panies were men of remarkable enterprise and energy, and in their struggles to outrival each other they met with numerous adventures, which still form the subject of stories among their descendants. Their conflicts were often of a far from pacific character. The gentlemen of the opposing parties when they crossed each other in the haunts of the Indians, were little disposed to barter peaceably their guns, tobacco-boxes, copper kettles, brass buttons, and other articles, for the beaver, marten, and fox skins of the Indian trappers. Fierce contentions arose between them, ending sometimes in personal conflicts with fists, and not unfrequently with more deadly weapons. Stratagem, however, was more common than open violence, of which the following amusing instance is related by Mr. R. M. Ballantyne in his interesting narrative of a residence of many years in the territories of the Company:—
Upon one occasion, the Hudson's Bay Company's look-out man reported that he had discovered the tracts of Indians in the snow, and that he thought they had just returned from a hunting expedition. No sooner was this heard, than a grand ball was given to the North-West Company. Great preparations were made; the men, dressed in their newest capotes and gaudiest hats, visited each other, and nothing was thought of or talked of but the ball. The evening came, and with it the guests; and soon might be heard within the fort the sounds of merriment and revelry, as they danced in lively measures to a Scottish reel, played by some native fiddler upon a violin of his own construction. Without the gates, however, a very different scene met the eye. Down in a hollow, where the lofty trees and dense under-
