To put an end to these sordid and ruinous contentions, several of the
principal merchants of Montreal entered into a partnership in the winter
of 1783, which was augmented by amalgamation with a rival company in
1787. Thus was created the famous "Northwest Company," which for a time
held a lordly sway over the wintry lakes and boundless forests of
the Canadas, almost equal to that of the East India Company over the
voluptuous climes and magnificent realms of the Orient.

The company consisted of twenty-three shareholders, or partners,
but held in its employ about two thousand persons as clerks, guides,
interpreters, and "voyageurs," or boatmen. These were distributed at
various trading posts, established far and wide on the interior lakes
and rivers, at immense distances from each other, and in the heart of
trackless countries and savage tribes.

Several of the partners resided in Montreal and Quebec, to manage
the main concerns of the company. These were called agents, and were
personages of great weight and importance; the other partners took
their stations at the interior posts, where they remained throughout
the winter, to superintend the intercourse with the various tribes of
Indians. They were thence called wintering partners.

The goods destined for this wide and wandering traffic were put up at
the warehouses of the company in Montreal, and conveyed in batteaux, or
boats and canoes, up the river Attawa, or Ottowa, which falls into the
St. Lawrence near Montreal, and by other rivers and portages, to Lake
Nipising, Lake Huron, Lake Superior, and thence, by several chains of
great and small lakes, to Lake Winnipeg, Lake Athabasca, and the Great
Slave Lake. This singular and beautiful system of internal seas, which