re forfeited
when the country passed into the hands of the English.

Louise Elizabeth Joibert, the daughter of Soulanges, who was born on
the River St. John, was educated at the convent of the Ursulines in
Quebec. At the age of seventeen she married the Marquis Vaudreuil, a
gentleman thirty years her senior. She is described as a very
beautiful and clever woman possessed of all the graces which would
charm the highest circles; of rare sagacity and exquisite modesty. She
was the mother of twelve children. Her husband, the Marquis de
Vaudreuil, was for twenty-two years governor general of Canada, and
her son held the same position when the French possessions passed into
the hands of the English; he was consequently the last governor
general of New France.

La Valliere succeeded the Sieur de Soulanges and was for six years
commander of Acadia. He cared little for the dignity or honor of his
position provided he could use it for his own benefit. He established
a small settlement at the River St. John and engaged in fishing and
trading. Many complaints were preferred against him by rival traders.
They alleged that he encouraged the English to fish on the coasts,
granting them licenses for the purpose, that he traded with them in
spite of the king's prohibition; also that he robbed and defrauded the
savages.

These charges seem to have been well founded. An Indian captain named
Negascouet says that as he was coming from Neguedchecouniedoche, his
usual residence, he was met by the Sieur de la Valliere, who took from
him by violence seventy moose skins, sixty martins, four beaver and
two otter, without giving him any payment, and this was not the first
time la Valliere had so acted.

In 1685 la Valliere was replaced by Perrot whose conduct was, if
possible, even more reprehensible than that of his predecessor. He was
such a money making genius that he thought nothing of selling brandy
to the Indians by the pint and half-pint before strangers and in his
own house, a rather undignified occupation certainly for a royal
governor of Acadia.

Examples such as these on the part of those in authority naturally
found many imitators, indeed there was at this time a general
disposition on the part of young men of the better families in New
France to become "coureurs de bois," or rangers of the woods, rather
than cultivators of the soil. The life of a coureur de bois was wild
and full of adventure, involving toil and exposure, but t