THE CONTINENTAL FUR-TRADE.

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gaged in it; but it is now, from a variety of causes, declining every where."5

A topic closely allied to that of this chapter, the annals of the great transcontinental fur-hunt by companies of different nations, will be recorded in all desirable detail in a later part of this volume.

51 Greenhow's Or. and Cal., 412-13; Sturgis' Northwest Fur Trade, 533-6. Since 1801 'the trade has declined, the sea-otter having become scarce... There are at the present time absent from the United States fourteen vessels engaged in this trade, combined with that to the Sandwich islands... These vessels are from 200 to 400 tons burthen, and carry from 25 to 30 men each, and they are usually about three years in completing a voyage... The value at Canton of the furs, sandal wood,.. carried thither the last season, by American vessels engaged in the trade, was little short of half a million of dollars... We believe this trade will be thought too valuable to be quietly relinquished' to Russia. North Amer. Review, xv. 372-3.

CHAPTER XII.

NEW FRANCE AND THE FUR-TRADE.

1524-1763.

CHANGE OF OWNERSHIP, IN 1759-63, OF NORTH AMERICA-DISCOVERYFRANCE IN SOUTH AMERICA AND FLORIDA-THE FISHERMEN AND FUR-TRADERS OF NEWFOUNDLAND AND THE ST LAWRENCE-HISTORY OF THE FUR-TRADE-PELTRIES A VITAL ELEMENT IN COLONIZATION— THE CARTIER NEPHEWS AND THE ST MALO MERCHANTS-LA ROCHETHE FORTY THIEVES-PONTGRAVÉ-CHAUVIN-DE CHASTES-CHAMPLAIN-DE MONTS-THE PORT ROYAL COMPANY-THE JESUITS IN NEW FRANCE-TADOUSAC BECOMES THE CENTRE OF THE FUR-TRADENEW ENGLAND AND NEW YORK FUR-TRADE-COMTE DE SOISSONSTHE COMPANY OF ST MALO AND ROUEN-CHAMPLAIN'S MISRULE-THE FRANCISCANS CELEBRATE MASS IN NEW FRANCE-THE CAENS-NEW FRANCE UNDER RICHELIEU-THE HUNDRED ASSOCIATES-SIR WILLIAM ALEXANDER AND THE BROTHERS KIRK-THE HURONS AND THE IROQUOIS-TROUBLES IN ACADIA - DISCOVERY AND OCCUPATION OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY BY DE SOTO, MARQUETTE, JOLIET, LA SALLE, HENNEPIN, AND IBERVILLE-THE GREAT FUR MONOPOLIES OF NEW FRANCE-FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR-FINAL CONFLICT-TREATIESBOUNDARIES.

THUS far in this history we have directed our attention more especially to affairs relative to the seaboard of the great north-west, merely glancing at explorations by land in various quarters. Let us now turn and review, still very briefly, the early affairs of French and English in Canada, their gradual movements westward, and finally the occupation as a game preserve of the immense area to the north and west by the subjects of Great Britain.

All England rang rejoicings, all save the little village where dwelt Wolfe's widowed mother. Scotland

THE GREAT LANDHOLDER.

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too was glad; for on the plains of Abraham the bay · onets of her wild highlanders had unlocked oppor tunity for multitudes of her shrewd sons. Nor were Anglo-American colonies displeased; for with the reduction of a foreign power perched since birth upon their border, was removed a standing menace, which had made them hesitate to declare independence of their too severely protecting mother, as seventeen years later they did not fail to do. It was in September 1759 that the citadel of Quebec surrendered; and one year after Canada, with all her possessions east of the Mississippi, passed to the British crown.

Hitherto France had been the great landholder upon this continent. Nearly all that is now British America was hers; nearly all that is now the United States. she claimed and held. Of all this continental triangle, from Darien to Labrador and Alaska, there only remained to other European powers the comparatively insignificant areas of Central America and Mexico, a few little patches on the Atlantic seaboard, a narrow border round Hudson Bay, and the far-off Russian American corner, together with what we call the Northwest Coast-all the rest belonged to France; and of this, by the peace of Paris in 1763, and subsequently following the conquest of Canada, France hastened to divest herself, that portion west of the Mississippi going secretly to Spain, and all the remainder being swept into the maw of Great Britain.

