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 Montre