"I have been the cook of that great Sir D. D. Smith that is in Canada at this time. [In the days when Lord Strathcona was chief trader at Hamilton Inlet.] He was then at Rigolet Post, a chief trader only, now what is he so great! He was seen last winter by one of the women that belong to this bay. She went up to Canada ... and he is gray headed and bended, that is Sir D. D. Smith."
"August 1, 1894.—My dear friends, you will please excuse my writing and spelling—the paper sweems by me, my eyesight is dim now——"
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Whom Bradbury and Irving and Chittenden have all conspired to make immortal.
[2] While Lewis and Clark were on the Upper Missouri, the former had reached a safe footing along a narrow pass, when he heard a voice shout, "Good God, captain, what shall I do?" Turning, Lewis saw Windsor had slipped to the verge of a precipice, where he lay with right arm and leg over it, the other arm clinging for dear life to the bluff. With his hunting-knife he cut a hole for his right foot, ripped off his moccasins so that his toes could have the prehensile freedom of a monkey's tail, and thus crawled to safety like a fly on a wall.
[3] Whether they actually reached the shores of the bay on this trip is still a dispute among French-Canadian savants.
[4] 1685-'87; the same Le Moyne d'Iberville who died in Havana after spending his strength trying to colonize the Mississippi for France—one instance which shows how completely the influence of the fur trade connected every part of America, from the Gulf to the pole, as in a network irrespective of flag.