e as all the viceroys
came--penniless, to mend his fortunes; and as the salary of the Governor
did not exceed $3000 a year, the only way to wealth was by the fur trade;
but which way to look for fur trade! Hudson Bay, thanks to Radisson, was
in the hands of England. Taudoussac was farmed out to the King. The
merchants of Quebec and Three Rivers and Montreal absorbed all the furs
of the tribes from the Ottawa; and New England drained the Iroquois land.
There remained but one avenue of new trade, and that was west of the
Lakes, where Jolliet had been.

Taking only La Salle into his confidence, Frontenac issued a royal
mandate commanding all the officers and people of New France to
contribute a quota of men for the establishment of a fort on Lake
Ontario. By June 28, 1673, the same year that Jolliet had been
dispatched for the Mississippi, there had gathered at La Chine, La
Salle's old seigniory near Montreal, four hundred armed men and one
hundred and twenty canoes, which Frontenac ordered painted gaudily in red
and blue. With these the Governor moved in stately array up the St.
Lawrence, setting the leafy avenues of the Thousand Islands ringing with
trumpet and bugle, and sweeping across Lake Ontario in martial lines to
the measured stroke of a hundred paddles.

Long since, La Salle's scouts had scurried from canton to canton,
rallying the Iroquois to the council of great "Onontio." At break of
day, July 13, while the sunrise was just bursting up {135} over the lake,
Frontenac, with soldiers drawn up under arms, himself in velvet cloak
laced with gold braid, met the chiefs of the Iroquois Confederacy at the
place to be known for years as Fort Frontenac, now known as Kingston, a
quiet little city at the entrance of Lake Ontario on the north shore.

[Illustration: ROBERT DE LA SALLE]

Ostensibly the powwow was to maintain peace. In reality, it was to
attract the Iroquois, and all the tribes with whom they traded, away from
the English, down to Frontenac's new fort with their furs. It is a
question if all the military pomp deceived a living soul. Before the
Governor had set his sappers to work on the foundations of a fort, the
merchants of Montreal--the Le Bers and Le Moynes and Le Chesnayes and Le
Forests--were furious with jealousy. Undoubtedly Fort Frontenac would be
the most valuable fur post in America.

{136}

[Illustration: OLD PLAN OF FORT FRONTENAC]

Determined to have the support of the Court, wh