NORTHERN INTERIOR OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

deprived since the beginning of May, as it is a practice throughout the North-West neither to sell nor give any rum to the natives during the summer,”'t which implies that the contrary was the case in the course of other seasons.

The very first pages of Mackenzie’s Journal are valuable as giving us an insight into the policy followed by the North-West Company with regard to their subordinates. We therefore continue our quotation :

“As they [the Indians, who must have been Beavers] very soon expressed their desire of the expected regale, I called them together, to the number of forty-two hunters or men capable of bearing arms, to offer some advice .. . and I strengthened my admonition with a nine gallon cask of reduced rum and a quantity of tobacco.”?

Leaving the new establishment, he crossed the Rocky Mountains up to the junction of the Parsnip and the Finlay, and, a short distance west thereof, he met, on the former, the men he had sent to prepare his winter quarters. With them he found an Indian chief, together with about - seventy of his men, who, from their conduct and familiarity with fire-arms, seem to have been Beavers encroaching on Sekanais territory.

His tent had no sooner been pitched than he summoned them together, reproached them with their past mis- behaviour, after which he gave each of them “about four inches of Brazil tobacco,” and “presented them with a quantity of rum,” adding the somewhat naive recommend- ation that they should use it with discretion! In spite of the bitter cold, he had to wait until the 23rd of December before the house that was being erected for him was in-

I. ‘“ Journal of a Voyage Through the North-West Continent of America,” London, 1801, pp. 125, 126.

2. lbid., p. 126.

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