of it
+vessels to hold the sap which was to flow from the incisions they cut
+in the bark of the maple trees. Into these cuts they introduced wooden
+spouts or ducts, and under them were placed the birch-bark vessels.
+When these were filled, the sweet liquid was poured into larger
+buckets, and the buckets were emptied into bags of elkskin containing
+perhaps a hundred gallons. Boilers (probably of metal, introduced by
+the French) were next set up in the camp over fires kept burning day
+and night, and the maple sap thus boiled became, by concentration,
+maple sugar.
+
+The women attended to all the business of sugar manufacture, while the
+men cut wood and went out hunting and fishing to secure food for the
+community; though, as a matter of fact, sugar and syrup were their
+main sustenance during all this absence from home. "I have known
+Indians", wrote Henry, "to live for a time wholly on maple sugar and
+syrup and become fat." The sap of the maple had certain medicinal
+qualities which were exceedingly good for persons who had previously
+been eating little else than meat and fish, so that the three weeks of
+sugar-boiling in Canada was, no doubt, a splendid assistance to the
+health of the natives. On this particular occasion described by Henry,
+the party returned, after three weeks' absence, to the Sault Ste Marie
+with 1600 lb. of maple sugar, and 36 gallons of syrup.[4]
+
+[Footnote 4: There are at least two species of maple in Canada
+yielding sugar from their sap; but the best is _Acer saccharinum_. The
+maple leaf is the national emblem of Canada.]
+
+Henry returned in the summer of 1763 to Fort Michili-makinak. The
+place was then held by a British garrison under Major Etherington.
+Shortly after Henry's arrival, an Ojibwe chief named Wawatam came
+often to his lodgings, and, taking a great fancy to the Englishman,
+asked leave to become his blood brother. He was about forty-five
+years of age, and of an excellent character amongst his nation. He
+warned Henry that he, Wawatam, had had bad dreams during the winter,
+in which he had been disturbed "by the noises of evil birds", and gave
+him other roundabout warnings that the Indians of different tribes
+were going to attack the British garrison at Michili-Makinak, and
+endeavour to destroy all the English in Upper Canada. Henry did not
+pay over much attention to this warning, because "the Indian manner of
+speech is so extravagantly figurative".
+
+The King's birthday was celebrated with, no doubt, somewhat tipsy
+rejoicings in the summer of 1763. The Ojibwe Indians outside the fort
+pretended they were going to have a great game of La Crosse with the
+S[-a]ki or "Fox" Indians. This game was got up to find a pretext for
+entering the fort and taking the British officers and garrison at a
+disadvantage. Some of the officers and soldiers, suspecting nothing in
+the way of danger, were outside the fort by the waterside. However,
+the sport commenced, and suddenly the ball was struck over the pickets
+of the fort. At once the Ojibwes, pretending great ardour in their
+game, came leaping, struggling and shouting over the defences into the
+fort as though "in the unrestrained pursuit of a rude, athletic
+exercise". Once inside the fortifications, they attacked the
+unsuspicious and unarmed soldiers and officers, of whom they killed
+seventy out of ninety.
+
+Henry had not gone with the others, but had stayed in his room writing
+letters. Suddenly he heard the Indian warcry and a noise of general
+confusion. Looking out of his window he saw a crowd of Indians inside
+the fort furiously cutting down and scalping every Englishman they
+could reach. Meantime, the French Canadian inhabitants of the fort
+looked on calmly, neither intervening to stop the Indians, nor
+suffering any injury from them. Realizing that all his fellow
+countrymen were practically destroyed, Henry endeavoured to hide
+himself. He entered the house of his next-door neighbour, a Frenchman,
+and found the whole family at the windows gazing at the scene of blood
+before them. He implored this Frenchman to put him into some place of
+safety until the massacre was over. The latter merely shrugged his
+shoulders and intimated that he could do nothing for him; but a Pani
+Indian woman, a slave of this Frenchman, beckoned to Henry to follow
+her, and hid him in a garret. Then the Indians burst into the house
+and asked the Frenchman if he had got any Englishmen concealed, the
+latter returned an evasive answer, telling them to search for
+themselves. Henry hid himself under a heap of birch-bark vessels,
+which were used in maple-sugar manufacture. The door was unlocked, the
+four Indians dashed in, their bodies covered with blood, and armed
+with tomahawks. The hidden man thought that the throbbing of his heart
+must make a noise loud enough to betray him. The Indians searched the
+garret, and one of them approached Henry so closely as almost to touch
+him; yet he remained undiscovered, possibly owing to the dark colour
+of his clothes and the dim light in the room. Then the Indians, after
+describing to the Frenchman how many they had killed and scalped,
+returned downstairs, and the door was locked behind them.
+
+But the next day the Indians insisted on a further search, and,
+regarding every attempt at concealment as vain, Henry, by a desperate
+resolve, rose from his bed and presented himself in full view to the
+Indians as they entered the room. They were all in a state of
+intoxication and entirely naked. One of them, upwards of six feet in
+height, had all his face and body covered with charcoal and grease,
+but with a large white ring encircling each of his eyes. This man,
+walking up to Henry, seized him with one hand by the collar of his
+coat, and in the other held up a large carving knife, making a feint
+as if to plunge it into his breast, his eyes meanwhile fixed
+steadfastly on those of the Englishman. At length, after some seconds
+of the most anxious suspense, he dropped Henry's arm, saying: "I won't
+kill you," adding that he had often fought in war with the English and
+brought away many scalps, but that on a certain occasion he had lost a
+brother whose name was Musinigon, and that he would adopt Henry in his
+place.
+
+One would like the story to have stopped here at this happy turn of
+events, but Wenniway (as this saviour of Henry was called) entertained
+a very fickle regard for his adopted brother, and, though he once or
+twice intervened, subsequently took no great pains to see that his
+life was spared. However, for the time being he was reprieved, and
+regarded Wenniway as his "master". Nevertheless, he was soon haled out
+of the house by another Indian, apparently coming with Wenniway's
+authority. This man ordered him to undress, and then took away all his
+clothes, giving him such dirty rags or strips of leather as he
+possessed himself. He frankly owned that his motive for stripping him
+was that, as he wished afterwards to kill him, Henry's clothes might
+not be stained with blood! With the intention of assassinating him, in
+fact, he dragged Henry along to a region of bushes and sandhills, and
+then produced a knife and attempted to execute his purpose. But with
+the rage and strength of absolute despair Henry wrenched himself free,
+pushed his would-be murderer on one side, and ran for his life towards
+the fort.
+
+Here Wenniway rather indifferently helped him to take refuge in the
+house of the Frenchman in which he had formerly hidden, but the same
+night he was roused from sleep and ordered to come below, where to his
+surprise he found himself in the presence of three of the British
+officers who had formerly commanded in this fort, and who were now
+prisoners of the Ojibwes. The Indian chiefs for the time being had
+handed these men over to the surveillance of the French Canadians,
+together with the seventeen surviving English soldiers and traders.
+Henry, like the others, was almost without clothes. The French
+Canadian in whose house he had taken refuge refused to give him as
+much as a blanket, but another Canadian, less indifferent to the
+sufferings of a fellow white man, did give him a blanket, but for
+which he would certainly have perished from cold.
+
+The next day he and the other English prisoners were embarked in
+canoes and taken away to Lake Michigan. On reaching the mouth of that
+lake, at the Beaver Islands, the Ojibwe canoes, on account of the fog,
+were obliged to approach the lands of the Ottawa Indians. These last
+suddenly seized the canoes as they entered shallow water, and
+professed great indignation at the capture of Fort Michili-Makinak and
+the slaughter of the Englishmen. They declared their intention of
+saving the survivors, and charged the Ojibwes with being about to kill
+and eat them. By the Ottawa Indians, therefore, the twenty Englishmen
+were carried back again and deposited in Fort Michili-Makinak, which
+was now taken possession of by the Ottawas. The English were still
+held as prisoners. After hearing all the Ojibwes had to say, and
+receiving from them large presents, the Ottawas finally decided to
+restore their English prisoners to the Ojibwes, who consequently took
+them away with ropes tied round their necks, and put them into an
+Indian habitation. Here, as they were starving, they were offered
+loaves of bread, but with the horrible accompaniment of seeing the
+slices cut with knives still covered with the blood of the murdered
+English. The Ojibwes moistened this blood on the knife blades with
+their spittle, and rubbed it on the slices of bread, offering this
+food then to their prisoners, so that they might force them to eat the
+blood of their countrymen.
+
+The next morning, however, there appeared before Menehewehna, the
+great war chief of the Ojibwes, Henry's friend and adopted brother,
+Wawatam. This man made an earnest speech to the council of Ojibwe
+chiefs and braves, in which he pleaded hard for the Englishman's life,
+at the same time tendering from out of his own goods a considerable
+ransom. After much pipe-smoking and an embarrassing silence, the war
+chief rose to his feet and accepted the ransom, giving Wawatam
+permission to take away into safety his adopted brother. "Wawatam led
+me to his lodge, which was at the distance of a few yards only from
+the prison lodge. My entrance appeared to give joy to the whole
+family; food was immediately prepared for me; and I now ate the first
+hearty meal which I had made since my capture. I found myself one of
+the family; and, but that I had still my fears as to the other
+Indians, I felt as happy as the situation could allow."
+
+The next day seven of the English prisoners were killed by the
+Ojibwes, and Henry actually saw their dead bodies being dragged out
+into the open. They had been killed in cold blood by an Indian chief
+who had just arrived from a hunting expedition, and who, not having
+been present at the attack on the fort, now desired to satisfy his
+warlike instincts and his agreement with the policy of the Ojibwes by
+going into the lodge where the English officers and men were tied up,
+and slaughtering seven of them in cold blood.
+
+Shortly afterwards two of the Ojibwes took the fattest amongst the
+dead men, cut off his head, and divided his body into five parts, one
+of which was put into each of five kettles hung over as many fires,
+which were kindled for this purpose at the door of the house in which
+the other prisoners were tied up. They then sent to insist on the
+attendance at their cannibal feast of Wawatam, the adopted brother and
+protector of Henry. The invitation was delivered after the Amerindian
+fashion. A small cutting of cedar wood about four inches in length
+supplies the place of the written or printed invitation to dinner of
+European civilization, and the man who bore the slip of cedar wood
+gave particulars as to place and time by word of mouth. Guests on
+these occasions were expected to bring their own dish and spoon.
+
+In spite of repugnance, Wawatam, to save his life and that of Henry,
+was obliged to go. He returned after an absence of half an hour,
+bringing back in his dish the portion given to him--a human hand and a
+large piece of flesh. His objection to eat this gruesome food was
+apparently not very deep or persistent. He excused the custom by
+saying that amongst all Amerindian nations there existed this practice
+of making a war feast from out of the bodies of the slain after a
+successful battle.
+
+Soon after this episode of horror the Ojibwes abandoned Fort
+Michili-Makinak, for fear the English should come to attack it. Henry
+was hidden by his adopted brother, Wawatam, in a cave, where he found
+himself by the light of the next morning sleeping on a bed of human
+bones, which the night before he had taken to be twigs and boughs. The
+whole of the cave was, in fact, filled with these human remains. No
+one knew or remembered the reason. Henry thought that the cave had
+been an ancient receptacle for the bones of persons who had been
+sacrificed and devoured at war feasts; for, however contemptuous they
+may be of the flesh, the Amerindians paid particular attention
+to the bones of human beings--whether friends, relations, or
+enemies--preserving them unbroken, and depositing them in some
+place kept exclusively for that purpose.
+
+The great chief of the Ojibwes, however, advised that Henry, who had
+rejoined Wawatam, should be dressed in disguise as an Indian to save
+him from any further harm, for the natives all round about were
+preparing for what they believed to be an inevitable war with the
+English.
+
+"I could not but consent to the proposal, and the chief was so kind as
+to assist my friend and his family in effecting that very day the
+desired metamorphosis. My hair was cut off, and my head shaved, with
+the exception of a spot on the crown, of about twice the diameter of a
+crown piece. My face was painted with three or four different colours;
+some parts of it red, and others black. A shirt was provided for me,
+painted with vermilion, mixed with grease. A large collar of wampum[5]
+was put round my neck, and another suspended on my breast. Both my
+arms were decorated with large bands of silver above the elbow,
+besides several smaller ones on the wrists; and my legs were covered
+with _mitasses_, a kind of hose, made, as is the favourite fashion, of
+scarlet cloth. Over all I was to wear a scarlet blanket or mantle, and
+on my head a large bunch of feathers. I parted, not without some
+regret, with the long hair which was natural to it, and which I
+fancied to be ornamental; but the ladies of the family, and of the
+village in general, appeared to think my person improved, and now
+condescended to call me handsome, even among Indians."
+
+[Footnote 5: Shell beads.]
+
+He then went away to live with his protectors, and with them passed a
+by no means unhappy autumn, winter, and spring, hunting and fishing.
+
+Here are some of his adventures at this period.
+
+"To kill beaver, we used to go several miles up the rivers, before the
+approach of night, and after the dusk came on, suffer the canoe to
+drift gently down the current, without noise. The beavers, in this
+part of the evening, come abroad to procure food, or materials for
+repairing their habitations, and as they are not alarmed by the canoe,
+they often pass it within gunshot.
+
+"On entering the River Aux Sables, Wawatam took a dog, tied its feet
+together, and threw it into the stream, uttering, at the same time, a
+long prayer, which he addressed to the Great Spirit, supplicating his
+blessing on the chase, and his aid in the support of the family,
+through the dangers of a long winter. Our 'lodge' was fifteen miles
+above the mouth of the stream. The principal animals, which the
+country afforded, were red deer (wapiti), the common American deer,
+the bear, racoon, beaver, and marten.
+
+"The beaver feeds in preference on young wood of the birch, aspen, and
+poplar tree[6]; but, in defect of these, on any other tree, those of
+the pine and fir kinds excepted. These latter it employs only for
+building its dams and houses. In wide meadows, where no wood is to be
+found, it resorts, for all its purposes, to the roots of the rush and
+water lily. It consumes great quantities of food, whether of roots or
+wood; and hence often reduces itself to the necessity of removing into
+a new quarter. Its house has an arched dome-like roof, of an
+elliptical figure, and rises from three to four feet above the surface
+of the water. It is always entirely surrounded by water; but, in the
+banks adjacent, the animal provides holes or _washes_, of which the
+entrance is below the surface, and to which it retreats on the first
+alarm.
+
+"The female beaver usually produces two young at a time, but not
+unfrequently more. During the first year, the young remain with their
+parents. In the second, they occupy an adjoining apartment, and assist
+in building, and in procuring food. At two years old, they part, and
+build houses of their own; but often rove about for a considerable
+time before they fix upon a spot. There are beavers, called, by the
+Indians, _old bachelors_, who live by themselves, build no houses, and
+work at no dams, but shelter themselves in holes. The usual method of
+taking these is by traps, formed of iron, or logs, and baited with
+branches of poplar.
+
+"According to the Indians, the beaver is much given to jealousy. If a
+strange male approaches the cabin, a battle immediately ensues. Of
+this the female remains an unconcerned spectator, careless as to which
+party the law of conquest may assign her. The Indians add that the
+male is as constant as he is jealous, never attaching himself to more
+than one female.
+
+"The most common way of taking the beaver is that of breaking up its
+house, which is done with trenching tools, during the winter, when the
+ice is strong enough to allow of approaching them; and when, also, the
+fur is in its most valuable state.
+
+"Breaking up the house, however, is only a preparatory step. During
+this operation, the family make their escape to one or more of their
+_washes_. These are to be discovered by striking the ice along the
+bank, and where the holes are, a hollow sound is returned. After
+discovering and searching many of these in vain, we often heard the
+whole family together in the same wash. I was taught occasionally to
+distinguish a full wash from an empty one, by the motion of the water
+above its entrance, occasioned by the breathing of the animals
+concealed in it. From the washes, they must be taken out with the
+hands; and in doing this, the hunter sometimes receives severe wounds
+from their teeth. Whilst I was a hunter with the Indians, I thought
+beaver flesh was very good; but after that of the ox was again within
+my reach, I could not relish it. The tail is accounted a luxurious
+morsel.
+
+"One evening, on my return from hunting, I found the fire put out, and
+the opening in the top of the lodge covered over with skins--by this
+means excluding, as much as possible, external light. I further
+observed that the ashes were removed from the fireplace, and that dry
+sand was spread where they had been. Soon after, a fire was made
+withoutside the cabin, in the open air, and a kettle hung over it to
+boil.
+
+"I now supposed that a feast was in preparation. I supposed so only,
+for it would have been indecorous to enquire into the meaning of what
+I saw. No person, among the Indians themselves, would use this
+freedom. Good breeding requires that the spectator should patiently
+wait the result.
+
+"As soon as the darkness of night had arrived, the family, including
+myself, were invited into the lodge. I was now requested not to speak,
+as a feast was about to be given to the dead, whose spirits delight in
+uninterrupted silence.
+
+"As we entered, each was presented with his wooden dish and spoon,
+after receiving which we seated ourselves. The door was next shut, and
+we remained in perfect darkness.
+
+"The master of the family was the master of the feast. Still in the
+dark, he asked everyone, by turn, for his dish, and put into each two
+boiled ears of maize. The whole being served, he began to speak. In
+his discourse, which lasted half an hour, he called upon the manes of
+his deceased relations and friends, beseeching them to be present, to
+assist him in the chase, and to partake of the food which he had
+prepared for them. When he had ended, we proceeded to eat our maize,
+which we did without other noise than what was occasioned by our
+teeth. The maize was not half boiled, and it took me an hour to
+consume my share. I was requested not to break the spikes,[7] as this
+would be displeasing to the departed spirits of their friends.
+
+"When all was eaten, Wawatam made another speech, with which the
+ceremony ended. A new fire was kindled, with fresh sparks, from flint
+and steel; and the pipes being smoked, the spikes were carefully
+buried, in a hole made in the ground for that purpose, within the
+lodge. This done, the whole family began a dance, Wawatam singing, and
+beating a drum. The dance continued the greater part of the night, to
+the great pleasure of the lodge. The night of the feast was that of
+the first day of November."
+
+[Footnote 6: _Populus nigra_, called by the French Canadians _liard_.]
+
+[Footnote 7: The grains of maize (Indian corn) grow in compact cells,
+round a pithy core.]
+
+In the month of January, Henry happened to observe that the trunk of a
+very large pine tree was much torn by the claws of a bear, made both
+in going up and down. On further examination he saw there was a large
+opening, in the upper part, near which the smaller branches were
+broken. From these marks, and from the additional circumstances that
+there were no tracks on the snow, there was reason to believe that a
+bear lay concealed in the tree.
+
+He communicated his discovery to his Indian friends, and it was agreed
+that all the family should go together in the morning to cut down the
+tree, the girth of which was not less than eighteen feet! This task
+occupied them for one and a half days with their poor little axes,
+till about two o'clock in the second afternoon the tree fell to the
+ground. For a few minutes everything remained quiet, and Henry feared
+that all his expectations would be disappointed; but, as he advanced
+to the opening, there came out a female bear of extraordinary size,
+which he had shot and killed before she had proceeded many yards.
+
+"The bear being dead, all my assistants approached, and all, but more
+particularly my old mother, (as I was won't to call her), took the
+bear's head in their hands, stroking and kissing it several times;
+begging a thousand pardons for taking away her life; calling her their
+relation and grandmother; and requesting her not to lay the fault upon
+them, since it was truly an Englishman that had put her to death.
+
+"This ceremony was not of long duration; and if it was I that killed
+their grandmother, they were not themselves behindhand in what
+remained to be performed. The skin being taken off, we found the fat
+in several places six inches deep. This, being divided into two parts,
+loaded two persons; and the flesh parts were as much as four persons
+could carry. In all, the carcass must have exceeded five
+hundredweight.
+
+"As soon as we reached the lodge, the bear's head was adorned with all
+the trinkets in the possession of the family, such as silver armbands
+and wristbands, and belts of wampum; and then laid upon a scaffold,
+set up for its reception, within the lodge. Near the nose was placed a
+large quantity of tobacco.
+
+"The next morning no sooner appeared, than preparations were made for
+a feast to the manes. The lodge was cleaned and swept; and the head of
+the bear lifted up, and a new Stroud blanket, which had never been
+used before, spread under it. The pipes were now lit; and Wawatam blew
+tobacco smoke into the nostrils of the bear, telling me to do the
+same, and thus appease the anger of the bear, on account of my having
+killed her.
+
+"At length, the feast being ready, Wawatam commenced a speech,
+resembling, in many things, his address to the manes of his relations
+and departed companions; but, having this peculiarity, that he here
+deplored the necessity under which men laboured, thus to destroy their
+_friends_. He represented, however, that the misfortune was
+unavoidable, since without doing so, they could by no means subsist.
+The speech ended, we all ate heartily of the bear's flesh; and even
+the head itself, after remaining three days on the scaffold, was put
+into the kettle. The fat of our bear was melted down, and the oil
+filled six porcupine-skin bags. A part of the meat was cut into
+strips, and fire-dried, after which it was put into the vessels
+containing the oil, where it remained in perfect preservation, until
+the middle of summer."
+
+In the spring of 1762 Henry once more returned to Fort
+Michili-Makinak, and went sugar-making with his Indian companions.
+Whilst engaged in this agreeable task, a child belonging to one of the
+party fell into a kettle of boiling syrup. It was instantly snatched
+out, but with little hope of its recovery. So long, however, as it
+lived, a continual feast was observed; and this was made "to the Great
+Spirit and Master of Life", that he might be pleased to save and heal
+the child. At this feast Henry was a constant guest; and often found
+some difficulty in eating the large quantity of food which, on such
+occasions as these, was put upon his dish.
+
+Several sacrifices were also offered; among which were dogs, killed
+and hung upon the tops of poles, with the addition of blankets and
+other articles. These, also, were yielded to the Great Spirit, in the
+humble hope that he would give efficacy to the medicines employed. But
+the child died. To preserve the body from the wolves it was placed
+upon a scaffold, and then later carried to the borders of a lake, on
+the border of which was the burial ground of the family.
+
+"On our arrival there, which happened in the beginning of April, I did
+not fail to attend the funeral. The grave was made of a large size,
+and the whole of the inside lined with birch bark. On the bark was
+laid the body of the child, accompanied with an axe, a pair of
+snowshoes, a small kettle, several pairs of common shoes, its own
+strings of beads, and--because it was a girl--a carrying belt and a
+paddle. The kettle was filled with meat. All this was again covered
+with bark; and at about two feet nearer the surface logs were laid
+across, and these again covered with bark, so that the earth might by
+no means fall upon the corpse.
+
+"The last act before the burial, performed by the mother, crying over
+the dead body of her child, was that of taking from it a lock of hair
+for a memorial. While she did this, I endeavoured to console her by
+offering the usual arguments: that the child was happy in being
+released from the miseries of this present life, and that she should
+forbear to grieve, because it would be restored to her in another
+world, happy and everlasting. She answered that she knew it, and that
+by the lock of hair she should discover her daughter; for she would
+take it with her. In this she alluded to the day when some pious hand
+would place in her own grave, along with the carrying belt and paddle,
+this little relic, hallowed by maternal tears."
