In the storehouse he kept his barrel of flour, his
barrel of salt, a stock of smoked or dried meat, and that which the
woodsman, if accustomed in early life to the settlements, prizes
most highly, a half-barrel of pickled pork. The bark canoe had
sufficed to transport all these stores, merely ballasting handsomely
that ticklish craft; and its owner relied on the honey to perform
the same office on the return voyage, when trade or consumption
should have disposed of the various articles just named.
The reader may smile at the word "trade," and ask where were those
to be found who could be parties to the traffic. The vast lakes and
innumerable rivers of that region, however, remote as it then was
from the ordinary abodes of civilized man, offered facilities for
communication that the active spirit of trade would be certain not
to neglect. In the first place, there were always the Indians to
barter skins and furs against powder, lead, rifles, blankets, and
unhappily "fire-water." Then, the white men who penetrated to those
semi-wilds were always ready to "dicker" and to "swap," and to
"trade" rifles, and watches, and whatever else they might happen to
possess, almost to their wives and Children.
Pages:
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68