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which has ever since continued. The destructive industry with which this, when once begun, was followed up, soon brought into the ports of France and England vast quantities of furs, some of which were consumed there, and the rest disposed of in the neighbouring countries. Most of these furs were already known in Europe: they came from the northern parts of our own hemisphere, but in too small quantities to bring them into general use. Caprice and novelty, however, brought them more or less into fashion, since it was found that it was for the interest of the American colonies that they should be admired in the mother-countries.

THE FUR-TRADE IN CANADA UNDER THE FRENCH.

Whether from the favourable situation of their settlements along the banks of the St Lawrence, in the very heart of the fur countries, or from the congeniality of the pursuit itself to the character and habits of that volatile and restless race, it is certain that the French soon acquired, and for a considerable period retained, a superiority in the fur-trade over other European nations in America. From time to time, our own intrepid navigators, employed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the ineffectual search for the north-west passage, had brought home specimens of the valuable furs which the northern portion of the American continent contained. But the first regular and permanent traffic with the Indians, appears to have been opened up about the beginning of the seventeenth century, by the French colony, at Tadousac, a post situated on the St Lawrence about thirty leagues below the present town of Quebec. The large profits arising from this commerce, and the advantages to be derived from its more extended and systematic prosecution, did not escape the vigilant and sagacious eye of Cardinal Richelieu, then at the head of affairs in France. To give effect to the views he entertained on this subject, he originated, about the year 1628, under his own immediate auspices, an extensive association under the name of La Compagnie de la Nouvelle France (New France), being the name by which the somewhat indefinite possessions of the French in America were at that time distinguished. To this association, which consisted of 700 copartners, including in their number some of the most distinguished men of the time in France, various important privileges were granted. The king made a present of two large ships to the company, and twelve of the principal members were raised to the rank of nobility. They had the disposal of the settlements that were, or should be formed in New France, with the power of fortifying and governing them as they thought proper; and of making war or peace as should best promote their interests. The whole trade by land and sea, 'from the river St Lawrence to the Arctic Circle and the Frozen Ocean,' was made over to them for a term of fifteen years, except the cod and whale

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fisheries, which were left open to all French subjects. The beaver and all the fur-trade was granted to the company for ever. In return for such extensive concessions, the company, which had a capital of 100,000 crowns, engaged to bring into the colony during the first year of their incorporation, 200 or artificers, of such trades as were fitted for their purpose; and 16,000 men before the year 1643. They were to find them in lodging and board, and to maintain them for three years, and afterwards to give them as much cleared land as might be necessary for their subsistence; together with a sufficient quantity of grain to sow it for the first year. A leading object of the company's incorporation was represented to be the propagation of Christianity among the native Indians; and with this view the most liberal provision was made for a numerous staff of missionaries, who accompanied the first settlers to the new colony.

Fortune, however, did not second the endeavours of government in favour of the new association. The first ships fitted out by them were taken by the English, who were lately embroiled with the French on account of the siege of Rochelle. Other disasters speedily followed; the monopolising company fulfilled none of their engagements; and the colonists, becoming clamorous in their complaints against the arbitrary measures and abuses of their administration, one after another of the privileges granted to the company had to be modified or recalled. It was found impossible to enforce the restrictions imposed upon the trade with the Indians, and these soon came, therefore, to be practically regarded by the colonists as a dead letter. Finally, the association itself, unable to accomplish any of the objects for which it had been established, was formally dissolved.

Freed from the incubus of the company's monopoly, the adventurers settled on the banks of the St Lawrence gave full scope to their roving propensities and their love of adventure. Allured by the enormous profits to be derived from the traffic with the Indians, and the unbridled licence of a savage life, these daring and hardy individuals penetrated for hundreds of miles into the wilderness, then, as now, known in Canada as the Indian Country. As the valuable furs soon grew scarce in the neighbourhood of the settlements, the Indians of the vicinity were stimulated to make a wider range in their hunting excursions. They were generally accompanied in these expeditions by some of the traders or their dependents, appropriately named coureurs des bois, or rangers of the woods, who shared in the toils and privations of the chase, and at the same time made themselves acquainted with the best hunting and trapping grounds, and with the remote tribes, whom they encouraged to bring their peltries to the settlements.

In this way the trade was augmented, and drawn from remote quarters to Montreal, where, in process of time, all the fur-trade of the colony centered. From this point the traders, ever in quest

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of new fields of adventure and profit, ascended the St Lawrence and Ottawa rivers to their sources, and formed establishments on the Great Lakes. From the north-western end of Lake Superior, they threaded the intricate communication which leads by lakes, rivers, and portages to Lake Winnipeg, and from thence penetrated some distance up the great stream of the Saskatchewan, 'the Mississippi of the north.' Their most distant establishment was on the banks of that river, in latitude 53 degrees north, and longitude 103 degrees west. This place was situated at a distance of upwards of 2000 miles from the colonised part of Canada; the route to it was through a country occupied by numerous savage tribes, where the means of subsistence were scanty, and the navigation unfit for any other craft than frail birch-rind canoes. Yet we have evidence that at this distant establishment considerable improvements were effected; that agriculture was carried on, and even wheel-carriages used; in fact, that they then possessed fully as many of the attendants of civilisation as the Hudson's Bay Company do now, after the lapse of a century.'* The author of Astoria presents us with a lively picture of those palmy days of the French fur-trade in Canada: Every now and then, a large body of Ottowas, Hurons, and other tribes who hunted the countries bordering on the great lakes, would come down in a squadron of light canoes, laden with beaver-skins and other spoils of their year's hunting. The canoes would be unladen, taken on shore, and their contents disposed in order. A camp of birch-bark would be pitched outside of the town, and a kind of primitive fair opened, with that grave ceremonial so dear to the Indians. An audience would be demanded of the governor-general, who would hold the conference with becoming state, seated in an elbow-chair, with the Indians ranged in semicircles before him, seated on the ground, and silently smoking their pipes. Speeches would be made, presents exchanged, and the audience would break up in universal good-humour.

