It was, by either route, a very long and tiresome journey from Quebec or Montreal to Wisconsin, and owing to the early freezing of the Straits of Mackinac, but one trip could be made in a year. It was not, however, necessary for every trader to go to the "lower settlements" each year. At the Western forts large stocks of goods were kept, and there the furs were stored, sometimes for several seasons, until a great fleet of canoes could be made up by bands of traders and friendly Indians; and then the expedition to Montreal was made, with considerable display of barbaric splendor. When the traders reached Montreal, the inhabitants of the settlement turned out to welcome their visitors from the wilderness, and something akin to a great fair was held, at which speculators bought up the furs, feasts were eaten and drunk, and fresh treaties of peace were made with the Indians. A week or two would thus pass in universal festivity, at the end of which traders and savages would seek their canoes, and, amid volleys of cannon from the fort, martial music, the fluttering of flags, and the shouts of the _habitants_, the fleet would push off, and soon be swallowed again by the all-pervading forest. When the French were driven out of Canada, in 1760, and the British assumed control, the English Hudson Bay Company began spreading its operations over the Northwest. But in 1783, at the close of the Revolutionary War, the Northwest Company was organized, with headquarters at Montreal. The British still held possession of our Northwest long after the treaty with the United States was signed. Soon sailing ships were introduced, and many goods were thus brought to Mackinac, Green Bay, and Chequamegon Bay; nevertheless, canoes and bateaux, together with the more modern "Mackinac boats" and "Durham boats," were for many years largely used upon these long Western journeys from Montreal. To a still later date were these rude craft sent out from the Mackinac warehouses to Wisconsin, or from Mackinac to the famous headquarters of the company at the mouth of Pigeon River, on the western shore of Lake Superior, the "Grand Portage," as it was called. It was a life filled with great perils, by land and flood; many were the men who lost their lives in storms, in shooting river rapids, in deadly quarrels with one another or with the savages, by exposure to the elements, or by actual starvation. Yet there was a glamour over these wild experiences, as is customary wherever men are associated as comrades in an outdoor enterprise involving common dangers and hardships. The excitement and freedom of the fur trade appealed especially to the volatile, fun loving French; and music and badinage and laughter often filled the day.