Astoria; Or, Anecdotes of an Enterprise Beyond the Rocky Mountains

Chapter I

Objects of American Enterprise.—Gold Hunting and Fur
Trading.—Their Effect on Colonization.—Early French Canadian
Settlers.—Ottawa and Huron Hunters.—An Indian Trading Camp.
Coureurs Des Bois, or Rangers of the Woods.—Their Roaming
Life.—Their Revels and Excesses.—Licensed Traders.
Missionaries.—Trading Posts.—Primitive French Canadian
Merchant.—His Establishment and Dependents.—British Canadian
Fur Merchant.—Origin of the Northwest Company.—Its
Constitution.—Its Internal Trade.—A Candidate for the
Company.—Privations in the Wilderness.—Northwest Clerks.
Northwest Partners.—Northwest Nabobs.—Feudal Notions in the
Forests.—The Lords of the Lakes.—Fort William.—Its
Parliamentary Hall and Banqueting Room.—Wassailing in the
Wilderness.

TWO leading objects of commercial gain have given birth to wide and daring enterprise in the early history of the Americas; the precious metals of the South, and the rich peltries of the North. While the fiery and magnificent Spaniard, inflamed with the mania for gold, has extended his discoveries and conquests over those brilliant countries scorched by the ardent sun of the tropics, the adroit and buoyant Frenchman, and the cool and calculating Briton, have pursued the less splendid, but no less lucrative, traffic in furs amidst the hyperborean regions of the Canadas, until they have advanced even within the Arctic Circle.