CHAPTER 20
1663-1763.  

TRADE AND INDUSTRY.

WE have seen the head of the colony, its guiding intellect and will: it remains to observe its organs of nutrition.  Whatever they might have been under a different treatment, they were perverted and enfeebled by the regimen to which they were subjected.

The spirit of restriction and monopoly had ruled from the beginning.  The old governor Lauson, seignior for a while of a great part of the colony, held that Montreal had no right to trade directly with France, but must draw all her supplies from Quebec; and this preposterous claim was revived in the time of Me’zy.  The successive companies to whose hands the colony was consigned had a baneful effect on individual enterprise.  In 1674 the charter of the West India Company was revoked, and trade was declared open to all subjects of the King; yet commerce was still condemned to wear the ball and chain.  New restrictions were imposed, meant for good, but resulting in evil.  Merchants not resident in the colony were forbidden all trade, direct or indirect, with the Indians.  They were also forbidden to sell any goods at retail except in August, September, and October; to trade anywhere in Canada above Quebec, and to sell clothing or domestic articles ready made.  This last restriction was designed to develop colonial industry.  No person, resident or not, could trade with the English colonies, or go thither without a special passport, and rigid examination by the military authorities.  Foreign trade of any kind was stiffly prohibited.  In 1719, after a new company had engrossed the beaver trade, its agents were empowered to enter all houses in Canada, whether ecclesiastical or secular, and search them for foreign goods, which when found were publicly burned.  In the next year the royal council ordered that vessels engaged in foreign trade should be captured by force of arms, like pirates, and confiscated along with their cargoes; while anybody having an article of foreign manufacture in his possession was subjected to a heavy fine.  

Attempts were made to fix the exact amount of profit which merchants from France should be allowed to make in the colony; one of the first acts of the superior council was to order them to bring their invoices immediately before that body, which there upon affixed prices to each article.  The merchant who sold and the purchaser who bought above this tariff were alike condemned to heavy penalties; and so, too, was the merchant who chose to keep his goods rather than sell them at the price ordained.  Resident merchants, on the other hand, were favored to the utmost: they could sell at what price they saw fit; and, according to La Hontan, they made great profit by the sale of laces, ribbons, watches, jewels, and similar superfluities to the poor but extravagant colonists.

A considerable number of the nonresident merchants were Huguenots, for most of the importations were from the old Huguenot city of Rochelle.  No favor was shown them; they were held under rigid restraint, and forbidden to exercise their religion, or to remain in the colony during winter without special license.  This sometimes bore very hard upon them.  The governor, Denonville, an ardent Catholic, states the case of one Bernon, who had done great service to the colony, and whom La Hontan mentions as the principal French merchant in the Canadian trade.  "It is a pity," says Denonville, "that he cannot be converted.  As he is a Huguenot, the bishop wants me to order him home this autumn,  which I have done, though he carries on a large business, and a great deal of money remains due to him here."

For a long time the ships from France went home empty, except a favored few which carried furs, or occasionally a load of dried pease or of timber.  Payment was made in money when there was any in Canada, or in bills of exchange.  The colony, drawing everything from France and returning little besides beaver skins, remained under a load of debt.  French merchants were discouraged, and shipments from France languished.  As for the trade with the West Indies, which Talon had tried by precept and example to build up, the intendant reports in 1680 that it had nearly ceased; though six years later it grew again to the modest proportions of three vessels loaded with wheat.

