To this Mr. Carver adds, "that allowing their accounts true, he could not help joining in their opinion;" but afterwards he admits that this dissatisfaction might probably proceed, in a great measure, from the intrigues of the Canadian traders; and that the method they took to withdraw the Indians from their attachment to the Hudson's Bay Company, and to engage their good opinion in behalf of their new employers, was by depreciating, on all occasions, the company's goods, and magnifying the advantages that would arise to them from trafficking entirely with the Canadian traders: in this they too well succeeded; and from this, doubtless, did the dissatisfaction which the Assinipoils and Killistinoes proceed." But, says he, further, "another reason augmented it, the length of the journey to the Hudson's Bay Factories, which they informed him took up three months during the summer heats to go and return, and from the smallness of their canoes they could not carry more than one-third of the beaver they [131] killed, so that it is not to be wondered at that the Indians should wish to have traders come to reside among them." As Mr. Carver did not travel in the interior parts as a trader, he could not have any interested commercial motives; on that account he is certainly entitled to credit as an impartial observer: the public will judge of his remarks, and how far they tend to censure, or approve, the conduct of the Hudson's Bay Company.
I am induced to indulge this digression in consequence of a new publication on the present state of Hudson's Bay by Mr. Umfreville.[1]
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- ↑ This was the work of Edward Umfreville, Present State of Hudson's Bay (London, 1790), written with a view of opposing the continuance of the Company's charter, and exposing the practices of the officers. Umfreville had been in the service of the Company from 1771 to 1782.—Ed.
