164 Str ALEXANDER MACKENZIE

that he has become, in obedience to doctor’s
orders, “a water drinker and milk sop”,
though “the great doctor Hamilton of Edin-
burgh” could give his ailment no more definite
a name than “a shake of the constitution.”
In the same letter he shows a keen interest in
the fur-trade and the struggle with the Hud-
son’s Bay Company, protests at the conces-
sions made to the United States in the
boundary settlement of 1818 through the
energy of “that crafty, cunning statesman
Gallatin”, and announces his intention of
retiring from the North West Company on
the expiration of the existing agreement in
1822.

This intention he did not live to carry
out. In March, 1820, as he was returning to
Avoch from Edinburgh with his wife and
children, he was suddenly taken ill on the
road at a small hamlet in Perthshire. He
died there the next morning (March 12), aged
about sixty years. It was an end such as one
who had dared sudden death many times
would have desired. His body lies buried in
the churchyard at Avoch. He left two infant