As Spain sought
gold in the New Word, so France sought precious furs. Furs were the
only possible means of wealth to the French colony, and for ten years
the fur trade had languished owing to the Iroquois wars. For a year
after the migration of the Hurons to Onondaga, not a single beaver skin
was brought to Montreal. Then began the annual visits of the Indians
from the Upper Country to the forts of the St. Lawrence. Sweeping down
the northern rivers like wild-fowl, in far-spread, desultory flocks,
came the Indians of the _Pays d'en Haut_. Down the Ottawa to Montreal,
down the St. Maurice to Three Rivers, down the Saguenay and round to
Quebec, came the treasure-craft,--light fleets of birch canoes laden to
the water-line with beaver skins. Whence came the wealth that revived
the languishing trade of New France? From a vague, far Eldorado
somewhere round a sea in the North. Hudson had discovered this sea
half a century before Radisson's day; Jean Bourdon, a Frenchman, had
coasted up Labrador in 1657 seeking the Bay of the North; and on their
last trip the explorers had learned from the Crees who came through the
dense forests of the hinterland that there lay round this Bay of the
North a vast country with untold wealth of furs. The discovery of a
route overland to the north sea was to become the lodestar of
Radisson's life.[1]
[Illustration: Montreal in 1760: 1, the St. Lawrence; 20, the Dock;
18-19, Arsenal; 16, the Church; 13-15, the Convent and Hospital; 8-12,
Sally-ports, River Side; 17, Cannon and Wall; 3-4-5, Houses on Island.
Pages:
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116