Bay Company owes to Indian women cannot be told. In a few cases they acted as spies, to shield the wrongdoing of their own people, but as a rule they became faithful allies of their white partners, persuading the Indians to bring in their trade and settling many a difficulty to the satisfaction of both parties.
Dr. McLoughlin introduced Mr. Ogden to Jason Lee. "By my faith, it 's not a bad thing to have a minister here just now," exclaimed the chief factor." Never before these later days have I heard of sermons or prayers either in a Hudson's Bay fort. But remember, my friend," said Ogden, with an impressive shake of the finger, "remember, gunpowder is stronger than prayers."
Jason Lee was astonished at the effeminate voice of Peter Skeen Ogden, a voice so out of harmony with the hunter's rough external make-up.
Chief Justice Isaac Ogden was the greatest lawyer in Canada, and Peter Skeen, too, had been destined for the bar, but that voice! As a boy in Montreal he pored over the yellow tomes. He set them back on his father's bookshelf. "I can never plead in this falsetto, father. The very clerks would snicker in their sleeves." So that harsh, squeaking, unmanageable voice drove Peter Skeen Ogden into the fur trade. Instead of devoting his life to tracing the seigniorial subdivisions of Canadian property, the son of the chief justice became a Nimrod of that primitive age fast slipping into fable. So long had Ogden been among the Indians that his manners resembled theirs. There was the same wild, unsettled, watchful expression of the eye, the same gesticulation in conversation. Never did he use a word when a sign, a contortion of face or body, would indicate his thought.