+
+After many ups and downs of hope and despair, and many narrow escapes
+of being killed and made into broth for warlike Ojibwes, Henry at
+length obtained permission to travel with a party of Ojibwe Indians
+who were invited to visited Sir William Johnson at Niagara. This
+British Governor of Canada was attempting to enter into friendly
+relations with the Amerindian tribes, and induce them to accept
+quietly the transference of Canada from French to English control.
+
+[Illustration: SCENE ON CANADIAN RIVER: WILD SWANS FLYING UP DISTURBED
+BY BEAR]
+
+Before starting, however, to interview this great White Governor, the
+Ojibwes decided to consult their oracle, the Great Turtle, after which
+Fort Michili-Makinak was named.[8] Behind Fort Michili-Makinak is an
+extraordinary mound or hill of stone supposed to resemble this reptile
+exactly, and in fact to be in some way the residence of a supernatural
+giant turtle.
+
+[Footnote 8: Michili, pronounced "Mishili", means "great", and
+Makinak, "turtle", in the translation of some Canadian writers. The
+turtle in question is, of course, not the turtle of sea waters, but
+the Snapping Turtle (_Chelydra serpentina_) found in most Canadian
+lakes and the big rivers of North America, east of the Rocky
+Mountains.]
+
+For invoking and consulting the Great Turtle, the first thing to be
+done was to build a large house, within which was placed a kind of
+tent, for the use of the priest and reception of the spirit. The tent
+was formed of moose skins, hung over a framework of wood made out of
+five pillars of five different species of timber, about ten feet in
+height and eight inches in diameter, set up in a circle of four feet
+in diameter, with their bases two feet deep in the soil. At the top
+the pillars were bound together by a circular hoop of withies. Over
+the whole of this edifice were spread the moose skins, covering it at
+top and round the sides, and made fast with thongs of the same, except
+that on one side a part was left unfastened, to admit of the entrance
+of the priest.
+
+The ceremonies did not commence till the approach of night. To give
+light inside the house several fires were kindled round the tent.
+Nearly the whole village assembled in the house, Alexander Henry among
+the rest. It was not long before the priest appeared, almost in a
+state of nakedness. As he approached the tent the skins were lifted
+up, as much as was necessary to allow of his creeping under them on
+his hands and knees. His head was scarcely within side when the
+edifice, massive as it has been described, began to shake; and the
+skins were no sooner let fall than the sounds of numerous voices were
+heard beneath them--some yelling, some barking as dogs, some howling
+like wolves; and in this horrible concert were mingled screams and
+sobs of despair, anguish, and the sharpest pain. Articulate speech was
+also uttered, as if from human lips, but in a tongue unknown to any of
+the audience.
+
+After some time these confused and frightful noises were succeeded by
+a perfect silence; and now a voice, not heard before, seemed to
+manifest the arrival of a new character in the tent. This was low and
+feeble, resembling the cry of a young puppy. The sound was no sooner
+distinguished than all the Indians clapped their hands for joy,
+exclaiming that this was the Chief Spirit, the Turtle, the Spirit that
+never lied! Other voices, which they had distinguished from time to
+time, they had previously hissed, as recognizing them to belong to
+evil and lying spirits, the deceivers of mankind.
+
+Then came from the tent a succession of songs, in which a diversity
+of voices met the ear. From his first entrance, till these songs were
+finished, we heard nothing in the proper voice of the priest. But now
+he addressed the multitude, declaring the presence of the Great
+Turtle, and the spirit's readiness to answer such questions as should
+be proposed. The questions were to come from the chief of the village,
+who was silent, however, till after he had put a large quantity of
+tobacco into the tent, introducing it at the aperture. This was a
+sacrifice offered to the spirit; for the spirits were supposed by the
+Indians to be as fond of tobacco as themselves. This done, the chief
+desired the priest to enquire: Whether or not the English were
+preparing to make war upon the Indians? and whether or not there were
+at Fort Niagara a large number of English troops?
+
+The priest was heard to put the questions, and then the tent shook and
+rocked so violently that Henry expected to see it levelled with the
+ground. But apparently answers were given, after which a terrific cry
+announced, with sufficient intelligibility, the departure of the
+Turtle. Subsequently the priest interpreted the Great Turtle's
+answers, which gave a great deal of information regarding the
+disposition and numbers of the English soldiers, and the presents
+which Sir William Johnson was preparing for the Ojibwes; and which
+finally approved the wisdom of the embassy proceeding on its way.
+
+Journeying along the shores of Lake Huron, they stopped to avoid a
+gale of wind and to rest. Henry, gathering firewood, disturbed a
+rattlesnake which manifested hostile intentions. He went back to the
+canoe to fetch his gun; but upon telling the Ojibwes that he was about
+to kill a rattlesnake they begged him to desist. They then seized
+their pipes and tobacco pouches and returned with him to the place
+where he had left the rattlesnake, which was still coiled up and
+angry.
+
+"The Indians, on their part, surrounded it, all addressing it by
+turns, and calling it their _grandfather_; but yet keeping at some
+distance. During this part of the ceremony they filled their pipes;
+and now each blew the smoke towards the snake, who, as it appeared to
+me, really received it with pleasure. In a word, after remaining
+coiled, and receiving incense for the space of half an hour, it
+stretched itself along the ground, in visible good humour. Its length
+was between four and five feet. Having remained outstretched for some
+time, at last it moved slowly away, the Indians following it, and
+still addressing it by the title of grandfather, beseeching it to take
+care of their families during their absence, and to be pleased to open
+the heart of Sir William Johnson, so that he might _show them
+charity_, and fill their canoe with rum.
+
+"One of the chiefs added a petition, that the snake would take no
+notice of the insult which had been offered him by the Englishman, who
+would even have put him to death, but for the interference of the
+Indians, to whom it was hoped he would impute no part of the offence."
+
+Early the next morning they proceeded on their way, with a serene sky
+and very little wind, so that to shorten the journey they determined
+to steer across the lake to an island which just appeared on the
+horizon. But after hoisting a sail the wind increased, and the
+Indians, beginning to be alarmed, frequently called on the rattlesnake
+to come to their assistance. By degrees the waves grew high, and at
+last it blew a hurricane, Henry and his companions expecting every
+moment to be swallowed up. From prayers the Indians now proceeded to
+sacrifices, both alike offered to the god-rattlesnake, or
+_manito-kinibik_. One of the chiefs took a dog, and, after tying its
+fore legs together, threw it overboard, at the same time calling on
+the snake to preserve the party from being drowned, and desiring him
+to satisfy his hunger with the carcass of the dog. The snake was
+unpropitious, and the wind increased. Another chief sacrificed
+another dog, with the addition of some tobacco. In the prayer which
+accompanied these gifts he besought the snake, as before, not to
+avenge upon the Indians the insult which he had received from the
+Englishman. "He assured the snake that I was _absolutely_ an
+Englishman, and of kin neither to him nor to them."
+
+"At the conclusion of this speech, an Indian, who sat near me,
+observed, that if we were drowned it would be for my fault alone, and
+that I ought myself to be sacrificed, to appease the angry manito; nor
+was I without apprehensions, that in case of extremity this would be
+my fate; but, happily for me, the storm at length abated, and we
+reached the island safely."
+
+The next day they arrived at the shore of Lake Ontario. Here they
+remained two days to make canoes out of the bark of the elm tree, in
+which they might travel to Niagara. For this purpose the Indians first
+cut down a tree, then stripped off the bark in one entire sheet of
+about eighteen feet in length, the incision being lengthwise. The
+canoe was now complete as to its bottom and sides. Its ends were next
+closed, by sewing the bark together; and a few ribs and bars being
+introduced, the architecture was finished. In this manner they made
+two canoes; of which one carried eight men, and the other nine.
+
+A few days later Henry was handed over safe and sound to Sir William
+Johnson at Niagara. He was then given the command of a corps of Indian
+allies which was to accompany the expedition under General Bradstreet
+to raise the siege of Detroit, which important place had been long
+invested by a great Indian chief, Pontiac, who still carried on the
+war on behalf of King Louis XV. This enterprise was successful, and
+British control was extended to many places in central Canada. Henry
+returned to Fort Michili-Makinak and regained much of the property
+which he had lost in the Indian attacks. As some compensation for his
+former sufferings he received from the British commandant of
+Michili-Makinak the exclusive fur trade of Lake Superior.
+
+The currency at that period, and long before, in Canadian history, was
+in beaver skins, which were approximately valued at the price of two
+shillings and sixpence a pound. Otter skins were valued at six
+shillings each, and marten skins at one shilling and sixpence, and
+others in proportion; but all these things were classed at being worth
+so many beaver skins or proportion of beaver skins. Thus, for example,
+the native canoemen and porters engaged by Henry for his winter hunts
+were paid each at the rate of a hundred pounds weight of beaver
+skins.[9]
+
+[Footnote 9: The smallest change, so to speak, was the skin of a
+marten, worth one shilling and sixpence. If you went to a canteen for
+a drink you paid your score with a marten skin, unless the value of
+your refreshment exceeded the sum of eighteen pence.]
+
+At various places on the River Ontonagan, which flows into Lake
+Superior, Henry was shown the extraordinary deposits of copper, which
+presented itself to the eye in masses of various weight. The natives
+smelted the copper and beat it into spoons and bracelets. It was so
+absolutely pure of any alloy that it required nothing but to be beaten
+into shape. In one place Henry saw a mass of copper weighing not less
+than five tons, pure and malleable, so that with an axe he was able to
+cut off a portion weighing a hundred pounds. He conjectured that this
+huge mass of copper had at some time been dislodged from the side of a
+lofty hill and thence rolled into the position where he found it.
+Farther to the north of Lake Superior he found pieces of virgin copper
+remarkable for their form, some resembling leaves of vegetables, and
+others the shapes of animals.
+
+In these journeys he collected some of the native traditions, amongst
+others that of the Great Hare, Naniboju, who was represented to him as
+the founder or creator of the Amerindian peoples. An island in Lake
+Superior was called Naniboju's burial place. Henry landed there, and
+"found on the projecting rocks a quantity of tobacco, rotting in the
+rain; together with kettles, broken guns, and a variety of other
+articles. His spirit is supposed to make this its constant residence;
+and here to preside over the lake, and over the Indians, in their
+navigation and fishing."
+
+In the spring of the following year (1768), whilst the snow still lay
+many feet thick on the ground, he and his men made sugar from the
+maple trees on a mountain, and for nearly three weeks none of them ate
+anything but maple sugar, consuming a pound a day, desiring no other
+food, and waxing fat and strong on this diet. Then they returned to
+the banks of the Ontonagan River, where the wild fowl appeared in such
+abundance that one man, with a muzzle-loading gun, could kill in a day
+sufficient birds for the sustenance of fifty men. As soon as the ice
+and snow had melted, parties of Indians came in from their winter's
+hunt, bringing to Henry furs to pay him for all the goods he had
+advanced. In this way the whole of his outstanding credit was
+satisfied, with the exception of thirty skins, which represented the
+contribution due from one Indian who had died. In this case even, the
+man's family had sent all the skins they could gather together, and
+gradually acquitted themselves of the amount due, in order that the
+spirit of the dead man might rest in peace, which it could not do if
+his debts were not acquitted.
+
+In the following autumn he had an experience which showed him how near
+famine was to great abundance, and how ready the Amerindians were in
+cases of even slight privation to turn cannibal, kill and eat the
+weaker members of the party. He was making an excursion to the Sault
+de Sainte Marie, and took with him three half-breed Canadians and a
+young Indian woman who was journeying in that direction to see her
+relations. As the distance was short, and they expected to obtain much
+fish by the way, they only took with them as provisions a quart of
+maize for each person. On the first night of their journey they
+encamped on the island of Naniboju and set their net to catch fish.
+But there arose a violent storm, which continued for three days,
+during which it was impossible for them to take up the net or to leave
+the island. In consequence of this they ate up all their maize. On the
+evening of the third day the storm abated, and they rushed to examine
+the net. It was gone! It was impossible to return to the point of
+their departure, where there would have been plenty of food, on
+account of the strong wind against them. They therefore steered for
+the Sault de Sainte Marie. But the wind veered round, and for nine
+days blew a strong gale against their progress in this direction,
+making the waves of the lake so high that they were obliged to take
+refuge on the shore.
+
+Henry went out perpetually to hunt, but all he got during those nine
+days were two small snow-buntings. The Canadian half-breeds with him
+then calmly proposed to kill and feed upon the young woman. One of
+these men, indeed, admitted that he had had recourse to
+this expedient for sustaining life when wintering in the north-west
+and running out of food. But Henry indignantly repudiated the
+suggestion. Though very weak, he searched everywhere desperately for
+food, and at last found on a very high rock a thick lichen, called by
+the French Canadians _tripe de roche_,[10] looking, in fact, very much
+like slices of tripe. Henry fetched the men and the Indian woman, and
+they set to work gathering quantities of this lichen. The woman was
+well acquainted with the mode of preparing it, which was done by
+boiling it into a thick mucilage, looking rather like the white of an
+egg. On this they made hearty meals, though it had a bitter and
+disagreeable taste. After the ninth day of their sufferings the wind
+fell, they continued their journey, and met with kindly Indians, who
+supplied them with as many fish as they wanted. Nevertheless, they all
+were so ill afterwards that they nearly died, from the effects of the
+lichen diet.
+
+[Footnote 10: See p. 128.]
+
+Some time after this Henry resolved to search for the marvellous
+island of Yellow Sands,[11] an island of Lake Superior which, it is
+true, the French had discovered, but about which they kept up a good
+deal of mystery. The Indian legend was that the sands of this small
+island consisted of gold dust, and the Ojibwe Indians, having
+discovered this, and attempting to bring some away, they were
+disturbed by a supernatural being of amazing size, sixty feet in
+height, which strode into the water and commanded them to deliver back
+what they had taken away. Terrified at his gigantic stature, they
+complied with his request, since which time no Indian has ever dared
+to approach the haunted coast. Henry, however, with his men, finally
+discovered this Island of Yellow Sands in 1771, in the north-east part
+of Lake Superior. It was much smaller than he had been led to expect,
+and very low and studded with small lakes, probably made by the action
+of beavers damming up the little streams. He found no supernatural
+monster to dispute the island with him, but a number of large
+reindeer, so unused to the sight of man that they scarcely got out of
+his way, so that he was able to shoot as many as he wanted. The
+ancestors of these reindeer may have reached the island either by
+floating ice or by swimming. They seem, with the birds, to have been
+the island's only inhabitants, and to have increased and multiplied to
+a remarkable extent, small portions of the island's surface being
+actually formed of immense accumulations of reindeer bones.
+
+[Footnote 11: The Isle of Yellow Sands, famed in legend for its
+terrible serpents and ogre sixty feet high, was subsequently
+identified with the Ile de Pont Chartrain, which is distant sixty
+miles from the north shore of Lake Superior.]
+
+Amongst the birds of the island, besides geese and pigeons, were
+hawks. No serpents whatever were seen by the party, but Henry remarks
+that the hawks nearly made up for them in abundance and ferocity. They
+appeared very angry at the intrusion of these strangers on the sacred
+island, and hovered round perpetually, swooping at their faces and
+even carrying off their caps.
+
+In 1775 Henry, having been greatly disappointed over an attempt to
+work the copper of Lake Superior, entered with vigour into a fur trade
+with the north-west. He penetrated from Lake Superior to the Lake of
+the Woods and reached the great Lake Winnipeg. Here he encountered the
+Kristino,[12] Knistino, or Kri Indians. He found these people very
+different in appearance from the other Amerindian tribes farther
+south. The men were almost entirely naked in spite of the much colder
+climate. Their bodies were painted with an ochre or clay so red that
+it was locally known by the French Canadians as vermilion. Every man
+and boy had his bow strung and in his hand, with the arrow, ready to
+attack in case of need. Their heads were shaved all over except for a
+large spot on the crown. Here the hair grew very long, and was rolled
+and gathered into a tuft; and this tuft, which was the object of the
+greatest care, was covered with a piece of skin. The lobes of their
+ears were pierced, and through the opening was inserted the bones of
+fish or small beasts. The women wore their hair in great length all
+over the head. It was divided by a parting, and on each side was
+collected into a roll fastened above the ear and covered with a piece
+of painted skin or ornamented with beads. The clothing of the women
+was of leather, the dressed skins of buffalo or deer. This cloak was
+fastened round the waist by a girdle, and the legs were covered with
+leather gaiters. The Kristino men were eager that their women should
+marry Europeans, because the half-breed children proved to be bolder
+warriors and better hunters than themselves. Henry found that although
+the Kris were much addicted to drunkenness they were peaceable when
+inebriated, and, moreover, detached two of their number, who refused
+ever to touch the liquor under such circumstances, in order that they
+might guard the white men, and not allow any drunken Indian to
+approach their camp.
+
+[Footnote 12: See p. 166.]
+
+Henry and his party, after crossing Lake Winnipeg, ascended the
+Saskatchewan (in the autumn of 1775). On their way up this river they
+came to a village of Paskwaya Indians, which consisted of thirty
+families, who were lodged in tents of a circular form, composed of
+dressed bison skins stretched upon poles twelve feet in length. On
+their arrival the chief of this village, named Chatik, which name
+meant Pelican,[13] called the party rather imperiously into his lodge
+or meeting house, and then told them very plainly that his armed men
+exceeded theirs in number, and that he would put the whole of the
+party to death unless they were very liberal in their presents. To
+avoid misunderstanding, he added that he would inform them exactly
+what it was that he required: Three casks of gunpowder, four bags of
+shot and ball, two bales of tobacco, three kegs of rum, and three
+guns, together with knives, flints, and other articles. He went on to
+say that he had already seen white men, and knew that they promised
+more than they performed. He, personally, was a peaceful man, who
+contented himself with moderate views in order to avoid quarrels;
+nevertheless, he desired that an immediate answer should be given
+before the strangers quitted his lodge. A hurried consultation took
+place, and Henry could do nothing but comply with the chief's demands,
+for he was powerless to resist. Having, therefore, intimated his
+acceptance of these demands, he was invited to smoke the pipe of
+peace, and then obtained permission to depart. After this the goods
+demanded were handed over, but Chatik managed to snatch more rum from
+them before they got safely away.
+
+[Footnote 13: Elsewhere Henry observes the great numbers of pelicans
+to be seen on Lake Winnipeg.]
+
+In the winter of 1776 Henry, who, together with his party, had
+received welcome hospitality from the Hudson's Bay Company's station
+at Cumberland House, resolved to reach the western region known as the
+Great Plains, or Prairies--that immense tract of country through which
+flow the Athabaska, the Saskatchewan, the Red River, and the Missouri.
+He and his party, of course, travelled on snowshoes, and their goods
+were packed on sledges made of thin boards, and drawn after them by
+the men. The cold was intense, so that, besides wearing very warm
+woollen clothes, they were obliged to wrap themselves in blankets of
+beaver skin and huge bison robes. On these plains there were
+occasional knolls covered with trees, which were usually called
+"islands". These provided the precious fuel which alone enabled the
+travellers to support the intense cold of the nights.
+
+After fifteen days of very difficult travel, during which it had been
+impossible to kill any game, as the beasts were mostly hidden in the
+dense woods on these rare hillocks, the situation of his party became
+alarming. They were now on the borders of the plains, and the trees
+were getting small and scanty. On the twentieth day of their journey
+they had finished the last remains of their provisions. But Henry had
+taken the precaution of concealing a large cake of chocolate[14] as a
+reserve in case of great need. His men had walked till they were
+exhausted, and had lost both strength and hope, when Henry informed
+them of the treasure which was still in store. They filled the big
+kettle with snow. It held two gallons of water, and into this was put
+one square of the chocolate. The quantity was scarcely sufficient to
+give colour to the water, but each man drank off a gallon of this hot
+liquor and felt much refreshed. The next day they marched vigorously
+for six hours on another two gallons of chocolate and water. For five
+days the chocolate kept them going, though more by faith than by any
+actual nourishment that it imparted. They now began to be surrounded
+by large herds of wolves, who seemed to be conscious of their dire
+extremity and the probability that they would soon fall an easy prey,
+yet were cunning enough to keep out of gunshot. At last, however, at
+sunset on the fifth day, they discovered on the ice the remains of an
+elk's carcass on which the wolves had left a little flesh. From these
+elk bones a meal of strong and excellent soup was soon prepared, and
+the men's bodies thrilled with new life.
+
+[Footnote 14: Chocolate from St. Domingue (Haiti) was a favourite form
+of portable nutriment among the French Canadians, who also provided a
+means of subsistence for long journeys called _praline_. This was made
+of roasted Indian corn on which sugar had been sprinkled. It was a
+most nourishing food, as well as being an agreeable sweet-meat.]
+
+"Want had lost his dominion over us. At noon we saw the horns of a red
+deer, standing in the snow, on the river. On examination we found that
+the whole carcass was with them, the animal having broken through the
+ice in the beginning of the winter, in attempting to cross the river,
+too early in the season; while his horns, fastening themselves in the
+ice, had prevented him from sinking. By cutting away the ice we were
+enabled to lay bare a part of the back and shoulders, and thus procure
+a stock of food amply sufficient for the rest of our journey. We
+accordingly encamped, and employed our kettle to good purpose, forgot
+all our misfortunes, and prepared to walk with cheerfulness the twenty
+leagues which, as we reckoned, still lay between ourselves and Fort
+des Prairies. Though the deer must have been in this situation ever
+since the month of November, yet its flesh was perfectly good. Its
+horns alone were five feet high or more, and it will therefore not
+appear extraordinary that they should be seen above the snow."
+
+The next day they reached the Fort des Prairies, established by the
+Hudson's Bay people, on the verge of the Assiniboin country. The
+journey was resumed in company with Messrs. Patterson and Holmes, and
+accompanied by a band of natives. They had entered the bison country,
+and were regaled by the Indians with bison tongue and beef.
+
+"Soon after sunrise we descried a herd of oxen (bison) extending a
+mile and a half in length, and too numerous to be counted. They
+travelled, not one after another, as, in the snow, other animals
+usually do, but, in a broad phalanx, slowly, and sometimes stopping to
+feed.... Their numbers were so great that we dreaded lest they should
+fairly trample down the camp; nor could it have happened otherwise,
+but for the dogs, almost as numerous as they, who were able to keep
+them in check. The Indians killed several when close upon their tents,
+but neither the fire of the Indians nor the noise of the dogs could
+soon drive them away." The poor animals were more frightened of the
+frightful snowstorm which was raging than of what man or dog might do
+to them in the shelter of the woods.
