for the buoyant energy of
its youth. While the population of the English colonies was nearing
the million mark, New France had not 60,000 inhabitants by 1759. Yet
what had the little nation, whose mainspring was at Quebec,
accomplished? Look at the map! Her bushrovers had gone overland to
Hudson Bay far north as Nelson. Before 1700 Duluth had forts at
Kaministiquia (near modern Fort Williams) on Lake Superior. Radisson,
Marquette, Jolliet, and La Salle had blazed a trail to the Mississippi
from what is now Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico. By 1701 La Motte
Cadillac had built what is now Detroit in order to stop the progress of
the English traders up the lakes to Michilimackinac; and by 1727 the
Company of the Sioux had forts far west as Lake Pepin. With Quebec as
the hub of the wheel, draw spokes across the map of North America.
Where do they reach? From Quebec to the Gulf of Mexico, to the
Missouri, to the Upper Mississippi, to Lake Superior, to Hudson Bay.
Who blazed the way through these far pathless wilds? Nameless
wanderers dressed in rags and tatters,--outcasts of society, forest
rovers lured by the Unknown as by a siren, soldiers of fortune,
penniless, in debt, heartbroken, slandered, persecuted, driven by the
demon of their own genius to earth's ends,--and to ruin!

Spite of clandestine raids and open wars, New France was now setting
herself to stretch the lines of her discoveries farther westward.

It will be remembered it was at Three Rivers that the Indians of the Up
Country paused on their way down the St. Lawrence. {206} From the days
of Radisson in 1660 the passion for discovery had been in the very air
of Three Rivers. In this little fort was born in 1686 Pierre Gaultier
Varennes de La Verendrye, son of a French officer. From childhood the
boy's ear must have been accustomed to the uncouth babblings of the
half-naked Indians, whose canoes came swarming down the river soon as
ice broke up in spring. One can guess that in his play the boy many a
time simulated Indian voyageur, bushrover, coming home clad in furs,
the envy of the villagers. At fourteen young Pierre had decided that
he would be a great explorer, but destiny for the time ruled otherwise.
At eighteen he was among the bushraiders of New England. Nineteen
found him fighting the English in Newfoundland. Then came the honor
coveted by all Canadian boys,--an appointment to the King's army in
Europe. Young La Verendrye was among t