theless possessed sources of wealth that might almost rival the mines of Mexico and Peru. The Indians, unacquainted with the artificial value given to some descriptions of furs in European society, bartered away quantities for trinkets and cheap commodities; immense profits were thus made by the early French traders, and the traffic was pursued with avidity. After the conquest this trade was contracted within very narrow limits; it was soon, however, revived with much emulation, by individual merchants and adventurers. To put an end to the ruinous jealousies and rivalships which necessarily ensued, several of the principal merchants of Montreal entered into a partnership, in the year 1783, which was augmented by amalgamation with a rival company in 1787. We borrow a notice of their extensive confederation from the introduction to the romantic history of Astoria. "Thus was created the famous 'North-west Company,' which for a time held a lordly sway over the wintry lakes and boundless forests of the Canadas, almost equal to that of the East India Company over the voluptuous climes, and magnificent realms of the Orient. The company consisted of twenty-three shareholders or partners; but held in its employ about two thousand persons as clerks, guides, interpreters, and 'voyageurs' or boatmen. These were distributed at various tradingports, established far and wide in the interior lakes and rivers, at immense distances from each other, and in the heart of trackless countries and savage tribes. "As to the principal partners or agents, who resided in Montreal and Quebec, they formed a kind of commercial aristocracy, living in lordly and hospitable style. Their early associations, when clerks at the remote trading ports, and the pleasures, dangers, adventures, and mishaps which they had shared together in their wild wood life, had linked them heartily to each other, so that they formed a convivial fraternity. Few travellers that visited Canada some thirty years since, in the days of the M'Tavishes, the M'Gillivrays, the M'Kenzies, the Frobishers, and the other magnates of the North-West, when the Company was in all its glory, but must remember the round of feasting and revelry kept up amongst these hyperborean nabobs. Sometimes one or two partners, recently from the interior ports, would make their appearance in New York in the course of a tour of pleasure and curiosity. On these occasions there was always a degree of magnificence of the purse about them, and a peculiar propensity to expenditure at the goldsmiths and jewellers for rings, chains, brooches, necklaces, jewelled watches, and other rich trinkets, partly for their own wear, and partly for presents to their female acquaintances; a gorgeous prodigality, such as was often noticed in former times in Southern Planters and West Indian Creoles, when flush with the profits of their plantations. To behold the North-West Company in all its state and grandeur, however, it was necessary to witness an annual gathering at the great interior place of conference established at Fort-William, near to what is called the Grand Portage, on Lake Superior. "On these occasions might be seen the change since the unceremonious times of the old French traders; how the aristocratical character of the Briton shone forth magnificently, or rather the feudal spirit of the Highlander. "The partners from Montreal, however, were the lords of the ascendant; coming from the midst of luxurious and ostentatious life, they quite eclipsed their compeers from the woods, whose forms and faces had been battered and hardened by hard living and hard service, and whose garments and equipments were all the worse for wear. Indeed, the partners from below considered the whole dignity of the Company as represented in their persons, and conducted themselves in suitable style. They ascended the rivers in great state, like sovereigns making a progress, or rather like Highland chieftains navigating their subject lakes. They were wrapped in rich furs, their huge canoes freighted with every convenience and luxury, and manned by Canadian voyageurs' as obedient as Highland clansmen. They carried up with them cooks and bakers, together with delicacies of every kind, and abundance of choice wines for the banquet which attended this great convocation. Happy were they, too, if they could meet with some distinguished stranger,-above all, some titled member of the British nobility, to accompany them on this stately occasion, and grace their high solemnities. Fort William, the scene of this important annual meeting, was a considerable village on the banks of Lake Superior. Here, in an immense wooden building, was the great Council Hall, as also the banqueting chamber, decorated with Indian arms and accoutrements, and the trophies of the fur-trade. "These grave and weighty councils were alternated by huge feasts and revels, like some of the old feasts described in Highland castles. The tables in the great banqueting rooms groaned under the weight of game of all kinds; of venison from the woods; of fish from the lakes, with hunters' delicacies, such as buffaloes' tongues and beavers' tails, and various luxuries from Montreal, all served up by experienced cooks brought up for the purpose. There was no stint of generous wine, for it was a hard drinking period,-a time of loyal toasts and bacchanalian songs, and brimming bumpers. "Such was the North-West Company in its powerful and prosperous days, when it held a kind of feudal sway over a vast domain of lake and forest! We are dwelling too long, perhaps, upon these individual pictures, endeared to us by the associations of early life, when, as yet a stripling youth, we have sat at the board of the Mighty North-Westers,' then lords of the ascendant at Montreal, and gazed with wondering and inexperienced eye at their baronial wassailing, and listened with astonished ear to their tales of hardships and adventures. It is one object of our task, however, to present the scenes of the rough life of the wilderness, and we are tempted to fix these few memorials of a transient state VOL. VIII.