|
Stretching from ocean to
ocean, with "cold and pitiless" Labrador at the eastern
extremity, and Vancouver Island for its western outpost, lies a broad
belt of land, bounded on the south by Quebec, Ontario and the United
States, but unlimited northward, save by the icy ramparts which
encompass the Polar Sea. All this vast expanse is British territory and
forms part and parcel of the Dominion of Canada. Of the eastern portion
little will require to be said, except in so far as the Hudson Bay
Company’s trading operations may invite notice. It is almost uniformly
bleak and barren, whatever may be its mineral value, and is historically
interesting only because it has afforded scope for the adventurous
trapper and huntsman. It is with the North-West that we have now chiefly
to do, including in that term all that region lying from James Bay to
the Pacific. It will be found that, as a field for exploration, trade
and settlement, this broad domain has claims upon the consideration of
Britons of which the vast majority of them have only the feeblest
conception. The literature accumulated upon the subject is voluminous
enough certainly; and yet it is not too much to affirm that the
surpassing value and importance of this noble possession of the Crown
are far from being appreciated not only in Europe, but even in the older
Provinces of the Dominion. To undervalue what is but partially and
imperfectly known, especially if it be distant or demand energy and
self-denial to secure, has been a characteristic, of many nations
otherwise sufficiently diverse in their tempers and tendencies. It is,
so to speak, the wisdom of ignorance, quickened into contempt by the
languid energy of indolence and satiety. The cynical Frenchman who
consoled Louis XV. for the loss of New France by the sneer at those
"few arpents of snow," represented a large class not yet
extinct. There are not a few men now who are not much better than he,
the only difference being that they laugh at his ignorance, and at the
same time repeat it along with the sneer, when they speak of the
Saskatchewan Valley. The "arpents" are not few, farther west
than the courtier dreamed of, but they are only "arpents of
snow" after all.
It was Lord Salisbury, if
we mistake not, who uttered some pungent remarks concerning the right
and wrong use of maps a few years ago. There is need of a similar
caution otherwhere than in Eastern concerns. To some men it would appear
to be not merely inexplicable, but preposterous, that the climate and
fruitfulness of a continent, throughout its entire breadth should depend
upon anything except the parallels of latitude. They are astonished, if
not incredulous, when told, that the isothermal line which passes below
the city of Quebec reaches the Pacific Ocean at almost the sixtieth
degree of north latitude, and therefore, that all their preconceptions
regarding the North-West are far astray. In European countries,
especially in the British Isles, there is no room for tracing these
broad climatic laws. It seems startling, therefore, to be told that in
and about the Province of Manitoba, seven hundred miles north of
Toronto, as fine, if not finer, wheat is grown than in any part of the
rich peninsula of Ontario; and further, that this fertile breadth of one
hundred miles, hemmed in between the northern lakes and the boundary
line, expands, like the cornucopia, as it stretches to the Rocky
Mountains, until it measures three or four hundred miles. Even north of
that fertile belt, about far-distant Hudson Bay, "houses" and
"factories," cerea1s are cultivated regularly and with assured
success. Another point deserves notice. It is constantly urged by the
pessimists that, whatever the natural advantages of the North-West may
be, it can never compete with the American line of overland travel,
either for traffic or permanent settlement. Now, in the first place,
there is the superiority of the country itself to be taken into account.
The American Desert is almost entirely south of the boundary line; in
fact it only impinges slightly upon British territory and need not be
taken into account. There is no salt solitude on the banks of the
Assiniboine, the Saskatchewan, or any of the other generous streams
which water our central America. Broad prairie, navigable waters—lake
and river—and what our neighbours lack, coal almost the entire way
from Manitoba to Victoria. The mineral wealth of the Northwest has only
been vaguely guessed at; but it is known that not only in the
"fertile belt," but far north, upon the Mackenzie River, even
beyond the Arctic Circle, gold, iron, copper, lead, and coal have been
found in exhaustless abundance. There is another advantage in the
climate, notwithstanding the fact that the extremes of heat and cold
exceed those of the older Provinces, though not those of Minnesota. The
atmosphere is dry, and the temperature in any given season more equable
than in other parts of the Dominion. The snow-fall is less heavy, and
there is not usually that distressing interchange of frost and thaw, ice
and slush, which are so trying elsewhere. Those who have passed the
winter in the west as well as the east, express their decided preference
for the climate of the former. So lightly does the icy finger of the
north press upon the fertile country that horses and cattle are often
pastured all the winter upon the long grass on the prairie, without
shelter and yet without risk. The facilities for the construction of a
transcontinental railway are as much in our favour as the fertility and
well-watered character of the land. Most of the country is comparatively
level, or, at worst, rolling prairie, and the engineering difficulties
are few, until the Rocky Mountains are reached. Even there, the passes
are at a lower elevation, the snows less threatening, and the work
necessarily less expensive. Add to this, that, through this rich and
fertile region, lies the shortest route from Europe to China and Japan,
and the reader may form some conception of the glorious future in store
for the Canadian North-West.
