16 Department of Conservation of Louisiana 



court demanded more and more furs, adventurers came for 

 the fur trade exclusively. Pont-Grave and Chauvin built 

 Tadoussac in 1599 as a center for this trade with the 

 Indians of the Saguenay, and when trade routes were dis- 

 covered further inland, the founding of Quebec and Mon- 

 treal followed. 1 



The French Government from the first granted monop- 

 olies of the fur trade, always on the condition that the 

 Company should take to New France (Canada) a stated 

 number of settlers. But settlement and the fur trade could 

 never go together — settlement, by driving fur animals 

 farther afield, made trading increasingly expensive, and the 

 great profits of the fur trade, together with its freedom 

 and romance, excluded the more adventurously inclined 

 from the rational pursuits of a settler. Trade spread west 

 and south by the river routes, convoys bringing the furs 

 yearly to Montreal and Quebec. The de Caen Company, 

 in the seventeenth century, sent yearly to France from 

 15,000 to 20,000 pelts. "Beaver" was made the Canadian 

 currency. 



In the meantime, English navigators had been seeking 

 a northwest passage to the Orient. By 1632 their efforts 

 came to an end with little practical result. Hudson Bay, 

 however, had been accurately charted, so that when the 

 first English fur-trading ships came some thirty years 

 later, they sailed by charted routes to a safe harbor. The 

 first expedition came at the instigation of Radisson and 

 Groseilliers, two French coureurs de bois who had traveled 

 in the rich fur country north of Lake Superior. They had 

 sought aid in France, but being repulsed, turned to England. 

 The charter of the "Adventurers of England trading into 

 Hudson's Bay" was obtained in 1670 by Prince Rupert, 

 who became first Governor of the Company, whence the 

 name Rupert's Land. In 1676, merchandise costing £650 

 was sent to the Bay and the furs obtained by barter were 

 sent to England and sold for £19,500. The dividend on 

 the stock of £10,500 was sometimes as high as 100 per cent. 

 During the struggle with the French, beginning about 1685, 



'Coates, Fur Production of Canada, 1923 Dominion Bureau of Statistics, 

 Fur Branch. 



