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VI

RIVAL FUR COMPANIES 1824-39

IT was time for the fall brigade and the Montreal express. They usually came down the Columbia together. Every year the express left Montreal in May. With a sweep and a swing and flying paddles they shot up the Canadian rivers and through the Great Lakes. In July they were at Red River. Through the torrid summer they toiled along the great Saskatchewan. Before the autumn snows came on the voyageurs left their boats and crossed the Rocky Mountains, generations before a Canadian Pacific was dreamed of. There on the western slope at the Boat Encampment stood a deserted hunting-lodge. Twice a year the big fireplace roared and the kettle sung. Tearing off their moccasins stained with blood in the awful solitudes of the mountain pass, the lighthearted voyageurs prepared to re-embark. Leathern bags of flour and pemmican, sugar and tea, were unearthed from a cache, hidden canoes were drawn out of the cedar brush, and, launching on the little stream, the express soon entered the head waters of the great Columbia.

Down, down they glided, singing as they went the songs of Old Canada, brought generations ago from the land of the fleur-de-lis. Down, down they glided, past peaks of snow and tangled woody heights, past Fort Colvile on her terrace, past park-like stretches of gr