cler,
"that Canada subsists only upon the trade of these skins and furs,
three-fourths of which come from the people who live around the Great
Lakes." The prosperity of the French colony hinged wholly upon two
things: whether the routes from the West were open, and whether the
market for furs in France was holding up. Upon the former depended the
quantity of furs brought to Montreal; upon the latter, the amount of
profit which the _coureurs-de-bois_ and the merchants of the colony
would obtain.

For ten days or a fortnight the great fair at Montreal continued. A
picturesque bazaar it must have been, this meeting of the two ends of
civilization, for trade has been, in all ages, a mighty magnet to draw
the ends of the earth together. When all the furs had been sold, the
_coureurs-de-bois_ took some goods along with them to be used partly
in trade on their own account at the western posts and partly as
presents from the King to the western chieftains. There is reason to
suspect, however, that much of what the royal bounty provided for this
latter purpose was diverted to private use. There were annual fairs at
Three Rivers for the Indians of the St. Maurice region; at Sorel,
for those of the Richelieu; and at Quebec and at Tadoussac, for
the redskins of the Lower St. Lawrence. But Montreal, owing to its
situation at the confluence of the St. Lawrence and Ottawa trade
routes, was by far the greatest fur mart of all.

It has been mentioned that the colonial authorities tried to
discourage trading at the western posts. Their aim was to bring the
Indian with his furs to the colonial settlement. But this policy could
not be fully carried out. Despite the most rigid prohibitions and the
severest penalties, some of the _coureurs-de-bois_ would take goods
and brandy to sell in the wilderness. Finding that this practice could
not be exterminated, the authorities decided to permit a limited
amount of forest trading under strict regulation, and to this end the
King authorized the granting of twenty-five licenses each year.
These licenses permitted a trader to take three canoes with as much
merchandise as they would hold. As a rule the licenses were not issued
directly to the traders themselves, but were given to the religious
institutions or to dependent widows of former royal officers. These in
turn sold them to the traders, sometimes for a thousand _livres_ or
more. The system of granting twenty-five annual licenses did not
of it