I have, therefore, availed myself
occasionally of collateral lights supplied by the published journals of
other travellers who have visited the scenes described: such as Messrs.
Lewis and Clarke, Bradbury, Breckenridge, Long, Franchere, and Ross Cox,
and make a general acknowledgment of aid received from these quarters.
The work I here present to the public is necessarily of a rambling
and somewhat disjointed nature, comprising various expeditions and
adventures by land and sea. The facts, however, will prove to be linked
and banded together by one grand scheme, devised and conducted by
a master spirit; one set of characters, also, continues throughout,
appearing occasionally, though sometimes at long intervals, and the
whole enterprise winds up by a regular catastrophe; so that the work,
without any labored attempt at artificial construction, actually
possesses much of that unity so much sought after in works of fiction,
and considered so important to the interest of every history.
WASHINGTON IRVING
CHAPTER I.
Objects of American Enterprise.--Gold Hunting and Fur
Trading.--Their Effect on Colonization.--Early French Canadian
Settlers.--Ottawa and Huron Hunters.--An Indian Trading Camp.
Coureurs Des Bois, or Rangers of the Woods.
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