The pioneers in discovery
here were, of course, the French of Old Canada; but it is to Scotsmen
especially, that the world owes the complete exploration of the
territory, and the first efforts put forth for its settlement and
civilization under the British régime. The successors of
Champlain, La Salle, Marquette, Joliet, and De La Vérendrye—the first
white man to lift his eyes upon the snow-tipped summits of the Rocky
Mountains—were almost all of them Scots. Some indications of Scottish
energy are embalmed in the maps and charts of the country; yet they
inadequately represent the courage and enterprise displayed in the early
days by those avant-couriers of trade and exploration. The river
nomenclature is usually supposed to afford the best indication of the
race earliest at work in any country; and, if that be taken as a mark of
Scotch priority, the evidence is conclusive. The Mackenzie River—longer
than the St. Lawrence, including its great chain of lakes—traced by
him whose name it bears to the delta through which it struggles, by
various mouths, into the frozen sea, the Fraser River of British
Columbia, the Simpson and the Finlay—all afford silent testimony to
the indomitable courage and enterprise of the North Briton. Whatever
future—and it must needs be a glorious one—awaits this noble British
domain, in the past certainly, all the rough, and much that proved
thankless, work was accomplished by the stout arm, the strong will, and
the hard head of the Scot. Multitudes of diverse nationalities will pour
upon those fertile plains, and enjoy the fruits of the Scotsman’s
labours, without thinking of their benefactor; still, to the eye of the
historian, or even the grateful patriot, in centuries to come, the
trials and struggles of the past will assume their fair proportions in
any panorama of this greater Scotland in the North American continent.
During the French period
which the graphic pen of Mr. Parkman, for the first time, introduced to
the notice of the English reader—the fur trade was the be-all and the
end-all of colonization. It was the pursuit of skins and peltries of all
sorts that more than anything else, fomented the natural antagonism
between French and English colonies, aggravated the horrors of Indian
tribal warfare, and eventually brought about—first, the death-struggle
between the powers in the North, and, secondly, by necessary sequence,
though indirectly, the American Revolution. ["We come now to a
trade far more important than all the rest together, one which absorbed
the enterprise of the colony, drained the life sap from other branches
of commerce, and, even more than a vicious system of government, kept
them in a state of chronic debility – the hardy, adventurous, lawless,
fascinating fur trade. In the eighteenth century Canada exported a
moderate quantity of timber, wheat, the herb called ginseng, and a few
other commodities; but from first to last she lived chiefly on
beaver-skins. The government tried without ceasing to control and
regulate this traffic; but it never succeeded. Parkman: The Old
Regime in Canada, p. 303.] The great aim of the Colonial Governors,
both English and French, was to detach the Indian tribes from affiance
with their national rivals. When the French were not fighting the
Iroquois of the British colonies, they were intriguing with them, though
for the most part unsuccessfully. The English, on the other hand, strove
to destroy the French trade by seducing or crushing the Hurons and
Ottawas, who not only served the masters of New France, but commanded
their communications with the North-West, both by the Ottawa and the
Upper Lakes, and at Michillimackinac (now Mackinaw), the junction of
Lakes Huron and Michigan, by the frontier route. It was the settled
policy of the French rulers to hem in the British colonies by Gallic
settlements on all sides, and if they could not drive them off the
continent, at least to concede only a strip of territory, upon the
Atlantic. It was with this object that the heroic La Salle, Father
Marquette and other daring explorers, wandered far west and north and
south. Fort du Quesne on the Ohio, memorable as the scene of Braddock’s
defeat, was only one of the cordon of strongholds designed to strangle
British North American colonization in its infancy. The claim set up by
Frontenac, Denonville and other French viceroys to both shores of the
great lakes, and all the territory watered by streams flowing into them,
was prompted by no mere lust of national aggrandizement in the way of
land, but by a settled determination to secure and maintain possession
of the great water highways of the continent.
