1700-1740.] TEIUMPHS OF THE FRENCH. 71 



Niagara, within the limits of the confederacy.^ 

 Meanwhile, in spite of every obstacle, the power 

 of France had rapidly extended its boundaries in 

 the west. French influence diffused itself through 

 a thousand channels, among distant tribes, hostile, 

 for the most part, to the domineering Iroquois. 

 Forts, mission-houses, and armed trading stations 

 secured the principal passes. Traders, and cou- 

 rears de hois pushed their adventurous traffic into 

 the wildest deserts ; and French guns and hatchets, 

 French beads and cloth, French tobacco and 

 brandy, were known from where the stunted Es- 

 quimaux burrowed in their snow caves, to where 

 the Camanches scoured the plains of the south with 

 their banditti cavalry. Still this far-extended com- 

 merce continued to advance westward. In 1738, 

 La Verandye essayed to reach those mysterious 

 mountains which, as the Indians alleged, lay be- 

 yonrl the arid deserts of the Missouri and the Sas- 

 katchawan. Indian hostility defeated his enterprise, 

 but not before he had struck far out into these 

 unknown wilds, and formed a line of trading posts, 

 one of which. Fort de la Reine, was planted on 

 the Assinniboin, a hundred leagues beyond Lake 

 Winnipeg. At that early period, France left her 

 footsteps upon the dreary wastes which even now 

 have no other tenants than the Indian buffalo- 

 hunter or the roving trapper. 



The fur-trade of the English colonists opposed 

 but feeble rivah-y to that of their hereditary foes. 

 At an early period, favored by the friendship of 



1 Doc. Hist. N. Y. I. 446. 



