chance, came to what has always been Canada's
greatest city, on the Island of Montreal. It was only half a dozen years
after Wolfe's great victory, that a great Montreal trader, Alexander
Henry, penetrated the western lakes to Mackinaw--the Island of the
Turtle, lying between Lakes Huron and Michigan. At Sault Ste. Marie, he
fell in with a most noted French Canadian, Trader Cadot, who had married
a Saulteur wife. He became a power among the Indians. With Scottish
shrewdness Henry acquired from the Commandant at Mackinaw the exclusive
right to trade on Lake Superior. He became a partner of Cadot, and they
made a voyage as Canadian Argonauts, to bring back very rich cargoes of
fur. They even went up to the Saskatchewan on Lake Winnipeg. After
Henry, came another Scotchman, Thomas Curry, and made so successful a
voyage that he reached the Saskatchewan River, and came back laden with
furs, so that he was now satisfied never to have to go again to the
Indian country. Shortly afterwards James Findlay, another son of the
heather, followed up the fur-traders' route, and reached Saskatchewan.
Thus the Northwest Fur Trade became the almost exclusive possession of
the Scottish Merchants of Montreal. With the master must go the man. And
no man on the rivers of North America ever equalled, in speed, in good
temper, and in skill, the French Canadian voyageur. Almost all the
Montreal merchants, the Forsythes, the Richardsons, the McTavishes, the
Mackenzies, and the McGillivrays, spoke the French as fluently as they
did their own language. Thus they became magnetic leaders of the French
canoemen of the rivers. The voyageurs clung to them with all the
tenacity of a pointer on the scent. There were Nolins, Falcons,
Delormes, Faribaults, Lalondes, Leroux, Trottiers, and hundreds of
others, that followed the route until they became almost a part of the
West and retired in old age, to take up a spot on some beautiful bay, or
promontory, and never to return to "Bas Canada." Those from Montreal to
the north of Lake Superior were the pork eaters, because they lived on
dried pork, those west of Lake Superior, "Couriers of the Woods," and
they fed on pemmican, the dried flesh of the buffalo. They were mighty
in strength, daring in spirit, tractable in disposition, eagles in
swiftness, but withal had the simplicity of little children. They made
short the weary miles on the rivers by their smoking "tabac"--the time
to smoke a pipe counting a mile--