+
+At last the party reached the residence of the great chief of the
+Assiniboins, whose name was "Great Road". These Amerindians received
+Henry and his people with the greatest respect, giving them a
+bodyguard, armed with bows and spears, who escorted them to the lodge
+or tent prepared for their reception. This was of circular form,
+covered with leather, and not less than twenty feet in diameter. On
+the ground within, bison skins were spread for beds and seats.
+
+"One-half of the tent was appropriated to our use. Several women
+waited upon us, to make a fire and bring water, which latter they
+fetched from a neighbouring tent. Shortly after our arrival these
+women brought us water, unasked for, saying that it was for washing.
+The refreshment was exceedingly acceptable, for on our march we had
+become so dirty that our complexions were not very distinguishable
+from those of the Indians themselves."
+
+Invited to feast with the great chief, they proceeded to the tent of
+"Great Road", which they found neither more ornamented nor better
+furnished than the rest. At their entrance the chief arose from his
+seat, saluted them in the Indian manner by shaking hands, and
+addressed them in a few words, in which he offered his thanks for the
+confidence which they had reposed in him in trusting themselves so far
+from their own country. After all were seated, on bearskins spread on
+the ground, the pipe, as usual, was introduced, and presented in
+succession to each person present. Each took his whiff, and then let
+it pass to his neighbour. The stem, which was four feet in length, was
+held by an officer attendant on the chief. The bowl was of red marble
+or pipe stone.
+
+When the pipe had gone its round, the chief, without rising from his
+seat, delivered a speech of some length, after which several of the
+Indians began to weep, and they were soon joined by the whole party.
+"Had I not previously been witness" (writes Henry) "to a weeping scene
+of this description, I should certainly have been apprehensive of some
+disastrous catastrophe; but, as it was, I listened to it with
+tranquillity. It lasted for about ten minutes, after which all tears
+were dried away, and the honours of the feast were performed by the
+attending chiefs." This consisted in giving to every guest a dish
+containing a boiled bison's tongue. Henry having enquired why these
+people always wept at their feasts, and sometimes at their councils,
+he was answered that their tears flowed to the memory of their
+deceased relations, who were formerly present on these occasions, and
+whom they remembered as soon as they saw the feast or the conference
+being got ready.[15]
+
+[Footnote 15: The Assiniboins (whom Henry calls the Osinipoilles) are
+the Issati of older travellers, and have sometimes been called the
+Weeper Indians, from their tendency to tears.]
+
+The chief to whose kindly reception they were so much indebted was
+about five feet ten inches high, and of a complexion rather darker
+than that of the Indians in general. His appearance was greatly
+injured by the condition of his head of hair, and this was the result
+of an extraordinary superstition.
+
+"The Indians universally fix upon a particular object, as sacred to
+themselves; as the giver of their prosperity, and as their preserver
+from evil. The choice is determined either by a dream, or by some
+strong predilection of fancy; and usually falls upon an animal, or
+part of an animal, or something else which is to be met with, by land,
+or by water; but 'Great Road' had made choice of his _hair_--placing,
+like Samson, all his safety in this portion of his proper substance!
+His hair was the fountain of all his happiness; it was his strength
+and his weapon, his spear and his shield. It preserved him in battle,
+directed him in the chase, watched over him on the march, and gave
+length of days to his wife and children. Hair, of a quality like this,
+was not to be profaned by the touch of human hands. I was assured that
+it had never been cut nor combed from his childhood upward, and, that
+when any part of it fell from his head, he treasured up that part with
+care: meanwhile, it did not escape all care, even while growing on the
+head; but was in the special charge of a spirit, who dressed it while
+the owner slept. All this might be; but the spirit's style of
+hairdressing was at least peculiar; the hair being suffered to remain
+very much as if it received no dressing at all, and matted into ropes,
+which spread themselves in all directions."
+
+From this Assiniboin village Henry saw, for the first time, one of
+those herds of horses which the Assiniboins possessed in numbers. The
+herd was feeding on the skirts of the plain. The horses were provided
+with no fodder, but were left to find food for themselves, which they
+did in winter by removing the snow with their feet till they reach
+the grass. This was everywhere on the ground in plenty.
+
+Amongst these people they saw the paunch or stomach of a bison
+employed as a kettle. This was hung in the smoke of a fire and filled
+with snow. As the snow melted, more was added, till the paunch was
+full of water. The lower orifice of the organ was used for drawing off
+the water, and stopped with a plug and string.
+
+Henry also noticed amongst the Assiniboins the celebrated lariat. This
+is formed of a stone of about two pounds weight, which is sewed up in
+leather and made fast to a wooden handle two feet long. In using it
+the stone is whirled round the handle by a warrior sitting on
+horseback and riding at full speed. Every stroke which takes effect
+brings down a man, a horse, or a bison. To prevent the weapon from
+slipping out of the hand, a string, which is tied to the handle, is
+also passed round the wrist of the wearer.
+
+Alexander Henry extended his travels in the north-west within four
+hundred and fifty miles of Lake Athabaska. He met at this point some
+Chipewayan slaves in the possession of the Assiniboins, and heard from
+them (1) of the Peace River in the far west which led one through the
+Rocky Mountains (he uses that name) to a region descending towards a
+great sea (the Pacific Ocean); and (2) of the Slave River which, after
+passing through several lakes, also reached a great sea on the north.
+This, of course, was an allusion to the Mackenzie River. Here were
+given and recorded the chief hints at possible lines of exploration
+which afterwards sent Alexander Mackenzie and other explorers on the
+journeys that carried British-Canadian enterprise and administration
+to the shores of the Pacific and Arctic Oceans.
+
+After 1776 Alexander Henry ceased his notable explorations of the far
+west. In that year he paid a visit to England and France, returning to
+Canada in 1777. Whilst in France he was received at the French Court
+and had the privilege of relating to Queen Marie Antoinette some of
+his wonderful adventures and experiences. After two more visits to
+England he settled down at Montreal as a merchant (autumn of 1780),
+and in 1784 he joined with other great pioneers in founding, at
+Montreal, The North-west Trading Company. Eventually he handed over
+his share in this enterprise to his nephew, Alexander Henry the
+Younger, and established himself completely in a life of ease and
+quiet. He died at Montreal in 1824, aged eighty-five years.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Samuel Hearne
+
+
+The first noteworthy explorer of the far north was SAMUEL HEARNE,[1]
+who had been mate of a vessel in the employ of the whale fishery of
+Hudson Bay. He entered the service of the Hudson's Bay Company about
+1765, and was selected four years afterwards by the Governor of Prince
+of Wales's Fort (a certain Moses Norton, a half-breed) to lead an
+expedition of discovery in search of a mighty river flowing
+northwards, which was rumoured to exist by the Eskimo. This
+"Coppermine" River was said to flow through a region rich in deposits
+of copper. From this district the northern tribes of Indians derived
+their copper ornaments and axeheads.
+
+[Footnote 1: Hearne was born in London in 1745. He entered the Royal
+Navy as a midshipman at the tender age of eleven, and remained in the
+Navy till about 1765, when he went out to Hudson Bay with the rank of
+quartermaster. He must have acquired a considerable education, even in
+botany and zoology. He not only wrote well, and was a good surveyor
+for rough map making, but he had a considerable talent as a
+draughtsman.]
+
+Samuel Hearne started on the 6th of November, 1769, from Prince of
+Wales's Fort at the mouth of the Churchill River, on the north-west
+coast of Hudson Bay. Presumably he and the two "common white men" who
+were with him travelled on snowshoes and hauled small sledges after
+them. Travelling westward they passed over bleak hills with very
+little vegetation--"the barren grounds, where, in general, we thought
+ourselves well off if we could scrape together as many shrubs as would
+make a fire; but it was scarcely ever in our power to make any other
+defence against the weather than by digging a hole in the snow down to
+the moss, wrapping ourselves up in our clothing, and lying down in it,
+with our sledges set up edgeways to windward". But the principal
+Indian guide that he engaged was so obviously determined to make the
+expedition a failure that Hearne returned to his base, Prince of
+Wales's Fort, and made a second start on the 23rd of February, 1770,
+this time taking care not to be accompanied by any other white men,
+and insisting that the Indians who accompanied him should be more
+carefully chosen.
+
+It must be remembered that in all these early expeditions, French and
+English, the explorers relied for their food almost entirely on what
+could be obtained as they went along, in the way of venison, grouse,
+geese, fish, and wild fruits. In the springtime they would probably
+get goose eggs and some form of maple sugar through the Indians. From
+the summer to the autumn there would be an abundance of wild fruits
+and nuts, but for the rest of the year it would be a diet almost
+entirely of flesh or fish. As a stand-by there was probably
+_pemmican_, made in times of plenty from fish, from bison meat and
+fat, or from the dried flesh of deer or musk oxen; but tea, coffee,
+bread, biscuits, and such like accessories were absolutely unknown to
+them, in fact they lived exactly as the Amerindians did. Their
+habitations, of course, were the tents or houses of the natives, or
+what they made for themselves.
+
+In order to pitch an Indian tent in winter it was first necessary to
+search for a level piece of dry ground, and this could only be
+ascertained by thrusting a stick through the snow, down to the ground,
+all over the proposed plot. When a suitable site had been found the
+snow was then cleared away down to the very moss, in the shape of a
+circle. When a prolonged stay was contemplated, even the moss was cut
+up and removed, as it was very liable when dry to catch fire. A
+quantity of poles were then procured, proportionate in number and
+length to the size of the tent cloth and the number of persons the
+tent was intended to contain. Two of the longest poles were tied
+together at the top and raised to an angle of about 45 degrees from
+the ground, so that the lower ends extended on either side as widely
+as the proposed diameter of the tent. The other poles were then
+arranged on either side of the first two, so that they formed a
+complete circle round the bottom, and their points were tied together
+at the top. The tent cloth was usually of thin moose leather, and in
+shape resembled the vane of a fan, so that the large outer curve
+enclosed the bottom of the poles, and the smaller one fitted round the
+apex of the poles at the top, leaving an open space which let out the
+smoke and let in air and light. The fire was made on the ground in the
+centre of the floor, which floor was covered all over with small
+branches of firs and pines serving as seats and beds. Pine foliage and
+branches were laid round the bottom of the poles on the outside, and a
+quantity of snow was packed all round the exterior of the tent, thus
+excluding a great part of the external air, and contributing much to
+the warmth within.
+
+For a month or more Hearne camped in this fashion by the side of a
+lake, waiting till the season was sufficiently open for him to
+continue his journey by water. He and his party of Indians lived
+mainly on fish, but when these became scarce they attempted to snare
+grouse or kill deer. In the intervals of rare meals all the party
+smoked or slept, unless they were obliged to go out to hunt and fish.
+They would delight, after killing deer, in securing as much as
+possible of the blood and turning it into broth by boiling it in a
+kettle with fat and scraps of meat. This was reckoned a dainty dish.
+Their spoons, dishes, and other necessary household furniture were cut
+out of birch bark.
+
+[Illustration: LAKE LOUISE, THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS]
+
+By the 19th of May, geese, swans, ducks, gulls, and other birds of
+passage were so plentiful, flying from south to north, and halting to
+rest at the lake, that Hearne felt the time had come to resume his
+journey, provisions being now very plentiful and the worst of the thaw
+over. The weather was remarkably fine and pleasant as the party
+travelled northwards.
+
+There must have been good patent medicines even in those days. Of
+these Hearne possessed "Turlington's Drops" and "Yellow Basilicon",
+and with these he not only healed the terrible wounds of a valuable
+Indian who had cut his leg most severely (when making birch-bark
+dishes, spoons, &c), but also the hand of another Indian, which was
+shattered with the bursting of a gun. These medicines soon restored
+the use of his hand, so that in a short time he was out of danger,
+while the carver of birch-bark spoons was able to walk. Nevertheless,
+although they were to the south of the 60th degree of latitude, the
+snow was not completely melted until the end of June.
+
+All at once the weather became exceedingly hot, the sledges had to be
+thrown away, and each man had to carry on his back a heavy load. For
+instance, Hearne was obliged to carry his quadrant for taking
+astronomical observations, and its stand; a trunk containing books and
+papers, &c.; a large compass; and a bag containing all his wearing
+apparel; also a hatchet, a number of knives, files, &c., and several
+small articles intended for presents to the natives--in short, a
+weight of _sixty pounds_. Moreover, the barren ground was quite
+unsuited to the pitching of the southern type of tent, the poles of
+which obviously could not be driven into the bare rock, so that Hearne
+was obliged to sleep in the open air in all weathers. Very often he
+was unable to make a fire, and was constantly reduced to eating his
+meat quite raw. "Notwithstanding these accumulated and complicated
+hardships, we continued in perfect health and good spirits." The
+average day's walk was twenty miles, sometimes without any other
+subsistence than a pipe of tobacco and a drink of water.
+
+At last they saw three musk oxen grazing by the side of a small lake.
+This seemed a splendid piece of fortune, but, to their mortification,
+before they could get one of them skinned, a tremendous downpour of
+rain ensued, so as to make it out of their power to have a fire, for
+their only form of fuel was moss. And the flesh of the musk ox eaten
+raw was disgusting; it was coarse and tough, and tasted so strongly of
+musk that Hearne could hardly swallow it. "None of our natural wants,"
+he writes, "except thirst, are so distressing or hard to endure as
+hunger.... For want of action, the stomach so far loses its digestive
+powers that, after long fasting, it resumes its office with pain and
+reluctance." After these prolonged fasts, his stomach was scarcely
+able to contain two or three ounces of food without producing the most
+agonizing pain. "We fasted many times two whole days and nights, and
+twice for three days; once for nearly seven days, during which we
+tasted not a mouthful of anything, except a few cranberries, water,
+scraps of old leather, and burnt bones."
+
+At a place 63 deg. north latitude he bought a canoe for a single knife
+"the full value of which did not exceed one penny", having been told
+that they would soon reach rivers through which they could not wade.
+And, moreover, they found an Indian who was willing to carry it. In
+July his guide persuaded him to join an encampment of natives--about
+six hundred persons living in seventy tents--asserting that, as it was
+no use proceeding much farther north in their search for the
+Coppermine River that season, it would be well to winter to the west,
+and resume their northern journey in the spring. The country, though
+quite devoid of trees, and mostly barren rock, was covered with a herb
+or shrub called by the Indian name of Wishakapakka,[2] from which the
+European servants of the Hudson's Bay Company had long been used to
+prepare a kind of tea by steeping it in boiling water. Here there were
+multitudes of reindeer feeding on the _Cladina_ lichen and the Indians
+with Hearne killed large numbers for the food of the party, and also
+for their skins and the marrow in their bones.
+
+[Footnote 2: This word is said to be a corruption or altered form of
+_Wishakagami[-u]_, a liquid or broth (Kri language). The drink made
+from this shrub or herb (_Ledum palustre_) is now known as Labrador
+tea. It is a bitter aromatic infusion.]
+
+The Indian who had volunteered to carry the canoe proved unequal to
+his task. But Hearne found another of his carriers who was willing to
+take the burden. In order, therefore, to be readier with his gun to
+shoot deer, he transferred a portion of his own load to the ex-canoe
+carrier. This portion consisted of the invaluable quadrant and its
+stand, and a bag of gunpowder. The gunpowder was of such importance to
+Hearne and his party that one wonders he made this exchange; for if he
+lost this powder he had no means of killing game, and was entirely
+dependent for food on the troop of Indians with whom he was
+travelling, and whom he knew to be most niggardly and inhospitable.
+Judge, therefore, of his horror when, at the end of a day's march,
+this weakly Indian porter was missing with his load. All night Hearne
+was unable to sleep with anxiety, and the whole of the next day he
+spent searching the rocky ground for miles to discover some sign of
+the missing man. At that season of the year it was like looking for a
+needle in a pottle of hay, for there was no snow, and equally no
+herbage, on which a man's foot could leave traces. However, at last,
+by some miracle, they discovered the load by the banks of a little
+river where a party of Indians had crossed.
+
+Shortly afterwards, leaving his quadrant on its stand for a few
+minutes, whilst he went to eat his dinner, a violent wind arose and
+blew the whole thing on to the rocks, so that the quadrant was
+smashed and rendered useless. On this account he determined once more
+to return to Fort Prince of Wales. The Northern Indians[3] with whom
+Hearne travelled backwards towards the fort were most inhospitable,
+not to say dangerous. They robbed him of most of his goods, and
+refused to allow their women to assist his people to dress the
+reindeer skins out of which it would be necessary shortly to make
+coverings to protect them from the severe cold of the autumn. In fact
+Hearne was in rather a desperate condition by September, 1770, when he
+was joined by a party of Indians under a famous leader, whom he calls
+Matonabi.
+
+[Footnote 3: The Indians of the Athapaskan or Dene group were usually
+called the _Northern Indians_ by the Hudson Bay people, in comparison
+to all the other tribes of the more temperate regions farther south,
+who were known as the _Southern Indians_ (Algonkins, &c.).]
+
+Matonabi, though of Athapaskan stock, had, when a boy, resided several
+years at Prince of Wales's Fort, and learnt a little English, and,
+above all, was a master of several Algonkin dialects or languages, so
+that he could discourse with the Southern Indians. As soon as he heard
+of Hearne's distress he furnished him with a good, warm suit of skins,
+and had the reindeer skins dressed for the Indian carriers who
+accompanied Hearne. In journeying together, Matonabi invited him to
+return once more, with himself as guide, to discover the copper mines.
+
+"He attributed all our misfortunes to the misconduct of my guides, and
+the very plan we pursued, by the desire of the Governor, in not taking
+any women with us on this journey, was, he said, the principal thing
+that occasioned all our wants. 'For,' said he, 'when all the men are
+heavy laden, they can neither hunt nor travel to any considerable
+distance; and in case they meet with success in hunting, who is to
+carry the produce of their labour?' 'Women,' added he, 'were made for
+labour; one of them can carry, or haul, as much as two men can do.
+They also pitch our tents, make and mend our clothing, keep us warm at
+night; and, in fact, there is no such thing as travelling any
+considerable distance, or for any length of time, in this country,
+without their assistance.' 'Women,' said he again, 'though they do
+everything, are maintained at a trifling expense; for as they always
+stand cook, the very licking of their fingers in scarce times is
+sufficient for their subsistence.'
+
+"This," added Hearne, "however odd it may appear, is but too true a
+description of the situation of women in this country: it is at least
+so in appearance; for the women always carry the provisions, though it
+is more than probable they help themselves when the men are not
+present."
+
+On the 7th of December, 1770, Samuel Hearne started again
+from Prince of Wales's Fort, Hudsons Bay, but under very much happier
+circumstances, Matonabi being practically in charge of the expedition.
+
+Unfortunately, on reaching the Egg River, where Matonabi's people had
+made a _cache_ or hiding place in which they had stored a quantity of
+provisions and implements, they found that other Indians had
+discovered this hiding place and robbed it of nearly every article.
+This was a great disappointment to Matonabi's people; but Hearne
+remarks the fortitude with which they bore this, nor did one of them
+ever speak of revenge. But the expedition's scarcity of food obliged
+them to push on from morning till night, day after day; yet the road
+being very bad, and their sledges heavy, they were seldom able to do
+more than eighteen miles a day. Hearne himself writes that he never
+spent so dull a Christmas. For the last three days he had not tasted a
+morsel of anything, except a pipe of tobacco and a drink of snow
+water, yet he had to walk daily from morning till night heavily laden.
+However, at the end of December they reached Island Lake, where they
+entered a camp of Matonabi's people, and here they found a little
+food in the way of fish and dried venison. From Island Lake they made
+their way in a zigzag fashion, stopping often to drive reindeer into
+pounds to secure large supplies of venison and of skins, till, in the
+month of April, 1771, they reached a small lake with an almost
+unpronounceable name, which meant "Little Fish Hill", from a high hill
+which stood at the west end of this sheet of water.
+
+On an island in this lake they pitched their tents, as deer were very
+numerous. During this time also they were busily employed in preparing
+staves of birch wood, about seven or eight feet long, to serve as tent
+poles in the summer, and in the winter to be converted into snowshoe
+frames. Here also Chief Matonabi purchased another wife. He had now
+with him no less than seven, most of whom would for size have made
+good grenadiers. He prided himself much on the height and strength of
+his wives, and would frequently say few women could carry off heavier
+loads. In fact in this country wives were very seldom selected for
+their beauty, but rather for their strength.
+
+"Ask a Northern Indian," wrote Hearne, "'What is beauty?' He will
+answer: 'A broad, flat face, small eyes, high cheekbones, three or
+four broad black lines across each cheek, a low forehead, a broad
+chin, a clumsy hook nose, and a tawny hide.'"
+
+But the model woman amongst these Indians was one who was capable of
+dressing all kinds of skins and making them into clothing, and who was
+strong enough to carry a load of about a hundred pounds in weight in
+summer, and to haul perhaps double that weight on a sledge in winter.
+"As to their temper, it is of little consequence; for the men have a
+wonderful facility in making the most stubborn comply with as much
+alacrity as could possibly be expected." When the men kill any large
+beast the women are always sent to bring it to the tent. When it is
+brought there, every operation it undergoes, such as splitting,
+drying, pounding, is performed by the women. When anything is prepared
+for eating it is the women who cook it; and when it is done, not even
+the wives and daughters of the greatest chiefs in the country are
+served until all the males--even the male slaves--have eaten what they
+think proper. In times of scarcity it was frequently the lot of the
+women to be left without a single mouthful; though, no doubt, they
+took good care to help themselves in secret.
+
+[Illustration: SAMUEL HEARNE; ALEXANDER MACKENZIE]
+
+Hearne mentions that in this country among the Northern Indians the
+names of the boys were various and generally derived from some place,
+or season of the year, or animal; whilst the names of the girls were
+chiefly taken from some part or property of a marten,[4] such as the
+white marten, the black marten, the summer marten, the marten's head,
+foot, heart, or tail.
+
+[Footnote 4: A fur-bearing animal (_Mustela americana_), very like the
+British pine marten.]
+
+From the Lake of Little Fish Hill the party moved on to Lake Clowey,
+and here the Northern Indians set to work to build their canoes in the
+warm and dry weather, which was about to come in at the end of May.
+These canoes were very slight and simple in construction and
+wonderfully light, which was necessary, for some of the northern
+portages might be a hundred to one hundred and fifty miles in length,
+over which the canoes would have to be carried by the Indians. All the
+tools employed in those days, in building such canoes and making
+snowshoes and all the other furniture and utensils of Indian life,
+consisted of a _hatchet_, a _knife_, a _file_, and an _awl_ obtained
+from the stores of the Hudson's Bay Company. In the use of these tools
+they were so dexterous that everything they manufactured was done with
+a neatness which could not be excelled by the most expert mechanic.
+These northern canoes were flat-bottomed, with straight, upright
+sides, and sharp prow and peak. The stern part of the canoe was wider
+than the rest in order to receive the baggage. The average length of
+the canoe would be from twelve to thirteen feet, and the breadth in
+the widest part about two feet. Generally but a single paddle was
+used, and that rather attenuated. When transporting the canoes from
+one river to another, a strong band of bark or fibre would be fastened
+round the thwarts of the canoe, and then slung over the breast and
+shoulders of the Indian that was carrying it.
