back to the
Portage of the Prairie.

The wanderings of La Verendrye and his sons for the next few years led
southwestward far as the Rockies in the region of Montana,
northwestward far as the Bow River branch of the Saskatchewan.
Meanwhile, all La Verendrye's property had been seized by his
creditors. Jealous rivals were clamoring for possession of his fur
posts. The King had conferred on him the Order of the Cross of St.
Louis, but eighteen years of exposure and worry had broken the
explorer's health. On the eve of setting out again for the west he
died suddenly on the 6th of December, 1749, at Montreal.

Look again at the map! The spokes of the wheel running out from Quebec
extend to the Gulf of Mexico on the south, to the Rockies on the west,
to Hudson Bay on the north. And the population of New France does not
yet number 60,000 people. Is it any wonder French Canadians look back
on these days as the Golden Age?

And while the bushrovers of Canada are pushing their way through the
wilderness westward, there come slashing, tramping, swearing, stamping
through the mountainous wilds of West and East Siberia the Cossack
soldiers of Peter the Great, led by the Dane, Vitus Bering, bound on
discovery to the west coast of America. La Verendrye's men have
crossed only half a continent. Bering's Russians cross the width of
two continents, seven thousand miles, then launch their crazily planked
ships over unknown northern seas for America. From 1729 to August of
1742 toil the Russian sea voyagers. Their story is not part of
Canada's history. Suffice to say, December of 1741 finds the Russian
crews cast away on two desert islands of Bering Sea west of Alaska, now
known as the Commander Islands. Half the crew of seventy-seven perish
of starvation and scurvy. Bering himself lies dying in a sandpit, with
the earth spread over him for warmth. Outside the sand holes, {213}
where the Russians crouch, scream hurricane gales and white billows and
myriad sea birds. The ships have been wrecked. The Russians are on an
unknown island. Day dawn, December 8, lying half buried in the sand,
Bering breathes his last. On rafts made of wreckage the remnant of his
crew find way back to Asia, but they have discovered a trail across the
sea to a new land. Fur hunters are moving from the east, westward.
Fur hunters are moving from the west, eastward. These two tides will
meet and clash at a later era.

The Treaty of Utrec