All those historical
episodes, which give so romantic a tinge and shed so sombre an interest
over the chronicles of New France—the surprises, the heroisms, the
patience, the endurance and the sufferings of soldier, priest, religieuse
and habitan—were occasioned by the Indian intrigues and
counter-intrigues in the great struggle for the mastery in trade
competition. The mother countries might be at peace, and yet covert, and
often open, war was waged between the colonies. Even during the later
Stuart epoch, when the honour and fortunes of England were at the lowest
ebb, the royal pensioners of France who sat on the throne could not
restrain the impetuosity of the Virginia, New York, and New England
colonists. The struggle between Denonville and Gov. Dongan of New York
may serve to illustrate the internecine conflict which never ceased
until the red cross of St. George floated over the castle of St. Louis.
The Marquis de Denonville, with his predecessor the irascible De la
Barre, filled up the space between the two vice-royalties of Frontenac.
His term almost exactly coincided with the reign of James II. in
England. He appears to have been a pious, well-meaning ruler, not
without considerable abilities and certainly with strong patriotic
feelings. Colonel Thomas Dongan, an Irishman and nephew of the
redoutable Earl of Tyrconnel, was a Catholic, and yet no friend either
to the Jesuits or the French. He had been strictly enjoined, both by
Charles and James, to concede every French demand, to give no
countenance to the Iroquois or any Indian tribe hostile to the French;
and yet, either from choice or necessity, he violated his instructions
in every particular. The Dutch and English settlers were determined to
assert their claims to a share in the lucrative fur-trade in the
North-West. As this traffic could not be carried on without contracting
Indian alliances, of which the French were naturally jealous, conflict
was inevitable under any circumstances. The Iroquois were not merely
friends of both races, but even aspired to hold the balance of power
between them. Dongan was, perhaps unjustly, accused of having incited
the Five (or Six) Nation Indians to war; unhappily, as the whole history
shows, they stood in no need of prompting. The scalping-knife was always
ready whetted; it was only to sing the war-dance, brandish the tomahawk,
and away to the harvest of death. The French had an astute agent in the
Jesuit Lamberville, but they made little progress south of the Lakes.
The chief, "Big Mouth," as represented in Parkman’s graphic
narrative, [Parkman: Frontenac, p. 109.] was wily enough to
palter with the bluff La Barre, and, in spite of his plausible and
almost eloquent harangues, little satisfaction was obtained by the
French. The old soldier failed and was succeeded by Denonville, who,
according to Saint Vallier, always had the Psalms of David in his hands.
The Church, no less than the State, hoped much from his piety and
administrative skill. He was a soldier of long service, but he had to
face a difficult and trying crisis with an empty exchequer and a mere
handful of troops. The people of New France were numerically inferior to
those of New England and New York; the flower of their youth were
scouring the woods, huckstering with the Indians and worse; and above
all there was a government which was despotic without effective power,
strong where it might have been mild, and weak where it ought to have
been strong. And yet the task was laid upon Denonville to decide in
France’s favour the deadly struggle between the French and English
colonies. ["The Senecas, insolent and defiant, were still attacking
the Illinois; the tribes of the North-West were angry, contemptuous and
disaffected; the English of New York were urging claims to the whole
country south of the great lakes, and to a controlling share in all the
western trade; while the English of Hudson Bay were competing for the
traffic of the northern tribes, and the English of New England were
seizing upon the fisheries of Acadia, and now and then making practical
descents upon its coast. The great question lay between New York and
Canada. Which of these two should gain mastery in the west. –" Frontenac,
p. 117.]
Denonville was not
disposed to resort to any means which his religious spirit did not
sanction. He was a firm ally of the clergy in their inflexible hostility
to the traffic in brandy with the Indians; but he could also use
religion as a political engine, when French emissaries were needed on
British territory. He appeals rather too fervently to Dongan, as a man
"penetrated with the glory of that name which makes Hell tremble,
and at the mention of which all the powers of Heaven fall
prostrate," to "come to understanding to sustain our
missionaries by keeping those fierce tribes in respect and fear."