The besetting evil of trade and industry in Canada was the habit they contracted, and were encouraged to contract, of depending on the direct aid of government.  Not a new enterprise was set on foot without a petition to the King to lend a helping hand.  Sometimes the petition was sent through the governor, sometimes through the intendant; and it was rarely refused.  Denonville writes that the merchants of Quebec, by a combined effort, bad sent a vessel of sixty tons to France with colonial produce; and he asks that the royal commissaries at Rochefort be instructed to buy the whole cargo, in order to encourage so deserving an enterprise.  One Hazeur set up a sawmill at Mai Bay.  Finding a large stock of planks and timber on his hands, he begs the King to send two vessels to carry them to France; and the King accordingly did so.  A similar request was made in behalf of another sawmill at Saint Paul's Bay.  Denonville announces that one Riverin wishes to embark in the whale and cod fishery, and that though strong in zeal he is weak in resources.  The minister replies that he is to be encouraged, and that his Majesty will favorably consider his enterprise.  Various gifts were soon after made him.  He now took to himself a partner, the Sieur Chalons; whereupon the governor writes to ask the minister's protection for them.  " The Basques," he says, "formerly carried on this fishery, but some monopoly or other put a stop to it." The remedy he proposes is homoaopathic.  He asks another monopoly for the two partners.  Louis Joliet, the discoverer of the Mississippi, made a fishing station on the island of Amicosti; and he begs help from the King, on the ground that his fishery will furnish a good and useful employment to young men.  The Sieur Vitry wished to begin a fishery of white porpoises, and he begs the King to give him two thousand pounds of cod line and two thousand pounds of one and two inch rope.  His request was granted, on which he asked for five hundred livres.  The money was given him; and the next year he asked to have the gift renewed.

The King was very anxious to develop the fisheries of the colony.  "His Majesty," writes the minister, "wishes you to induce the inhabitants to unite with the merchants for this object, and to incite them by all sorts of means to overcome their natural laziness, since there is no other way of saving them from the misery in which they now are." "I wish," says the zealous Denonville, "that fisheries could be well established to give employment to our young men, and prevent them from running wild in the woods; " and he adds mournfully, "they (the fisheries) are enriching Boston at our expense." "They are our true mines," urges the intendant Meules; "but the English of Boston have got possession of those of Acadia, which belong to us, and we ought to prevent it." It was not prevented; and the Canadian fisheries, like other branches of Canadian industry, remained in a state of almost hopeless languor.

The government applied various stimulants.  One of these, proposed by the intendant Duchesneau, is characteristic.  He advises the formation of a company which should have the exclusive right of exporting fish; but which on its part should be required to take, at a fixed price, all that the inhabitants should bring them.  This notable plan did not find favor with the King.  It was practised, however, in the case of beaver skins, and also in that of wood ashes.  The farmers of the revenue were required to take this last commodity at a fixed price, on their own risk, and in any quantity offered.  They remonstrated, saying that it was unsalable,  adding, that, if the inhabitants would but take the trouble to turn it into potash, it might be possible to find a market for it.  The King released them entirely, coupling his order to that effect with a eulogy of free trade.

In all departments of industry the appeals for help are endless.  Governors and intendants are so many sturdy beggars for the languishing colony.  "Send us money to build storehouses, to which the habitants can bring their produce and receive goods from the government in exchange." "Send us a teacher to make sailors of our young men: it is a pity the colony should remain in such a state for want of instruction for youth." " We want a surgeon: there is none in Canada who can set a bone." "Send us some tilers, brick makers, and potters."* "Send us iron workers to work our mines." "It is to be wished that his Majesty would send us all sorts of artisans, especially potters and glass workers." "Our Canadians need aid and instruction in their fisheries; they need pilots.  "

In 1688 the intendant reported that Canada was entirely without either pilots or sailors; and as late as 1712 the engineer Catalogue informed the government, that, though the Saint Lawrence was dangerous, a pilot was rarely to be had.  " There ought to be trade with the West Indies and other places," urges another writer.  "Everybody says it is best, but nobody will undertake it.  Our merchants are too poor, or else are engrossed by the fur trade."

The languor of commerce made agriculture languish.  "It is of no use now," writes Meules, in 1682, "to raise any crops except what each family wants for itself." In vain the government sent out seeds for distribution; in vain intendants lectured the farmers, and lavished well meant advice.  Tillage remained careless and slovenly.  "If," says the all observing Catalogue, "the soil were not better cultivated in Europe than here, three-fourths of the people would starve." He complains that the festivals of the Church are so numerous that not ninety working days are left during the whole working season.  The people, he says, ought to be compelled to build granaries to store their crops, instead of selling them in autumn for almost nothing, and every habitant should be required to keep two or three sheep.  The intendant Champigny calls for seed of hemp and flax, and promises to visit the farms, and show the people the lands best suited for their culture.  He thinks that favors should be granted to those who raise hemp and flax as well as to those who marry.  Denonville is of opinion that each habitant should be compelled to raise a little hemp every year, and that the King should then buy it of him at a high price.  It will be well, he says, to make use of severity, while at the same time holding out a hope of gain ; and he begs that weavers be sent out to teach the women and girls, who spend the winter in idleness, how to weave and spin.  Weaving and spinning, however, as well as the culture of hemp and flax, were neglected till 1705, when the loss of a ship laden with goods for the colony gave the spur to home industry; and Madame de Repentigny set the example of making a kind of coarse blanket of nettle and linden bark.

