" Events have proved his error. Mr. Ellice was a man of
commanding stature and presence, but, to my mind, had always the
demeanour of a colonist who had had to wrestle with the hardships of
nature, and his cast of countenance was Jewish. According to his own
account, he went out to Canada in 1803, when he must have been a mere
youth, and then personally associated himself with the fur trade, a
trade which attracted the attention of almost the whole Canadian
society. It was, in fact, at that time, the great trade of the country.
The traders had inherited the skill and organization of the old French
voyageurs, who, working from Quebec and Montreal as bases of their
operations, were the doughty competitors of the Hudson's Bay Company,
many of whose posts were only separated by distances of a hundred miles
from those of the French. When Canada became the possession of our
country, in the last century, Scotch and English capital and energy
reinforced the trade; and, as time went on, a powerful organization,
called the "North-West Company," arose, and extended its operations
right across to the Pacific.
At the end of the last century, or the beginning of this, Mr. Ellice's
father, as Mr. Ellice stated, "had supplied a great part of the capital
by which the whole north-west trade was conducted.
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