But although Col. Dongan was a Catholic, he was too crafty a bird to be
caught in the net spread in his sight. He knew full well what the
Jesuits, Lamberville, Engelran, and their associates were about amongst
the Iroquois, the Hurons and Ottawas; and he knew his duty as an English
governor. He boldly entered the lists against the French schemes.
"If his policy should prevail," writes Parkman, "New
France would dwindle to a feeble Province on the St. Lawrence; if the
French policy should prevail, the English colonies would remain a narrow
strip along the sea." [Ibid., p. 119.] The "diplomatic
duel" which ensued between the two rulers, is diverting at all
events, if not edifying. The earnest appeals of Denonville, the
rough-and-ready coarseness of retort used by the Irishman, together,
give spice to an altogether futile correspondence. Denonville complains
that Dongan had promised to leave everything in dispute to decision by
the kings at home, and yet had disregarded the orders of his master. So,
he had no doubt, but, with the mental reservation, that he should only
obey instructions of which he approved. The Frenchman scolds his
neighbour for permitting the sale of New England rum to the Aborigines.
"Think you," he writes, " that religion will make any
progress, while your traders supply the savages in abundance with the
liquor which, as you ought to know, converts them into demons, and their
lodges into counterparts of Hell?" "Certainly," replies
Dongan, "our rum doth as little hurt as your brandy, and, in the
opinion of Christians is much more wholesome." [Ibid. pp. 127,128.]
The New York Governor scouted the idea that "a few loose fellows
rambling amongst Indians to keep themselves from starving gave the
French a right to the North-West." As for the plea drawn from the
French Jesuit missionary, he sneeringly remarks "The King of China
never goes anywhere without two Jesuits with him. I wonder you make not
the like pretence to that kingdome." [Ibid., p. 161.] In short,
Dongan utterly repudiated the French claims either to territorial
ownership or the exclusive right to trade.
This brief glimpse of the
relations between the colonies touching the fur trade and the Indian
tribes, may serve to illustrate the deadly conflict which was almost
unintermittently waged between the two nationalities. It remains to give
a slight glance at French progress in the North-West. In the peltry
traffic, as elsewhere, the Royal authorities, the King, his Minister,
the Governor and the Intendant, attempted to inspect everything with
their administrative microscope and manage everything with their
official tweezers. The Bourbon system was, above all things, paternal—the
exact antipodes of any government a Scot or an Englishman could either
frame or endure. Colbert, the great minister of Louis XIV., wrote to the
ablest and best of the Quebec Intendants, in 1666, after assuring him
that the King regards all his Canadian subjects as his own children,
desires the Sieur Talon "to solace them in all things, and
encourage them to trade and industry." To this end he was
instructed to "visit all their settlements; one after the other, in
order to learn their true condition, provide as much as possible for
their wants, and, performing the duty of a good head of a family, put
them in the way of making some profit." [Packman: Old Regime, p.
209.] How this unwieldy system was manipulated from Paris may be
seen in the three volumes of the Royal Edicts and Ordinances reprinted
in Canada [Edits, Ordonnances Royaux. Declarations et Arrets du
Conseil d’Etat du Roi, concernant le Canada. Quebec, 1854.] by the
Provincial Government in 1854. A glance at the indexes at the end of the
third volume will, of itself, give some idea of the minute care
exercised over the mint, anise and cummin of Canada, while, the
weightier matters of the law were being dealt with as avarice or love of
adventure might suggest on the "few arpents of snow" lining
the St. Lawrence. It will be found that whilst all sorts of petty
arrangements were solemnly made in Paris to bind Canadians, not merely
such as we are accustomed to consider within the purview of government,
but matters commercial and purely personal of the most trivial
character, the inherent weakness of this scheme of centralized despotism
would early have manifested itself in any case, but it became clearly
apparent the moment free Anglo-Saxon energy became a competitor in the
race. The fur-trade was, of course, taken, so far as possible, under the
fatherly care of the rulers at Paris, Quebec, and Montreal, but to begin
with, their hands were not clean. Systematic jobbery pervaded the entire
governmental system. The taxes were farmed to the highest bidders, and
of the small portion which passed nominally into the coffers of the
State, far too much stuck to the fingers of the Governors, Intendants,
and those creatures to whom New France was simply a place of exile,
where rapid fortunes were to be made by the greedy and unscrupulous. The
mother country was early depleted of men and treasure by its vast and
expensive wars, and as the Canadian officials were poorly paid and
supported, they were compelled to make a competence, and often a bare
livelihood by engaging in trade, and not seldom by barefaced extortion,
peculation and fraud. Whilst the minister at Paris and his master were
framing edicts against profane swearing, deciding where the officials
should sit at church, how many horses a farmer should keep, and how
large a house he might build, &c., the men high in place were
plundering all alike with admirable impartiality. Bigot, the last and
far the most infamous of the Intendants, although he robbed right and
left, was so solicitous about the morals of the people that he forbade
those residing in the country to remove into Quebec, lest they should be
corrupted by city life. [Old Regime, p. 279.] The paralyzing hand
of absolutism was everywhere, meddling even with the bread a man ate and
the texture of his coat; and, as for freedom of speech, Intendant Meules
accurately expressed the prevailing view when he said: "It is of
great consequence that the people should not be left at liberty to speak
their minds." [For a general view of the Civil and Ecclesiastical
Government of Canada see Bell’s Garneau: History of Canada, B.
