The voyageurs clung to them with all the tenacity of a pointer on the scent.

There were Nolins, Falcons, Delormes, Faribaults, Lalondes, Leroux, Trottiers, and hundreds of others, that followed the route until they became almost a part of the West and retired in old age, to take up a spot on some beautiful bay, or promontory, and never to return to "Bas Canada." Those from Montreal to the north of Lake Superior were the pork eaters, because they lived on dried pork, those west of Lake Superior, "Couriers of the Woods," and they fed on pemmican, the dried flesh of the buffalo.

They were mighty in strength, daring in spirit, tractable in disposition, eagles in swiftness, but withal had the simplicity of little children.

They made short the weary miles on the rivers by their smoking "tabac"-- the time to smoke a pipe counting a mile--and by their merry songs, the "Fairy Ducks" and "La Claire Fontaine," "Malbrouck has gone to the war," or "This is the beautiful French Girl"-- ballads that they still retained from the French of Louis XIV.

They were a jolly crew, full of superstitions of the woods, and leaving behind them records of daring, their names remain upon the rivers, towns and cities of the Canadian and American Northwest.
Some thirty years before the arrival of the Colonists, the Montreal traders found it useful to form a Company.