States and Canada were refused. When, for a short time, in 1865 and
1866, I held the office of shareholders' auditor of the Hudson's Bay
Company, I cancelled many of these notes, which had become defaced,
mainly owing to the fingering of Indians and others, who left behind on
the thick yellow paper coatings of "Pemmican,"--the pounded flesh and
fat of the buffalo, done up in skins like sausages--a food eminently
nutritious and lasting long, but fearfully odorous and nasty.

Mr. Ellice supplied much of the political energy inside the old Reform
party, displayed in the Reform Bill struggle of 1830-1832. He became
one of the Secretaries of the Treasury; and, in 1831, had to organize
the eventful election of that year. His great powers and never-failing
energy, devoted in early life to the fur trade and its conflicts,
became of infinite value to the country, in many momentous struggles,
at home, for liberty and progress. It amused me much when, by chance,
meeting Mr. Ellice, after we had bought and paid for his Hudson's Bay
property, to see the kind of astonished stare with which he regarded
me. I think the purchase of the Hudson's Bay Company was a mystery to
him. I remember meeting him at the Royal Academy a few months before
his death. He stopped opposite to me, as if to study my features. He
did not speak a word, nor did I. He seemed in a state of abstraction,
like that of a man endeavouring to recollect a long history of
difficulty, and to realize how strangely it had all ended,--by the
negociation I had brought to a head.




CHAPTER X.