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Updated: June 3, 2025
The company of merchants, though pledged to promote its growth, did what they could to prevent it. They were fur-traders, and the interests of the fur-trade are always opposed to those of settlement and population. They feared, too, and with reason, that their monopoly might be suddenly revoked, like that of De Monts, and they thought only of making profit from it while it lasted.
"You are right, Mr McKay," said the elder. "But for the unfortunate jealousies of the two Companies, we might have been in very different circumstances to-day. If the North-Westers could only see that the establishment of a colony in Red River would in no way hinder the fur-trade, we could all get along peaceably enough together.
Let France, he argued, plant herself boldly and strongly on the St. Lawrence, that great highway for the savage's canoe and the white man's ship, and she would control the fur-trade. The other idea active in his mind was an earnest desire for the conversion of the Indians. It is undeniable that France was genuinely interested in christianizing the natives of America.
These could not be trusted to fight their kinsmen, but willingly made forays against the English borders. Caughnawaga, like various other Canadian missions, was divided between the Church, the army, and the fur-trade. It had a chapel, fortifications, and storehouses; two Jesuits, an officer, and three chief traders.
Her father, who was endowed with a veritable genius for commercial action, had monopolized more than the fur-trade of Alaska and of Hudson's Bay.
He had heard of the Missouri River fur-trade, and big wages on the steamboats carrying emigrants from St. Louis up-stream to Nebraska, Iowa and Dakota Territory, and bringing back furs and hides. But at Pittsburgh he was turned back by news of the outbreak of cholera at New Orleans, a disease which had struck us with terror along the canal two or three years before.
Our three voyageurs, meanwhile, ascended the Saskatchewan, penetrating deeper each day into the heart of the North American continent. On arriving at Fort Pitt, they were graciously permitted to rest for three days, after which they were forwarded to another district, where fresh efforts were being made to extend the fur-trade into lands hitherto almost unvisited.
But attic dwellers stave off many a woe with empty stomachs and stout courage. When April came, boats for the fur-trade should have been stirring, and my Lord Preston changes his tune. One night, when Pierre Radisson sat spinning his yarns of captivity with Iroquois to our attic neighbours, comes a rap at the door, and in walks Captain Godey of the English Embassy.
Before going to Mexico, Estenega remained for some weeks at his ranchos in the North, overlooking the slaughtering of his cattle, an important yearly event, for the trade in hides and tallow with foreign shippers was the chief source of the Californian's income. He also was associated with the Russians at Fort Ross and Bodega in the fur-trade.
The readiness, for instance, of the Eastern "fling" at Western Canada thirty years ago is still remembered, and it is easy to transfer it to the North. Those who lament the meagreness of our records of the fur-trade and primitive social life in Ontario, for example, before the advent of the U. E. Loyalists, can find their almost exact counterpart in Athabasca to-day.
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