one-tenth of the moose hides belonged to the king. The fur trade absorbed the enterprise of the colony and from first to last Canada lived chiefly on beaver skins, and the fur trade produced an effect akin to that of gold in our own days, and the deepest recesses of the wilderness were invaded by eager seekers after gain.

The government tried without ceasing to control 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 at Montreal. Thither every summer a host of savages came, along from the lakes in their bark canoes. A place was assigned them a little distance from the town. They landed, drew up their canoes in a line on the bank, took out their packs. of beaverskins, slung their kettles and encamped for the night. On the next day there was a grand council on the common between St. Paul street and the river. Speeches of compliment were made amid a solemn smoking of pipe.

The Governor-General was usually present,seated in an armchair, while the visitors formed a ring around him, ranged in 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 sought a share in the profits. 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. 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 move as close as possible to the Indians, and make squatter" settlements.

66

This was not all, for the more youthful and vigorous part of the population soon began to escape into the woods and trade with the Indians far beyond the limits of the remotest settlements. One Ondiette and his associates paid the Crown three hundred and fifty thousand livres for the privilege to collect the imports from a certain district, and they were also vested with an exclusive right of transporting all the beaver skins of the colony in 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 collector was a little more than three francs per pound.

The inhabitants would barter all their furs with merchants, but the merchants must bring them all to the magazines of Ondiette, 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 that part which they consented to take, they paid chiefly in hats, which Ondiette was not allowed to sell in France, but only in the French West Indies, where

very few people wanted them. An unlucky fashion of small hats diminished the consumption of furs 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 himself 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. The other hatters rose in wrath and petitioned the minister. The new factory was suppressed and Ondiette 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.

On the 24th of May, 1664, Louis XIV, King of France, had signed an edict creating the Company of the West, the first of a number of great trading corporations. Any person of the kingdom or out of it might become a partner by subscribing within a certain time not less than three thousand francs..

France was a mere patch on the map compared with the vast domains of the new association. Western Africa from Cape Verde to the Cape of Good Hope, South America between the Amazon and the Orinoco, Cayenne, the Antilles, and all New France from Hudson Bay to Virginia and Florida were bestowed on it forever to be held of the Crown on the simple condition of faith and homage. Monopoly of trade was granted it for forty years. Sugar from the Antilles, and furs from Canada were the chief sources of the expected profit, and Africa was to supply the slaves to raise the sugar.

Scarcely was the grand machine set in motion when its directors betrayed a narrowness of mind, which boded the enterprise no good. Canada was the chief sufferer. Once more bound hand and foot, she was handed over to a selfish league of merchants, monopoly in trade and monopoly in government. Nobody but the company had the right to bring her the necessaries of life, and nobody but the company had the right to exercise the traffic, which alone could give her the means of paying for these necessaries.

Moreover, the supplies which it brought were insufficient and the prices which it demanded were exorbitant. It was throttling its wretched victims. The Canadian merchants remonstrated. It was clear that, if the colony was to live, the system must be changed and a change was accordingly ordered. The company gave up its monopoly of the fur trade, but reserved the right to levy a duty of one-fourth of the beaver skins and one-tenth of the mooseskins, and it also reserved the entire trade of Tadensac, that is to say the trade of all the tribes between the Lower St. Lawrence and Hudson's Bay. It retained besides the exclusive right of transporting furs in its own ships, thus controlling the commerce of Canada and discouraging or rather extinguishing the enterprise of Canadian merchants. On its part it was required to pay governors, judges and all the colonial officials out of the duties it collected.

Yet the king had the prosperity of Canada at heart and he proceeded to show his interest in her after a manner hardly consistent with his late action in handing her over to a mercenary guardian. In fact he acted as if she had still remained under his paternal care. He had just conferred the right of naming a governor and intendant upon the new company but he now assumed it himself, the company with a just sense of its own unfitness, readily consenting to this suspension of one of its most important privileges. Daniel de Remy Sieur de Courcelle, was appointed governor and Jean Baptiste Talon was appointed intendant.

CHAPTER VIII.

t

THE FRENCH IN AMERICA.

In the year 1670, Charles II, king of England, granted a charter to Prince Rupert and seventeen other noblemen and gentlemen, incorporating them as "The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading with Hudson's Bay," and securing to them" the sole trade and commerce of those seas, straits, bays, rivers, lakes, creeks and sounds,in whatever latitude they shall be, that lie within the entrance of the straits, commonly called Hudson's Straits, together with all the lands and territories upon the countries, coasts and confines of the seas, bays, etc., aforesaid, that are not already actually possessed by or granted to any of our subjects, or possessed by the subjects of any other Christian province or State."

Besides the complete control and ownership and entire judicial, legislative and executive power within these vague limits (which the company finally agreed to accept as meaning all lands watered by streams flowing into Hudson Bay), the corporation received also the right to "the whole and entire trade and traffic to and from all havens, bays, creeks, rivers, lakes and seas into which they shall find entrance or passage by water or land out of the territories, limits or places aforesaid."

The company in return was to discover a passage from the Northern Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, and to establish trading posts along the line. Talon, who was then intendant of Canada and anxious to do all he could for his master, Louis XIV, and for his New France, determined to oppose the progress of England, occupy the interior of the country and hold it for France against every other nation. England was to be hemmed within a narrow strip of seaboard, while at the south, Talon. aimed at securing a port in the Gulf of New Mexico to keep the Spaniards in check, and