blankets, and strouds (a coarse woolen cloth made into shirts)—­could be bought more cheaply in England than in France.  Rum could be obtained from the British West Indies more cheaply than brandy from across the ocean.  Moreover, there were duties on furs shipped from Quebec and on all goods which came into that post.  And, finally, a paternal government in New France set the scale of prices in such a way as to ensure the merchants a large profit.  It is clear, then, that in fair and open competition for the Indian trade the French would not have survived a single season.[1] Their only hope was to keep the English away from the Indians altogether, and particularly from the Indians of the fur-bearing regions.  This was no easy task, but in general they managed to do it for nearly a century.

[Footnote 1:  In the collection of Documents Relating to the Colonial History of New York (ix., 408-409) the following comparative table of prices at Fort Orange (Albany) and at Montreal in 1689 is given: 

  The Indian pays for at Albany at Montreal

1 musket                 2 beavers       5 beavers
8 pounds of powder       1 beaver        4    "
40 pounds of lead         1    "          3    "
1 blanket                1    "          2    "
4 shirts                 1    "          2    "
6 pairs stockings        1    "          2    “]

The most active and at the same time the most picturesque figure in the fur-trading system of New France was the coureur-de-bois.  Without him the trade could neither have been begun nor continued successfully.  Usually a man of good birth, of some military training, and of more or less education, he was a rover of the forest by choice and not as an outcast from civilization.  Young men came from France to serve as officers with the colonial garrison, to hold minor civil posts, to become seigneurial landholders, or merely to seek adventure.  Very few came out with the fixed intention of engaging in the forest trade; but hundreds fell victims to its magnetism after they had arrived in New France.  The young officer who grew tired of garrison duty, the young seigneur who found yeomanry tedious, the young habitant who disliked the daily toil of the farm—­young men of all social ranks, in fact, succumbed to this lure of the wilderness.  “I cannot tell you,” wrote one governor, “how attractive this life is to all our youth.  It consists in doing nothing, caring nothing, following every inclination, and getting out of the way of all restraint.”  In any case the ranks of the voyageurs included those who had the best and most virile blood in the colony.