THE FRENCH TRAPPER 51 



turns in furs to the value of eight hundred per cent on 

 their capital. The original investment would be de 

 ducted, and the enormous profit divided among the 

 trappers and their outfitters. In the heyday of the fur 

 trade, when twenty beaver-skins were got for an axe, it 

 was no unusual thing to see a trapper receive what 

 would be equivalent to $3,000 of our money as his 

 share of two years trapping. But in the days when 

 the French were only beginning to advance up the 

 Missouri from Louisiana and across from Michili- 

 mackinac to the Mississippi vastly larger fortunes were 

 made. 



Two partners * have brought out as much as $200,- 

 000 worth of furs from the great game preserve be 

 tween Lake Superior and the head waters of the Mis 

 souri after eighteen months absence from St. Louis 

 or from Montreal. The fur country was to the young 

 French nobility what a treasure-ship was to a pirate. 

 In vain France tried to keep her colonists on the land 

 by forbidding trade without a license. Fines, the gal 

 leys for life, even death for repeated offence, were the 

 punishments held over the head of the illicit trader. 

 The French trapper evaded all these by staying in the 

 wilds till he amassed fortune enough to buy off pun 

 ishment, or till he had lost taste for civilized life and 

 remained in the wilderness, coureur des bois, voyageur, 

 or leader of a band of half-wild retainers whom he 

 ruled like a feudal baron, becoming a curious connect 

 ing link between the savagery of the New World and 

 the noblesse of the Old. 



Duluth, of the Lakes region; La Salle, of the Mis- 



* Radisson and Groseillers, from regions westward of Duluth. 



