ly direction, almost, in which they
exhibit any expansive tendency is in the border trade and general
adventure business, in which figure the names of many of them
conspicuously and with honor. The Chouteaus are of that stock; and of
that stock came the late Major Aubry, renowned among the guides and
trappers of the southwestern wilderness; and if J.C. Fremont is not a
French Canadian by birth, the strong efforts made about the time of
the last Presidential election to establish him as one had at least
the effect of determining his Canadian descent.

Pierre La Marche was a Franco-Canadian of the spread-eagle kind
referred to. Departing widely from the conservative prejudices of his
race, his wandering propensities took him away, at an early age, from
the primitive colonial village in which he first saw the light of day.
He was but fourteen years old when he left his peaceful and thoroughly
whitewashed home on the banks of the St. Francois, in company with a
knot of Canadian _voyageurs_, whose principles tended towards the Red
River of the North. Leaving this convoy at Fond-du-Lac, he pushed his
way on to the Mississippi, alone and friendless, and, falling in with
a party of trappers at St. Louis, accompanied them when they returned
to the mountain "gulches" in which their business lay.

After six years of trapper and trader life, but little trace of the
simple young Canadian _habitant_ was left in Pierre La Marche. He
spoke mountain English and French _patois_ with equal fluency. There
was a decision of character about him that commanded the respect of
his comrades. When the other trappers went to St. Louis, they used to
drink and gamble away their hard-won dollars, few of these men caring
for anything beyond the indulgence of immediate fancies. But Pierre
was ambitious, and thought that money might be made subservient to his
aspirations in a better way than speculating with it upon "bluff" or
squandering it upon deteriorating drinks.

About this time of his life, Pierre began to think that the fact of
his being "only a French Canadian" was likely to be a bar to his
advancement. He despised himself greatly for one thing, indeed,--that
his name was La Marche, and not Walker,--which patronymic he made out
to be the nearest Anglo-Saxon equivalent for his French one. He
adopted it,--calling himself Peter Walker,--and had an adventure out
of it, to begin with.

While trading furs at St. Louis, on one occasion, he offered