The jealousy of colonial manufactures shown by England appears but rarely in the relations of France with Canada.  According to its light, the French government usually did its best to stimulate Canadian industry, with what results we have just seen.  There was afterwards some improvement.  In 1714 the intendant Be’gon reported that coarse fabrics of wool and linen were made; that the sisters of the congregation wove cloth for their own habits as good as the same stuffs in France; that black cloth was made for priests, and blue cloth for the pupils of the colleges.  The inhabitants, he says, have been taught these arts by necessity.  They were naturally adroit at handiwork of all kinds; and during the last half century of the French rule, when the population had settled into comparative stability, many of the mechanic arts were practised with success, notwithstanding the assertion of the Abbe La Tour that everything but bread and meat had still to be brought from France.  This change may be said to date from the peace of Utrecht, or a few years before it.  At that time one Duplessis had a new vessel on the stocks.  Catalogne, who states the fact, calls it the beginning of shipbuilding in Canada, evidently ignorant that Talon had made a fruitless beginning more than forty years before.

Of the arts of ornament not much could have been expected; but, strangely enough, they were in somewhat better condition than the useful arts.  The nuns of the Hotel Dieu made artificial flowers for altars and shrines, under the direction of Mother Juchereau; and the boys of the seminary were taught to make carvings in wood for the decoration of churches.  Pierre, son of the merchant Le Ber, had a turn for painting, and made religious pictures, described as very indifferent.  His sister Jeanne, an enthusiastic devotee, made embroideries for vestments and altars, and her work was much admired.

The colonial finances were not prosperous.  In the absence of coin, beaver skins long served as currency.  In 1669 the council declared wheat a legal tender, at four francs the minot or three French bushels; and, five years later, all creditors were ordered to receive moose skins in payment at the market rate.  Coin would not remain in the colony: if the company or the King sent any thither, it went back in the returning ships.  The government devised a remedy.  A coinage was ordered for Canada one fourth less in value than that of France.  Thus the Canadian livre or franc was worth, in reality, fifteen sous instead of twenty.  This shallow expedient produced only a nominal rise of prices, and coin fled the colony as before.  Trade was carried on for a time by means of negotiable notes, payable in furs, goods, or farm produce.  In 1685 the intendant Meules issued a card currency.  He had no money to pay the soldiers, "and not knowing," he informs the minister, "to what saint to make my vows, the idea occurred to me of putting in circulation notes made of cards, each cut into four pieces; and I have issued an ordinance commanding the inhabitants to receive them in payment." The cards were common playing cards, and each piece was stamped with & fleur-de-lis and a crown, and signed by the governor, the intendant, and the clerk of the treasury at Quebec.  The example of Meules found ready imitation.  Governors and intendants made card money whenever they saw fit; and, being worthless everywhere but in Canada, it showed no disposition to escape the colony.  It was declared convertible not into coin, but into bills of exchange; and this conversion could only take place at brief specified periods.  " The currency used in Canada," says a writer in the last years of the French rule, "has no value as a representative of money.  It is the sign of a sign." It was card representing paper, and this paper was very often dishonored.  In 1714 the amount of card rubbish had risen to two million livres.  Confidence was lost, and trade was half dead.' The minister Ponchartrain came to the rescue, and promised to redeem it at half its nominal value.  The holders preferred to lose half rather than the whole, and accepted the terms.  A few of the cards were redeemed at the rate named; then the government broke faith, and payment ceased.  "This afflicting news," says a writer of the time, "was brought out by the vessel which sailed from France last July."

