Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/72

 64 DOCUMENTS. edge of the rivers and lakes through which their merchandise was to be carried, and a more extensive acquaintance with the natives, among whom they were eventually to be disposed of for furs, the produce of the labor of the savage. With views of this kind small parties have been dispatched, at diiferent times, from the year 1774 until the year 1793, to examine the rivers of the West. At the period last mentioned, one of those parties, under the direction of Alexander M'Kenzie, pene- trated even to the Western Ocean, thereby greatly adding to their stock of useful knowledge in that branch of commerce, which they have not failed duly to appreciate. Notwithstand- ing the great difficulties which the British furriers encounter, from the embarrassment of their commerce by their different systems of exclusive privilege, these companies find it a source of vast profit, far exceeding anything known in the United States ; this, too, when the merchandise is so much advanced in price, from the distance and the numerous obstructions. The enhanced value of the articles, and their difficulties in transporting them, may be fully understood, when it is known the tract of transport is equal to three or four thousand miles, through more than sixty lakes, some of them very considerable in extent, and numerous rivers, and the means of transporta- tion are bark canoes. Furthermore, these waters are inter- rupted in at least an hundred places by falls and rapids, along which the trader has to carry his merchandise on his back, and over an hundred and thirty carrying places, from twenty or thirty yards in extent to thirteen miles, where both canoe and cargo have to be conveyed by the same means. These are some of the obstructions which the Northwest Company encounters; yet their exports from Quebec alone are valued at more than a million of dollars annually, without reference to those brought to the United States, and shipped from New York and Philadelphia direct to China, rather than incur the cost and delay in procuring them a passage iO London, and thence to India, in the ships of the East India Company. Indeed, it appears that many of the goods of that company, destined for this trade, particularly on the coast of