-No XV. U of things, fast passing into oblivion :-for the feudal state of Fort William is at an end its council chamber is silent and deserted: its banquet hall no longer echoes to the burst of loyalty, or the auld warld' ditty: the lords of the lakes and the forests have passed away; and the hospitable Magnates of Montreal-where are they?” We cannot close this brief record of the "Great NorthWesters", without a passing notice of a class of persons who were almost called into existence by their commercial enterprise. We quote again the graphic words of Washington Irving, who writes of the Land of Lake and Forest with an accuracy of description and a truth of feeling, which proclaim him native-born. "The 'Voyageurs' form a kind of confraternity in the Canadas, like the arrieros or carriers of Spain, and like them are employed in long internal expeditions of travel and traffics. "The dress of these people is generally half civilized, half savage. They wear a capot or surcoat, made of a blanket, a striped cotton shirt, cloth trousers, or leather legging, and a belt of variegated worsted, from which are suspended the knife, tobacco-pouch, and other implements. Their language is of the same pie-bald character, being a French patois, embroidered with Indian and English words and phrases. No men are more submissive to their leaders and employers, more capable of enduring hardship, or more submissive under privations. Never are they so happy as when on long and rough expeditions, toiling up rivers, and coasting lakes; encamping at night on the borders, gossiping round their fires, and bivouacking in the open air. They are dexterous boatmen, vigorous and adroit with the oar and paddle, and will row from morning until night without a murmur. The steersman often sings an old traditionary French song, with some regular burden in which they all join, keeping time with their oars; if at any time they flag in spirits or relax in execution, it is only necessary to strike up a song of the kind, to put them all in fresh spirits and activity. The Canadian waters are vocal with these little French chansons, that have been echoed from mouth to mouth, and transmitted from father to son, from the earliest days of *The competition and success of the North-West Company roused the dormant energies of the Hudson's Bay Company. The conflicting interests and pretensions of the two companies were naturally productive of much ill-will. Under the auspices of the late Earl of Selkirk, who was, for a considerable period, at the head of the Hudson's Bay Company, a colony was projected and formed on the Red River, which runs into Lake Winnipec. The North-West Company regarded this establishment as an encroachment upon their peculiar rights; and the animosities thence arising led to the most violent proceedings on the part of the servants of both companies. At length, however, the more moderate individuals of each party began to perceive that their interests were not materially different; and the rival companies, wearied and impoverished by their dissensions, ultimately united under the name of the "Hudson's Bay Company," which at present engrosses most of the fur trade of British North America.-M'Culloch's Dictionary of Commerce, Art. Fur Trade. the colony; and it has a pleasing effect in a still, golden, summer evening, to see a 'batteau' gliding across the bosom of a lake, and dipping its oars to the cadence of these quaint old ditties, or sweeping in full chorus on a bright sunny morning down the transparent current of one of the Canadian rivers. "But we are talking of things that are fast fading away! The march of mechanical invention is driving everything poetical before it. The steamboats which are fast dispelling the wildness and romance of our lakes and rivers, and aiding to subdue the world into common-place, are proving as fatal to the race of Canadian voyageurs' as they have been to that of the boatmen on the Mississippi. Their glory is departed. They are no longer the lords of our internal seas, and the great navigators of the wilderness. Some of them may still occasionally be seen, coasting the lower lakes with their frail barks, and pitching their camps and lighting their fires on the shores; but their range is fast contracting to those remote waters, and shallow and obstructed rivers, unvisited by the steamboat. "In the course of years they will gradually disappear; their songs will die away like the echoes they once awakened, and the Canadian voyageurs' will become a forgotten race, or be remembered like their associates, the Indians, among the poetical images of past times, and as themes for local and romantic associations." The merchants engaged in the timber trade constitute the other great commercial interest in the colony. It was subsequently to 1808, when events seriously threatened our relations with the Baltic, that Mr. Vansittart, in pursuance of his favourite policy, imposed the present heavy duties on European timber; and the following comparative table will show to what an extent a preference for our colonies has been carried. An Account of the rates of Duty payable in Great Britain on the principal Articles of Wood*. 10 0 BATTENS, 6, not exceeding 6 feet long, and not £. s. DEALS, 8, and not above 10 feet long, and not 11 10 0 20 20 0 0 2 0 0 8 2 6 * M'Culloch's Commercial Dictionary, Art. Timber Trade, p. 1154. Timber. Of Foreign Of the British Plantations in America. 6, and not above 16 feet long, and not exceeding 3 inches thick, per 120. 19 0 0 200 2 10 0 44 0 0 16, and not exceeding 21 feet long, and not (See DEAL-ENDS under 6 feet long, and not exceeding 34 inches thick, per 120 And exceeding 34 inches thick, per 120 LATHWOOD, in pieces under 5 feet long, per fathom . . . . 5, and under 8 feet long 8, and under 12 feet long. MASTS, 6 and under 8 inches in diameter, each 22 feet long, per 120 ... And 22 feet long or upwards, per 120. 4 and under 6 inches in diameter. STAVES, not exceeding 36 inches long. Above 36 and not exceeding 50 inches long, per 120 Above 50 and not exceeding 60 inches long, per 120 Above 60, and not exceeding 72 inches long, per 120 Above 72 inches long N.B.-Staves of the United States of America, FIR, 8 inches square or upwards, per load. . . ditto Unenumerated . . . . ditto WAINSCOT-LOGS, 8 inches square or upwards, per load.. 2 10 0 |