There was a deficit of
L1700 between the amount realized in furs and the cost of the
equipment and wages of the French and French Canadians. De Beauharnais
made a fresh appeal to the French Court; he urged that the expenditure
to convey La Verendrye's expedition to the Pacific Ocean would not be
a large one--perhaps only L1500.
[Footnote 14: What we should call to-day a "concession".]
But the French Court was obdurate; it would not furnish a penny. Thus
La Verendrye, in all probability, was prevented from forestalling the
British explorers of sixty and seventy years later, besides the
expeditions of Captain Cook and Captain Vancouver, which secured for
Great Britain a foothold on the Pacific seaboard of British Columbia.
La Verendrye in his fort on Lake Winnipeg was in a desperate position.
He made a hasty journey back to Montreal and even Quebec, to beat up
funds and to pacify the capitalists of his fur-trading monopoly. He
painted in glowing colours the prospects of cutting off the trade of
the Hudson's Bay Company and the building up of an immense commerce in
valuable furs, and these men agreed once again to furnish the funds
for the extension of the expedition. On his return he took back with
him his youngest son, Louis, a boy of eighteen. Whilst he had been
absent from Fort St. Charles (a post which he had built on the Lake of
the Woods, in communication by water with the Winnipeg River), on Lake
Winnipeg, that place was visited by a party of Siou Indians.
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