at a voyage to
the interior at this season without snowshoes, food, or heavy clothing,
meant certain death; but they followed their master faithfully as black
slaves. Wherever night found them they turned the canoe upside down and
slept under it. Fish lines supplied food, and the deserted hut of some
hunter occasionally gave them shelter for the night. Winter set in
early. The ice edging of the river cut the birch canoe. Abandoning it,
they went forward on foot. From York Fort, Hudson Bay, the nearest
Northwest post was seven hundred miles. By the end of October they had
not gone half the distance. Then came one of those changes so frequent
in northern climes,--a sunburst of warm {405} weather following the first
early winter, turning all the frozen fields to swimming marshes, and the
travelers had no canoe. By this time Frobisher was too weak to walk. As
his body failed his mind rallied, and he begged the two half-breeds to go
on without him, as delay meant the death of all three; but the faithful
fellows carried him by turns on their backs. They themselves were now so
emaciated they were making but a few miles a day. Their moccasins had
been worn to tatters, and all three looked more like skeletons than
living men. Then, the third week of November, Frobisher could go no
farther, and the servants' strength failed. Building a fire in a
sheltered place for their master, the two faithful fellows left Frobisher
somewhere west of Lake Winnipeg. Two days later they crept into a
Northwest post too weak to speak, and handed the Northwesters a note
scrawled by Frobisher, asking them to send a rescue party. Frobisher was
found lying across the ashes of the fire. Life was extinct.

[Illustration: PLANS OF YORK AND PRINCE OF WALES FORTS]

In 1820 the union of the companies put an end to the ruinous and criminal
struggle. George Simpson, afterwards knighted, {406} who has been sent
to look over matters in Athabasca, is appointed governor, and Nicholas
Garry, one of the London directors, comes out to appoint the officers of
the united companies to their new districts. The scene is one for artist
brush,--the last meeting of the partners at Fort William, Hudson's Bay
men and Nor'westers, such deadly enemies they would not speak, sitting in
the great dining hall, glowering at each other across tables: George
Simpson at one end of the tables, pompously dressed in ruffles and satin
coat and silk breeches, vainly ende