If not the earliest to obtain footing in America, Francis I. was not far behind his rivals of Spain and England; for while Cortés was seating himself on Montezuma's throne, and Henry VIII. was hesitating whether to dispute Pope Alexander's partition, Giovanni Verrazano, a Florentine in the French service, crossed to Carolina, and thence coasted northward to Newfoundland, where even twenty years previous the fishermen of Normandy and Brittany had plied their craft.

Ten years later-that is to say in 1534, still three quarters of a century before John Smith entered Chesapeake Bay, or Carver landed on Plymouth Rock— Jacques Cartier sailed from France under the auspices of Philippe de Brion-Chabot and found the St Lawrence, which the following year he ascended to Montreal. Erected into a viceroyalty under Jean François de la Roque, Sieur de Roberval, La Nouvelle France1 was again visited by Cartier, with certain exclusive rights, in 1541; in the year following came Roberval, but only to find himself the woful follower of preceding woes. Then rested colonization in this region for half a century; perturbed Frenchmen filling the interval with buccaneering and protestantizing.

For while like a grim shadow the sixteenth-century superstitions of Spain hung quiescent over the greater part of Europe, France was alive with heresy, and from the burning of men and burying alive of women for opinion's sake, the Huguenots, with a sprinkling of restless orthodox adventurers, in 1555 under Villegagnon, and again in 1562 under Jean Ribault, turned and sought homes in the New World.

Villegagnon landed his colony on an island in the harbor of Rio de Janeiro, and with an arrogance characteristic of the adventurers of that day took possession of all South America for the king of France, calling it La France Antarctique. After quarrelling fiercely with certain of his Calvinistic associates about the legality of mixing water with the wine of the eucharist, and making the sacramental bread of cornmeal instead of wheaten flour, he returned with all his followers to Europe, thus missing an opportunity which, but for the important theological issues that must be immediately settled, might indeed have given the continent to France.

'Cartier mistook the native word kanata, which signifies a collection of huts, for the name of the country, which in consequence became known later as Canada, though for a century or two called New France.

OFF NEWFOUNDLAND.

381

Florida was the landing-place of Ribault; and when Calvin's French disciples revelled in this fruitful wilderness, there was not a European besides them north of that Cíbola whose seven cities with their unspeakable wealth, the natives assured them, were but twenty days distant, and that by water. Next in 1564, René de Laudonnière brought to this shore a company of French Calvinists, not of the stern stuff of which successful colonists are made, but rather pirates, destined to be massacred, nine hundred of them some say, by the Luther-hating Spaniards under Pedro de Menendez, Ribault himself falling with the rest. In retaliation Dominique de Gourgues in 1568, while Menendez was in Spain, surprised and slaughtered the Spaniards, four hundred in number; after which he abandoned to the natives for demolition the fort which had been built. Thus died Huguenot effort in Florida. It was not for France to plant protestantism in America.

The next we hear of New France is in 1578, when, off Newfoundland, besides one hundred Spanish, fifty Portuguese, and fifty English vessels, there are one hundred and fifty French fishing craft and some twentyfive Biscayan whalers. Soon these fishermen find their way up the St Lawrence and ply a more lucrative trade, exchanging trinkets for beaver and bear skins.

And here, it may be said, begins the history of the fur-trade in America, which for two and a half centuries is indeed the history of Canada. Not that the skins of wild beasts had not before this been bought and sold, but now for the first time do we see the traffic in peltries assuming under royal protection a primary influence on colonization. In early times, and indeed in some localities until a comparatively recent date, Canada has presented this anomaly, that while properly classed among agricultural colonies, the cultivation of the soil has been of less importance than fishing and fur-trading.