ing of the
nineteenth century, depict the periods of the annual return of the
traders from their wintering stations in the great panorama of the
wilderness, east, west, north, and south, as a perfect carnival, in
which eating and drinking and wild carousals prevailed. The earnings of
a year were often spent in a week or a day. As to practical morality, it
was regarded by the higher order of "merchant-voyageurs" as something
spoken of in books, but not worth the while of a _bon vivant_. The
common hands, who paddled canoes and underwent the drudgery of the trade
(who were exclusively of the lower order of Canadian peasantry), squared
their moral accounts once a year with a well-conducted confessional
interview and a crown, and felt as happy as the "Christian Pilgrim" when
he had been relieved of his burden. It would, probably, be wrong to say
that the lordly Highlander, the impetuous son of Erin, or the proud and
independent Englishman, who vied with each other in feats of sumptuous
hospitality during these periods of relaxation, did much better on the
score of moral responsibilities. They broke, generally, nine out of the
ten commandments without a wince, but kept the other very scrupulously,
and would flash up and call their companions to a duel who doubted them
on that point. But of the practical things of religion, as they are
depicted by Paul and the Apostles, they lived in utter disregard; these
things were laid aside, like the heavier parts of Dr. Drowsy's sermon,
for "some more fitting opportunity," that is to say, till a fortune was
secured from the avails of "skins and peltries," and they returned
triumphantly to the precincts of civilized and Christian society. Of the
wild and picturesque Indian, who was ever a man most scrupulous of rites
and ceremonies, it was hardly deemed worth inquiry whether he had a
soul, or whether the deity of the elements, whom he worshiped under the
name of the Great Spirit, was not, in the language of the Universalist
Poet, "Jehovah, Jove, or Lord."

A society which, like that of Michilimackinack, was based on such a
state of affairs but a few years back, could hardly be regarded without
strong solicitude, for my correspondent had been a witness, in the first
revival under Mr. Ferry, in 1828, of which he was himself a subject,
that there is a "POWER that breaketh the flinty heart in pieces, who
also giveth freely and upbraideth not." Most, of the subjects of hope at
this time were,