FORT CHIPEWYAN TO FORT MWMURRAY iit

* The Forest People,” doubtless from its original habitat in
this region.

Owing to the agglutinative vharacter of the aboriginal
languages, numbering over four hundred, some philologists
are inclined to attribute them all to a eommon origin, the
Basque tongue being one of the two or three in Europe which
have a like peculiarity. In the languages of the American
Indians one syllable is piled upon another, each with a dis-
tinet rootsignuificance, so that a single word will often
contain the meaning of an ordinary English sentence. This
polysynthetie character undoubtedly does point to a common
origin, just as the Indo-European tongues trace back to
Sanskrit. But whether this is indicative of the ancient
unity of the American races, whose languages differed in so
many other respeets, and whose characteristics were so
divergent, is another question.

One Interesting impression, begot of our environment, was
that we were now emphatically in what might be called
“ Mackenzie’s country.” In his “General History of the
Fur-Trade,” published in London in 1801, Sir Alexander
tells us that, after spending five years in My. Gregory's
office in Montreal, he went to Detroit to trade, and after-
wards, in 1785, to the Grand Portage (Fort William).

The fret traders, he tells us, had penetrated to the Ath
basea, ria Methy Portage, as early as 1791, and in 1785-
the merchants of Lower Canada united under the name of
The North-West Company, the two Frobishers-~Joseph
Frobisher had traded on the Churchill River as early as
1y75-~and Simon McTavish being managers. The Com-
pany, he says, “was consolidated in July, 1787,° and
became very powerful in more ways than one, employing,
at the time. he wrote, over 1,400 men, including 1,190
eanoemen. “It teok four years from the time the goods
were ordered until the furs were sold;” but, of course,
the profits, compared with the capital invested, were very
great, until the strife deepened between the Montrealers
and the Hudson’s Bay Company, whose first inland post