Page:Voyages in the Northern Pacific - 1896.djvu/22

4 an immediate inroad on barbarism, by establishing a chain of posts at the distance of 50 or 100 miles along the great rivers as far as the Pacific Ocean. The fur trade is the great object of attraction to settlers in this wilderness; and so lucrative is this traffic, that it is well calculated to excite a competition amongst rival states. It can only be prosecuted by such nations as have a ready access to these deserts, where the wild animals which afford this valuable article of trade multiply undisturbed by civilized man. These nations are at present the British, whose possessions of Canada secures them access to the north-western desert of America, the Americans, who have free access to the wilderness that lies between their territories and the Pacific Ocean, and the Russians, whose immense empire borders on the north-west coast of America, giving them ample opportunities, which they have duly improved, of establishing settlements on its shores; of cultivating a friendly intercourse with the natives, and of exchanging European articles for the valuable furs which they collect in the course of their hunting excursions. The fur trade has been prosecuted with amazing enterprise and activity by the British Canadian companies. Every season they dispatch into the wilds a numerous body of their servants, clerks, and boatmen, amounting to about 800, who, traveling in canoes across the vast succession of lakes and rivers, which extend northwest nearly 3,000 miles into the American continent, and are connected with the great Canadian lakes of Huron,