Here, then, came the brigades from Montreal--seven hundred, and one thousand strong, preceded by the swift-traveling partners whose annual meeting was held in July. A great whoop welcomed the men ashore and they were at once rallied to the Canteen, where bread, butter, meal and four quarts of rum were given to each man. About the same time as the canoes from the East arrived, the fur brigades from the West came in smaller canoes, loaded to the waterline with skins valued at £40 a pack. To these also was given a _régale_. Then twenty or a dozen kegs of rum were distributed to the Indian families; “and after that,” says one missionary, “truly the furies of Hell were let loose.” The gates were closed for reasons that need not be given, and the Nor’ Westers often took the precaution of gathering up all the weapons of the Indians before the _boisson_ or mad drinking bout began, but the rum-frenzied Indians still had fists and teeth left, and never a drinking bout passed but from one to a dozen Indians were murdered--frequently wives and daughters because they were least able to defend themselves--though the Indian murderer when sobered was often plunged in such grief for his deed that he would come to the white men and beg them to kill him as punishment. The stripping of all restraint--moral, physical, legal--has different effects on different natures. Some rise higher in the freedom. Others go far below the level of the most vicious beast. Men like Alexander MacKenzie and Doctor McLoughlin braced themselves to the shock of the sudden transition from civilization to barbarism and rose to renown--one as explorer, the other as patriot; but in the very same region where Alexander MacKenzie won his laurels was another MacKenzie--James--a blood relative, who openly sold native women to voyageurs and entered them as an asset on the Company’s books; and in that very Oregon where McLoughlin won his reputation as a saint, was his son McLoughlin, notorious as a sot. Perhaps the crimes of the fur country were no greater than those committed under hiding in civilization, but they were more terrific, for they were undisguised and in open day where if you would not see them you must close your eyes or bolt the gates. Inside the bolted gates where the partners lived, the code was on the whole one of decency and high living and pomp. In the daytime, the session of the annual meeting was held in secret behind barred doors. The entire Up Country was mapped out for the year’s campaign. Reports were received on the past season, men and plans arranged for the coming year, weak leaders shifted to easy places, strong men, “old winterers, the crafty wolves of the North,” dispatched to the fields where there was to be the hardest fighting against either Indians or English, and English always meant Hudson’s Bay.