The interest of the work, aside from incidental historical references to expeditions in Canada and Wisconsin during the Revolution, the Loyalist settlements, and the retention of the Northern posts, lies in the author’s intimate knowledge of Indian life and customs, especially those of the more primitive and savage tribes of the North; and in the light he incidentally throws on the history of the fur-trade.[8] It is anything but an engaging picture which Long paints of his Indian friends and companions—they are in the stage of downright savagery, debauched by contact with the dregs of civilization, learning its vices, appropriating its weapons, and dominating the whites by sheer force of numbers, and knowledge of the weakness and greed of the latter. A pleasant contrast is his account of the Canadian mission Indians; but even these proved their savagery during the American Revolution. Of their aboriginal customs, Long’s notices of totemism, religious rites and beliefs, courtship and marriage, social customs—games, dances, food, dwellings—habits of hunting, and physical and mental characteristics, are valuable because original and the result of immediate observation. Scarcely less dark is the picture presented by Long, of the fur-trade and the traders. This was the period of unlicensed and almost ruinous competition between the great company at the North, and the independent merchants from Canada—the latter acting each for himself, with slight regard for the interest of the trade, the Indians, or the lesser employees. The fur-trade under the French régime had been under strict surveillance. All traders were required to purchase a government license, and the products of their traffic were closely inspected. By the close of the French rule, even the lawless _coureurs de bois_—trading through the forest at will, and carrying their peltries to the English at Albany and Hudson Bay—had been quite largely suppressed, and brought into the service of the licensed traders. After the conquest of New France, a period of cutthroat competition began. The English traders did not at first dare venture into the wilderness peopled with Indians faithful to the French; those who did, nearly paid the penalty with their lives (as witness Alexander Henry, at Mackinac). But after Pontiac’s War, and the gradual subsidence of Indian hostility, British traders from Montreal and Quebec began reaching out for this lucrative traffic, and a class of enterprising _entrepreneurs_ was developed, recruited chiefly from the ranks of Scotchmen. By them the fur-trade was pushed to its highest development, and the rivers, lakes, and fastnesses of the great Northwest discovered and explored in rapid succession. This work was done by such men as the Henrys, Ponds, Frobishers, Finlays, Camerons, McDonalds—and, greatest of all, Sir Alexander Mackenzie.