CHAPTER VI 



THE FRENCH TRAPPER 



To live hard and die hard, king in the wilderness 

 and pauper in the town, lavish to-day and penniless 

 to-morrow such was the life of the most picturesque 

 figure in America s history. 



Take a map of America. Put your finger on any 

 point between the Gulf of Mexico and Hudson Bay, 

 or the Great Lakes and the Rockies. Ask who was the 

 first man to blaze a trail into this wilderness; and 

 wherever you may point, the answer is the same the 

 French trapper. 



Impoverished English noblemen of the seventeenth 

 century took to freebooting, Spanish dons to piracy 

 and search for gold ; but for the young French noblesse 

 the way to fortune was by the fur trade. Freedom from 

 restraint, quick wealth, lavish spending, and adventur 

 ous living all appealed to a class that hated the menial 

 and slow industry of the farm. The only capital re 

 quired for the fur trade was dauntless courage. Mer 

 chants were keen to supply money enough to stock 

 canoes with provisions for trade in the wilderness. 

 What would be equivalent to $5,000 of modern money 

 was sufficient to stock four trappers with trade enough 

 for two years. 



At the end of that time the sponsors looked for re- 

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