First French Fooi-Prints Beyond the Lakes. 123 



gion was so fall of far that the governor's share in the profits of 

 a trading company soon amounted to 300,000 francs. 



Those who, from mere love of fan, explored unknown woods 

 and waters, learned strange tongues and ceased t9 be strangers 

 among stranga tribes, and unawares acquired all the requisites for 

 successful commerce in beaver. Missions also, though founded 

 in faith, by faith and for faith, furnished as good a base for the 

 enterprises of farriers as if they had owed their origin to the 

 spirit of mercantile speculation. ' 



There is no danger of overrating the pervasiveness of French 

 far dealings m the Northwest centuries ago. We may well be- 

 lieve no cove, no navigable stream was unplowed by their boats 

 of bark; no tribe, no council unvisited. 



The denfiand for fur in France was stimulated by royal decrees. 

 In 1670 one of them prohibited the manufacture of demi-castors, 

 a sort of hats that were only half made of beaver. Soon after- 

 ward a prohibitory duty was laid in France on all furs not from 

 French colonies. 



Statistics are stupefying, and there is some wit in the quip, " A 

 fig for your cZa/es .^ " After all a few figures are necessary if we 

 would understand how speedily and how grandly the trade in 

 skins was developed, or how long and how widely fur was king 

 as truly as cotton or corn has bscome so in our times. 



In 1610, ten years before the landing of the forefathers at 

 Plymouth, the boats of fur traders were at the outlet of Lake 

 Champlain. Three years after forty canoes came down to Mon- 

 treal brinaina: far. In 1690 their number was 165 ; three years 

 after, it rose to two hundred. For a decade before 1649, the 

 Haron beaver harvest was valued at half a million francs a year. 

 Fifty francs would then feed a man for a twelvemonth, and one 

 hundred and fifty would pay a soldier. In 1674, the skins im- 

 ported inio E)chelle were 31 1,815. The governor of Montreal, 

 whose salary was a thousand crowns, soon cleared fifty thousand 

 by illicit lur dealing. 



As early as 1670 there is mention of a fur fleet embarking at 

 Green Bay for Montreal. Even before this, as we have seen, ad- 

 venturers to Wisconsin waters and its interior, paid the charges 



