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Stepping Westward © 21

to the value of £109,875.’ One of these passes, No. 13,
was granted on 2 May, to-Gregory and MacLeod, for “4
canoes, 50 men, 400 gallons of rum, 32 gallons of wine,
1700 pounds of powder, 64 pals 20 cwt. of shot, wor
£28 50. ih

It is not to be wondered at that after five years’ observa-
tion of the stream of wealth passing in from the west, and
hearing daily the tales of traders, and the yarns of the
“comers and goers,” as the canoemen plying between
Montreal and Grande Portage were called, that Mackenzie
felt that he was sufficiently experienced, or knew enough
about the routine of the business, to go on a venture of his
own to Detroit with a cargo of goods entrusted to him by
his employers. That they had great faith in this young man
of twenty-two is evidenced by their action in making him
without any solicitation on his part a bourgeois, or partner,
in the newly-formed partnership with Peter Pangman.

Eight years before Mackenzie arrived in Canada the
competition among the Montreal traders was so keen and
unscrupulous that they had virtually ruined one another.
Under the Proclamation of 1763 the trafic was thrown
open to any subject of any colony who might obtain from
the governor a licence which would bind the applicant to
obey regulations made by the Legislature of Quebec.

The traders followed certain well-known routes and
encountered the same tribes, whence arose a fierce rivalry,
and a determination to obtain at all costs the valuable furs
possessed by the natives. The Indians were bribed with

liquor. Fifty thousand gallons of rum and high wines were |

used for this purpose in 1785, the year in which Mackenzie
himself was engaged on his first venture at Detroit.

1 Davidson, Gordon Charles, Ph.D., The Novih-West Company.
Univ. of Calif. Pub. in Hist., vol, vii., p. 24.