lodging was to be a tent, my only food Indian corn, when I could get it; and many other comforts were enumerated with the view of producing a certain effect, which my countenance no doubt betrayed, whilst he chuckled with the greatest delight at the success of his jokes.  I took leave, and found myself that evening at the Lake of Two Mountains.  On my arrival, a large building was pointed out to me as the Company’s establishment, to which I soon found admittance, and was, to my great surprise, ushered into a large well furnished apartment.  Tea had just been served, with a variety of substantial accompaniments, to which I felt heartily disposed to do ample justice, after my day’s abstinence.  This was very different entertainment from what I had been led to expect in the morning; would it had been my lot to be always so agreeably deceived!

The village of the Lake of Two Mountains is inhabited by two distinct tribes of the aborigines—­viz. the Iroquois and the Algonquins; the latter are a tribe of the Sauteux nation, or Ojibbeway, and live principally by the chase.  The former cultivate the soil, and engage as voyageurs, or in any other capacity that may yield them the means of subsistence.  They are a very hardy industrious race; but neither the habits of civilized life, nor the influence of the Christian religion, appear to have mitigated, in any material degree, the ferocity that characterized their pagan ancestors.  Although they do not pay great deference to the laws of God, they are sufficiently aware of the consequences of violating the laws of man, and comport themselves accordingly.

The Catholic seminary and church, along with the gardens of the establishment, almost divide the village into two equal parts; yet this close proximity does not appear to encourage any friendly intercourse between the two tribes.  They in fact seldom pass their respective limits, and, with few exceptions, cannot converse together, the language of the one being unintelligible to the other.

The Company established a post here in the spring of 1819, and when I arrived it was in charge of Mr. Fisher, then a senior clerk.  He had two other clerks under him, besides myself, a like number of attaches, two interpreters, two servants, and a horse to ride upon.  With such an establishment to rule over, need it be matter of surprise that our bourgeois was in his own estimation a magnate of the first order? N’importe,—­whatever might be his vanity, he possessed those qualities which constitute a first-rate Indian trader, and he required them to fill successfully his present situation.  A number of petty traders were settled in the village, who, whenever the Company entered the lists against them, laid aside the feuds that subsisted among themselves, and joined to oppose their united efforts against the powerful rival that threatened to overwhelm them all.  The spring fur campaign was about to open when I made