26 Mackenzie’s Voyages months after the brigades had been sent off to their far- distant destinations at Grande Portage, and this is the season when travelling is particularly delightful on the northern waterways. With little to keep them at their humdrum duties it is easy to understand that men with initiative would want to be off, following the immemorial highways either towards civilisation or away from it. Mackenzie had been an active rival of the North-Westers, and Simon McTavish, who was known as “the Marquis,” from his autocratic domination of the Company’s affairs, was not particularly friendly towards young Alexander Mackenzie. “The Marquis” was one of the leading mer- chants of Montreal, a power in directing the destinies of the company, whose opinion was to be considered by a young man of twenty-five just appointed to the charge of one of the most important and most desired districts in the gift of the company. On that account Mackenzie felt it desirable to keep his plans very much to himself. If they got to the ears of McTavish, that autocrat might easily block them or transfer the ambitious young man to another district. Full credit must be given to Roderick Mackenzie for furthering his cousin’s projects by remaining in the trade when he would have preferred to retire. Roderick Mackenzie was a man of active mind, literary tastes, and a soul above the sordid details of rum and beaver-skins. His Reminiscences throw a flood of light on the condition of the trader’s existence and the general history of the development of the fur-trade in the North-West. He collected a large amount of material, much of which has not yet been used, and it is believed that the Voyages were either written by him or very extensively edited by his hand. When Fort Chipewyan was completed, Alexander