III. Chaps III. and IV.]
So far as trade was
concerned, the French policy may be summed up in one word - monopoly.
Early in the sixteenth century, Cardinal Richelieu chartered "The
Company of the Hundred Associates," ceding to them all French North
America on the usual terms of feudality. After being about thirty years
in active operation, the Associates, who had dwindled down to
forty-five, surrendered their charter in 1663. This Company possessed
governmental and even royal powers, but, when it disappeared, a regular
system of administration was established. In 1664 the monopoly of trade
was given to the West India Company for a period of fifty years, and at
about the same time the feudal system was regularly and definitely
introduced. M. Talon, the first and best of the Intendants, under the
new colonial system, amongst other wise and beneficent measures, urged
and obtained a relaxation of trade from Colbert, by which the people
were allowed to import their own goods, and buy furs and peltries from
the Indians, subject to a royalty payable to the all-devouring Company.
The traffic in furs was, however, from the first, almost beyond the
control both of the government and the monopolists. It was, in fact, the
only safety-valve for the pent-up energy, enterprise and spirit of
adventure, which lay within the breasts of the Canadian Youth. Companies
and farmers of taxes; might mulet the owners of beaver-skins, at
Montreal, Three Rivers or Quebec, but they had little or no control over
the Indians who trapped the fur-bearing animals, or the middlemen who
traded both with the aborigines and with the merchants of New France.
The Coureurs des Bois or
Wood-coursers, as the middlemen came to be called, soon formed a
distinct class of the Canadian population. As the discoverer of the
Mackenzie River says, they were "a kind of pedlars, and were
extremely useful to the merchants engaged in the fur-trade, who gave
them the necessary credit to proceed in 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
squander 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."[Sir Alex. Mackenzie’s General History of the Fur
Trade from Canada to the North-West prefixed to his Voyages to the
Frozen and Pacific Oceans in the Years 1789 and 1793. London, 1801.]
There was much to attract the romantic spirits of New France in this
novel and adventurous life and if they had been amenable to the control
of the Government and the Church, their hardiness and power of endurance
might have made the Coureurs of use to their country in its
conflicts with any enemy, red or white. Unhappily, instead of proving a
source of strength to the colony, this class became a running ulcer
through which all the vigour and vitality of Canada ebbed gradually
away. The monopolists were the first to take the alarm, though not at
all on moral or political grounds. The interlopers were lessening the
profits of the West India Company, and although under Colbert’s
regulations, the whole population became more or less interested in the
fur-trade, they had organized power at their command. The consequence
was an unsuccessful effort "to bring the trade to the colonists, to
prevent them going to the Indians, and induce the Indians to come to
them. To this end a great annual fair was established, by order of the
kings at Montreal." [Old Regime, p. 303. Mr Parkman gives a
graphic account of one of these Indian gatherings in the passage
directly following these words.] Another fair was afterwards established
near Three Rivers; but neither of them served the purpose. The people
were too wary to submit to the paternal scheme, and they soon learned to
form settlements further west and north, to intercept the Indians, and
negotiate with them as they pleased. It was now, through the coureurs
and squatters, that brandy was introduced to facilitate trade with
the red men, and the fearful train of evils which followed, against
which the Church uniformly protested in no uncertain terms. At last,
although the curse of the traffic was sufficiently apparent, the New
England rum was made the excuse for the sale of French brandy and vice
versa.
