Governor Simpson lifted the fur trade out of the depth into which it had fallen, harmonised the hostile elements of the two Companies, reduced order out of chaos in the interior, helped, as we shall see, various expeditions for the exploration of Rupert's Land, and though, as tradition goes and as his journey around the world shows, he never escaped from the witchery of a pretty face, yet the business concerns of the Company were certainly such as to gain the approbation of the financial world. CHAPTER XXX. THE LIFE OF THE TRADERS. Lonely trading posts--Skilful letter writers--Queer old Peter Fidler--Famous library--A remarkable will--A stubborn Highlander--Life at Red River--Badly-treated Pangman--Founding trading houses--Beating up recruits--Priest Provencher--A fur-trading mimic--Life far north--"Ruled with a rod of iron"--Seeking a fur country--Life in the canoe--A trusted trader--Sheaves of letters--A find in Edinburgh--Faithful correspondents--The Bishop's cask of wine--Red River, a "land of Canaan"--Governor Simpson's letters--The gigantic Archdeacon writes--"MacArgrave's" promotion--Kindly Sieveright--Traders and their books. It was an empire that Governor Simpson established in the solitudes of Rupert's Land. The chaos which had resulted from the disastrous conflict of the Companies was by this Napoleon of the fur trade reduced to order. Men who had been in arms against one another--Macdonell against Macdonell, McLeod against McLeod--learned to work together and gathered around the same Council Board. The trade was put upon a paying basis, the Indians were encouraged, and under a peaceful rule the better life of the traders began to grow up. It is true this social life was in many respects unique. The trading posts were often hundreds of miles apart, being scattered over the area from Labrador to New Caledonia. Still, during the summer, brigades of traders carried communications from post to post, and once or twice in winter the swift-speeding dog-trains hastened for hundreds of miles with letters and despatches over the icy wastes. There grew up during the well-nigh forty years of George Simpson's governorship a comradeship of a very strong and influential kind.