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The North-Westers seeing them approach, halted, and standing to their arms, sent forward one of their number to demand whether Mr. Semple and his party were for peace or war.
Yet François Beaulieu, one of Mackenzie's voyageurs, only died in 1872, and was well known to many old North-Westers who are still alive. The Indian birch-bark canoe is pre-eminently characteristic of Canada. But it is not the most primitive type of small craft; and it was often superseded for various purposes by the more advanced types introduced by the whites.
From 1674 to 1813 the Hudson's Bay Company slumbered at its posts along the shores of Hudson's Bay, never attempting to penetrate beyond the banks of the Saskatchewan, until the North-Westers had led and cleared the way; and in this manner began their rivalry. That collisions should follow, marked by violence and outrage, need not be wondered at.
They only spoke among themselves, while the agents of the North-west Company were here. We did not know what it meant, when they asked the North-westers into the plain. As soon as they were done speaking among themselves the cannons were fired. We said, "What can it mean? It must be some great affair." The apparent harmony of the two Companies did not last long.
"If it wass not for the jealousy an' ill-will o' the North-Westers we should hev been at this goot hour in our comfortable houses amang the green fields of Rud Ruver." "Wheesht! faither!" interposed Duncan junior, "Mr Sutherland wass speakin', an' ye've stoppit him." "An' what if I hev, Tuncan? Can he not continoo to speak when I hev done?" retorted the old man, resuming his drum-stick.
Although everything had been done for them by their patron the Earl of Selkirk with the best intentions, the carrying out of his plans had been frustrated by the feuds of the rival fur companies, the misunderstandings and the jealousies of Indians and half-breeds, and, to some extent, by the severity of the climate. An open rupture took place between them and the North-westers.
Whether he induced his company to grant him a vast area of land at the junction of the Red and Assiniboine rivers against which a minority of stockholders protested for the sake of these same colonists, or to hold a strategical point past which North-Westers' cargoes must go who can say?
Each day he watched the compasses with attention, and it is to him we owe the discovery of the magnetic variation, of which he took account in his calculations. The pilots, however, were much disturbed on seeing the compasses all "north-westers," as they expressed it. On the 14th of September the sailors saw a swallow and some tropic-birds.
I knew, or rather I could foresee, the result; but as he had taken in the course of the last two hours three north-westers, and was half-seas over, my advice availed little. The other boat was at some distance from us.
He was remarkable for always jerking up his breeches when he gave out his orders, and his voice sounded not unlike the brattling of a tin trumpet, owing to the number of hard north-westers which he had swallowed in the course of his seafaring.
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