The half-savage life of toil, hardship, excitement, and long intervals of idleness attracted them strongly.

This was perhaps one among the reasons why they got on so much better with the Indians than did the Americans, who, wherever they went, made clearings and settlements, cut down the trees, and drove off the game.
But even these pursuits were followed under the ancient customs and usages of the country, leave to travel and trade being first obtained from the commandant[23] for the rule of the commandant was almost patriarchal.

The inhabitants were utterly unacquainted with what the Americans called liberty.

When they passed under our rule, it was soon found that it was impossible to make them understand such an institution as trial by jury; they throve best under the form of government to which they had been immemorially accustomed--a commandant to give them orders, with a few troops to back him up.[24] They often sought to escape from these orders, but rarely to defy them; their lawlessness was like the lawlessness of children and savages; any disobedience was always to a particular ordinance, not to the system.
The trader having obtained his permit, built his boats,--whether light, roomy bateaux made of boards, or birch-bark canoes, or pirogues, which were simply hollowed out logs.

He loaded them with paint, powder, bullets, blankets, beads, and rum, manned them with hardy voyageurs, trained all their lives in the use of pole and paddle, and started off up or down the Mississippi,[25] the Ohio, or the Wabash, perhaps making a long carry or portage over into the Great Lakes.