26 The Home of the Wolverene and Beaver. 



gradually became a distinct class known as 

 conrenrs dcs bois or wood-rangers. Without their 

 aid the merchant would have been unable to com- 

 municate with the distant tribes, and the fur trade 

 would have fallen to the ground, for it is needless 

 to say that all valuable animals in the vicinity of 

 the settlements had been long since destroyed. 

 Therefore acknowledging their value as " go- 

 betweens," the traders each employed a certain 

 number oi courcurs, whom they equipped on credit, 

 and despatched into the interior. Three or four of 

 these men would unite their stock, place all their 

 property in a birch-bark canoe, which they worked 

 themselves, and would then paddle up the almost 

 unknown rivers with which Canada abounded, until 

 they reached a tribe whose hunting-ground seemed 

 rich enough to repay them. There the light- 

 hearted Frenchmen would throw aside the garb of 

 civilisation, would don the attire and lead the life of 

 the savage, having each taken to himself an Indian 

 wife. At the expiration of a year or eighteen 

 months they would return to the settlements, the 

 frail canoe almost sinking under its load of costly 

 furs. During their stay in town, their life was one 

 t-cene of reckless extravagance and wild dissipation, 

 insomuch that in fifteen days they often squandered 

 the hardly-earned gains of as many months. Of 



