United States or Armenia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Occasionally, however, meetings and encounters did take place, and sometimes bitter feuds arose, but the possession of fire-arms by the Indians who were supplied by the fur-traders rendered the Eskimos wary. Their headstrong courage, however, induced the red men to keep as much as possible out of their way.
The wharf is at the junction of the two streams, but chiefly on the shore of the unattractive Little Kanawha, which is spanned by several bridges, and abounds in steamers and houseboats moored to the land. Clark and Jones did not think well of Little Kanawha lands, yet there were several families on the river as early as 1763, and Trent, Croghan, and other Fort Pitt fur-traders had posts here.
Surmounting this obstacle by the simple process of carrying the canoe and her lading past the falls by land, and relaunching on the still water above, they continued their voyage day by day, encamping under the trees by night, until they had penetrated far and deep into the heart of the northern wilderness, and had even passed beyond the most distant establishments of the adventurous fur-traders.
Like all the establishments of the fur-traders, it is a solitary group of wooden buildings, far removed beyond the influences almost beyond the ken of the civilised world, and surrounded by the primeval wilderness, the only tenants of which were, at the time we write of, a few scattered tribes of Muskigon Indians, and the wild animals whose flesh furnished them with food and whose skins constituted their sole wealth.
On landing, Charley and Jacques walked up to a tall, good-looking Indian, whom they judged from him demeanour, and the somewhat deferential regard paid to him by the others, to be one of the chief men of the little community. "Ho! what cheer?" said Jacques, taking him by the hand after the manner of Europeans, and accosting him with the phrase used by the fur-traders to the natives.
They were largely soldiers or the descendants of soldiers who had fought in the Highland Regiments during the campaign of 1759, and who after the Treaty of Paris in 1763 had taken up the land assigned to them by the Crown. Many of these soldiers, too, later became fur-traders and entered the service of the North-West Company.
This was one of those sheets of water which glitter in hundreds on the green bosom of America's forests, and are so numerous and comparatively insignificant as to be scarce distinguished by a name, unless when they lie directly in the accustomed route of the fur-traders.
I have always had a high opinion of the energy and perseverance of these missionaries, but I cannot get over the incongruity of their strange way of mingling trade with religion. It seems to me an unnatural sort of thing for missionaries to be fur-traders. I do not mean by this to object to their system, however; I daresay it works well, but I've had no means of judging."
In an adjacent harbor, called by them Port Mouton, because a sheep here leaped overboard, they waited nearly a month for Pontgrave's store-ship. At length, to their great relief, she appeared, laden with the spoils of four Basque fur-traders, captured at Cansean.
With him were a few Huron converts, and among them a noted Christian chief, Eustache Ahatsistari. Others of the party were in course of instruction for baptism; but the greater part were heathen, whose canoes were deeply laden with the proceeds of their bargains with the French fur-traders. Jogues sat in one of the leading canoes. He was born at Orleans in 1607, and was thirty-five years of age.
Word Of The Day