MackeEnziE’s Granp DEsIGN 139

Two of the agents spent their summers in
attending the annual meeting at Grand Port-
age. Mackenzie was certainly there in 1797,
1798, and 1799, and probably in 1795 and
1796 as well. Twice he arranged for Land-
mann to be taken west in the agents’ canoe
as far as the military post of St. Joseph’s near
Sault Ste. Marie, and Landmann has left a
most vivid account of the route and the mode
of travel. The agents journeyed in great
state, with a picked crew, in a canoe which
carried no freight and went at a much faster
pace than the brigades which conveyed the
trade goods and furs.

In 1797, while at Grand Portage, Macken-
zie met the man who did more than anyone
else to follow up his explorations—David
Thompson. Thompson had just left the ser-
vice of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and had
gone to Grand Portage to offer himself to the
North West Company. He records his pleas-
ure at the cordial reception given him by
Mackenzie and McGillivray: ‘‘How very dif-
ferent the liberal and public spirit of this
North West Company of Merchants of Canada