Cameron[1] defines the limits of this region as follows: “Bounded on the south by Lake Superior, on the southwest and west, by the northwest road from Lake Superior to the lower end of Lake Ouinipique (Winnipeg); on the northwest and north by Hayes river and part of Hudson Bay; and on the northeast by Hudson Bay. Its greatest length from Pierre Rouge (Red Rock), at the entrance of Nipigon River, to the Lake of the Islands, on the Hayes river, is about three hundred and fifty leagues and its greatest breadth, from Trout Lake to Eagle Lake, is about one hundred and eighty leagues, but in most parts not over eighty leagues. The two-thirds at least of this country are nothing but rivers and lakes, some fifty leagues long; properly speaking, the whole country is nothing but water and islands.” Into this watery wilderness Long and his voyageurs pushed their way, literally subsisting on the country. The bourgeois’s chief qualification for the enterprise was his familiarity with the Indian life and language, and the fact that he had undergone the ceremony of adoption by one of the most noted chiefs of the Chippewa nation. During the French régime, this country was noted for producing the largest number and best quality of furs in the Northwest;[2] but after the English occupation the district had been nearly abandoned, the difficulties of existence proving too great. Four out of eight traders starved to death in the region in one year, and it was avoided in favor of the better-provisioned Western districts. Cameron says that in 1785 the whole district produced but fifty-six packs of furs. We may judge from this of Long’s success as a trader; in the first year, he not only subsisted himself and a party of eight Canadians, during the “hardest winter ever remembered,” but rescued a brother trader from destruction by a murderous band of Indians, and brought out a cargo of a hundred and forty packs of furs all in good condition, valued between $25,000 and $30,000. For these services he received from his chiefs the salary of $750 a year, and a supply of Indian corn and “hard grease,” or tallow, as provision.[3] At the end of his first year’s engagement, Long returned only to Pays Plat, a trading station on Lake Superior. Being there relieved of his furs, and supplied with fresh provisions, he set out August 15, 1778, for another winter in the “inlands,” whither, after many hardships and experiences with murderous Indians, he returned to Mackinac, and spent the following winter with the Chippewas near that fort.