+
+From Lake Clowey the northern progress was made on foot, steady and
+fatiguing walking over the barren grounds. The wooded region had been
+left behind to the south; but for a distance of about twenty miles
+outside the living woods there was a belt of dry stumps more or less
+ancient. According to Hearne, these vestiges of trees to the north of
+the present forest limit were an indication that the climate had grown
+colder during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, because,
+according to the traditions of the Indians and the remembrances of
+their old people, the forest had formerly extended much farther to the
+north.
+
+Whilst they were staying for the canoe building at Lake Clowey, Hearne
+was a great deal bothered by the domestic troubles of his Indian
+friend Matonabi. This man had been constantly trying to add to his
+stock of wives as he passed up country, and at Clowey he had met the
+former husband of one of these women whom he had carried off by force.
+The man ventured to reproach him, whereupon Matonabi went into his
+tent, opened one of his wives' bundles, and with the greatest
+composure took out a new, long, box-handled knife; then proceeded to
+the tent of the man who had complained, and without any parley
+whatever took him by the collar and attempted to stab him to death.
+The man had already received three bad knife wounds in the back before
+other people, rushing in to his assistance, prevented Matonabi from
+finishing him. After this, Matonabi returned to his tent as though
+nothing had happened, called for water, washed the blood off his hands
+and knife, and smoked his pipe as usual, asking Hearne if he did not
+think he had done quite right!
+
+"It has ever been the custom among those people for the men to wrestle
+for any woman to whom they are attached; and of course the strongest
+party always carries off the prize. A weak man, unless he be a good
+hunter and well beloved, is seldom permitted to keep a wife that a
+stronger man thinks worth his notice; for at any time when the wives
+of those strong wrestlers are heavy laden either with furs or
+provisions, they make no scruple of tearing any other man's wife from
+his bosom and making her bear a part of his luggage. This custom
+prevails throughout all their tribes, and causes a great spirit of
+emulation among their youth, who are upon all occasions, from their
+childhood, trying their strength and skill in wrestling. This enables
+them to protect their property, and particularly their wives, from the
+hands of those powerful ravishers, some of whom make almost a
+livelihood by taking what they please from the weaker parties without
+making them any return. Indeed it is represented as an act of great
+generosity if they condescend to make an unequal exchange, as, in
+general, abuse and insult are the only return for the loss which is
+sustained.
+
+"The way in which they tear the women and other property from one
+another, though it has the appearance of the greatest brutality, can
+scarcely be called fighting. I never knew any of them receive the
+least hurt in these _rencontres_; the whole business consists in
+hauling each other about by the hair of the head; they are seldom
+known either to strike or kick one another. It is not uncommon for one
+of them to cut off his hair and to grease his ears immediately before
+the contest begins. This, however, is done privately; and it is
+sometimes truly laughable to see one of the parties strutting about
+with an air of great importance, and calling out: 'Where is he? Why
+does he not come out?' when the other will bolt out with a clean-shorn
+head and greased ears, rush on his antagonist, seize him by the hair,
+and, though perhaps a much weaker man, soon drag him to the ground,
+while the stronger is not able to lay hold of him. It is very frequent
+on those occasions for each party to have spies, to watch the other's
+motions, which puts them more on a footing of equality. For want of
+hair to pull, they seize each other about the waist, with legs wide
+extended, and try their strength by endeavouring to vie who can first
+throw the other down."
+
+"Early in the morning of the twenty-ninth 'Captain' Keelshies (an
+Indian) joined us. He delivered to me a packet of letters and a
+two-quart keg of French brandy, but assured me that the powder, shot,
+tobacco, knives, &c, which he received at the fort for me, were all
+expended. He endeavoured to make some apology for this by saying that
+some of his relations died in the winter, and that he had, according
+to native custom, thrown all his own things away; after which he was
+obliged to have recourse to my ammunition and other goods to support
+himself and a numerous family. The very affecting manner in which he
+related this story, often crying like a child, was a great proof of
+his extreme sorrow, which he wished to persuade me arose from the
+recollection of his having embezzled so much of my property; but I was
+of a different opinion, and attributed his grief to arise from the
+remembrance of his deceased relations. However, as a small recompense
+for my loss, he presented me with four ready-dressed moose skins,
+which was, he said, the only retribution he could then make. The moose
+skins, though not the twentieth part of the value of the goods which
+he had embezzled, were in reality more acceptable to me than the
+ammunition and the other articles would have been, on account of their
+great use as shoe leather, which at that time was a very scarce
+article with us, whereas we had plenty of powder and shot."
+
+During Hearne's stay at Lake Clowey a great number of Indians entered
+into a combination with those of his party to travel together to the
+Coppermine River, with no other intent than to murder the Eskimo who
+frequented that river in considerable numbers. Before leaving Lake
+Clowey all the Northern Indians who had assembled there prepared their
+arms for the encounter, and did not forget to make shields before they
+left the woods of Clowey. These shields were composed of thin boards
+about three-quarters of an inch thick, two feet broad, and three feet
+long, and were intended to ward off the arrows of the Eskimo.
+
+When the now large expedition reached a river with the fearful name of
+Congecathawhachaga, they found a portion of the tribe known as Copper
+Indians,[5] and these had never before seen a white man. They gave a
+very friendly reception to Hearne on account of Matonabi.
+
+[Footnote 5: Or "Tantsawh[-u]ts". Like the "Dog-rib" Indians,
+mentioned farther on, they belonged to the "Northern", Tinne,
+Athabaskan type.]
+
+"They expressed as much desire to examine me from top to toe as a
+European naturalist would a nondescript animal. They, however, found
+and pronounced me to be a perfect human being, except in the colour of
+my hair and eyes; the former, they said, was like the stained hair of
+a buffalo's tail, and the latter, being light, were like those of a
+gull. The whiteness of my skin also was, in their opinion, no
+ornament, as they said it resembled meat which had been sodden in
+water till all the blood was extracted. On the whole I was viewed as
+so great a curiosity in this part of the world that during my stay
+there, whenever I combed my head, some or other of them never failed
+to ask for the hairs that came off, which they carefully wrapped up,
+saying: 'When I see you again, you shall again see your hair'."
+
+The Copper Indians sent a detachment of their men in the double
+capacity of guides and warriors, and the whole party now turned
+towards the north-west, and after some days' walking reached the Stony
+Mountains. "Surely no part of the world better deserves that name",
+wrote, Hearne. They appeared to be a confused heap of stones quite
+inaccessible to the foot of man. Nevertheless, with the Copper Indians
+as guides, they got over this range, though not without being obliged
+frequently to crawl on hands and knees. This range, however, had been
+so often crossed by Indians coming to and fro that there was a very
+visible path the whole way, the rocks, even in the most difficult
+places, being worn quite smooth. By the side of the path there were
+several large, flat stones covered with thousands of small pebbles.
+These marks had been gradually built up by passengers going to and fro
+from the copper mines in the far north. The weather all this time,
+although the month was July, was very bad--constant snow, sleet, and
+rain. Hearne seldom had a dry garment of any kind, and in the caves
+where they lodged at night the water was constantly dropping from the
+roof. Their food all this time was raw venison. One snowstorm which
+fell on them was heavier than was customary even in the winter, but at
+last the weather cleared up and sunshine made the journey far more
+tolerable.
+
+As they descended the northern side of the Stony Mountains they
+crossed a large lake, passing over its unmelted ice, and called it
+Musk-ox Lake, from the number of these creatures which they found
+grazing on the margin of it.
+
+This was not the first time that Hearne had seen the musk ox. These
+animals were wont to come down as far south as the shores of Hudson
+Bay.
+
+On the northern side of the Stony Mountains Hearne was taken by the
+Indians to see a place which he called Grizzly-bear Hill, which took
+its name from the numbers of those animals (presumably what we call
+grizzly bears) which resorted here for the purpose of bringing forth
+their young in a cave in this hill. On the east side of the adjoining
+marsh Hearne was amazed at the sight of the many hills and dry ridges,
+which were turned over like ploughed land by the long claws of these
+bears in searching for the ground squirrels and mice which constitute
+a favourite part of their food. It was surprising to see the enormous
+stones rolled out of their beds by the bears on these occasions.
+
+As they neared the Coppermine River the weather became very warm, and
+the country had a good supply of firewood. Reindeer were abundant,
+and, the Indians having killed some of these, Hearne sat down to the
+most comfortable meal he had had for some months.
+
+It was a kind of haggis, called by the Amerindians "biati", made with
+the blood of the reindeer, a good quantity of fat shredded small, some
+of the tenderest of the flesh, together with the heart and lungs, cut,
+or more commonly torn, into small slivers--all which would be put into
+the stomach, and roasted by being suspended before the fire by a
+string. Care had to be taken that it did not get too much heat at
+first, as the bag would thereby be liable to be burnt and the contents
+be let out. When it was sufficiently done it emitted steam, "which",
+writes Hearne, "is as much as to say: 'Come, eat me now'; and if it be
+taken in time, before the blood and other contents are too much done,
+it is certainly a most delicious morsel, even without pepper, salt, or
+any other seasoning."
+
+It was now almost impossible to sleep at night for the mosquitoes,
+which swarmed in myriads as soon as the warmth of the sun melted the
+ice and snow. When Hearne actually reached the banks of the Coppermine
+River he was a little disappointed at its appearance, as it seemed to
+be only one hundred and eighty yards wide, shallow, and full of
+shoals. The Chipewayan Amerindians with him now sent out their spies
+to try and locate the Eskimo. Presently they found that there were
+five tents of them on the west side of the river.
+
+"When the Indians received this intelligence no further attendance or
+attention was paid to my survey, but their whole thoughts were
+immediately engaged in planning the best method of attack, and how
+they might steal on the poor Eskimo the ensuing night and kill them
+all when asleep. To accomplish this bloody design more effectually the
+Indians thought it necessary to cross the river as soon as possible;
+and, by the account of the spies, it appeared that no part was more
+convenient for the purpose than that where we had met them, it being
+there very smooth, and at a considerable distance from any fall.
+Accordingly, after the Indians had put all their guns, spears,
+shields, &c, in good order, we crossed the river....
+
+"When we arrived on the west side of the river, each painted the front
+of his shield; some with the figure of the sun, others with that of
+the moon, several with different kinds of birds and beasts of prey,
+and many with the images of imaginary beings, which, according to
+their silly notions, are the inhabitants of the different elements,
+Earth, Sea, Air, &c. On enquiring the reason of their doing so, I
+learned that each man painted his shield with the image of that being
+on which he relied most for success in the intended engagement. Some
+were content with a single representation; while others, doubtful, as
+I suppose, of the quality and power of any single being, had their
+shields covered to the very margin with a group of hieroglyphics quite
+unintelligible to everyone except the painter. Indeed, from the hurry
+in which this business was necessarily done, the want of every colour
+but red and black, and the deficiency of skill in the artist, most of
+those paintings had more the appearance of a number of accidental
+blotches, than 'of anything that is on the earth, or in the water
+under the earth'....
+
+"After this piece of superstition was completed, we began to advance
+towards the Eskimo tents; but were very careful to avoid crossing any
+hills, or talking loud, for fear of being seen or overheard by the
+inhabitants."
+
+When the attacking party was within two hundred yards of the Eskimo
+tents, they lay in ambush for some time, watching the motions of their
+intended victims; and here the Indians wanted Hearne (for whom they
+had a sincere affection) to stay till the fight was over; but to this
+he would not consent, lest, when the Eskimo came to be surprised, they
+should try every way to escape, and, finding him alone, kill him in
+their desperation.
+
+While they lay in ambush the Northern Indians performed the last
+ceremonies which were thought necessary before the engagement. These
+chiefly consisted in painting their faces: some all black, some all
+red, and others with a mixture of the two; and to prevent their hair
+from blowing into their eyes, it was either tied before or behind, and
+on both sides, or else cut short all round. The next thing they
+considered was to make themselves as light as possible for running,
+which they did by pulling off their stockings, and either cutting off
+the sleeves of their jackets, or rolling them up close to their
+armpits; and though the mosquitoes at that time "were so numerous as
+to surpass all credibility", yet some of the Indians actually pulled
+off their jackets and entered the lists nearly or quite naked. Hearne,
+fearing he might have occasion to run with the rest, thought it also
+advisable to pull off his stockings and cap, and to tie his hair as
+close up as possible.
+
+By the time the Indians had made themselves thus "completely
+frightful", it was nearly one in the morning. Then, finding all the
+Eskimo quiet in their tents, they rushed forth from their ambuscade,
+and fell on the poor, unsuspecting creatures, unperceived till they
+were close to the very eaves of the tents. A horrible massacre
+forthwith took place, while Hearne stood neutral in the rear.
+
+"The scene was shocking beyond description. The poor unhappy victims
+were surprised in the midst of their sleep, and had neither time nor
+power to make any resistance; men, women, and children, in all upward
+of twenty, ran out of their tents stark naked, and endeavoured to make
+their escape; but the Indians having possession of all the landside,
+to no place could they fly for shelter. One alternative only remained,
+that of jumping into the river; but, as none of them attempted it,
+they all fell a sacrifice to Indian barbarity!
+
+"The shrieks and groans of the poor expiring wretches were truly
+dreadful; and my horror was much increased at seeing a young girl,
+seemingly about eighteen years of age, killed so near me, that when
+the first spear was stuck into her side she fell down at my feet, and
+twisted round my legs, so that it was with difficulty that I could
+disengage myself from her dying grasp. As two Indian men pursued this
+unfortunate victim, I solicited very hard for her life; but the
+murderers made no reply till they had stuck both their spears through
+her body, and transfixed her to the ground. They then looked me
+sternly in the face, and began to ridicule me by asking if I wanted an
+Eskimo wife; and paid not the smallest regard to the shrieks and agony
+of the poor wretch, who was twining round their spears like an eel!"
+
+On his requesting that they would at least put the woman out of her
+misery, one of the Indians hastily drew his spear from the place where
+it was first lodged, and pierced it through her breast near the heart.
+The love of life, however, even in this most miserable state, was so
+predominant, that "though this might justly be called the most
+merciful act that could be done for the poor creature, it seemed to be
+unwelcome, for, though much exhausted by pain and loss of blood, she
+made several efforts to ward off the friendly blow."... "My own
+situation and the terror of my mind at beholding this butchery,
+cannot easily be conceived, much less described; though I summed up
+all the fortitude I was master of on the occasion, it was with
+difficulty that I could refrain from tears; and I am confident that my
+features must have feelingly expressed how sincerely I was affected at
+the barbarous scene I then witnessed; even at this hour I cannot
+reflect on the transactions of that horrid day without shedding
+tears."
+
+There were other Eskimo on the opposite shore of the river. Though
+they took up their arms to defend themselves, they did not attempt to
+abandon their tents, for they were utterly unacquainted with the
+nature of firearms; so much so that when the bullets struck the
+ground, they ran in crowds to see what was sent them, and seemed
+anxious to examine all the pieces of lead which they found flattened
+against the rocks. At length one of the Eskimo men was shot in the
+calf of his leg, which put them in great confusion. They all
+immediately embarked in their little canoes, and paddled to a shoal in
+the middle of the river, which being somewhat more than a gunshot from
+any part of the shore, put them out of the reach of our barbarians.
+
+"When the savages discovered that the surviving Eskimo had gained the
+shore above-mentioned, the Northern Indians began to plunder the
+tents of the deceased of all the copper utensils they could find; such
+as hatchets, bayonets, knives, &c, after which they assembled on the
+top of an adjacent hill, and, standing all in a cluster, so as to form
+a solid circle, with their spears erect in the air, gave many shouts
+of victory, constantly clashing their spears against each other, and
+frequently calling out _tima! tima!_[6] by way of derision to the poor
+surviving Eskimo, who were standing on the shoal almost knee deep in
+water."
+
+[Footnote 6: "_Tima_ in the Eskimo language is a friendly word similar
+to _what cheer_?"--Hearne.]
+
+"It ought to have been mentioned in its proper place," writes Hearne,
+after describing further atrocities, "that in making our retreat up
+the river, after killing the Eskimo on the west side, we saw an old
+woman sitting by the side of the water killing salmon, which lay at
+the foot of the fall as thick as a shoal of herrings. Whether from the
+noise of the fall, or a natural defect in the old woman's hearing, it
+is hard to determine, but certain it is, she had no knowledge of the
+tragical scene which had been so lately transacted at the tents,
+though she was not more than two hundred yards from the place. When we
+first perceived her she seemed perfectly at ease, and was entirely
+surrounded with the produce of her labour. From her manner of
+behaviour, and the appearance of her eyes, which were as red as blood,
+it is more than probable that her sight was not very good; for she
+scarcely discerned that the Indians were enemies, till they were
+within twice the length of their spears of her. It was in vain that
+she attempted to fly, for the wretches of my crew transfixed her to
+the ground in a few seconds, and butchered her in the most savage
+manner. There was scarcely a man among them who had not a thrust at
+her with his spear; and many in doing this aimed at torture rather
+than immediate death, as they not only poked out her eyes, but stabbed
+her in many parts very remote from those which are vital.
+
+"It may appear strange that a person supposed to be almost blind
+should be employed in the business of fishing, and particularly with
+any degree of success; but when the multitude of the fish is taken
+into the account, the wonder will cease. Indeed they were so numerous
+at the foot of the fall, that when a light pole, armed with a few
+spikes, which was the instrument the old woman used, was put under
+water, and hauled up with a jerk, it was scarcely possible to miss
+them. Some of my Indians tried the method, for curiosity, with the old
+woman's staff, and seldom got less than two at a jerk, sometimes
+three or four. Those fish, though very fine, and beautifully red, are
+but small, seldom weighing more (as near as I could judge) than six or
+seven pounds, and in general much less. Their numbers at this place
+were almost incredible, perhaps equal to anything that is related of
+the salmon in Kamschatka, or any other part of the world."
+
+Hearne seems to have been so intent on geographical discovery that he
+did not allow his feelings to influence him very long against the
+society of his Amerindian companions, who apparently sat down and ate
+a dish of salmon with him an hour or so after they had killed this
+last old woman! The Indians now told him that they were ready again to
+assist him in making an end of his survey, and apparently on foot, for
+the Coppermine River was not navigable here, even for a boat.
+
+Thus, first of all white men coming overland, he reached the sea coast
+of the Arctic Ocean. The tide was then out, and a good deal of the sea
+surface was covered with ice, on which he observed many seals lying
+about. Along the sea coast and river banks were many birds; gulls,
+divers or loons, golden plovers, green plovers, curlews, geese, and
+swans. The country a little way inland was obviously inhabited by
+numbers of musk oxen, reindeer, bears, wolves, gluttons, foxes, polar
+hares, snowy owls, ravens, ptarmigans, gopher ground-squirrels, stoats
+(ermines), and mice. In this region also he saw a bird which the
+Copper Indians called the Alarm Bird. He tells us that in size and
+colour it resembles a "Cobadekoock"; but as none of us know what that
+is, we can only go on to imagine that the Alarm Bird was a kind of
+owl, as Hearne says it was "of the owl genus". When it perceived
+people or beasts it directed its way towards them immediately, and,
+after hovering over them for some time, flew over them in circles or
+went away with them in the same direction as they walked. All this
+time the bird made a loud screaming noise like the cry of a child.
+These owls were sometimes accustomed to follow the Indians for a whole
+day, and the Copper Indians believed that they would in some way
+conduct them to herds of deer and musk oxen, which without the birds'
+assistance might never be found. They also warned Indians of the
+arrival of strangers. The Eskimo, according to Hearne, paid no heed to
+these birds, and it was thus that they allowed themselves to be
+surprised and massacred, for if they had looked out from the direction
+in which the Chipewayans were lying in ambush, they would have seen a
+large flock of these owls continually flying about and making
+sufficient noise to awaken any man out of the soundest sleep.
+
+The country on either side of the estuary of the Coppermine River was
+not without vegetation. There were stunted pines and tufts of dwarf
+willows, and the ground was covered with a lichen or herb, which the
+English of the Hudson's Bay Company knew by the name of
+Wishakapaka,[7] and which they dried and used instead of tea. There
+were also cranberry and heathberry bushes, but without fruit. The
+scrub grew gradually thinner and smaller as one approached the sea,
+and at the mouth of the river there was nothing but barren hills and
+marsh.
+
+[Footnote 7: _Ledum palustre_.]
+
+The unfortunate Eskimo of this region, judging by the examples seen by
+Hearne, were of low stature, with broad thickset bodies. Their
+complexion was a dirty copper colour, but some of the women were
+almost fair and ruddy. Their dress, their arms and fishing tackle were
+precisely similar to those of the Greenland Eskimo. Their tents were
+made of deerskins, and were pitched in a circular form. But these were
+only their summer habitations, those for the winter being partly
+underground, with a roof framework of poles, over which skins were
+stretched; and of course Nature did the rest, covering the roof with
+several feet of snow. Owing to being almost entirely surrounded by
+snow, these winter houses were very warm. Their household furniture
+consisted of stone kettles and wooden troughs of various sizes, also
+dishes, scoops, and spoons made of musk-ox horns. The stone kettles
+(which some people think they borrowed from the Norse discoverers of
+America in the eleventh century) were as large as to be capable of
+containing five or six gallons. They were, of course, carved out of
+solid blocks of stone, every one of them being ornamented with neat
+moulding round the rims, and some of the large ones with fluted work
+at each corner. In shape they were oblong, wider at the top than the
+bottom, and strong handles of solid stone were left at each end to
+lift them up.
+
+The Eskimo hatchets were made of a thick lump of copper about five or
+six inches long, and one and a half to two inches broad. They were
+bevelled away at one end like a chisel. This piece of copper was
+lashed into the end of a piece of wood about twelve or fourteen inches
+long. The men's daggers and the women's knives were also made of
+copper. The former were in shape like the ace of spades, and the
+handle was made of reindeer antler.
+
+With the Eskimo was a fine breed of dogs, with erect ears, sharp
+noses, bushy tails. They were all tethered to stones to prevent them
+from eating the flesh that was spread all over the rocks to dry.
+Apparently, these beautiful dogs were left behind still tethered by
+the wicked Amerindians, after the massacre of their owners. Hearne,
+however, noticed with these Coppermine River Eskimo that the men were
+entirely bald, having all their head hair pulled out by the roots. The
+women wore their hair at the usual length.
+
+Before leaving this region to return southwards, Hearne was led by the
+Indians to one of the copper mines about thirty miles south-east of
+the river mouth. It was no more than a jumble of rocks and gravel,
+which had been rent in many ways, apparently by an earthquake shock.
+This mine was at the time of Hearne's visit very poor in copper, much
+of the metal having already been removed.
+
+The Copper Indians set a great value on this native metal even at the
+present day, and prefer it to iron for almost every use except that of
+a hatchet, a knife, and an awl. "For these three necessary
+implements", writes Hearne, "copper makes but a very poor substitute."
