Before the construction of canals these great inland waters were of but little value to commerce, the only means of reaching them being by the bark canoe or bateau of the voyageur. The United Empire Loyalists who came to Canada at the close of the American war were conveyed to their settlements on the St. Lawrence and Bay of Quinte in the long sharp-pointed, flat-bottomed boats of the period, called “bateaux,” by a very slow, laborious and uncomfortable process. General Simcoe, the first Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada (1791-96), is said to have sailed from Kingston to Detroit in his bark canoe, rowed by twelve chasseurs of his own regiment and followed by another canoe carrying his tents and provisions. Many still living recollect how Sir George Simpson, Governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, made his annual canoe journeys from Montreal to the Red River country. Having “sung at St. Ann’s their parting hymn,” his flotilla of canoes ascended the Ottawa, breasted the rapids, and by river, lake and portage, after many weary days, reached Lake Huron and the Sault Ste. Marie, thence along the north shore of Lake Superior to Fort William and the Grand Portage and by Rainy Lake and Lake of the Woods to Fort Garry. “With the self-possession of an emperor he was borne through the wilderness. He is said to have made the canoe journey to the Red River _forty times_. For his distinguished management of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s affairs and for his services to the trade of Canada, Governor Simpson was knighted. He died in 1860, a man who would have been of mark anywhere.”[42]