In 1717 the government made another proposal, and the cards were converted into bills of exchange.  At the same time a new issue was made, which it was declared should be the last.  This issue was promptly redeemed; but twelve years later another followed it.  In the interval, a certain quantity of coin circulated in the colony; but it underwent fluctuations through the intervention of government, and within eight years at least four edicts were issued affecting its value.  Then came more promises to pay, till, in the last bitter years of its existence, the colony floundered in drifts of worthless paper.

One   characteristic  grievance  was   added  to  the countless woes of Canadian commerce.  The government was so jealous of popular meetings of all kinds, that for a long time it forbade merchants to meet together for discussing their affairs; and it was not till 1717 that the establishment of a bourse, or exchange, was permitted at Quebec and Montreal.

In respect of taxation, Canada, as compared with France, had no reason to complain.  If the King permitted governors and intendants to make card money, he permitted nobody to impose taxes but himself.  The Canadians paid no direct civil tax, except in a few instances where temporary and local assessments were ordered for special objects.  It was the fur trade on which the chief burden fell.  One-fourth of the beaver skins, and one-tenth of the moose hides belonged to the King; and wine, brandy, and tobacco contributed a duty of ten per cent.  During a long course of years these were the only imposts.  The King also retained the exclusive right of the fur trade at Tadoussac.  A vast tract of wilderness extending from Saint Paul's Bay to a point eighty leagues down the Saint Lawrence, and stretching indefinitely northward towards Hudson's Bay, formed a sort of royal preserve, whence every settler was rigidly excluded.  The farmers of the revenue had their trading houses at Tadoussac, whither the northern tribes, until war, pestilence, and brandy consumed them, brought every summer a large quantity of furs.  

When, in 1674, the West India Company, to whom these imposts had been granted, was extinguished, the King resumed possession of them.  The various duties, along with the trade of Tadoussac, were now fanned out to one Oudiette and his associates, who paid the Crown three hundred and fifty thousand livres for their privilege.

We come now to a trade far more important than all the others together, one which absorbed the enterprise of the colony, drained the life sap from other branches of commerce, and, even more than a vicious system of government, kept them in a state of chronic debility,  the hardy, adventurous, lawless, fascinating fur trade.  In the eighteenth century, Canada exported a moderate quantity of timber, wheat, the herb called ginseng, and a few other commodities; but from first to last she lived chiefly on beaver skins.  The government tried without ceasing to control and regulate this traffic; but it never succeeded.  It aimed, above all things, to bring the trade home to the colonists; to prevent them from going to the Indians, and induce the Indians to come to them.  To this end a great annual fair was established by order of the King at Montreal.  Thither every summer a host of savages came down from the lakes in their bark canoes.  A place was assigned them at a little distance from the town.  They landed, drew up their canoes in a line on the bank, took out their packs of beaver skins, set up their wigwams, slung their kettles, and encamped for the night.  On the next day there was a grand council on the common, between Saint Paul Street and the river.  Speeches of compliment were made amid a solemn smoking of pipes.  The governor general was usually present, seated in an arm chair, while the visitors formed a ring about him, ranged in the order of their tribes.  On the next day the trade began in the same place.  Merchants of high and low degree brought up their goods from Quebec, and every inhabitant of Montreal', of any substance, sought a share in the profit.  Their booths were set along the palisades of the town, and each had an interpreter, to whom he usually promised a certain portion of his gains.  The scene abounded in those contrasts  not always edifying, but always picturesque  which mark the whole course of French Canadian history.  Here was a throng of Indians armed with bows and arrows, war clubs, or the cheap guns of the trade,  some of them being completely naked, except for the feathers on their heads and the paint on their faces; French bush rangers tricked out with savage finery; merchants and habitants in their coarse and plain attire, and the grave priests of Saint Sulpice robed in black.  Order and sobriety were their watchwords; but the wild gathering was beyond their control.  The prohibition to sell brandy could rarely he enforced; and the fair ended at times in a pandemonium of drunken frenzy.  The rapacity of trade, and the license of savages and coureurs de bois, had completely transformed the pious settlement.

