James McKenzie, brother of Hon. Roderick McKenzie, was a graphic, though somewhat irritable writer with a good style. He has left us "A Journal from the Athabasca Country," a description of the King's posts on the Lower St. Lawrence, with a journal of a jaunt through the King's posts. This fur trader joined the North-West Company. In 1799 he was at Fort Chipewyan. His descriptions are minute accounts of his doings at his fort. He seems to have taken much interest in his men, and he gives a pathetic account of one of these trappers called "Little Labrie." Labrie had been for six days without food, and was almost frozen to death. He says: "Little Labrie's feet are still soaking in cold water, but retain their hardness. We watched him all last night; he fainted often in the course of the night, but we always brought him to life again by the help of mulled wine. Once in particular, when he found himself very weak and sick, and thought he was dying he said, 'Adieu; je m'en vais; tout mon bien à ceux qui ont soin de moi.' 10th, about twelve o'clock, Labrie was freed from all his agonies in this world." McKenzie evidently had a kind heart. The candid writer gives us a picture of New Year's Day, January 1st, 1890. "This morning before daybreak, the men, according to custom, fired two broadsides in honour of the New Year, and then came in to be rewarded with rum, as usual. Some of them could hardly stand alone before they went away; such was the effect of the juice of the grape on their brains. After dinner, at which everyone helped themselves so plentifully that nothing remained to the dogs, they had a bowl of punch. The expenses of this day, with fourteen men and women, are: 61-1/2 fathoms Spencer twist (tobacco), 7 flagons rum, 1 ditto wine, 1 ham, a skin's worth of dried meat, about 40 white fish, flour, sugar, &c." McKenzie had many altercations in his trade, and seems to have been of a violent temper. He found fault with one of the X Y people, named Perroue, saying it was a shame for him to call those who came from Scotland "vachers" (cow-boys). He said he did not call all, but a few of them "vachers." "I desired him to name one in the North, and told him that the one who served him as a clerk was a 'vacher,' and had the heart of a 'vacher' since he remained with him." McKenzie has frequent accounts of drunken brawls, from which it is easy to be seen that this period of the opposition of the two Montreal Companies was one of the most dissolute in the history of the fur traders. The fur trader's violent temper often broke out against employés and Indians alike. He had an ungovernable dislike to the Indians, regarding them simply as the off-scourings of all things, and for the voyageurs and workmen of his own Company the denunciations are so strong that his violent language was regarded as "sound and fury, signifying nothing." CHAPTER XIX. THE LORDS OF THE LAKES AND FORESTS.--II.