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'Now would ensue a brisk traffic with the merchants, and all Montreal would be alive with naked Indians running from shop to shop, bargaining for arms, kettles, knives, axes, blankets, bright-coloured cloths, and other articles of use or fancy; upon all which, says an old French writer, the merchants were sure to clear at least 200 per cent. There was no money used in this traffic, and after a time, all payment in spirituous liquors was prohibited, in consequence of the frantic and frightful excesses and bloody brawls which they were apt to occasion.

"Their wants and caprices being supplied, they would take leave of the governor, strike their tents, launch their canoes, and ply their way up the Ottawa to the lakes. . . . . The French merchant at his trading-post, in these primitive days of Canada, was a kind of commercial patriarch. With the lax habits and easy

* Life and Travels of Thomas Simpson, the Arctic Discoverer.

familiarity of his race, he had a little world of self-indulgence and misrule around him. He had his clerks, canoe-men, and retainers of all kinds, who lived with him on terms of perfect sociability, always calling him by his Christian name. He had his harem of Indian beauties, and his troop of half-breed children; nor was there ever wanting a louting train of Indians hanging about the establishment, eating and drinking at his expense in the intervals of their hunting expeditions.'

It is not necessary to investigate the cause, but experience has shewn, that it requires much less time for a civilised people to degenerate into the manners and customs of savage life, than for savages to rise into a state of civilisation. Such was the event with the coureurs des bois, who, after accompanying the natives on their hunting and trading excursions, became so attached to the Indian mode of life, that they lost all relish for their former habits and native homes. For this very reason, however, these pedlers of the wilderness were extremely useful to the merchants engaged in the fur-trade, who freely supplied them with the necessary credit to proceed in their trading excursions. Three or four of these people would join stock, embark their property in a birch-bark canoe, which they worked themselves, and making their way up the mazy rivers that interlace the vast forests of Canada, commit themselves fearlessly to the first tribe of Indians they encountered. Sometimes they sojourned for months among them, assimilating to their tastes and habits with the happy facility of Frenchmen, adopting, in some degree, the Indian dress, and not unfrequently taking to themselves Indian wives. These voyages would extend often to twelve or fifteen months, when they would return in full glee down the Ottawa, their canoes loaded with rich cargoes of furs, and followed by great numbers of the natives. Now would ensue a period of revelry and dissipation, a continued round of drinking, gaming, feasting, and extravagant prodigality, which sufficed in a few weeks to dissipate all their gains, when they would start upon a fresh adventure, to be followed by fresh scenes of riot and extravagance.

The influence of such conduct and example could not but be pernicious to the native Indians, impeding the labours of the missionaries among them, and bringing into scandal and disrepute the character of the Christian religion among those natives who had become converts to it. As a check upon these loose adventurers, the missionaries prevailed upon the government to prohibit, under severe penalties, all persons from trading into the interior of the country without a licence. These licences were at first granted only to persons whose character could give no alarm to the zeal of the missionaries, but they came in time to be bestowed as rewards for services to officers and their widows, and others, who having the power of selling them again to the merchants, who again, in their turn, employed the coureurs des bois as their agents, the abuses of the old system were very soon revived and continued as

flagrant as before. At length, military posts were established at the confluence of the principal lakes and rivers of Canada, which in a great measure restrained the excesses of these marauders of the wilderness, and at the same time protected the trade. The persons in charge of these posts frequently engaged in the traffic themselves, under their own licences, having in most cases the exclusive privilege of buying and selling in the districts under their command, and combining their views with those of the missionaries, restored some degree of order and regularity to the trade, at the same time that they secured the respect of the natives. To distinguish themselves from the traders, they assumed the name of 'Commanders,' though they were, in fact, entitled to both these characters. As for the missionaries, they appear to have laboured most zealously and assiduously in the great work they had undertaken, receiving from the first the most cordial aid and encouragement both from the government and the colonists. Indeed, it is but justice to the French to state, that during their tenure of the fur-trade, the interest they displayed in the welfare of the aborigines furnishes a humiliating contrast to the conduct of our own government, or rather of the great trading association by whom their functions have been exercised since the traffic has passed into our hands. "The whole of their long route,' says Sir Alexander Mackenzie, speaking of these missionaries, and of the neglect into which the missions had fallen in his time (toward the end of the last century), when the fur-trade had passed into the hands of the British -the whole of their long route I have often travelled; and the recollection of such a people as the missionaries having been there, was confined to a few superannuated Canadians, who had not left that country since the cession to the English in 1763, and who particularly mentioned the death of some, and the distressing situation of them all. Though these religious men did not attain the objects of their persevering piety, they were, during their mission, of great service to the French commanders who engaged in those distant expeditions, and spread the fur-trade as far west as the banks of the Saskatchewan River.'

RISE OF THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY.

The fur-trade of Canada had for a long time to sustain a keen competition from the British and Dutch settlers of New York, who inveigled the coureurs des bois and the Indians to their tradingposts, and traded with them on more favourable terms. In the absence of any regular organisation, however, among these settlers, the isolated and desultory efforts of individual traders served rather to keep alive the spirit of activity and enterprise among the French, than in any very permanent or considerable degree to affect the extensive and important traffic which had now grown up under their hands. But in the year 1669, another and a

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