A similar fair was established at Three Rivers, for the Algonquin tribes north of that place.  These yearly markets did not fully answer the desired object.  There was a constant tendency among the inhabitants of Canada to form settlements above Montreal, in order to intercept the Indians on their way down, drench them with brandy, and get their furs from them at low rates in advance of the fair.  Such settlements were forbidden, but not prevented.  The audacious "squatter" defied edict and ordinance and the fury of drunken savages, and boldly planted himself in the path of the descending trade.  Nor is this a matter of surprise; for he was usually the secret agent of some high colonial officer,  an intendant, the local governor, or the governor-general, who often used his power to enforce the law against others, and to violate it himself.

This was not all; for the more youthful and vigorous part of the male population soon began to escape into the woods, and trade with the Indians far beyond the limits of the remotest settlements.  Here, too, many of them were in league with the authorities, who denounced the abuse while secretly favoring the portion of it in which they themselves were interested.  The home government, unable to prevent the evil, tried to regulate it.  Licenses were issued for the forest trade.  Their number was limited to twenty-five, and the privileges which they conferred varied at different periods.  In La Hontan's time, each license authorized the departure of two canoes loaded with goods.  One canoe only was afterwards allowed, bearing three men with about four hundred pounds of freight.  The licenses were sometimes sold for the profit of government; but many were given to widows of officers and other needy persons, to the hospitals, or to favorites and retainers of the governor.  Those who could not themselves use them sold them to merchants or voyageurs, at a price varying from a thousand to eighteen hundred francs.  They were valid for a year and a half; and each canoeman had a share in the profits, which, if no accident happened, were very large.  The license system was several times suppressed and renewed again; but, like the fair at Montreal, it failed completely to answer its purpose, and restrain the young men of Canada from a general exodus into the wilderness.

The most characteristic features of the Canadian fur trade still remain to be seen.  Oudiette and his associates were not only charged with collecting the revenue, but were also vested with an exclusive right of transporting all the beaver skins of the colony to France.  On their part they were compelled to receive all beaver skins brought to their magazines, and, after deducting the fourth belonging to the King, to pay for the rest at a fixed price.  This price was graduated to the different qualities of the fur; but the average cost to the collectors was a little more than three francs a pound.  The inhabitants could barter their furs with merchants; but the merchants must bring them all to the magazines of Oudiette, who paid in receipts convertible into bills of exchange.  He soon found himself burdened with such a mass of beaver skins that the market was completely glutted.  The French hatters refused to take them all; and for the part which they consented to take they paid chiefly in hats, which Oudiette was not allowed to sell in France, but only in the French West Indies, where few people wanted them.  An unlucky fashion of small hats diminished the con sumption of fur and increased his embarrassments, as did also a practice common among the hatters of mixing rabbit fur with the beaver.  In.  his extremity he bethought him of setting up a hat factory for himself, under the name of a certain licensed hatter, thinking thereby to alarm his customers into buying his stock.  petitioned the minister.  The new factory was suppressed, and Oudiette soon became bankrupt.  Another company of farmers of the revenue took his place with similar results.  The action of the law of supply and demand was completely arrested by the peremptory edict which, with a view to the prosperity of the colony and the profit of the King, required the company to take every beaver skin offered.

All Canada, thinking itself sure of its price, rushed into the beaver trade, and the accumulation of unsalable furs became more and more suffocating.  The farmers of the revenue could not meet their engagements.  Their bills of exchange were unpaid, and Canada was filled with distress and consternation.  In 1700 a change of system was ordered.  The monopoly of exporting beaver was placed in the hands of a company formed of the chief inhabitants of Canada.  Some of them hesitated to take the risk; but the government was not to be trifled with, and the minister, Ponchartrain, wrote in terms so peremptory, and so menacing to the recusants, that, in the words of a writer of the time, he "shut everybody's mouth." About a hundred and fifty merchants accordingly subscribed to the stock of the new company, and immediately petitioned the King for a ship and a loan of seven hundred thousand francs.  They were required to take off the hands of the farmers of the revenue an accumulation of more than six hundred thousand pounds of beaver, for which, however, they were to pay but half its usual price.  The market of France absolutely refused it, and the directors of the new company saw no better course than to burn three-fourths of the troublesome and perishable commodity; nor was this the first resort to this strange expedient.  One cannot repress a feeling of indignation at the fate of the interesting and unfortunate animals uselessly sacrificed to a false economic system.  In order to rid themselves of what remained, the directors begged the King to issue a decree, requiring all hatters to put at least three ounces of genuine beaver fur into each hat.

