The goods destined for this wide and wandering traffic were put
up at the warehouses of the company in Montreal, and conveyed in
batteaux, or boats and canoes, up the river Attawa, or Ottowa,
which falls into the St. Lawrence near Montreal, and by other
rivers and portages, to Lake Nipising, Lake Huron, Lake Superior,
and thence, by several chains of great and small lakes, to Lake
Winnipeg, Lake Athabasca, and the Great Slave Lake. This singular
and beautiful system of internal seas, which renders an immense
region of wilderness so accessible to the frail bark of the
Indian or the trader, was studded by the remote posts of the
company, where they carried on their traffic with the surrounding
tribes.
The company, as we have shown, was at first a spontaneous
association of merchants; but, after it had been regularly
organized, admission into it became extremely difficult. A
candidate had to enter, as it were, "before the mast," to undergo
a long probation, and to rise slowly by his merits and services.
He began, at an early age, as a clerk, and served an
apprenticeship of seven years, for which he received one hundred
pounds sterling, was maintained at the expense of the company,
and furnished with suitable clothing and equipments. His
probation was generally passed at the interior trading posts;
removed for years from civilized society, leading a life almost
as wild and precarious as the savages around him; exposed to the
severities of a northern winter, often suffering from a scarcity
of food, and sometimes destitute for a long time of both bread
and salt. When his apprenticeship had expired, he received a
salary according to his deserts, varying from eighty to one
hundred and sixty pounds sterling, and was now eligible to the
great object of his ambition, a partnership in the company;
though years might yet elapse before he attained to that enviable
station.
Most of the clerks were young men of good families, from the
Highlands of Scotland, characterized by the perseverance, thrift,
and fidelity of their country, and fitted by their native
hardihood to encounter the rigorous climate of the North, and to
endure the trials and privations of their lot; though it must not
be concealed that the constitutions of many of them became
impaired by the hardships of the wilderness, and their stomachs
injured by occasional famishing, and especially by the want of
bread and salt. Now and then, at an interval of years, they were
permitted to come down on a visit to the establishment at
Montreal, to recruit their health, and to have a taste of
civilized life; and these were brilliant spots in their
existence.
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 posts, 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
have 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 Northwest, when the company was in all
its glory, but must remember the round of feasting and revelry
kept up among these hyperborean nabobs.
Sometimes one or two partners, recently from the interior posts,
would make their appearance in New York, in the course of a tour
of pleasure and curiosity. On these occasions there was a degree
of magnificence of the purse about them, and a peculiar
propensity to expenditure at the goldsmith's and jeweler's for
rings, chains, brooches, necklaces, jeweled watches, and other
rich trinkets, partly for their own wear, partly for presents to
their female acquaintances; a gorgeous prodigality, such as was
often to be noticed in former times in Southern planters and West
India creoles, when flush with the profits of their plantations.
To behold the Northwest 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 what is called the Grand Portage, on Lake Superior. Here two
or three of the leading partners from Montreal proceeded once a
year to meet the partners from the various trading posts of the
wilderness, to discuss the affairs of the company during the
preceding year, and to arrange plans for the future.
On these occasions might be seen the change since the
unceremonious times of the old French traders; now the
aristocratic character of the Briton shone forth magnificently,
or rather the feudal spirit of the Highlander. Every partner who
had charge of an interior post, and a score of retainers at his
Command, felt like the chieftain of a Highland clan, and was
almost as important in the eyes of his dependents as of himself.
To him a visit to the grand conference at Fort William was a most
important event, and he repaired there as to a meeting of
parliament.
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 banquets which attended this great
convocation.
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