First French Foot- Prints Beyond the Lakes. 115 



The fur trade would have drawn them thither, even if fun and 

 faith had not pave.i their way. Indeed, that trade began to at- 

 tract them to Arr.erican shores before either fun or faith had 

 worked at all in that direction. 



After all, fisli was the first magnet which drew Frenchmen 

 across the Atlantic. According to a manuscript in the library at 

 Versailles, when Cabot (before Columbus had landed on conti- 

 nental America) discovered Newfoundland, he heard the word 

 haccalaos there in use for "cod-fish." But " baecalaos" is the Bre- 

 ton-Fiench word for that fish. l!; is possible then that Bretons, 

 next to the Norse, were the true discoverers of America — pre- 

 Columbian and pre-Cabotian. 



However this may be, fish, indispensable for fasts and not un- 

 welcome at feasts, were sought by Bretons off Newfoundland, a 

 century before Quebec was founded. In 1578, there were o )e 

 hundred and fifty French vessels there. 



But peltries, already scarce in Europe, filled the land in that 

 quarter no less than fish the sea, and were hunted as early. Before 

 the close of the sixteenth century, forty onvicts, left on a Nova 

 Scotia island, had accumulated a quantity of valuable furs. 



But, what is far more surprising, Menendez relates that fifty- 

 five years before the landing from the May Flower — in 1565 — 

 bufl:alo skins had been brought by Indians down the Potomac, 

 and thence along shore in cinoes to the French about the S'. 

 Lawrence at the rate of three thousand a year. 



But not content with coast traffic, and with a view to escape the 

 rivalry and hostility of Dutch and English, as well as in quest of 

 fresli fur fields, traders pushed inland. Before the year 1600 they 

 had a post at Tadoussac, at the mouth of the Saguenay, and in 

 1603 established themselves at Quebes. 



To thi-? emporium Indian flotilla^, year by year larger and 

 larger, and from districts more and more remote, resorted. They 

 came laden with furs, and drawn thither by what they counted 

 miracles of beauty and ingenuity, which, bartered on the coast 

 by the first comers, had glided up the St Lawrence and all 

 its tributaries, and even to the great lakes, where beaver were 

 most and best. 



