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 them to culture; they have owners, and from these must be purchased the right of rendering them productive! Besides one ought not to give way to illusions: these countries, at times so delightful, do not enjoy a perpetual spring; they have their winter, and a rigorous one; a piercing cold is then spread through the atmosphere; deep snows cover the surface; the frozen rivers flow only for the fish; the trees are stripped of their leaves and hung with icicles; the verdure of the plains has disappeared; the hills and valleys offer but a uniform whiteness; Nature has lost all her beauty; and man has enough to do, to shelter himself from the injuries of the inclement season.

{325} CHAPTER XXVI

Fort Montée—Cumberland House—Lake Bourbon—Great Winipeg Rapids—Lake Winipeg—Trading-House—Lake of the Woods—Rainy Lake House, &c.

On the 18th of June (a day which its next anniversary was to render forever celebrated in the annals of the world),[184] we re-embarked at an early hour: and the wind rising, spread sail, a thing we had not done before, since we quitted the river Columbia. In the afternoon the clouds gathered thick and black, and we had a gust, accompanied with hail, but of short duration; the weather cleared up again, and about sundown we arrived at Le Fort de la Montée, so called, on account of its being a depôt, where the traders going south, leave their canoes and take pack-horses to reach their several posts.[185] We found here, as at Fort Vermilion, two trading-houses {326} joined together, to make common cause against the Indians; one belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company, the other to the company of the Northwest: the Hudson's