the Shoshonie country, on Salt Lake's borders, and on the Yellowstone his brigades pitched their tents, bringing home rich caravans of skins and mantles.
And who was this king of the Columbia in whose will lay decrees of life and death, at whose bidding the bloodthirsty savage laid aside the tomahawk and entered upon the peaceful pursuits of the hunt? It was a chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company who had been building on the Pacific a fur-trader's empire. Not for nineteen years had John McLoughlin crossed the ocean to set foot in that old Hudson's Bay house in Fenchurch Street, London; not since the wedding of the rival fur companies in 1820, when he stood up for Canadian enterprise.
That wedding of the fur companies is historic. When the French and English were fighting at Waterloo, two rival fur companies were fighting in North America, the Hudson's Bay and the Northwest. When the smoke of battle over there cleared away, the British Parliament saw the smoke of battle over here and called a halt: "Here, you rivals! We cannot let you stain the plains of North America with British blood. If you must fight, turn your arms against the Americans or the Indians, anybody but each other. We cannot afford to lose the few representatives we have over there and abandon the country altogether. Be good children, make up, and King George will give you a wedding present."
So the hoary old Hudson's Bay Company that had slumbered for a century proposed to the young Northwest Company of Montreal, and both sent their best men to London to discuss the marriage dowry. It was plainly a wedding of capital and labor. The Canadian company had nothing but her hands, her courage, and
