Adventures on the Columbia River

Adventures on the Columbia River, by Ross Cox.

In this book, the author writes about the five years he spent on the western side of the Rocky Mountains between 1811 and 1817. He returned home by way of the Ottawa River and Montreal, staying a night at the Schneider Hotel. Here is the passage from pages 303-304:

Sept. I8th [1817] We did not rise till ten this morning, at which time some of the men insisted on awakening us. They told us that two of the loaded canoes, which stopped to repair below the Sault the evening before, had not yet arrived. We therefore told them to wait a couple of hours longer, at the expiration of which, if they did not arrive, we should proceed. Took a late breakfast, shortly after which we bade farewell to my friend M'Gillis, who accompanied us to the beach. Seeing no appearance of the two canoes, we ordered our men to make little use of the paddles; and as the day was remarkably fine, after descending a few miles, Wentzel, M'Neill, and I landed, and proceeded seven or eight miles on a good road running parallel with the river, until we arrived at an excellent tavern kept by a curious and eccentric person named Snyder, a German by birth, at which place we determined to pass the night. We therefore sent orders to the canoes to encamp before the tavern; and, having inquired what we could obtain for dinner, were presented with a bill of fare that would not have derogated from the credit of the first inn in England. It was not, however, like many of those documents – all show and no substance: the German put nothing on paper that he was not prepared to put on the table ; and in less than an hour after our orders were given, the dinner was served up in a style of neatness and even elegance which I have seldom seen surpassed in any house of public entertainment.

After dinner we invited the old man to join us. He was a most entertaining companion. Fame had celebrated him as a first-rate narrator of anecdotes, and the report we found was not exaggerated. His conversation was a complete antidote to ennui, and effectually checked any propensities we might have had to sleep. The North-Westers, he said, were the founders of his fortune: they always stopped at his house in their journeys to and from the interior, and, no matter how other customers might fare, a North-Wester should always have the best bed and bottle in his house. He kept his word,—but we could not keep our beds. Five months continued sleeping on the hard ground had so vitiated our taste for comfort, that we in vain endeavoured to compose ourselves to rest; and, after suffering the torments of luxury for a couple of hours, were obliged to order the beds to be removed, after which we slept tolerably well on the mattrasses.

September 19th. Partook of an early breakfast with the worthy old Rhinelander, immediately after which we embarked. Some distance below Snyder's we entered the Lake of the Two Mountains, which is formed by the extension of the Ottawa. Stopped at a village on the western shore of the lake, from which it derives its name. The principal inhabitants of this place are Iroquois Indians, a small remnant of that once powerful tribe. They are all Roman Catholics, and have a plain neat church. Here I also found another old friend from the Columbia, Mr. Fillet, with whom we stopped a couple of hours. He had a snug farm, a comfortable house, a handsome wife, and two pretty children, and altogether appeared to be in happy circumstances. 

Adventures on the Columbia River, "including The Narrative of a Residence  of Six Years on the Western Side of the Rocky Mountains among Various Tribes of Indians Hitherto Unknown", by Ross Cox. J. & J. Harper, 1832. The book is available online from Google Books.

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