+
+On the return journey, in the course of which the Great Slave
+Lake--which Hearne calls "Lake Athapuscow"--was discovered and crossed
+on the ice, the party travelled so hard and stayed so seldom to rest
+that Hearne suffered terribly with his legs and feet. "I had so little
+power to direct my feet when walking, that I frequently knocked them
+against the stones with such force, as not only to jar and disorder
+them, but my legs also; and the nails of my toes were bruised to such
+a degree, that several of them festered and dropped off. To add to
+this mishap, the skin was entirely chafed off from the tops of both my
+feet, and between every toe; so that the sand and gravel, which I
+could by no means exclude, irritated the raw parts so much, that for a
+whole day before we arrived at the women's tents, I left the print of
+my feet in blood almost at every step I took. Several of the Indians
+began to complain that their feet also were sore; but, on examination,
+not one of them was the twentieth part in so bad a state as mine. This
+being the first time I had been in such a situation, or seen anybody
+foot-foundered, I was much alarmed, and under great apprehensions for
+the consequences. Though I was but little fatigued in body, yet the
+excruciating pain I suffered when walking had such an effect on my
+spirits, that if the Indians had continued to travel two or three days
+longer at that unmerciful rate, I must unavoidably have been left
+behind; for my feet were in many places quite honeycombed by the dirt
+and gravel eating into the raw flesh."
+
+"Among the various superstitious customs of those people, it is worth
+remarking, and ought to have been mentioned in its proper place, that
+immediately after my companions had killed the Eskimo at the Copper
+River, they considered themselves in a state of uncleanness, which
+induced them to practise some very curious unusual ceremonies. In the
+first place, all who were absolutely concerned in the murder were
+prohibited from cooking any kind of victuals, either for themselves or
+others. As luckily there were two in company who had not shed blood,
+they were employed always as cooks till we joined the women. This
+circumstance was exceedingly favourable on my side; for had there been
+no persons of the above description in company, that task, I was told,
+would have fallen on me; which would have been no less fatiguing and
+troublesome, than humiliating and vexatious.
+
+"When the victuals were cooked, all the murderers took a kind of red
+earth, or ochre, and painted all the space between the nose and chin,
+as well as the greater part of their cheeks, almost to the ears,
+before they would taste a bit, and would not drink out of any other
+dish, or smoke out of any other pipe, but their own; and none of the
+others seemed willing to drink or smoke out of theirs."
+
+He goes on to relate that they practised the custom of painting the
+mouth and part of the cheeks before each meal, and drinking and
+smoking out of their own utensils, till the winter began to set in,
+and during the whole of that time they would never kiss any of their
+wives or children. They refrained also from eating many parts of the
+deer and other animals, particularly the head, entrails, and blood;
+and during their "uncleanness" their food was never cooked in water,
+but dried in the sun, eaten quite raw, or broiled. When the time
+arrived that was to put an end to these ceremonies, the men, without a
+female being present, made a fire at some distance from the tents,
+into which they threw all their ornaments, pipe stems, and dishes,
+which were soon consumed to ashes; after which a feast was prepared,
+consisting of such articles as they had long been prohibited from
+eating, and when all was over each man was at liberty to eat, drink,
+and smoke as he pleased, "and also to kiss his wives and children at
+discretion, which they seemed to do with more raptures than I had ever
+known them to do it either before or since".
+
+On the 11th of January, as some of Hearne's companions were hunting,
+they saw the track of a strange snowshoe, which they followed, and at
+a considerable distance came to a little hut, where they discovered a
+young woman sitting alone. As they found that she understood their
+language, they brought her with them to the tents. On examination she
+proved to be one of the Western Dog-rib Indians, who had been taken
+prisoner by the Athapaska Indians in the summer of 1770. From these,
+in the following summer, she had escaped, with the intention of
+returning to her own country, but the distance being so great, and the
+way being unknown to her, she forgot the track, so she built the hut
+in which they found her, to protect her from the weather during the
+winter, and here she had resided from the first setting in of the cold
+weather. For seven months she had seen no human face. During all this
+time she had supported herself in comparative comfort by snaring
+grouse, rabbits, and squirrels; she had also killed two or three
+beaver, and some porcupines. That she did not seem to have been in
+want was evident, as she had a small stock of provisions by her when
+she was discovered, and was in good health and condition; and Hearne
+thought her "one of the finest women", of the real Indian type, that
+he had seen in any part of North America.
+
+"The methods practised by this poor creature to procure a livelihood
+were truly admirable, and are great proofs that necessity is the real
+mother of invention. When the few deer sinews that she had an
+opportunity of taking with her were all expended in making snares and
+sewing her clothing, she had nothing to supply their place but the
+sinews of the rabbits' [he means hares'] legs and feet; these she
+twisted together for that purpose with great dexterity and success.
+The rabbits, &c, which she caught in those snares, not only furnished
+her with a comfortable subsistence, but of the skins she made a suit
+of neat and warm clothing for the winter. It is scarcely possible to
+conceive that a person in her forlorn situation could be so composed
+as to be capable of contriving or executing anything that was not
+absolutely necessary to her existence; but there were sufficient
+proofs that she had extended her care much farther, as all her
+clothing, beside being calculated for real service, showed great taste
+and exhibited no little variety of ornament. The materials, though
+rude, were very curiously wrought and so judiciously placed as to make
+the whole of her garb have a very pleasing, though rather romantic,
+appearance.
+
+"Her leisure hours from hunting had been employed in twisting the
+inner rind or bark of willows into small lines, like net twine, of
+which she had some hundred fathoms by her; with this she intended to
+make a fishing net as soon as the spring advanced. It is of the inner
+bark of willows, twisted in this manner, that the Dog-rib Indians make
+their fishing nets, and they are much preferable to those made by the
+Northern Indians.
+
+"Five or six inches of an iron hoop, made into a knife, and the shank
+of an arrowhead of iron, which served her as an awl, were all the
+metals this poor woman had with her when she eloped, and with these
+implements she had made herself complete snowshoes, and several other
+useful articles.
+
+"Her method of making a fire was equally singular and curious, having
+no other materials for that purpose than two hard sulphurous stones.
+These, by long friction and hard knocking, produced a few sparks,
+which at length communicated to some touchwood (a species of fungus
+which grew on decayed poplars); but as this method was attended with
+great trouble, and not always with success, she did not suffer her
+fire to go out all the winter...."
+
+Hearne regained Prince of Wales's Fort on Hudson Bay in June, 1772.
+Subsequently he was dispatched, in the year 1774, to found the first
+great inland trading station and fort of the Hudson's Bay Company
+which was established at any considerable distance westward of Hudson
+Bay--the first step, in fact, which led to this chartered company
+becoming in time the ruler and colonizing agent of Alberta and British
+Columbia. Hearne chose for his station of "Cumberland House" a site at
+the entrance to Pine Island Lake on the lower Saskatchewan River.
+
+In 1775 he became Governor of his old starting-point on Hudson
+Bay--Fort Prince of Wales. During the American war with France, the
+French admiral, La Perouse, made a daring excursion into Hudson Bay
+(1782), and summoned Hearne to surrender his fort. This he felt
+obliged to do, not deeming his small garrison strong enough to resist
+the French force.
+
+Samuel Hearne returned to England in 1787, and died (probably in
+London) in 1792.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Alexander Mackenzie's Journeys
+
+
+It has been already mentioned that the conquest of Canada by the
+British led to a great increase in travel for the development of the
+fur trade. Previously, under the French, permission was only granted
+to a few persons to penetrate into the interior to trade with the
+natives, commerce being regarded as a special privilege or monopoly to
+be sold or granted by the Crown. But after the British had completely
+assumed control, nothing was done to bar access to the interior. So
+long as the Catholic missionaries had been practically placed in
+charge of the Amerindians, and had served as buffers between them and
+unscrupulous traders, they--the Amerindians--had been saved from two
+scourges, smallpox and strong drink.[1] But now, unhappily, all
+restrictions about trade in alcohol were removed. In their eagerness
+to obtain ardent spirits and "high" wine, the Indians eagerly welcomed
+British traders and French Canadians in their midst. The fur trade
+developed fast. The Hudson's Bay Company had established its trading
+stations only in the vicinity or on the coasts of that inland sea, far
+away from the two Canadas, from the Middle West and the vast North
+West. After a little reluctance and suspicion, most of the northern
+Amerindian tribes were persuaded to deflect their caravans from the
+routes leading to Hudson Bay, and to meet the British, the New
+Englander ("Bostonian"), and the French Canadian traders at various
+rendezvous on Lake Winnipeg and its tributary lakes and rivers. The
+principal depot and starting-point for the north-west traders was
+_Grand Portage_, on the north-west coast of Lake Superior, whence
+canoes and goods were transferred by a nine-mile portage to the waters
+flowing to Rainy Lake, and so onwards to the Winnipeg River and the
+vast system of the Saskatchewan, the Red River, and the Assiniboine.
+
+[Footnote 1: See Sir Alexander Mackenzie's _Travels_, p. 5.]
+
+Amongst the pioneers in this new development of the fur trade, who
+became also the great explorers of northernmost America, was Alexander
+Henry (already described), THOMAS CURRIE, JAMES FINLAY, PETER POND,[2]
+JOSEPH and BENJAMIN FROBISHER, and SIMON M'TAVISH. These and some of
+their supporting merchants in Montreal resolved to form a great
+fur-trading association, the celebrated North-west Trading Company,
+and did so in 1784.
+
+[Footnote 2: Peter Pond was a native of Connecticut, and in the
+opinion of his trading associates rather a ruffian. He was strongly
+suspected of having murdered an amiable Swiss fur trader named Wadin,
+and at a later date he actually did kill his trading partner, Ross.]
+
+Two of the Montreal merchant firms participating in this confederation
+(Gregory and M'Leod) were inclined to play a somewhat independent
+part, and called themselves the New North-west Trading Company. They
+had the foresight to engage as their principal agents in the
+north-west (Sir) ALEXANDER MACKENZIE and his cousin RODERICK
+MACKENZIE. Both these young men were Highlanders, probably of Norse
+origin. Alexander Mackenzie was born at Stornoway, in the Island of
+Lewis (Hebrides), in 1763. He was only sixteen when he started for
+Canada to take up a position as clerk in the partnership concern of
+Gregory & M'Leod at Montreal.
+
+It may be said here briefly that this "New North-west Company" went at
+first by the nickname of "The Little Company" or "The Potties", this
+last being an Amerindian corruption of the French _Les Petits_. Later
+it developed into the "X.Y. Company", or "Sir Alexander Mackenzie &
+Co.". Although much in rivalry with the original "Nor'-westers", the
+rivalry never degenerated into the actual warfare, the indefensible
+deeds of violence and treachery, which later on were perpetrated by
+the Hudson's Bay Company on the agents of the North-west, and returned
+with interest by the latter. Often the New North-west agents and the
+original Nor'-westers would camp or build side by side, and share
+equably in the fur trade with the natives; their canoemen and
+French-Canadian _voyageurs_ would sing their boating songs in chorus
+as they paddled side by side across the lakes and down the rivers, or
+marched with their heavy loads over the portages and along the trails.
+Eventually, in 1804, the X.Y. Company and the North-west fused into
+the North-west Trading Company, which until 1821 fought a hard fight
+against the encroachments and jealousy of the Hudson's Bay Company.
+
+During the period, however, from 1785 to 1812 the men of the
+north-west, of Montreal, and Grand Portage (as contrasted with those
+of Hudson Bay) effected a revolution in Canadian geography. They
+played the role of imperial pioneers with a stubborn heroism, with
+little thought of personal gain, and in most cases with full
+foreknowledge and appreciation of what would accrue to the British
+Empire through their success. It is impossible to relate the
+adventures of all of them within the space of any one book, or even of
+several volumes. Moreover, this has been done already, not only in
+their own published journals and books, but in the admirable works of
+Elliot Coues, Dr. George Bryce, Dr. S.J. Dawson, Alexander Ross, and
+others. I must confine myself here to a description of the adventures
+of Sir Alexander Mackenzie, with a glance at incidents recorded by
+Simon Fraser and by Alexander Henry the Younger.
+
+Mackenzie, having been appointed at the age of twenty-two a partner in
+the New North-west Company, proceeded to Grand Portage in 1785, and
+by the year 1788 (after founding Fort Chipewayan on Lake Athabaska)
+conceived the idea of following the mysterious Slave River to its
+ultimate outlet into the Arctic or the Pacific Ocean. He left Fort
+Chipewayan on June 3, 1789, accompanied by four French-Canadian
+_voyageurs_, two French-Canadian women (wives of two _voyageurs_), a
+young German named John Steinbruck, and an Amerindian guide known as
+"English Chief". This last was a follower and pupil of the Matonabi
+who had guided Hearne to the Coppermine River and the eastern end of
+the Great Slave Lake. The party of eight whites packed themselves and
+their goods into one birch-bark canoe. English Chief and his two
+wives, together with an additional Amerindian guide and a hunter,
+travelled in a second and smaller canoe. The expedition, moreover, was
+accompanied as far as Slave River by LE ROUX, a celebrated
+French-Canadian exploring trader who worked for the X.Y. Company. The
+journey down the Slave River was rendered difficult and dangerous by
+the rapids. Several times the canoes and their loads had to be lugged
+past these falls by an overland portage. Mosquitoes tortured the whole
+party almost past bearance. The leaders of the expedition and their
+Indian hunter had to be busily engaged (the Indian women also) in
+hunting and fishing in order to get food for the support of the party,
+who seemed to have had little reserve provisions with them. Pemmican
+was made of fish dried in the sun and rubbed to powder. Swans, geese,
+cranes, and ducks fell to the guns; an occasional beaver was also
+added to the pot. When they reached the Great Slave Lake they found
+its islands--notwithstanding their barren appearance--covered with
+bushes producing a great variety of palatable fruits--cranberries,
+juniper berries, raspberries, partridge berries, gooseberries, and the
+"pathogomenan", a fruit like a raspberry.
+
+Slave Lake, however, was still, in mid-June, under the spell of
+winter, its surface obstructed with drifting ice. In attempting to
+cross the lake the frail birch-bark canoes ran a great risk of being
+crushed between the ice floes. However, at length, after halting at
+several islands and leaving Le Roux to go to the trading station he
+had founded on the shores of Slave Lake, Mackenzie and his two canoes
+found their way to the river outlet of Slave Lake, that river which
+was henceforth to be called by his name. Great mountains approached
+near to the west of their course. They appeared to be sprinkled with
+white stones, called by the natives "spirit stones"--indeed over a
+great part of North America the Rocky Mountains were called "the
+Mountains of Bright Stones"--yet these brilliant patches were nothing
+more wonderful than unmelted snow.
+
+A few days later the party encountered Amerindians of the Slave and
+Dog-rib tribes, who were so aloof from even "Indian" civilization that
+they did not know the use of tobacco, and were still in the Stone Age
+as regards their weapons and implements. These people, though they
+furnished a guide, foretold disaster and famine to the expedition, and
+greatly exaggerated the obstacles which would be met with--rapids near
+the entrance of the tributary from Great Bear Lake--before the salt
+water was reached.
+
+The canoes of these Slave and Dog-rib tribes of the Athapaskan (Tinne)
+group were covered, not with birch bark, but with the bark of the
+spruce fir.
+
+The lodges of the Slave Indians were of very simple structure: a few
+poles supported by a fork and forming a semicircle at the bottom, with
+some branches or a piece of bark as a covering. They built two of
+these huts facing each other, and made a fire between them. The
+furniture consisted of a few dishes of wood, bark, or horn. The
+vessels in which they cooked their victuals were in the shape of a
+gourd, narrow at the top and wide at the bottom, and made of _watape_.
+
+This was the name given to the divided roots of the spruce fir, which
+the natives wove into a degree of compactness that rendered it capable
+of containing a fluid. Watape fibre was also used to sew together
+different parts of the bark canoes. They also made fibre or thread
+from willow bark. Their cooking vessels made of this watape not only
+contained water, but water which was made to boil by putting a
+succession of hot stones into it. It would, of course, be impossible
+to place these vessels of fibre on a fire, and apparently none of the
+Amerindians of temperate North America knew anything about pottery.
+Those that were in some degree in touch with the Eskimo used kettles
+or cauldrons of stone. Elsewhere the vessels for boiling water and
+cooking were made of bark or fibre, and the water therein was made to
+boil by the dropping in of red-hot stones. The arrows of these Slave
+Indians were two and a half feet long, and the barb was made of bone,
+horn, flint, or copper. Iron had been quite lately introduced,
+indirectly obtained from the Russians in Alaska. Their spears were
+pointed with barbed bone, and their daggers were made of horn or bone.
+Their great club, the _pogamagan_, was made of a reindeer's antler.
+Axes were manufactured out of a piece of brown or grey stone, six to
+eight inches long and two inches thick. They kindled fire by striking
+together a piece of iron pyrites and touchwood, and never travelled
+without a small bag containing such materials.
+
+The Amerindians along the lower Mackenzie had heard vague and terrible
+legends about the Russians, far, far away on the coast of Alaska; they
+were represented as beings of gigantic stature, and adorned with
+wings; which, however, they never employed in flying (possibly the
+sails of their ships). They fed on large birds, and killed them with
+the greatest ease. They also possessed the extraordinary power of
+killing with their eyes (no doubt putting up a gun to aim), and they
+travelled in canoes of very large dimensions.
+
+[Illustration: BIG-HORNED SHEEP OF ROCKY MOUNTAINS]
+
+"I engaged one of these Indians," writes Mackenzie, "by a bribe of
+some beads, to describe the surrounding country upon the sand. This
+singular map he immediately undertook to delineate, and accordingly
+traced out a very long point of land between the rivers ... which he
+represented as running into the great lake, at the extremity of which
+he had been told by Indians of other nations there was a white man's
+fort." The same people described plainly the Yukon River westward of
+the mountains, and told Mackenzie it was a far greater stream than the
+one he was exploring. This was the first "hint" of the existence of
+the great Alaskan river which was ever recorded. They also spoke to
+Mackenzie of "small white buffaloes" (?the mountain goat), which they
+found in the mountains west of the Mackenzie.
+
+Whenever and wherever Mackenzie's party met these northernmost tribes
+of Athapascan Indians they were always ready to dance in between short
+spells of talking. This dancing and jumping was their only amusement,
+and in it old and young, male and female, went to such exertions that
+their strength was exhausted. As they jumped up and down they imitated
+the various noises produced by the reindeer, the bear, and the wolf.
+
+In descending the Mackenzie River, and again on the return journey
+upstream, Mackenzie notices the abundance of berries on the banks of
+the river, especially the kind which was called "pears" by the French
+Canadians. These were of a purple hue, rather bigger than a pea, and
+of a luscious taste. There were also gooseberries and a few
+strawberries. Quantities of berries were collected and dried, but
+while on the lower Mackenzie the expedition fed mainly on fat geese.
+On the beach of the great river they found an abundance of a sweet
+fragrant root which Mackenzie calls "liquorice".
+
+Mackenzie seemed to think that along the lower Mackenzie River, near
+the sea, there were not only reindeer, bears, wolverines, martens,
+foxes, and hares, but a species of white buffalo or white musk ox,
+which may have been the mountain goat above referred to. He noted, in
+the cliffs or banks of the lower Mackenzie, pieces of "petroleum"
+which bore a resemblance to yellow wax but was more friable. His
+Indian guide informed him that rocks of a similar kind were scattered
+about the country at the back of the Slave Lake, near where the
+Chipewayans collected copper. If so, there may be a great oilfield yet
+to be discovered in Arctic Canada.
+
+On the river coming out of the Bear Lake Mackenzie discovered coal;
+the whole beach was strewn with it. He was attracted towards it by
+seeing smoke and noticing a strong sulphurous smell. The whole bank of
+the river was on fire for a considerable distance, and he thought this
+was due to the natives having camped there and set fire to the coal in
+the bank from their hearths. But subsequent travellers have also found
+this lignite coal burning to waste, and imagine that, being full of
+gas, it catches fire spontaneously if any landslip or other accident
+exposes it to moist air. In 1906 it was still burning!
+
+According to Mackenzie, the ground in the regions about the lower
+reaches of the Mackenzie River is always frozen at least five inches
+down from the surface, yet he found small spruce trees growing in
+patches near the delta of this river, besides pale-yellow raspberries
+of an agreeable flavour, and a great variety of other plants and
+herbs.
+
+As the expedition drew near to the estuary of the great Mackenzie
+River a range of lofty snowy mountains rose into sight on the west.
+These mountains were said by the natives to swarm with large
+bears--probably of the huge chocolate-coloured Alaska type; and again
+a mention was made of "small white buffaloes", which were in all
+probability the large white mountain goat (_Oreamnus_). The
+Amerindians along the river greatly magnified the dangers, predicting
+impassable rapids between the confluence of the Great Bear River and
+the sea. But these stories were greatly exaggerated. Every now and
+then the river would narrow and flow between white precipitous
+limestone walls of rock, but there was no obstacle to navigation,
+though it was very deep and the current fast.
+
+The travellers now began to get within touch of the Eskimo and to hear
+of their occasional raids up the river from the sea. They were said to
+use slings, from which they flung stones with such dexterity as to
+prove formidable in their fights with the Amerindians, who regarded
+them with great respect, the more so because of their intercourse with
+the mysterious white people (Russians) from whom they obtained iron.
+
+Mackenzie just managed to reach within sight of the sea, beyond the
+delta of the river, his most northern point being about 69 deg. 14" north
+latitude. Hence he gazed out northwards over a vast expanse of
+piled-up ice in which several small islands were embedded. In the
+spaces of open water whales were visible (the small white whale,
+_Beluga_). The water in between the islands was affected by the tide.
+The travellers had, in fact, reached the Arctic ocean. But, owing to
+the fickleness of their guides, and the danger of being detained by
+some obstacle in these northern latitudes without proper supplies for
+the winter, Mackenzie was afraid to stay for further investigations,
+and on July 16, 1789, turned his back on the sea and commenced his
+return journey up the stream of the great river which was henceforth
+to bear his name.
+
+The strength of the current made the homeward travel much more
+lengthy and tedious. The Indians of the party were troublesome, and
+the principal guide, English Chief, was sulky and disobedient. This
+man had insisted on being accompanied by two of his wives, of whom he
+was so morbidly jealous that he could scarcely bring himself to leave
+them for an hour in order to go hunting or to prospect the country;
+consequently he did little or nothing in the killing of game, and this
+kept the expedition on very small rations. Mackenzie got wroth with
+him, and so gave him a sound rating. This irritated English Chief to a
+high degree, and after a long and vehement harangue he burst into
+tears and loud and bitter lamentations. Thereat his friends and wives
+commenced crying and wailing vociferously, though they declared that
+their tears were shed, not for any trouble between the white man and
+English Chief, but because they suddenly recollected all the friends
+and relations they had lost within the last few years! "I did not
+interrupt their grief for two hours, but as I could not well do
+without them, I was at length obliged to sooth it and induce the chief
+to change his resolution (to leave me), which he did with great
+apparent reluctance."
