By 1780, they began to unite their fortunes, and a sixteen-share stock corporation was formed of the principal traders.[9] A conspiracy of the Indians in the same year, to massacre all the whites and pillage the posts, was discovered and averted; but by the following season a still more terrible scourge had begun. Smallpox appeared among the tribes in the Northwest, and spread so rapidly that hunting was but languidly carried on, and profits fell to the zero mark. To avert the chaos into which the trade seemed falling, the North West Company was established in 1783, for a term of five years. In 1787 its organization was perfected, and the corporate period of the Canadian fur-trade began; competitors were gradually bought out—union with the X Y Company occurring in 1805, and with the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821. Long’s narrative, therefore, portrays conditions during the period of the free trader, responsible to no authority, exploiting the country and the natives for the largest immediate returns, without reference to the preservation of the hunting grounds or the protection of the hunters. The frightful debauchery of the Indians by means of traders’ rum, and the necessity for the use of laudanum to control their drunken excesses, are shown in full by Long in his simple narrative of events. The dangers, also, to which this system exposed the trader, are only too evident from his relation of the case of Mr. Shaw. As for the competition with the Hudson’s Bay Company, it is plain from Long’s narrative that the Canadian traders were encroaching on the hunting grounds of this great monopoly. The case of M. Jacques Santeron shows the possibility of dishonest men passing from one employ to the other. As for the rest of the picture, Long presents the usual traits of the trader and interpreter—a certain rude honesty, taking the form of loyalty to his employer, a disregard of dangers, and small concern for hardships. His knowledge of wilderness life was intimate, but to this fact he alludes only in an incidental way. In acquaintance with Indian character, and power of influencing them in a crisis, he seems to have been superior to the ordinary trader. His vices were those of his class—slight regard for laws, either moral or military (witness the incident at Fort Mackinac), improvidence and wastefulness, restlessness, and dissatisfaction with the routine life of towns. His literary style, while discursive, is simple, and as clear as running water. What he wishes to say, he says plainly, leaving the reader as a rule to draw his own conclusions. There is an unvarnished, unflinching directness in his statements, conveying to the reader the impression that he is concealing nothing, doing nought for effect, but telling a straightforward story of travels and adventures. The book forms a contribution of note to this important class of literature, and will always be readable.