2 



A General History of the Fur Trade, 



lars, and were extremely useful to the merchants engaged 

 in the fur trade ; who gave them the necessary credit to pro- 

 ceed on their commercial undertakings. Three or four of 

 these people would join their stock, put their property into 

 a birch-bark canoe, which they worked themselves, and 

 either accompanied the natives in their excursions, or went 

 at once to the country where they knew they were to hunt. 

 At length, these voyages extended to twelve or fifteen 

 months, when they returned with rich cargoes of furs, and 

 followed by great numbers of the natives. During the short 

 time requisite to settle their accounts with the merchants, 

 and procure fresh credit, they generally contrived to squan- 

 der away all their gains, when they returned to renew their 

 favourite mode of life : their views being answered, and 

 their labour sufficiently rewarded, by indulging themselves 

 in extravagance and dissipation during the short space of 

 one month in twelve or fifteen. 



This indifference about amassing property, and the plea- 

 sure of living free from all restraint, soon brought on a li- 

 centiousness of manners which could not long escape the 

 vigilant observation of the missionaries, who had much 

 reason to complain of their being a disgrace to the christian 

 religion j by not only swerving from its duties themselves, 

 but by thus bringing it into disrepute with those of the na- 

 tives who had become converts to it ; and, consequently, 

 obstructing the great object to which those pious men had 

 devoted their lives. They, therefore, exerted their influ- 

 ence to procure the suppression of these?people, and accord- 

 ingly, no one was allowed to go up the country to traffic 

 with the Indians, without a licence from the government. 



At first these permissions were, of course, granted only 

 to those whose character was such as could give no alarm 

 to the zeal of the missionaries ; but they were afterwards 

 bestowed as rewards for services, on officers, and their 

 widows ; and they, who were not willing or able to make use 

 of them, (which may be supposed to be always the case with 

 those of the latter description) were allowed to sell them to 

 the merchants, who necessarily employed the Coureurs des 

 Bois, in Quality of their agents ; and these people, as may 

 be imagined, gave sufficient cause for the renewal of former 

 complaints ; so that the remedy proved, in fact, worse than 

 the disease. 



At length, military posts were established at the conflu- 

 ence of the different large lakes of Canada, which, in a great 