+
+Later on English Chief told Mackenzie that he feared he might have to
+go to war, because it was a custom amongst the Athapaskan chiefs to
+make war after they had given way to the disgrace attached to such a
+feminine weakness as shedding tears. Therefore he would undertake a
+warlike expedition in the following spring, but in the meantime he
+would continue with Mackenzie as long as he wanted him.
+
+Mackenzie, rejoining Le Roux at the Slave Lake, safely reached his
+station at Fort Chipewayan on September 12, 1789, just as the approach
+of winter was making travel in these northern regions dangerous to
+those who relied on unfrozen water as a means of transit.
+
+Mackenzie seems to have been a little disappointed with the results
+of his northward journey; perhaps he had thought that the outlet of
+Slave Lake and the Mackenzie River would be into the Pacific, the _Mer
+de l'Ouest_ of his Canadian _voyageurs_. Yet he must have realized
+that he had discovered something very wonderful after all: the
+beginning of Alaska, the approach to a region which, though lying
+within the Arctic circle, has climatic conditions permitting the
+existence of trees, abundant vegetation, and large, strange beasts,
+and which, moreover, is highly mineralized. His work in this
+direction, however (and that of Hearne), was to be completed in the
+next century by SIR JOHN FRANKLIN, SIR GEORGE BACK, SIR JOHN
+RICHARDSON, and SIR JOHN ROSS--all knighthoods earned by magnificent
+services in geographical exploration--and by THOMAS SIMPSON, Dr. John
+Rae,[3] WARREN DEASE, JOHN M'LEOD, ROBERT CAMPBELL, and other servants
+of the Hudson's Bay Company.
+
+[Footnote 3: See p. 125.]
+
+In October, 1792, Mackenzie had determined to make a great attempt to
+reach the Pacific Ocean. By this time he and his colleagues had
+explored the Peace River (the main tributary of Slave Lake), and had
+realized that they could travel up it into the heart of the Rocky
+Mountains. He wintered and traded at a place which he called "New
+Establishment", on the banks of the Peace River, near the foothills of
+the Rocky Mountains. He left this station on May 9, 1793, accompanied
+by ALEXANDER MACKAY,[4] six French Canadians, and two Indian guides.
+They travelled up the Peace River in a twenty-five-foot canoe, and at
+first passed through scenery the most beautiful Mackenzie had ever
+beheld. He describes it as follows:--
+
+"The ground rises at intervals to a considerable height, and
+stretching inwards to a considerable distance: at every interval or
+pause in the rise, there is a very gently ascending space or lawn,
+which is alternate with abrupt precipices to the summit of the whole,
+or at least as far as the eye could distinguish. This magnificent
+theatre of nature has all the decorations which the trees and animals
+of the country can afford it: groves of poplars in every shape vary
+the scene; and their intervals are enlivened with vast herds of elks
+and buffaloes: the former choosing the steeps and uplands and the
+latter preferring the plains. At this time the buffaloes were attended
+with their young ones, who were striking about them; and it appeared
+that the elks would soon exhibit the same enlivening circumstance. The
+whole country displayed an exuberant verdure; the trees that bear a
+blossom were advancing fast to that delightful appearance, and the
+velvet rind of their branches reflecting the oblique rays of a rising
+or setting sun, added a splendid gaiety to the scene which no
+expressions of mine are qualified to describe."
+
+[Footnote 4: Alexander Mackay long afterwards left the service of the
+North-west Company, and was killed by savages on the Alaska coast,
+near Nutka Sound.]
+
+Of course, as they neared the Rocky Mountains the navigation of the
+Peace River became more and more difficult. At last they left the
+river to find their way across the mountains till they should reach
+the headwaters of a stream flowing towards the Pacific Ocean.
+Sometimes they only accomplished three miles a day, having to carry
+all their goods and their canoe. The mountainous country was covered
+with splendid forests of spruce, pine, cypress, poplar, birch, willow,
+and many other kinds of trees, with an undergrowth of gooseberries,
+currants, and briar roses. The travellers generally followed paths
+made by the elk,[5] just as in the dense forests of Africa the way
+sometimes is cleared for human travellers by the elephant. Every now
+and again they resumed their journey on the river between the falls
+and cascades. The mountains seemed to be a solid mass of limestone, in
+some places without any covering of foliage.
+
+[Footnote 5: For the word "elk" Mackenzie uses "moose deer". "Elk" in
+the Canadian Dominion is misapplied to the great Wapiti red deer.]
+
+"In no part of the north-west", writes Mackenzie, "did I see so much
+beaver work" (along the eastern branch of the Peace River). In some
+places the beavers had cut down acres of large poplars, and were
+busily at work on their labours of dam-making during the night,
+between the setting and the rising sun.
+
+Gnats and mosquitoes came with the intense heat of June to make life
+almost unbearable. As they got close to the Rocky Mountains they
+encountered Amerindians who had never seen a white man before, and who
+at first received them with demonstrations of great hostility and
+fright. But owing to the diplomatic skill of Mackenzie they gradually
+yielded to a more friendly attitude, and here he decided to camp until
+the natives had become familiarized with him and his party, and could
+give them information as to his route. But they could only tell that,
+away to the west beyond the mountains, a month's travel, there was a
+vast "lake of stinking water", to which came, for purposes of trade,
+other white men with vessels as big as islands.
+
+These Rocky Mountain Indians made their canoes from spruce bark[6] in
+the following manner: The bark is taken off the spruce fir to the
+whole length of the intended canoe, only about eighteen feet, and is
+sewed with _watape_ at both ends. Two laths are then laid across the
+end of the gunwale. In these are fixed the bars, and against them the
+ribs or timbers, that are cut to the length to which the bark can be
+stretched; and to give additional strength, strips of wood are laid
+between them. To make the whole water-tight, gum is abundantly
+employed.
+
+[Footnote 6: See p. 281.]
+
+Obtaining a guide from these people, Mackenzie continued his journey
+along the Parsnip, or southern branch of the upper Peace River,
+partly by water, partly by land till he reached its source,[7] a lake,
+on the banks of which he saw innumerable swans, geese, and ducks. Wild
+parsnips grew here in abundance, and were a grateful addition to the
+diet of the travellers. As to birds, they not only saw blue jays and
+yellow birds, but the first humming bird which Mackenzie had ever
+beheld in the north-west.[8]
+
+[Footnote 7: Mr. Burpee points out that this was really the
+southernmost source of the mighty congeries of streams which flowed
+northwards to form the Mackenzie River system. Having traced the
+Mackenzie to the sea, its discoverer now stood four years afterwards
+at its most remote source, 2420 miles from its mouth at which he had
+seen the ice floes and the whales.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Humming birds arrive annually in British Columbia between
+April and May, and stay there till the autumn. They winter in the
+warmer parts of California.]
+
+From this tiny lake he made his way over lofty mountains to another
+lake at no great distance, and from this a small stream called the Bad
+River flowed southwards to join a still bigger stream, which Mackenzie
+thought might prove to be one of the branches of the mighty Columbia
+River that flows out into the Pacific through the State of Oregon. It
+really was the Fraser River, and of the upper waters of the Fraser
+Mackenzie was the discoverer.[9]
+
+[Footnote 9: The great surveyor and map maker, David Thompson, was the
+first white man to reach the upper waters of the _Columbia_ River. The
+Fraser River was afterwards followed to its outlet in the Straits of
+Georgia (opposite Vancouver Island) by Simon Fraser.]
+
+[Illustration: THE UPPER WATERS OF THE FRASER RIVER]
+
+Their experiences down the little mountain stream which was to take
+them into the Fraser nearly ended in complete disaster. "The violence
+of the current being so great as to drive the canoe sideways down the
+river, and break her by the first bar, I instantly jumped into the
+water and the men followed my example; but before we could set her
+straight, or stop her, we came to deeper water, so that we were
+obliged to re-embark with the utmost precipitation.... We had hardly
+regained our situations when we drove against a rock which shattered
+the stern of the canoe in such a manner, that it held only by the
+gunwales, so that the steersman could no longer keep his place. The
+violence of this stroke drove us to the opposite side of the river,
+which is but narrow, when the bow met with the same fate as the
+stern.... In a few moments, we came across a cascade which broke
+several large holes in the bottom of the canoe, and started all the
+bars.... The wreck becoming flat on the water, we all jumped out ...
+and held fast to the wreck; to which fortunate resolution we owed our
+safety, as we should otherwise have been dashed against the rocks by
+the force of the water, or driven over the cascades.... At length we
+most fortunately arrived in shallow water, and at a small eddy, where
+we were enabled to make a stand, from the weight of the canoe resting
+on the stones, rather than from any exertions of our exhausted
+strength.... The Indians, when they saw our deplorable situation,
+instead of making the least effort to help us, sat down and gave vent
+to their tears."
+
+Nobody, however, had been killed, though much of the luggage was lost,
+and what remained had to be spread out to dry. Many of Mackenzie's
+people, however, when they took stock of their misfortunes, were
+rather pleased than otherwise, as they thought the disaster would stop
+him from any further attempt to reach the Western Sea. He wisely
+listened to their observations without replying, till their panic was
+dispelled, and they had got themselves warm and comfortable with a
+hearty meal and a glass of rum; though a little later only by their
+indifferent carelessness they nearly exploded the whole of the
+expedition's stock of gunpowder.
+
+Fortunately the weather was fine. Mackenzie and his fellow
+countryman, Mackay, allowed nothing to dismay them or damp their
+spirits. Bark was obtained from the forest, the canoe was repaired,
+and they heard from their guide that this violent little stream
+would before long join a great and much smoother river. But they
+were tormented with sandflies and mosquitoes, and a day or two
+afterwards the guide bolted, while the expedition had to cross
+morasses in which they were nearly engulfed, and the water journey
+was constantly obstructed by driftwood. Nevertheless, at last they
+had "the inexpressible satisfaction of finding themselves on the
+bank of a navigable river on the western side of the first great
+range of mountains". Here they re-embarked, and were cheerful in
+spite of heavy rain.
+
+As they paddled down this great stream, more than two hundred yards
+wide, snow-capped mountains rose immediately above the river. The
+current was strong, but perfectly safe. Flocks of ducks, entirely
+white, except the bill and a part of the wing, rose before them. Smoke
+ascending in columns from many parts of the woods showed that the
+country was well inhabited, and the air was fragrant with the strong
+odour of the gum of cypress and spruce fir.
+
+Then came a series of cascades and falls and a most arduous portage
+of the heavy canoe. These labours were somewhat lightened by the
+discovery of quantities of wild onions growing on the banks; but
+these, when mixed with the pemmican, on which the party was
+subsisting, stimulated their appetites to an inconvenient degree,
+seeing that they were on short commons. Meeting with strange Indians
+they found no one to interpret, and had to use signs. But on the banks
+of the Fraser they were lucky enough to find the "real red deer", the
+great wapiti stag, which is absent from the far north-west, beyond the
+region of the Saskatchewan. The canoe was loaded with venison. The
+banks of the Fraser River sank to a moderate height and were covered
+with poplars and cypresses, birch trees, junipers, alders, and
+willows. The deserted house or lodge of some Amerindian tribe was
+visited on the banks. It was a finer structure than anything that
+Mackenzie had seen since he left Fort Michili-Makinak in upper
+Canada. It had been constructed for three families. There were three
+fireplaces and three beds and a kind of larder for the purpose of
+keeping fish. The whole "lodge" was twenty feet long by three wide,
+and had three doors. The walls were formed of straight spruce timbers
+with some skill of carpentry. The roof was covered with bark, and
+large rods were fixed across the upper part of the building, where
+fish might hang and dry.
+
+As they continued to descend the Fraser River, with here and there a
+rapid which nearly swamped the canoe, and lofty cliffs of red and
+white clay like the ruins of ancient castles (stopping on their way to
+bury supplies of pemmican against their return, and to light a fire on
+the top of the burial place so as to mislead bears or other animals
+that might dig it up), they were more or less compelled to seek
+intercourse with the new tribes of Amerindians, whose presence on the
+river banks was obvious. As usual, Mackenzie had to exercise great
+bravery, tact, and guile to get into peaceful conversation with these
+half-frightened, half-angry people. The peacemaking generally
+concluded with the distribution of trinkets amongst the men and women,
+and presents of sugar to the children. Talking with these folk,
+however, through such interpreters as there were amongst the Indians
+of his crew, he learnt that lower down on the Fraser River there was a
+peculiarly fierce, malignant race, living in vast caves or
+subterranean dwellings, who would certainly massacre the Europeans if
+they attempted to pass through their country on their way to the sea.
+He therefore stopped and set some of his men to work to make a new
+canoe. He noticed, by the by, that these Amerindians of the Fraser had
+small pointed canoes, "made after the fashion of the Eskimo".
+
+Renewing their voyage, they reached a house the roof of which just
+appeared above the ground. It was deserted by its inhabitants, who had
+been alarmed at the approach of the white men, but in the
+neighbourhood appeared gesticulating warriors with bows and arrows.
+Yet these people of underground houses turned out to be friendly and
+very ready to give information, partly because they were in
+communication with the Amerindian tribes to the east of the Rocky
+Mountains. From the elderly men of this tribe Mackenzie ascertained
+that the Fraser River flowed south by east, was often obstructed by
+rapids, and, though it would finally bring them to a salt lake or
+inlet, and then to the sea, it would cause them to travel for a great
+distance to the south. He noticed the complete difference in the
+language of these Atna or Carrier Indians[10] and that of the Nagailer
+or Chin Indians of the Athapaskan group on the eastern side of the
+Rocky Mountains.
+
+[Footnote 10: Apparently these were of the Sikanni tribe, and only
+another branch of the great Tinne (Athapaskan) stock.]
+
+He, however, learnt from these Atna Indians that although the Fraser
+was out of the question as a quick route to the sea, if he retraced
+his journey a little up this river he would find another stream
+entering it from the west, and along this they could travel upstream.
+And then the route to the water "which was unfit to drink", and the
+region to which came people with large ships, would be of no great
+length. Accordingly, after having had a tree engraved with Mackenzie's
+name and the date, by the bank of the Fraser River, the expedition
+returned to the subterranean house which they had seen the day before.
+
+"We were in our canoe by four this morning, and passed by the Indian
+hut, which appeared in a state of perfect tranquillity. We soon came
+in sight of the point where we first saw the natives, and at eight
+were much surprised and disappointed at seeing Mr. Mackay and our two
+Indians coming alone from the ruins of a house that had been partly
+carried away by the ice and water, at a short distance below the place
+where we had appointed to meet. Nor was our surprise and apprehension
+diminished by the alarm which was painted in their countenances....
+They informed me they had taken refuge in that place, with the
+determination to sell their lives ... as dear as possible. In a very
+short time after we had separated, they met a party of the Indians,
+whom we had known at this place, and were probably those whom we had
+seen landing from their canoe. These Indians appeared to be in a state
+of extreme rage, and had their bows bent, with their arrows across
+them. The guide stopped to ask them some questions, which our people
+did not understand, and then set off with his utmost speed. Mr.
+Mackay, however, followed, and did not leave him till they were both
+exhausted with running.... The guide then said that some treacherous
+design was meditated against them, ... and conducted them through very
+bad ways as fast as they could run. When he was desired to slacken his
+pace, he answered that they might follow him in any manner they
+pleased, but that he was impatient to get to his family, in order to
+prepare shoes and other necessaries for his journey. They did not,
+however, think it prudent to quit him, and he would not stop till ten
+at night. On passing a track that was but lately made, they began to
+be seriously alarmed, and on enquiring of the guide where they were,
+he pretended not to understand. Then they all laid down, exhausted
+with fatigue, and without any kind of covering; they were cold, wet,
+and hungry, but dared not light a fire, from the apprehension of an
+enemy. This comfortless spot they left at the dawn of day, and, on
+their arrival at the lodges, found them deserted; the property of the
+Indians being scattered about, as if abandoned for ever. The guide
+then made two or three trips into the woods, calling aloud, and
+bellowing like a madman. At length he set off in the same direction as
+they had come, and had not since appeared. To heighten their misery,
+as they did not find us at the place appointed, they concluded that
+we were all destroyed, and had already formed their plan to take to
+the woods, and cross in as direct a line as they could proceed, to the
+waters of the Peace River, a scheme which could only be suggested by
+despair. They intended to have waited for us till noon, and if we did
+not appear by that time, to have entered without further delay on
+their desperate expedition."
+
+Making preparations for warfare, if necessary, yet neglecting no
+chance of re-entering into friendly relations with the natives,
+Mackenzie set to work to repair the wretched canoe, which was
+constantly having holes knocked through her. He dealt tactfully with
+the almost open mutiny of his French Canadians and Indians. At last
+everyone settled down to the making of a new canoe, on an island in
+the river where there were plenty of spruce firs to provide the
+necessary bark. Even here they were plagued with thunderstorms.
+Nevertheless, the men set to work, and as they worked Mackenzie
+addressed them with simple fervour, saying he knew of their plans to
+desert him, but, come what might, _he_ was resolved to travel on to
+the westwards until he reached the waters of the Pacific.
+
+This calmed down the mutineers, and, to the great relief of all
+concerned, that very afternoon the runaway guide of the Atna people
+returned and apologized for having deserted them. He then offered once
+again to conduct them to the seacoast. Nevertheless, again he fled,
+and Mackenzie was obliged to guide the expedition, according to the
+information he had gathered from the natives, up the small western
+affluent of the upper Fraser, which he called the West Road River (now
+known as the Blackwater).
+
+His perseverance was rewarded, for after proceeding up this river for
+some distance he saw two canoes coming towards them containing the
+runaway guide and six of his relations. The guide was dressed in a
+painted beaver robe, and looked so splendid that they scarcely knew
+him again. Once more he declared it really was his intention not to
+disappoint them. Soon afterwards they landed, buried their property
+and provisions, and placed their canoe on a stage, shaded by a
+covering of small trees and branches from the sun. Each man carried on
+his back four bags and a half of pemmican, of an average weight of
+eighty-five pounds, or other loads (instruments, goods for presents,
+ammunition, &c.) of ninety pounds in weight. Moreover, each of the
+Canadians carried a gun. The Amerindian servants of the expedition
+were only asked to carry loads of forty-five pounds in weight.
+Mackenzie's pack, and that of his companion, Mackay, amounted to about
+seventy pounds. Loaded like this they had to scramble up the wooded
+mountains, first soaked in perspiration from the heat and then
+drenched with heavy rain. Nevertheless they walked for about thirteen
+miles the first day. Now they began to meet natives who were closely
+in touch with the seacoast, which lay to the west at a distance of
+about six days' journey.
+
+"We had no sooner laid ourselves down to rest last night than the
+natives began to sing, in a manner very different from what I had been
+accustomed to hear among savages. It was not accompanied either with
+dancing, drum, or rattle; but consisted of soft, plaintive tones, and
+a modulation that was rather agreeable: it had somewhat the air of
+church music." The country through which they travelled abounded in
+beavers. It was the month of July, however, and they were harassed
+with thunderstorms, some of which were followed by hailstones as big
+as musket balls. After one such storm the ground was whitened for two
+miles with these balls of ice.
+
+In order not to be deserted by all of their new guides, Mackenzie was
+obliged to insist on one of them sharing his hut. This young
+Amerindian was dressed in beaver garments which were a nest of
+vermin. His hair was greased with fish oil, and his body smeared with
+red earth, so that at first Mackenzie thought he would never be able
+to sleep; but such was his fatigue that he passed a night of profound
+repose, and found the guide still there in the morning. In this region
+he notes that the balsam fir of Canada was abundant, the tree which
+provided the gum that cured Cartier's expedition of scurvy. Some of
+the natives with whom they now came into contact were remarkable for
+their grey eyes, a feature often observed amongst the Amerindians of
+the North Pacific coast.
+
+"On observing some people before us, our guides hastened to meet them,
+and, on their approach, one of them stepped forward with an axe in his
+hand. This party consisted only of a man, two women, and the same
+number of children. The eldest of the women, who probably was the
+man's mother, was engaged, when we joined them, in clearing a circular
+spot, of about five feet in diameter, of the weeds that infested it;
+nor did our arrival interrupt her employment, which was sacred to the
+memory of the dead. The spot to which her pious care was devoted
+contained the grave of a husband and a son, and whenever she passed
+this way she always stopped to pay this tribute of affection."
+
+By this time, exposure to wind and sun, the attacks of mosquitoes and
+flies, the difficulty of washing or of changing their clothes, had
+made all the Europeans of the party as dark in skin colour as the
+Amerindians, so that such natives as they met who had the courage to
+examine them, did so with the intention of discovering whether they
+had any white skin left. The natives whom they now encountered
+(belonging to the maritime tribes) were comely in appearance, and far
+more cleanly than the tribes of the north-west. As already mentioned,
+they had grey eyes, sometimes tinged with hazel. Their stature was
+noble, one man measuring at least six feet four inches. They were
+clothed in leather, and their hair was nicely combed and dressed with
+beads. One of a travelling band of these Indians, finding that
+Mackenzie's party was on short rations and very hungry, offered to
+boil them a kettle of fish roes.
+
+"He took the roes out of a bag, and having bruised them between two
+stones, put them in water to soak. His wife then took an handful of
+dry grass in her hand, with which she squeezed them through her
+fingers. In the meantime her husband was employed in gathering wood to
+make a fire, for the purpose of heating stones. When she had finished
+her operation, she filled a _watape_ kettle nearly full of water, and
+poured the roes into it. When the stones were sufficiently heated,
+some of them were put into the kettle, and others were thrown in from
+time to time, till the water was in a state of boiling. The woman also
+continued stirring the contents of the kettle, till they were brought
+to a thick consistency; the stones were then taken out, and the whole
+was seasoned with about a pint of strong rancid oil. The smell of this
+curious dish was sufficient to sicken me without tasting it, but the
+hunger of my people surmounted the nauseous meal. When unadulterated
+by the stinking oil these boiled roes are not unpalatable food."
+
+Farther on their journey their hunger was alleviated by wild parsnips,
+also roots which appeared, when pulled up, like a bunch of white peas,
+with the colour and taste of a potato. On their way they were obliged
+to cross snow mountains, where the snow was so compact that their feet
+hardly made any perceptible impression. "Before us appeared a
+stupendous mountain, whose snow-clad summit was lost in the clouds."
+These mountains, according to the Indians, abounded in white
+goats.[11] Emerging from the mountains on to the lower ground, sloping
+towards the sea, at nightfall they came upon a native village in the
+thickness of the woods. Desperate with his fatigue, and risking any
+danger to obtain rest, Mackenzie walked straight into one of the
+houses, where people were busily employed in cooking fish, threw down
+his burden, shook hands with the people, and sat down.
+
+[Footnote 1: _Oreamnus_.]
