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course existed but by means of the forest rangers, who
penetrated the barren heaths round Hudson's Bay, the
morasses of the north-west, the homes of the
Sioux and
Miamis, the recesses of every forest where there was an Indian with skins to sell.
‘God alone could have saved
Canada this year,’ wrote Denonville, in 1688.
But for the missions at the west,
Illinois would have been abandoned, the fort at
Mackinaw lost, and a general rising of the natives would have completed the ruin of New France.
Personal enterprise took the direction of the fur-
trade:
Port Nelson, in Hudson's Bay, and
Fort Albany, were originally possessed by the
French.
The attention of the court of France was directed to the fisheries; and
Acadia had been represented by De Meules as the most important settlement of
France.
To protect it, the
Jesuits Vincent and James Bigot collected a village of Abenakis on the
Penobscot; and a flourishing town now marks the spot where the baron
de St. Castin, a veteran officer of the regiment of
Carignan, established a trading fort.
Would
France, it was said, strengthen its post on the
Penobscot, occupy the islands that command the
Gulf of St. Lawrence, and send supplies to
Newfoundland, she would be sole mistress of the fisheries for cod. Hence the strife with
Massachusetts, in which the popular mind was so deeply interested, that, to this day, the figure of a cod-fish is suspended in the hall of its representatives.
Thus
France, bounding its territory next
New England by the
Kennebec, claimed the whole eastern coast,
Nova Scotia, Cape Breton,
Newfoundland,
Labrador, and Hudson's Bay; and, to assert and defend this boundless region,
Acadia and its dependencies counted but nine hundred French inhabitants.
The missionaies,
