Born and reared on the
frontier fringe of the United States, he took with him into Canada
a primitive cast of mind, an elemental simplicity and grip on
things, as it were, that insured him immediate success in his new
career. From a mere servant of the Hudson Bay Company, driving a
paddle with the voyageurs and carrying goods on his back across the
portages, he swiftly rose to a Factorship and took charge of a
trading post at Fort Angelus.
Here, because of his elemental simplicity, he took to himself a
native wife, and, by reason of the connubial bliss that followed,
he escaped the unrest and vain longings that curse the days of more
fastidious men, spoil their work, and conquer them in the end. He
lived contentedly, was at single purposes with the business he was
set there to do, and achieved a brilliant record in the service of
the Company. About this time his wife died, was claimed by her
people, and buried with savage circumstance in a tin trunk in the
top of a tree.
Two sons she had borne him, and when the Company promoted him, he
journeyed with them still deeper into the vastness of the North-
West Territory to a place called Sin Rock, where he took charge of
a new post in a more important fur field. Here he spent several
lonely and depressing months, eminently disgusted with the
unprepossessing appearance of the Indian maidens, and greatly
worried by his growing sons who stood in need of a mother's care.
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