+
+"They received me without the least appearance of surprise, but soon
+made signs for me to go up to the large house, which was erected, on
+upright posts, at some distance from the ground. A broad piece of
+timber with steps cut in it led to the scaffolding even with the
+floor, and by this curious kind of ladder I entered the house at one
+end; and having passed three fires, at equal distances in the middle
+of the building, I was received by several people, sitting upon a very
+wide board, at the upper end of it. I shook hands with them, and
+seated myself beside a man, the dignity of whose countenance induced
+me to give him that preference...."
+
+Later on, this man, seeing Mackenzie's people arriving tired and
+hungry, rose and fetched from behind a plank, four feet wide, a
+quantity of roasted salmon. A whole salmon was offered to Mackenzie,
+and another to Mackay; half a salmon was given to each of the French
+Canadian _voyageurs_. Their host further invited them to sleep in the
+house, but, Mackenzie thinking it preferable to camp outside, a fire
+was lit to warm the weary travellers, and each was lent a thick board
+on which to sleep, so that he might not lie on the bare ground.
+
+"We had not long been seated round the fire when we received a dish of
+salmon roes, pounded fine and beat up with water so as to have the
+appearance of a cream. Nor was it without some kind of seasoning that
+gave it a bitter taste. Another dish soon followed, the principal
+article of which was also salmon roes, with a large proportion of
+gooseberries, and an herb that appeared to be sorrel. Its acidity
+rendered it more agreeable to my taste than the former preparation.
+Having been regaled with these delicacies, for such they were
+considered by that hospitable spirit which provided them, we laid
+ourselves down to rest with no other canopy than the sky. But I never
+enjoyed a more sound and refreshing rest, though I had a board for my
+bed and a billet for my pillow."
+
+The gooseberries, wortleberries, and raspberries which Mackenzie ate
+at this hospitable village were the finest he ever saw or tasted of
+their respective kinds. They were generally eaten together with the
+dry roes of salmon. Salmon was the staple food of the country, and
+very abundant in the river which Mackenzie was following down to the
+Pacific shore. The fish were usually caught in weirs, and also by
+dipping nets. The natives were so superstitious about the salmon, that
+they believed they would give offence to the spirits if they ate any
+other animal food, especially meat. They would scarcely allow
+Mackenzie to carry venison in his canoe, in case the salmon should
+smell it and abandon the river.
+
+After this welcome rest they embarked in two canoes on the stream
+which Mackenzie calls the Salmon River. The stream was rapid, and they
+proceeded at a great rate, stopping every now and then to get out and
+walk round salmon weirs. Nevertheless, although other Indians ran
+before them announcing their approach towards a village, the noise of
+which was apparent in the distance, they were received at this place
+in a very hostile way, the men rapidly arming themselves with bows and
+arrows, spears, and axes. But Mackenzie walked on alone to greet them,
+and shook hands with the nearest man. Thereupon an elderly man broke
+from the crowd and took Mackenzie in his arms. Another then came and
+paid him the same compliment. One man to whom he presented his hand
+broke the string of a handsome robe of sea-otter skin and threw it
+over Mackenzie.
+
+The chief made signs to the white men to follow him to his house,
+which Mackenzie found to be of larger dimensions and better materials
+than any he had yet seen. "Very clean mats" were spread in this house
+for the chief, his counsellors, and the two white men. A small roasted
+salmon was then placed before each person.
+
+"When we had satisfied ourselves with the fish, one of the people who
+came with us from the last village approached, with a kind of ladle in
+one hand, containing oil, and in the other something that resembled
+the inner rind of the cocoanut, but of a lighter colour. This he
+dipped in the oil, and, having eaten it, indicated by his gestures how
+palatable he thought it. He then presented me with a small piece of
+it, which I chose to taste in its dry state, though the oil was free
+from any unpleasant smell. A square cake of this was next produced,
+when a man took it to the water near the house, and having thoroughly
+soaked it, he returned, and, after he had pulled it to pieces like
+oakum, put it into a well-made trough, about three feet long, nine
+inches wide, and five deep. He then plentifully sprinkled it with
+salmon oil, and manifested by his own example that we were to eat of
+it. I just tasted it, and found the oil perfectly sweet, without which
+the other ingredient would have been very insipid. The chief partook
+of it with great avidity after it had received an additional quantity
+of oil. This dish is considered by these people as a great delicacy;
+and on examination, I discovered it to consist of the inner rind of
+the hemlock pine tree, taken off early in summer, and put into a
+frame, which shapes it into cakes of fifteen inches long, ten broad,
+and half an inch thick; and in this form I should suppose it may be
+preserved for a great length of time. This discovery satisfied me
+respecting the many hemlock trees which I had observed stripped of
+their bark."
+
+Mackenzie found some of the older men here with long beards, and to
+one of them he presented a pair of scissors for clipping his beard.
+
+After describing some remarkable oblong "tables" (as they might be
+called) of cedar wood--twenty feet long by eight feet broad--made of
+thick cedar boards joined together with the utmost neatness, and
+painted with hieroglyphics and the figures of animals; and his visit
+to a kind of temple in the village, into the architecture of which
+strangely carved and painted figures were interwoven; Mackenzie
+goes on to relate an episode giving one a very vivid idea of the
+helplessness of "native" medicine in many diseases.
+
+He was taken to see a son of the chief, who was suffering from a
+terrible ulcer in the small of his back, round which the flesh was
+gangrened, one of his knees being afflicted in the same way. The poor
+fellow was reduced to a skeleton, and apparently drawing very near to
+death.
+
+"I found the native physicians busy in practising their skill and art
+on the patient. They blew on him, and then whistled; at times they
+pressed their extended fingers with all their strength on his stomach;
+they also put their forefingers doubled into his mouth, and spouted
+water from their own with great violence into his face. To support
+these operations the wretched sufferer was held up in a sitting
+posture, and when they were concluded he was laid down and covered
+with a new robe made of the skin of a lynx. I had observed that his
+belly and breast were covered with scars, and I understood that they
+were caused by a custom prevalent among them of applying pieces of
+lighted touchwood to their flesh, in order to relieve pain or
+demonstrate their courage. He was now placed on a broad plank, and
+carried by six men into the woods, where I was invited to accompany
+them. I could not conjecture what would be the end of this ceremony,
+particularly as I saw one man carry fire, another an axe, and a third
+dry wood. I was, indeed, disposed to suspect that, as it was their
+custom to burn the dead, they intended to relieve the poor man from
+his pain, and perform the last sad duty of surviving affection. When
+they had advanced a short distance into the wood, they laid him upon a
+clear spot, and kindled a fire against his back, when the physician
+began to scarify the ulcer with a very blunt instrument, the cruel
+pain of which operation the patient bore with incredible resolution.
+The scene afflicted me, and I left it."
+
+The chief of this village had probably met Captain Cook about ten
+years before. He had been down in a large canoe[12] with forty of his
+people to the seacoast, where he saw two large vessels.
+
+[Footnote 12: Mackenzie thus describes one of the large sea-going
+canoes of the coast natives: "This canoe was built of cedar,
+forty-five feet long, four feet broad, and three and a half in depth.
+It was painted black and decorated with white figures of different
+kinds. The gunwale fore and aft was inlaid with the teeth of the sea
+otter." He adds that "these coast tribes (north of Vancouver Island
+and of Queen Charlotte Sound) had been in indirect contact with the
+Spaniards since the middle of the sixteenth century, and with the
+Russians from the middle of the eighteenth century. Therefore, from
+these two directions they had learnt the use of metal, and had
+obtained copper, brass, and iron. They may possibly have had copper
+earlier still from the Northern Indians on the other side of the Rocky
+Mountains; but brass and iron they could, of course, only have
+obtained from Europeans. They had already become very deft at dealing
+with these metals, and twisted the iron into collars which weighed
+upwards of twelve pounds, also beating it into plates for their
+daggers and knives."]
+
+Farther down the river the natives, instead of regaling them with
+fish, placed before them a long, clean, and well-made trough full of
+berries, most of them resembling blackberries, though white in colour,
+and others similar to huckleberries. In this region the women were
+employed in beating and preparing the inner rind of the juniper bark,
+to which they gave the appearance of flax, and others were spinning
+with a distaff; again, others were weaving robes of this fibrous
+thread, intermixed with strips of sea-otter skin. The men were fishing
+on the river with drag nets between two canoes, thus intercepting the
+salmon coming up the river.
+
+At last, on Saturday, the 20th of July, 1793, they emerged from the
+Salmon River into an arm of the sea (probably near King Island). The
+tide was out, and had left a large space covered with seaweed. The
+surrounding hills were involved in fog.... The bay appeared to be some
+three miles in breadth, and on the coast the travellers saw a great
+number of sea otters.[13] At two in the afternoon the swell was so
+high, and the wind, which was against them, so boisterous, that they
+could not proceed along the seacoast in their leaky canoe. A young
+chief who had come with them as one of their guides, and who had been
+allowed to leave when the seacoast was reached, returned bearing a
+large porcupine on his back. He first cut the animal open and threw
+its entrails into the sea, then singed the skin and boiled it in
+separate pieces; nor did he go to rest till, with the assistance of
+two others who happened to be awake, every morsel of it had been
+devoured. This was fortunate, because their stock of provisions was
+reduced to twenty pounds' weight of pemmican, sixteen pounds of rice,
+and six pounds of flour amongst ten men, "in a leaky vessel, and on a
+barbarous coast".
+
+[Footnote 13: These _may_ have been small seals, but the sea otter
+(_Enhydris lutris_), now nearly extinct, was at one time found in
+numbers along the north-west American coast, from the Aleutian Islands
+and Alaska to Oregon. Owing to persecution it now leads an almost
+entirely aquatic life, resting at times on the masses of floating
+seaweed.]
+
+The rise and fall of the tide here was noted at fifteen feet in
+height. Mr. Mackay collected a quantity of small mussels, which were
+boiled and eaten by the two Scotchmen, but not by the Canadians, who
+were quite unacquainted with sea shellfish.
+
+Near Point Menzies, which had already been reached and named by
+Captain VANCOUVER in the spring of 1793 on his great voyage of
+discovery up the North American coast,[14] Alexander Mackenzie met a
+party of Amerindians, amongst whom was a man of insolent aspect, who,
+by means of signs and exclamations, made him understand that he and
+his friends had been fired at by a white man named Makuba (Vancouver),
+and that another white man, called "Bensins", had struck him on the
+back with the flat of his sword. This man more or less compelled
+Mackenzie to accompany him in the direction of his village, and on the
+way explained that "Makuba" had come there with his "big boat".
+Indeed, Mackenzie's party perceived the remains of sheds or buildings
+on the shore where Europeans had probably made a camp, and here they
+established themselves, taking up a position of defence, because the
+attitude of the natives was rather threatening.
+
+[Footnote 14: GEORGE VANCOUVER (born about 1758, and probably
+descended from Dutch or Flemish ancestors) was one of the great
+pioneers of the British Empire. His name is commemorated in
+Vancouver's Island, an important portion of British Columbia.
+Vancouver entered the navy when only thirteen, sailed with Captain
+Cook, and eventually was appointed to command a naval expedition sent
+out in 1791 to survey and take over from the Spaniards the north-west
+American coast north of Oregon. It is remarkable that he should only
+have missed Mackenzie's arrival at Point Menzies by about two months.
+With what amazed rejoicing would these two heroic explorers have
+greeted one another had they met on this remote point of the Pacific
+coast, the one coming overland (so to speak) from Quebec and the
+Atlantic, and the other all the way by sea from Falmouth via the Cape
+of Good Hope, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, and Hawaii.]
+
+At this camp there was a rock, and on this Alexander Mackenzie, mixing
+up some vermilion or red clay in melted grease, inscribed in large
+characters the following words: "Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by
+land, the twenty-second of July, one thousand seven hundred and
+ninety-three". He then shifted his camp to a place three miles to the
+north-east, below a precipice from which issued streams of fine water
+as cold as ice. And here he took careful observations with his
+astronomical and surveying instruments, in order to fix his position.
+Fortunately the day was one of bright sunshine. Otherwise, had there
+been a long persistence of cloud, he might have been obliged to leave
+the Pacific coast without being able to fix precisely the place where
+he had reached the sea.
+
+Then he yielded to the passionate desire of his people to withdraw
+inland from the possibly dangerous inhabitants of the coast, and
+returned with them to the encampment where the porcupine had been
+eaten. Here the guide made off into the woods. Mackenzie followed him,
+and thus reached a village from which two men issued armed with
+daggers and intending to attack him. While stopping to defend himself,
+many other people assembled, and amongst them he recognized the
+irritating person who incessantly repeated the names "Makuba" and
+"Benzins". However, this threatened danger was narrowly averted, and
+eventually they left the village with a supply of food; but also in a
+state of considerable irritation with--fleas! For some of the houses
+of these Pacific coast villages swarmed with fleas to such an extent
+that Mackenzie and his men were obliged to take to the water to rid
+themselves of these vermin, which swarmed also on the ground that was
+bare of grass.
+
+The return journey up the Salmon River was a series of bewildering
+vicissitudes. Sometimes Mackenzie and his party were received in the
+most threatening way by persons who had been warm friends on their
+downward journey, then seemingly inevitable war was transformed into
+peace, but guides deserted, or the Amerindians from across the Rocky
+Mountains attempted to mutiny. However, they struggled through all
+their difficulties, till at last they reached the place known as the
+Friendly Village, and were here fortunately received with great
+kindness, being once more entertained "with the most respectful
+hospitality". "In short, the chief behaved to us with so much
+attention and kindness that I did not withhold anything in my power to
+give which might afford him satisfaction.... I presented him with two
+yards of blue cloth, an axe, knives, and various other articles. He
+gave me in return a large shell which resembled the under shell of a
+Guernsey oyster, but was somewhat larger. Where they procure them I
+could not discover, but they cut and polish them for bracelets,
+ear-rings, and other personal ornaments...."
+
+The women of this place were employed in boiling sorrel and different
+kinds of berries in large square kettles made of cedar wood. This
+pottage, when it had attained a certain consistency, they took out
+with ladles, and poured it into frames about twelve inches square.
+These were then exposed to the sun, until their contents became so
+many dried cakes. This was their principal article of food, and
+probably of traffic. These people had also made portable chests of
+cedar, in which they packed these cakes, as well as their salmon, both
+dried and roasted. The only flesh they ate in addition to the salmon
+was that of the sea otter and the seal; except that one instance
+already mentioned of the young Indian who feasted on the flesh of the
+porcupine.
+
+"Their faces are round, with high cheekbones, and their complexion
+between olive and copper. They have small grey eyes with a tinge of
+red,... their hair is of a dark-brown colour." The men wore their hair
+long, and either kept it well combed and hanging loose over the
+shoulders, or plaited it and bedaubed it with brown earth so as to
+make it quite impervious to the comb. Those who adopted this fashion
+had to carry a bone bodkin about with them to ease the frequent
+irritation which arose from the excessive abundance of vermin in their
+hair.
+
+The women, on the other hand, usually wore their hair short. Mackenzie
+noticed that the infants had their heads enclosed with boards covered
+with leather, to press the skull into the shape of a wedge. The women
+wore a fringed apron, and over that a long robe made of skins or
+leather, either loose or tied round the middle with a girdle. Over
+these in wet weather was worn a cap in the shape of an inverted bowl
+or dish. The men also wore this cap, and in cold weather used the
+robe, but in warm weather went about in no clothing at all, except
+that their feet were protected with shoes made of dressed elks' skins.
+In wet weather, over their robe they wore a circular mat with an
+opening in the middle sufficiently large to admit the head. This,
+spreading over the shoulders, threw off the wet. As compared with the
+Indians of the Rocky Mountains and the great plains, the men and boys
+were very cleanly, being constantly in the water. The women, however,
+were dirty.
+
+At the end of July, 1793, Mackenzie left what he calls the Friendly
+Village, and prepared to return to the east across the Rocky
+Mountains, having distributed to each man about twenty pounds weight
+of smoked salmon, flour, and pemmican. The fatigue of ascending the
+precipices of the mountains was past description. When they arrived at
+a spot where water could be obtained, and a camp made, they were in
+such an extremity of weariness they could hardly crawl about to gather
+wood for the purpose of making a fire; but two hours afterwards the
+Amerindians of their party arrived and came to their assistance. Then
+when they were sitting round a blazing fire, and some of their fatigue
+had lessened, they could sit and talk of past dangers, and indulge in
+the delightful reflection that they were thus far advanced on their
+homeward journey. "Nor was it possible to be in this situation without
+contemplating the wonders of it. Such was the depth of the precipices
+below, and the height of the mountains above, with the rude and wild
+magnificence of the scenery around, that I shall not attempt to
+describe such an astonishing and awful combination of objects.... Even
+at this place, which is only, as it were, the first step towards
+gaining the summit of the mountains, the climate was very sensibly
+changed. The air that fanned the village which we left at noon, was
+mild and cheering; the grass was verdant, and the wild fruits ripe
+around it. But here the snow was not yet dissolved, the ground was
+still bound by the frost, the herbage had scarce begun to spring, and
+the crowberry bushes were just beginning to blossom."
+
+Eventually they found their canoe, and the property which they had
+left behind, in perfect safety. At this camp, where the canoe had been
+left behind, many natives arrived both from the upper and lower parts
+of the river, all of them dressed in beaver robes, which they were
+ready enough to sell for large knives. It struck Alexander Mackenzie
+as being very extraordinary that these people, who had left absolutely
+untouched the property stored at this place--when anyone passing by
+could have stolen it and never have been detected--should now be so
+ready to pilfer articles and utensils from the camp. So many small
+things had been picked up and taken away by them, when coming to sell
+their beaver robes, that he was obliged to take some action. So,
+before all these beaver-clad Amerindians had departed on their
+westward journey, he told the rearguard that he had noticed the
+thefts, and scarcely thought their relations who were guilty of
+stealing realized the awful mischief that would result from this
+dishonesty; that they were on their way now to the sea to procure
+large quantities of salmon from the rivers, but the salmon, which was
+absolutely necessary to their existence, came from the sea which
+belonged to the white men, and it only needed a message from the white
+men to the powers of nature to prevent the fish coming up from the sea
+into the rivers; and if this word were spoken they and their children
+might starve. He consequently advised them to hurry after their
+friends, and see that all the stolen articles were sent back. This
+plan succeeded. The stolen articles were restored, and then Mackenzie
+purchased from these people several large salmon, and his party
+enjoyed a delicious meal.
+
+Mackenzie declared that there were no bison to be found on the west
+side of the Rocky Mountains[15] (British Columbia), and no wolves.
+
+[Footnote 15: He was not quite accurate: there were a few "wood" bison
+in the north and east of British Columbia.]
+
+Resuming their journey up the Fraser River, they passed through the
+narrow gut between mountainous rocks, which on the outward journey had
+been a passage of some risk. But now the state of the water was such
+that, they got up without difficulty, and had more time to examine
+these extraordinary rocks, which were as perpendicular as a wall, and
+gave the traveller the idea of a succession of enormous Gothic
+cathedrals. With little difficulty they transported their canoe across
+the water parting to the Peace River.
+
+As they began to glide down this stream, homeward bound, they noticed
+at the entrance of a small tributary an object which proved to be four
+beaver skins hung up to attract their attention. These were the skins
+which had been given to Mackenzie as a present by a native as he
+travelled westwards. Not wishing to add to his loads, he had left the
+skins behind, saying he would call for them on his return. Mackenzie
+imagined, therefore, that, being under the necessity of leaving the
+river, this Indian had hung up the skins in the hope that they would
+attract the attention of the travellers on their return. "To reward
+his honesty, I left three times the value of the skins in trade goods
+in their place." As the Peace River carried them away from the great
+mountains, and the plains extended before their sight, they stopped to
+repair the canoe and to get in supplies of food from the herds of game
+that were visible. They began with a hearty meal of bison beef. "Every
+fear of future want was removed." Soon afterwards they killed an elk,
+the carcass of which weighed over two hundred and fifty pounds. "As we
+had taken a very hearty meal at one o'clock, it might naturally be
+supposed that we should not be very voracious at supper; nevertheless,
+a kettleful of elk flesh was boiled and eaten, and that vessel
+replenished with more meat and put on the fire. All that remained of
+the bones, &c, were placed after the Indian fashion round the fire to
+roast, and at ten the next morning the whole was consumed by ten
+persons and a large dog, who was allowed his share of the banquet. Nor
+did any inconvenience result from what may be considered as an
+inordinate indulgence."
+
+On the 24th of August, 1793, Mackenzie was back again at Fort
+Chipewayan, after an absence of eleven months, having been the first
+white man to cross the broad continent of North America from the
+Atlantic to the Pacific, north of Mexico.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Mackenzie's Successors
+
+
+The Spaniards of California had been aware in the middle of the
+eighteenth century that there was a big river entering the sea to the
+north of the savage country known as Oregon. The estuary of this river
+was reached in May, 1792, by an American sea captain of a whaling
+ship--ROBERT GRAY, of Boston. He crossed the bar, and named the great
+stream after his own ship, the _Columbia_. Five months afterwards
+(October, 1792) Lieutenant BROUGHTON, of the Vancouver expedition,
+entered the Columbia from the sea, explored it upstream for a hundred
+miles, and formally took possession of it for the King of Great
+Britain. The news of this discovery reached Alexander Mackenzie (no
+doubt after his return from his overland journey to the Pacific
+coast), and he at once jumped to the conclusion that the powerful
+stream he had discovered in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, and had
+partially followed on its way to the Pacific, must be the Columbia. As
+a matter of fact it was the river afterwards called Fraser.
+
+If you look at the map of British North America, and then at the map
+of Russian Asia--Siberia--you will notice a marked difference in the
+arrangement of the waterways. Those of the Canadian Dominion, on the
+whole, flow more eastwards and westwards, or at any rate radiate in
+all directions, so as to constitute the most wonderful system of
+natural canals possessed by any country or continent. On the contrary,
+the rivers of Siberia flow usually in somewhat parallel lines from
+south to north. Siberia also is far less well provided than British
+North America with an abundance of navigable rivers, streams, and
+great lakes. Therefore the traveller in pre-railway days wishing to
+cross Siberia from west to east or east to west was obliged to have
+recourse to wheeled traffic, to ride, or to walk. Consequently, until
+the beginning of the twentieth century, the "exploitation" (or turning
+to useful account) of Siberia was a far more difficult process than
+the development of North America, once the question of British
+_versus_ French or Spanish was settled. Siberia at one time was almost
+as rich in fur-bearing animals as British North America; yet so
+difficult was transport (and so severe were the rigours of the
+climate) that the Russians, once they reached the shores of the
+Pacific at the beginning of the eighteenth century, began to stretch
+out their influence to the opposite peninsula of Alaska mainly on
+account of the fur trade. For it was easier and less expensive to
+bring furs from Alaska round Cape Horn, or the Cape of Good Hope, to
+Europe than to convey them overland from eastern Siberia. Then, also,
+the Chinese market was becoming of importance to the fur trade.