All was in vain.  The affairs of the company fell into a confusion which was aggravated by the bad faith of some of its chief members.  In 1707 it was succeeded by another company, to whose magazines every habitant or merchant was ordered to bring every beaver skin in his possession within forty-eight hours; and the company, like its predecessors, was required to receive it, and pay for it in written promises.  Again the market was overwhelmed with a surfeit of beaver.  Again the bills of exchange were unpaid, and all was confusion and distress.  Among the memorials and petitions to which this state of things gave birth, there is one conspicuous by the presence of good sense and the absence of self interest.  The writer proposes that there should be no more monopoly, but that everybody should be free to buy beaver skins and send them to France, subject only to a moderate duty of entry.  The proposal was not accepted.  In 1721 the monopoly of exporting beaver skins was given to the new West India Company; but this time it was provided that the government should direct from time to time, according to the capacities of the market, the quantity of furs which the company should be forced to receive.

Out of the beaver trade rose a huge evil, baneful to the growth and the morals of Canada.  All that was most active and vigorous in the colony took to the woods, and escaped from the control of intendants, councils, and priests, to the savage freedom of the wilderness.  Not only were the possible profits great; but, in the pursuit of them, there was a fascinating element of adventure and danger.  The bushrangers, or coureitrs de bois, were to the King an object of horror.  They defeated his plans for the increase of the population, and shocked his native instinct of discipline and order.  Edict after edict was directed against them; and more than once the colony presented the extraordinary spectacle of the greater part of its young men turned into forest outlaws.  But severity was dangerous.  The offenders might be driven over to the English, or converted into a lawless banditti,  renegades of civilization and the faith.  Therefore, clemency alternated with rigor, and declarations of amnesty with edicts of proscription.  Neither threats nor blandishments were of much avail.  We hear of seigniories abandoned; farms turning again into forests; wives and children left in destitution.  The exodus of the coureurs de bois would take, at times, the character of an organized movement.  The famous Du Lhut is said to have made a general combination of the young men of Canada to follow him into the woods.  Their plan was to be absent four years, in order that the edicts against them might have time to relent.  The intendant Duchesneau reported that eight hundred men out of a population of less than ten thousand souls had vanished from sight in the immensity of a boundless wilderness.  Whereupon the King ordered that any person going into the woods without a license should be whipped and branded for the first offence, and sent for life to the galleys for the second.  The order was more easily given than enforced.  " I must not conceal from you, Monseigneur," again writes Duchesneau, "that the disobedience of the coureurs de lois has reached such a point that everybody boldly contravenes the King's interdictions; that there is no longer any concealment; and that parties are collected with astonishing insolence to go and trade in the Indian country.  I have done all in my power to prevent this evil, which may cause the ruin of the colony.  I have enacted ordinances against the coureurs de bois; against the merchants who furnish them with goods; against the gentlemen and others who harbor them; and even against those who have any knowledge of them, and will not inform the local judges.  All has been in vain; inasmuch as some of the most considerable families are interested with them, and the governor lets them go on and even shares their profits." "You are aware, Monseigneur," writes Denonville, some years later, "that the coureurs de bois are a great evil, but you are not aware how great this evil is.  It deprives the country of its effective men; makes them indocile, debauched, and incapable of discipline, and turns them into pretended nobles,  wearing the sword and decked out with lace, both they and their relations, who all affect to be gentlemen and ladies.  As for cultivating the soil, they will not hear of it.  This, along with the scattered condition of the settlements, causes their children to be as unruly as Indians, being brought up in the same manner.  Not that there are not some very good people here, but they are in a minority." In another despatch he enlarges on their vagabond and lawless ways, their indifference to marriage, and the mischief caused by their example; describes how, on their return from the woods, they swagger like lords, spend all their gains in dress and drunken revelry, and despise the peasants, whose daughters they will not deign to marry, though they are peasants themselves.

