We can easily sum up the inventory of a country store on the frontier over one hundred and fifty years ago, whose chief customers were farmers, trappers, _bos-lopers_ or wood-runners, hunters, and Indians. On the shelves would be arranged the thick, warm, woollen cloth called “duffel,” which made “as warm a coat as man can sell,” and the coarse shoddy-like stuff named “strouds;” in the bins, powder, shot, bullets, lead, gun-flints, steel traps, powder-horns, rum, brandy, beads, mirrors, and trinkets for the Indians, fish-hooks and lines, rackets or snow-shoes, groceries, hardware, some of the commonest drugs, and building articles. In trading, a coin was rare. The money used was seewant, or wampum, but most of the business done was by barter; peltries, corn, venison, ginseng, roots, herbs, brooms, etc., being the red man’s stock in trade. The white settlers paid for their groceries and necessities of civilization in seewant, or wampum, potash, and cereals. One of the earliest in the collection of Johnson’s papers at Albany is a letter to “Dear Billy” from Captain Warren at Boston, suggesting a shipment in the spring, from the farm at Warrensburg, of grain and other produce to Boston by way of Albany. Being of robust health, with a strong frame and commanding figure, jovial in disposition and easy in manners, Johnson was not only able to show habitual industry, but in the field-sports and athletic games to take part and make himself popular alike with the muscular young Dutch and Germans and with the more lithe red men. The famous castle or palisaded village of the Mohawks on the hill-slopes back of Auriesville, now visible to all passengers by railway, and marked by the shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs, was but a short distance to the westward. Here Johnson soon became known as a friend as well as an honest trader. His simple and masterly plan was, never to lie, cheat, or deceive, and never to grant what he had once refused. To the red men much of a white man’s thinking was a mystery; but truth was always simple, and as heartily appreciated as it was easily understood.