[Illustration: Indians and Hunters spurring to the Fight.]
Certainly, if it were worth while for Peter the Great of Russia to send
Vitus Bering coasting the bleak headlands of ice-blocked, misty shores
to find the Western Sea, it would--as one of the French governors
reported--"be nobler than open war" for the little colony of New France
to discover this "sea of the setting sun." The quest was invested with
all the rainbow tints of "_la gloire_"; but the rainbow hopes were
founded on the practical basis of profits. Leading merchants of
Montreal had advanced goods for trade with the Indians on the way to
the Western Sea. Their expectations of profits were probably the same
as the man's who buys a mining share for ten cents and looks for
dividends of several thousand per cent. And the fur trade at that time
was capable of yielding such profits. Traders had gone West with less
than $2000 worth of goods in modern money, and returned three years
later with a sheer profit of a quarter of a million. Hope of such
returns added zest to De la Verendrye's venture for the discovery of
the Western Sea.
Goods done up in packets of a hundred pounds lay at the feet of the
_voyageurs_ awaiting De la Verendrye's command. A dozen soldiers in
the plumed hats, slashed buskins, the brightly colored doublets of the
period, joined the motley company. Priests came out to bless the
departing _voyageurs_. Chapel bells rang out their God-speed.
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