in summer.  We are happy to think that these brave and strong men belong to our race.  But in the time of Frontenac the ecclesiastical and civil authorities were averse to seeing the colony lose thus the most vigorous part of its population.  While admitting that the coureurs de bois became stout fellows in consequence of their hard experience, just as the fishermen of the French shore now become robust sailors after a few seasons of fishing on the Newfoundland Banks, the parallel is not complete, because the latter remain throughout their lives a valuable reserve for the French fleets, while the former were in great part lost to the colony, at a period when safety lay in numbers.  If they escaped the manifold dangers which they ran every day in dealing with the savages in the heart of the forest, if they disdained to link themselves by the bond of marriage to a squaw and to settle among the redskins, the coureurs de bois were none the less drones among their compatriots; they did not make up their minds to establish themselves in places where they might have become excellent farmers, until through age and infirmity they were rather a burden than a support to others.

To counteract this scourge the king published in 1673, a decree which, under penalty of death, forbade Frenchmen to remain more than twenty-four hours in the woods without permission from the governor.  Some Montreal officers, engaged in trade, violated this prohibition; the Count de Frontenac at once sent M. Bizard, lieutenant of his guards, with an order to arrest them.  The governor of Montreal, M. Perrot, who connived with them, publicly insulted the officer entrusted with the orders of the governor-general.  Indignant at such insolence, M. de Frontenac had M. Perrot arrested at once, imprisoned in the Chateau St. Louis and judged by the Sovereign Council.  Connected with M. Perrot by the bonds of friendship, the Abbe de Fenelon profited by the occasion to allude, in the sermon which he delivered in the parochial church of Montreal on Easter Sunday, to the excessive labour which M. de Frontenac had exacted from the inhabitants of Ville-Marie for the erection of Fort Cataraqui.  According to La Salle, who heard the sermon, the Abbe de Fenelon said:  “He who is invested with authority should not disturb the people who depend on him; on the contrary, it is his duty to consider them as his children and to treat them as would a father....  He must not disturb the commerce of the country by ill-treating those who do not give him a share of the profits they may make in it; he must content himself with gaining by honest means; he must not trample on the people, nor vex them by excessive demands which serve his interests alone.  He must not have favourites who praise him on all occasions, or oppress, under far-fetched pretexts, persons who serve the same princes, when they oppose his enterprises....  He has respect for priests and ministers of the Church.”