mules and horses, the latter with batteaux and canoes. The voyageurs may
be said to have sprung up out of the fur trade, having originally been
employed by the early French merchants in their trading expeditions
through the labyrinth of rivers and lakes of the boundless interior.
They were coeval with the coureurs des bois, or rangers of the woods,
already noticed, and, like them, in the intervals of their long,
arduous, and laborious expeditions, were prone to pass their time in
idleness and revelry about the trading posts or settlements; squandering
their hard earnings in heedless conviviality, and rivaling their
neighbors, the Indians, in indolent indulgence and an imprudent
disregard of the morrow.

When Canada passed under British domination, and the old French trading
houses were broken up, the voyageurs, like the coureurs des bois, were
for a time disheartened and disconsolate, and with difficulty could
reconcile themselves to the service of the new-comers, so different in
habits, manners, and language from their former employers. By degrees,
however, they became accustomed to the change, and at length came to
consider the British fur traders, and especially the members of the
Northwest Company, as the legitimate lords of creation.

The dress of these people is generally half civilized, half savage.
They wear a capot or surcoat, made of a blanket, a striped cotton shirt,
cloth trousers, or leathern leggins, moccasins of deer-skin, and a
belt of variegated worsted, from which are suspended the knife,
tobacco-pouch, and other implements. Their language is of the same
piebald character, being a French patois, embroidered with Indian and
English words and phrases.

The lives of the voyageurs are passed in wild and extensive rovings, in