It was a curious scene when a party of coureurs de lois returned from their rovings.  Montreal was their harboring place, and they conducted themselves much like the crew of a man-of-war paid off after a long voyage.  As long as their beaver skins lasted, they set no bounds to their riot.  Every house in the place, we are told, was turned into a drinking shop.  The new comers were bedizened with a strange mixture of French and Indian finery; while some of them, with instincts more thoroughly savage, stalked about the streets as naked as a Pottawattamie or a Sioux.  The clamor of tongues was prodigious, and gambling and drinking filled the day and the night.  When at last they were sober again, they sought absolution for their sins; nor could the priests venture to bear too hard on their unruly penitents, lest they should break wholly with the Church and dispense thenceforth with her sacraments.

Under such leaders as Du Lhut, the coureurs de lois built forts of palisades at various points throughout the West and Northwest.  They had a post of this sort at Detroit some time before its permanent settlement, as well as others on Lake Superior and in the valley of the Mississippi.  They occupied them as long as it suited their purposes, and then abandoned them to the next comer.  Michilimackinac was, however, their chief resort; and thence they would set out, two or three together, to roam for hundreds of miles through the endless mesh work of interlocking lakes and rivers which seams the northern wilderness.

No wonder that a year or two of bush ranging spoiled them for civilization.  Though not a very valuable member of society, and though a thorn in the side of princes and rulers, the coureur de bois had his uses, at least from an artistic point of view; and his strange figure, sometimes brutally savage, but oftener marked with the lines of a dare devil courage, and a reckless, thoughtless gayety, will always be joined to the memories of that grand world of woods which the nineteenth century is fast civilizing out of existence.  At least, he is picturesque, and with his red skin companion serves to animate forest scenery.  Perhaps he could sometimes feel, without knowing that he felt them, the charms of the savage nature that had adopted him.  Rude as he was, her voice may not always have been meaningless for one who knew her haunts so well,  deep recesses where, veiled in foliage, some wild shy rivulet steals with timid music through breathless caves of verdure; gulfs where feathered crags rise like castle walls, where the noonday sun pierces with keen rays athwart the torrent, and the mossed arms of fallen pines cast wavering shadows on the illumined foam; pools of liquid crystal turned emerald in the reflected green of impending woods; rocks on whose rugged front the gleam of sunlit waters dances in quivering light; ancient trees hurled headlong by the storm, to dam the raging stream with their forlorn and savage ruin; or the stern depths of immemorial forests, dim and silent as a cavern, columned with innumeiable trunks, each like an Atlas upholding its world of leaves, and sweating perpetual moisture down its dark and channelled rind,  some strong in youth, some grisly with decrepit age, nightmares of strange distortion, gnarled and knotted with wens and goitres, roots intertwined beneath like serpents petrified in an agony of contorted strife; green and glistening mosses carpeting the rough ground, mantling the rocks, turning pulpy stumps to mounds of verdure, and swathing fallen trunks as, bent in the impotence of rottenness, they lie outstretched over knoll and hollow, like mouldering reptiles of the primeval world, while around, and on and through them, springs the young growth that battens on their decay,  the forest devouring its own dead; or, to turn from its funereal shade to the light and life of the open woodland, the sheen of sparkling lakes, and mountains basking in the glory of the summer noon, flecked by the shadows of passing clouds that sail on snowy wings across the transparent azure.  
Yet it would be false coloring to paint the half savage coureur de bois as a romantic lover of Nature.  He liked the woods because they emancipated him from restraint.  He liked the lounging ease of the camp fire, and the license of Indian villages.  His life has a dark and ugly side, which is nowhere drawn more strongly than in a letter written by the Jesuit Carheil to the intendant Champigny.  It was at a time when some of the outlying forest posts, originally either missions or transient stations of coureurs de bois, had received regular garrisons.  Carheil writes from Michilimackinac, and describes the state of things around him like one whom long familiarity with them had stripped of every illusion.

But here, for the present, we pause; for the father touches on other matters than the coureurs de bois, and we reserve him and his letter for the next chapter.