and considered so important to the interest of every history.

WASHINGTON IRVING




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