Gradually the attractive
life of the Coureurs des Bois absorbed all the best youth of the
country, and, in the end, instead of civilizing the Indians, it seemed
not improbable that the French would themselves be barbarized by contact
and admixture with the Indians. Against the lawless adventurers, the
king and his officers strained every nerve. Duchesneau, Denonville, and
other viceroys complained bitterly of the fearful demoralization of the
young men. Instead of cultivating the soil, they permitted it to go to
waste; they would not marry the fair Frenchwomen and do their part in
the building up of the colony; but preferred the lawless; sensual and
degraded life of the woods and the wigwam. ["Out of the beaver
trade," observes Parkman, "rose a huge evil, baneful to the
growth and morals of Canada. All that was most active and vigorous in
the colony took to the woods, and escaped from the control of intendants,
councils, and priests, to the savage freedom of the wilderness. Not only
were the possible profits great; but, in pursuit of them there was a
fascinating element of adventure and danger. The bush rangers or coureurs
des bois were to the king an object of horror. They defeated his
plans for the increase of the population, and shocked his native
instinct of discipline and order. Edict after edict was directed against
them: and more than once the colony presented the extraordinary
spectacle of the greater part of the young men turned into forest
outlaws. Old Regime, pp. 309, 310.] The colony was, as nearly as
possible, in the condition it would have been, if all it’s
adult males had been drafted away upon foreign service. Farms, wives and
children were deserted by these adventurers who moved off occasionally
in organized bands. ["The famous Du Shut is said to have made a
general combination of the young men of Canada to follow him into the
woods. Their plan was to be absent four years, in order that the edicts
against them might have time to relent." Ibid. p. 310.] The
government was at its wit’s end. At times it ordered whipping,
branding, and the galleys, to be inflicted upon all who went to the
woods without license; at others, it tried coaxing and promises, and
promised amnesties. [One of these "Acts of Grace" will be
found in the Quebec edition of Edits, Ordennances, &c., vol.
ii. p. 551.] It was all to no purpose, and the work of
demoralization continued up to the conquest by Great Britain.
Meanwhile, by the various agencies at
work, the area of the hunting-grounds was being gradually extended until
it reached nearly two thousand five hundred miles from the citadel at
Quebec. It may be well to note here the names of the chief explorers
with the dates of their voyages. To the great Samuel Champlain belongs
the credit of first tracing out the Ottawa and Lake Huron route to the
North-West. In 1615, with only four voyageurs, and an interpreter
named Etienne Brulé, he ascended the Ottawa River, visited Lake
Nipissing, descended the French River, embarked upon the broad waters of
the Georgian, and returned by Matchedash Bay, the Huron country and Lake
Simcoe, not homewards, but to fight the Iroquois with the Hurons and
Algonquins on the Genesee River. In 1665 Father Allonez explored the
shores of Lake Superior and established a mission there. At Sault Ste
Marie the renowned Marquette formed a settlement in 1668, and in 1670
the Fathers Allonez, Dablon and Marquette had heard of the Mississippi
and were on the high road to the great North-West. In 1671, Marquette
established a Huron settlement at Michmillimackinac at the junction of
Lakes Huron and Michigan, and the first steps on the threshold of the
unknown land were traversed. Dreams of a short route to China and India
were floating through the minds of laymen like Joliette and La Salle
when they turned their eyes to the west. The story of the intrepid La
Salle does not fall within the purview of this work; yet his exploration
of Lake Erie, the building of the first vessel above Niagara—the
wonderful description of the Falls by Father Hennepin, and the
fortification of the line which still constitutes a frontier between
nations, is always fresh to the reader, and may be thus incidentally
referred to. Towards the close of the French régime— in
Canada, the last of the great French explorers, the Sieur De La
Verendrye attempted—now that early fancies had been dissipated—to
reach the Pacific by the overland route. Twelve years did that patient
and courageous adventurer spend, in company with a brother and two sons,
in exploring the country west of Lake Superior. The entire country to
the west, including the vast extent of territory from the Saskatchewan
down to the upper Missouri, and the Yellowstone Rivers were faithfully
examined, and in 1743, sixty years before any British traveller came
that way, the Rocky Mountains were sighted by De la Vérendrye’s son
and brother. This was the last expiring effort of French exploring
energy, and the scene opens upon British effort in a region which was
destined to be for all time to come an English-speaking land.
|
