winter in the "inlands," whither, after many hardships and experiences with murderous Indians, he returned to Mackinac, and spent the following winter with the Chippewas near that fort.
In June, 1780, he joined a party of Canadians and Indians who were sent from Mackinac to Prairie du Chien to secure the deposits of furs at the latter place, and prevent them from falling into the hands of the emissaries of George Rogers Clark from the Illinois, and the Spaniards from St. Louis. After a march through Wisconsin, this undertaking was successfully accomplished—the furs that could not be saved being burned to keep them from the enemy.[1]
The following autumn, Long returned to Quebec never again to come to the "upper country." He made one more successful trading expedition to unknown lands, by way of the Saguenay River and Lake St. John, penetrating the country east of Hudson Bay, and bringing back a rich cargo—in the very year that the Hudson's Bay Company was pillaged by the French expedition of La Pérouse.
Long returned for a year to England, his mother-land
being entirely strange to him after fifteen years' absence.
He was, therefore, glad to fit out a cargo for another venture
in the Indian trade of Canada. But his good fortune
seems now to have deserted him—debt, lack of
employment, and other difficulties drove him from one
place to another. In the spring of 1785 he was in New
York, where he pushed the claim of a Huron Indian
through Congress. A fur-trading expedition among
the Iroquois failed, and the British commandant at
Oswego confiscated his goods. Taking refuge among
————
- ↑ See Wisconsin Historical Collections, ix, pp. 290, 291.
