"This is a crowded land, and if all men rode and shot as they listed,
much harm would come from it. But let us talk rather of your own
country. You have lived much in the woods from what you tell me."

"I was but ten when first I journeyed with my uncle to Sault la Marie,
where the three great lakes meet, to trade with the Chippewas and the
tribes of the west."

"I know not what La Salle or De Frontenac would have said to that. The
trade in those parts belongs to France."

"We were taken prisoners, and so it was that I came to see Montreal and
afterwards Quebec. In the end we were sent back because they did not
know what they could do with us."

"It was a good journey for a first."

"And ever since I have been trading--first, on the Kennebec with the
Abenaquis, in the great forests of Maine, and with the Micmac
fish-eaters over the Penobscot. Then later with the Iroquois, as far
west as the country of the Senecas. At Albany and Schenectady we stored
our pelts, and so on to New York, where my father shipped them over the
sea."

"But he could ill spare you surely?"

"Very ill. But as he was rich, he thought it best that I should learn
some things that are not to be found in the woods. And so he sent me in
the _Golden Rod_, under the care of Ephraim Savage."