+Already Mackenzie, at the end of the eighteenth century, is found
+considering whether a sea trade between China and a British port on
+the North Pacific coast could not be arranged so as to develop a
+profitable market among the mandarins and grandees of the Celestial
+Empire for a good proportion of the North-west Company's skins.
+
+[Illustration: Map of Part of the Coast Region of BRITISH COLUMBIA]
+
+Peter Pond, already referred to on p. 278, is said to have expressed
+his intention (in 1788) of going to treat with the Empress Catherine
+II for a Russian occupation of the Alaskan and Columbian coasts. For
+this reason, or the mere desire to have a proportion of this
+fur-producing country, the Emperor Paul, in 1799, created a Russian
+Chartered Company to occupy the Alaska and north Columbian coasts.
+Great Britain offered no objection--in spite of having acquired some
+rights here by an agreement with Spain--and that is why, when you look
+at the map of the vast Canadian Dominion, you find with surprise that
+it has been robbed (one might almost say) of at least half of its
+legitimate Pacific seaboard. The Russian Company was allowed to claim
+the north Columbian coast between Alaska proper and Queen Charlotte
+Islands.
+
+In 1867 the Russian Government sold all Alaska and the north Columbian
+coast to the United States, partly to annoy Great Britain, whom it had
+not forgiven for the Crimean War.
+
+You will have noticed that quite a number of United States citizens
+(mostly born British subjects in New England) had taken part in the
+north-west fur trade immediately after the British conquest of Canada
+disposed of French monopolies. There were Jonathan Carver and Peter
+Pond, for example; and a much more worthy person than the last
+named--Daniel W. Harmon, a New Englander, who entered the service of
+the North-west Company in 1800, and followed in Mackenzie's footsteps
+to the upper Fraser River and the vicinity of the Skeena. Simon Fraser
+also, whose tracing of the Fraser River from its upper waters to the
+Pacific coast we shall presently deal with, was a native of Vermont,
+though his father came from Scotland. The furs which began to
+penetrate into the United States by way of Detroit and Niagara, the
+rising scale of luxury in dress in the towns of the eastern seaboard
+of the United States, the voyages of American whalers up the west
+coast of North America (including the discovery of the Columbia River
+in 1792 by Captain Robert Gray), the purchase of Louisiana from the
+Emperor Napoleon in 1804--with the vague claim it gave to the coast
+line of Oregon on the Pacific: all these circumstances inspired
+far-sighted persons in the United States at the beginning of the
+nineteenth century with a wish to secure for their Government and
+commerce a share in the fur trade and in these wonderful new lands of
+the Pacific watershed. American ships (whaling ships) had already
+become accustomed to sail round Cape Horn and to visit the Oregon and
+Alaskan coasts. The American Government therefore, immediately after
+the Louisiana purchase, dispatched an American expedition under
+Captains Meriwether Lewis and Jonathan Clarke to travel up the
+Missouri River and so across the mountains to the coast of Oregon, a
+wonderful expedition, which they carried out with great success in two
+years (1804-6), reaching the lower Columbia River and following it
+down to the sea.
+
+Consequently, with all this in the air, it is not very surprising that
+the far-sighted John Jacob Astor, a wealthy German merchant of New
+York, should have conceived the idea of founding a great American
+fur-trading company and of establishing it at the mouth of the
+Columbia River.
+
+At the beginning of the nineteenth century he had entered into
+arrangements with an Anglo-Canadian Company (the Mackinaw), which
+worked the southernmost part of Canada, to fuse its enterprise with
+his, and thus founded the _South-west Company_, the name of which (at
+any rate in current speech) was afterwards changed into the Pacific
+Fur-trading Company. After attempting in vain to come to a working
+arrangement with the great North-west Company, he decided to act quite
+independently and to establish the headquarters of his new concern at
+the mouth of the Columbia River. Accordingly, the expedition was sent
+out in duplicate to the mouth of the Columbia River, one-half going a
+six-months' voyage round Cape Horn in a sailing ship, the _Tonquin_,
+and the other marching overland or canoeing on lakes and rivers in
+eighteen months from Montreal via the Mississippi and Missouri. These
+two parties together founded "Astoria", at the mouth of the Columbia.
+But most of Astor's employees were British subjects derived from men
+of the North-west and Mackinaw Companies; and when, in 1812, war
+broke out between the United States and Great Britain, a British war
+vessel came up the Pacific coast to Astoria and promptly turned it
+into "Fort George". Forthwith the North-west Company bought up the
+derelict property of Mr. Astor's Company from his not very honest
+British employees, and the few Americans in the concern retreated
+inland, and, after almost incredible sufferings from the attacks of
+unfriendly Indians, succeeded in reaching the Mississippi.
+
+
+[Illustration: THE KOOTENAY OR HEAD STREAM OF THE COLUMBIA RIVER]
+
+This Columbia River had in reality been discovered at its sources, and
+traced down to the sea, between 1807 and 1811 by DAVID THOMPSON (once
+a Blue-coat boy in London; from 1784 to 1792 in the service of the
+Hudson's Bay Company, and after that one of the most famous of the
+Nor'-westers). The upper course of this river and its northern
+affluents were annexed as British by David Thompson; the lower course
+did not at once become the political property of the United States,
+but was considered vaguely to be the joint property of both nations,
+till the Oregon settlement of 1846. By the treaty of 1792, the
+southern boundary of central Canada was agreed upon as being the 49th
+degree of north latitude, but only between the Lake of the Woods and
+the Rocky Mountains. The agreement of 1846 continued the 49th degree
+boundary to the shore of the Pacific opposite Vancouver Island.
+
+Prominent among the agents of the North-western Company who followed
+Sir Alexander Mackenzie as a pioneer towards the Pacific shores was
+ALEXANDER HENRY THE YOUNGER,[1] regarding whose journeys some extracts
+may be given.
+
+[Footnote 1: The nephew of the Alexander Henry already mentioned as an
+explorer between 1761 and 1775.]
+
+The first entry in his diary of 1799 is not particularly romantic, but
+shows some of the unexpected dangers attending the life of an
+adventurer in the far north-west. He had been riding through the
+Assiniboin country in the autumn of 1799, probably after one of the
+very indigestible meals which he describes here and there in his
+pages. Alone, and crossing an open plain swarming with wolves, he was
+seized suddenly with a violent colic, the pain of which was so
+terrible that he could not remain in the saddle. He dismounted,
+hobbled his horse, and threw himself on the grass, where he lay in
+agony for two hours, expecting every moment would be his last, till,
+quite exhausted, he fell asleep. He was awakened, however, by the
+howling of the wolves advancing to tear him to pieces; yet he was so
+weak that he was scarcely able to mount his horse, and then could only
+proceed at a slow walk, with the wolves snapping at his horse's heels.
+
+Near the site of the present city of Winnipeg, in the late summer of
+1800, he and his expedition were much troubled by swarms of water
+snakes. They were harmless but not pleasant in their familiarity, for
+they entered the tents and took refuge in the explorers' beds; and as
+they apparently came from their breeding places in Amerindian graves
+which covered the remains of people who had died of smallpox in a
+recent epidemic, they were additionally loathsome.
+
+Smallpox indeed played a very important part in the historical
+development of western North America. Prior to 1780 the Amerindian
+tribes between the upper Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, and
+between the Saskatchewans and the Missouri, were numerous and warlike.
+At first, about 1765, they received in very friendly fashion the
+pioneer British traders and French Canadians who attempted to resume
+the fur trade where it had been dropped by the French monopolists in
+1760. But fifteen years afterwards, enraged at the violence and
+wrongdoing of the British and Canadian traders, and maddened by strong
+drink, they were planning a universal massacre of the whites, when
+suddenly smallpox (introduced by the Spaniards into New Mexico) came
+on them as a scourge, which destroyed whole tribes, and depopulated
+much of western North America.
+
+Alexander Henry had many adventures with the bison of the plains. Here
+is one of them.
+
+"Just as I came up to him at full speed and prepared to fire, my horse
+suddenly stopped. The bull had turned about to face my horse, which
+was naturally afraid of buffaloes, and startled at such a frightful
+object; he leaped to one side to avoid the bull. As I was not prepared
+for this I was pitched over his head, and fell within a few yards of
+the bull's nose; but fortunately for me he paid no more attention to
+my horse than to me. The grass was long, and I lay quiet until a
+favourable opportunity offered as he presented his placotte. I
+discharged both barrels of my double gun at him; he turned and made
+one plunge toward me, but had not time to repeat it before he fell,
+with his nose not more than three paces off.... I had to return on
+foot as my horse had bolted."
+
+At this place--near the Red River (the season September)--the country
+swarmed with big game such as North America will never see any more:
+enormous numbers of bison, of wapiti or Canadian red deer, moose or
+elk, prong-buck, and of grizzly bears and black bears who followed the
+herds to attack them. The rivers swarmed with otters and beavers. The
+ground along the banks of the river was worn into a smooth, hard
+pavement by the hoofs of the thousands of buffaloes. Racoons, red
+foxes, wolves, and pumas frequented the bush country and the chumps of
+forest. A large white wolf, prowling rather imprudently, came within a
+few yards of Henry, and was shot dead. "We observed on the opposite
+beach no fewer than seven bears drinking all at the same time. Red
+deer were whistling in every direction, but our minds were not
+sufficiently at ease to enjoy our situation." Large flocks of swans
+(_Cygnus columbianus_) rose out of the Red River apparently in a state
+of alarm and confusion, possibly caused by the many herds of buffaloes
+rushing down to the river to drink. At night everything was quiet
+except the bellowing of buffaloes and the whistling of red deer. "I
+climbed up a tall oak at the entrance of the plain, from the top of
+which I had an extensive view of the country. Buffalo and red deer
+were everywhere in sight passing to and fro."
+
+But the prairie had its nuisances as well as its wonders of animal
+life. From the end of April to the end of July the woods and grass
+swarmed with ticks (_Ixodes_), which covered the clothes of the
+Europeans and entered their ears and there caused serious
+inflammations. They would in time get such a firm hold by the
+insertion of their heads into the skin that they could not be removed
+without pulling the body from the head, which caused a terrible
+itching lasting for months. If left alone they adhered to the flesh
+until they swelled to the size of a musket ball, when they fell off of
+themselves. In the summertime gadflies were exasperating in their
+attacks on men and cattle. Mosquitoes were a veritable plague, and
+midges also, between June and the end of September.
+
+Not the least of the terrors of life in the far north-west in those
+days was the vermin that collected in the houses or huts built for a
+winter sojourn. It is frequently mentioned, in the records of the
+pioneers, how the lodges or tents of the Amerindians swarmed with
+fleas and lice. Henry notes on the 19th of April, 1803: "The men began
+to demolish our dwelling houses, which were built of bad wood, and to
+build new ones of oak. The nests of mice we found, and the swarms of
+fleas hopping in every direction, were astonishing."
+
+Henry reached the Pacific coast in 1814, by way of the Kootenay,
+Spokane, and Columbia River route, which had been discovered by David
+Thompson. He describes well the forests of remarkable trees on this
+portion of the Pacific coast, opposite the south end of Vancouver
+Island: the crooked oaks loaded with mistletoe, the tall wild cherry
+trees, the hazels with trunks thicker than a man's thigh, the
+evergreen arbutus, the bracken fern, blackberries, and black
+raspberries; and the game in these glades of trees and fern: small
+Columbian _Mazama_ deer, large lynxes, bears, gluttons, wolves, foxes,
+racoons, and squirrels. Overhead soared huge Californian condors
+(_Pseudogryphus_).
+
+Henry was drowned in 1812 in the estuary of the Columbia River,
+through the capsizing of a boat.
+
+The question of the identity of the great river flowing to the Pacific
+from near the headwaters of the Peace--the river which Mackenzie had
+discovered and been forced to leave--was finally decided by SIMON
+FRASER, one of the most celebrated among the North-west Company's
+pioneers. Like Mackenzie, he believed this stream to be the upper
+Columbia.
+
+Accompanied by John Stuart and Jules Quesnel, he left the Fraser River
+at its junction with the Nechaco on May 22, 1807, and, keeping as near
+as he could to the course of the river, found himself in the country
+of the Atna tribe, Amerindians of a diminutive size but active
+appearance, from whom he obtained an invaluable guide and faithful
+interpreter, Little Fellow, but for whose bravery, wise advice, and
+clever diplomacy the journey must have ended in disaster or
+disappointment--a remark which might be made about nearly all the
+Amerindian guides of the pioneers.
+
+The Atna Indians were dressed in skins with the hair outside, and were
+armed with bows and arrows. They besmeared their bodies with fish oil
+and red earth, and painted their faces in different colours. Bison
+were quite unknown to them, being very seldom found in those latitudes
+on the western side of the Rocky Mountains. The country of the Atna
+Indians on the upper Fraser abounded in elk, wapiti, reindeer, bighorn
+sheep, mountain goats,[2] and beaver.
+
+[Footnote 2: This remarkable beast (_Oreamnus_) they called "Aspai",
+and wove from its white wool an excellent cloth for their clothing.]
+
+Here is a description by Fraser of some of the rapids in the upper
+part of the river named after him.
+
+"The channel contracts to about forty yards, and is enclosed by two
+precipices of immense height, which bending towards each other make it
+narrower above than below. The water which rolls down this
+extraordinary passage in tumultuous waves and with great velocity has
+a frightful appearance. However, it being impossible to carry canoes
+by land, all hands without hesitation embarked, as it were, _a corps
+perdu_ upon the mercy of this awful tide. Once engaged, the die was
+cast. Our great difficulty consisted in keeping the canoes in the
+middle of the stream, that is, clear of the precipice on the one side,
+and of the gulfs formed by the waves on the other. Thus, skimming
+along as fast as lightning, the crews, cool and determined, followed
+each other in awful silence, and when we arrived at the end we stood
+gazing at each other in silent gratification at our narrow escape from
+total destruction.... I scarcely ever saw anything so dreary and
+dangerous in any country (such precipices, mountains, and rapids), and
+I still seem to see, whichever way I turn my eyes, mountains upon
+mountains whose summits are covered with eternal snow."
+
+[Illustration: A HUNTER'S "SHACK" IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: AFTER A
+SUCCESSFUL SHOOT OF BLUE GROUSE]
+
+They had to take to these same mountains, the river being unnavigable.
+The Asketti Indians brought them different kinds of roots, especially
+wild onions boiled into a syrup, excellent dried salmon, and some
+berries. These Indians had visited the seacoast, and had seen ships of
+war come there with white men, "very well dressed, and very proud,
+for," continued the chief, getting up and clapping his two hands upon
+his hips, and then striding about the place with an air of
+importance, "this is the way they go". In this country of the Hakamaw
+and Asketti Indians, dogs were much in use for carrying purposes, and
+could draw from one hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds. They were
+considered by the French Canadians very good eating, though only the
+smaller kinds were eaten, the large dogs being of another race and
+having a rank taste. They also shaved these dogs in the summer time,
+and wove rugs from their hair. These rugs were striped in different
+colours, crossing at right angles, and resembling at a distance a
+Highland plaid.
+
+The tombs of the Indian villages on this western side of the Rocky
+Mountains were superior to anything that Fraser had ever seen amongst
+savages. They were about fifteen feet long, and of the form of a chest
+of drawers. Upon the boards and posts, beasts and birds were carved in
+a curious but crude manner, and pretty well proportioned. Returning to
+the river, when the worst of the rapids were passed, they descended it
+rapidly, helped by a strong current, and at length entered a lake
+where they saw seals, which showed that they had got near to the
+Pacific Ocean. They also beheld a round mountain, the now celebrated
+Mount Baker, which is visible from so much of the surrounding country
+of British Columbia and Vancouver Island. The trees were splendid,
+junipers thirty feet in circumference in their trunks and two or three
+hundred feet high. Mosquitoes, however, were in clouds. Nearer to the
+coast the Indians often appeared in the distance like white men, for
+the very literal reason that they had covered their skins with white
+paint. Their houses were built of cedar planks, and were six hundred
+and forty feet long by sixty feet broad, all under one roof, but of
+course separated into a great number of partitions for different
+families. On the outside the boards (as Mackenzie had noticed) were
+carved with figures of men, beasts, and birds as large as life. Simon
+Fraser, however, when he reached sea water, near the site of New
+Westminster, was greatly disappointed that any view of the main ocean
+should be obstructed by distant lands. He had believed all along that
+he was tracing the far-famed Columbia River to its entrance into the
+Pacific Ocean; and now that, instead of this, he had discovered an
+entirely new river, henceforth to be called after him but without so
+long a course as the Columbia, his vanity was hurt.
+
+The Amerindians of the sea coast, opposite Vancouver Island, showed
+hostility to Fraser's party, as they had done farther north to
+Mackenzie. The Canadian _voyageurs_ got alarmed, and told Fraser's
+assistant, John Stuart, that they had made up their minds to return by
+land across the Rocky Mountains. Fraser and the other officers of the
+expedition joined in arguing with them and recalling them to their
+senses. Finally each member of the party swore a solemn oath before
+Almighty God that they would sooner perish than forsake in distress
+any of the crew in the present voyage. After this ceremony was over
+all hands dressed in their best apparel, and each took charge of his
+own bundle. They therefore returned as much as possible by the Fraser
+River, and only took to the mountains when obliged by the rapids. They
+had to pass many difficult rocks, defiles, precipices, in which there
+was a beaten path made by the natives, and made possible by means of
+scaffolds, bridges, and ladders, so peculiarly constructed that it
+required no small degree of necessity, dexterity, and courage in
+strangers to undertake them. For instance, they had to ascend
+precipices by means of ladders composed of two long poles placed
+upright, with sticks tied crosswise with twigs; upon the end of these
+others were placed, and so on to any height; add to this that the
+ladders were often so slack that the smallest breeze put them in
+motion, swinging them against the rocks, while the steps leading from
+scaffold to scaffold were so narrow and irregular that they could
+scarcely be traced by the feet without the greatest care and
+circumspection; but the most perilous part was when another rock
+projected over the one they were clearing.
+
+The Hakamaw Indians certainly deserved Fraser's grateful remembrance
+for their able assistance throughout these alarming situations. The
+descents were, if possible, still more difficult; in these places the
+white men were under the necessity of trusting their property to the
+Indians, even the precious guns were handed from one Indian to
+another; yet they thought nothing of it, they went up and down these
+wild places with the same agility as sailors do on a ship. After
+escaping innumerable perils in the course of the day, the party
+encamped about sunset, being supplied by the natives with plenty of
+dried fish.
+
+Thus the main lines of the exploration of the great Canadian Dominion
+were completed. Alexander Mackenzie went to England in 1799 and
+received a knighthood for his remarkable achievements. On his return
+he first definitely created the New North-west or "X.Y." Company, and
+then brought about its fusion (after several years of bitter rivalry)
+with the old North-west Company; and it was this united and
+strengthened organization which, between 1804 and 1819, sent out so
+many bold pioneers to fill in the details of the map between the
+Columbia and Missouri on the south, and the Great Slave Lake and Liard
+River on the north. But during these years the energies of the
+Hudson's Bay Company were reviving under a strange personality--THOMAS
+DOUGLAS, EARL OF SELKIRK. Lord Selkirk conceived the idea of putting
+new life into the Hudson's Bay Company, reviving the monopolies of
+trading granted in its old charter, and turning its vague rights to
+land into the absolute ownership of the enormous area of North
+America north and west of the Canadian provinces. No regard of course
+was paid to any rights of the natives, who as a matter of fact were
+dying out rapidly from the effects of bad alcohol and epidemic
+diseases.
+
+His motive was to establish large colonies of stalwart Highlanders as
+the tenants of a Chartered Company. Alexander Mackenzie had already
+called the north-west country "New Caledonia". Lord Selkirk wished to
+make it so in its population.
+
+Already he had been instrumental in establishing a Scottish colony on
+Prince Edward's Island,[3] which, after some difficulties at the
+beginning, had soon begun to prosper. Two or three years later he came
+to Montreal, and there collected all the information he could obtain
+from the partners in the North-west Company regarding the prospects of
+trade and colonization in the far west. In the year 1811 he had
+managed to acquire the greater part of the shares in the Hudson's Bay
+Company, and, placing himself at its head, he sent out his first
+hundred Highlanders and Irish to form a feudatory colony in the Red
+River district (the modern Manitoba). He also dispatched an official
+to govern what might be called the Middle West on behalf of the
+Hudson's Bay Company. This person, acting under instructions, claimed
+the whole region beyond the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada as the
+private property of the Hudson's Bay Company, on the strength of their
+antiquated charter issued by Charles II. The agents of the North-west
+Company were warned (as also the two or three thousand French
+Canadians and half-breeds in their pay) that henceforth they must not
+cut wood, fish or hunt, build or cultivate, save by the permission and
+as the tenants of the Hudson's Bay Company.
+
+[Footnote 3: Prince Edward's Island is off the north coast of New
+Brunswick. It was named after Queen Victoria's father, the Duke of
+Kent.]
+
+It is not surprising that such an outrageous demand, when it was
+followed up by the use of armed force, soon provoked bloodshed and a
+state of civil war throughout the North-west Territories. Lord Selkirk
+himself took command on the Red River, with a small army of
+disciplined soldiers. At length, in 1817, the British Government
+intervened through the Governor-General of Canada, and in 1818 Lord
+Selkirk left North America disgusted, and two years afterwards died at
+Pau, in France, from an illness brought on by grief at the failure of
+his projects.
+
+Sir Alexander Mackenzie also died suddenly in 1820, in Scotland. For
+twelve years he had been member of parliament for Huntingdon, and
+since 1812 had been the determined opponent in England of Lord
+Selkirk's plans of forcible colonization. After his death, however, in
+1821, a sudden movement for reconciliation took place between the two
+Companies. Thenceforth the Hudson's Bay Company ruled over the vast
+regions of British North America, beyond Newfoundland, New Brunswick,
+Nova Scotia, and the two Canadian provinces. Under their government
+the work of geographical exploration went on apace. In 1834 one of
+their officers, J. M'Leod, discovered the Stikine River in northern
+British Columbia, and by 1848 J. Bell and Robert Campbell had revealed
+the Porcupine and Yukon Rivers. By the time Thomas Simpson, Warren
+Dease, and Dr. John Rae, on behalf of the Hudson's Bay Company; and
+Franklin, Back, Parry, Richardson, and M'Clintock, for the Imperial
+Government, had completed the explorations mentioned in Chapter VI,
+all the main features of Canadian geography were made known. The next
+series of pioneers were to be those of the mining industry--it was the
+discovery of gold in 1856 which created British Columbia; of
+agriculture--the wheat-growers of the Red River region made the
+province of Manitoba; of the steamboat; and above all the railway.
+Developments of science scarcely yet dreamt of will demand in further
+time their pioneers, and these will not come from abroad, but will
+assuredly be found in this splendid Canadian people, the descendants
+of the men or of the types of men I have attempted to describe.
+
+
+
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