Coming from the highly civilized and elaborately circumscribed life of France, M. Petitot was vividly impressed with the enormous and underlying difference in the methods of life in the two countries, the more so on account of his youth. He says of this: "It is well to know the advantages of an isolated life. There is an entire exemption from taxes, tithes, levies in kind, quit-rents, poll-taxes, tariffs, customs duties, town duties (octroi), inheritance-taxes, land rents, forced labor, etc., etc." [Illustration: Liverpool Bay Region.] On the other hand he finds in the northern wilds "Perfect security, unchanging peacefulness, liberty to plant, to cut, to clear land, to mow, to reap, to fish, to hunt, to take and to give, to build and to tear down"--in short, unrestricted personal liberty of action as of thought. In changing his station to the far north he made his first voyage down the magnificent Mackenzie, which in the area of its drainage basin, its outflow, its length, and its wondrous scenery is scarcely surpassed by any other river of the world. His first stage of travel brought him to Fort Simpson, where he came in contact with the chief factors or agents of the Hudson Bay posts to the north, who gathered there in early autumn to bring the winter furs and to obtain the annual supply of food and of trading goods known as their outfit. For these men it was the holiday season of the year, the only break in the fearful monotony of their isolated lives, when they see their kind and speak their native tongue. The final glass had been drunk, the precious outfit[20] had been stowed safely under cover, the final word said, and then the Indian steersman dexterously turned his paddle. The voyage to the real north thus began, and the missionary's happiness was complete, though he travelled with six Indians, the factor staying behind. Drifting throughout the night, he could scarce believe his eyes when the sharp air of the cold morning awoke him. He had left a land of green trees and now the foliage of the elms that bordered the Mackenzie were as yellow as straw. The single night of polar cold had checked the life-giving sap with the same startling rapidity with which it had been caused to flow by a spring day of warm, invigorating sunshine. Then the priest, with the mountains in view, realized the justness of the poetic Indian name, the Giant of the Highlands, given to the "noble Mackenzie, with its vast outflow, its great length, its immense width, and its majestic mountainous banks."