of an explorer's exultation, though he was
first of pathfinders to reach the Arctic overland. Matonabbee led
Hearne back to Churchill in June of 1772 by a wide westward circle
through the Athabasca Bear Lake Country, which the Hudson's Bay people
thus discovered only a few years before the Nor'westers came.

[Illustration: SAMUEL HEARNE]

No longer dare the Hudson's Bay Company ignore the Up Country. Hearne
is sent to the Saskatchewan to build Fort Cumberland, and Matthew
Cocking is dispatched to the country of the Blackfeet, modern Alberta,
to beat up trade, where his French voyageur, Louis Primeau, deserts him
bag and baggage, to carry the Hudson's Bay furs off to the Nor'westers.
No longer does the English company slumber on the shores of its frozen
sea. Yearly are voyageurs sent inland,--"patroons of the woods," given
bounty to stay in the wilds, luring any trade from the Nor'westers.

The Quebec Act, guaranteeing the rights of the French Canadians, had
barely been put in force before the Congress of the {298} revolting
English colonies sent up proclamations to be posted on the church doors
of the parishes, calling on the French to throw off the British yoke,
to join the American colonies, "to seize the opportunity to be free."
Unfortunately for this alluring invitation, Congress had but a few
weeks previously put on record its unsparing condemnation of the Quebec
Act. Inspired by those New Englanders who, for a century, had suffered
from French raids, Congress had expressed its verdict on the privileges
granted to Quebec in these words: "_Nor can we supress our astonishment
that a British Parliament should establish a religion that has drenched
your island_ [England] _in blood_." This declaration was the cardinal
blunder of Congress as far as Canada was concerned. Of the merits of
the quarrel the simple French habitant knew nothing. He did what his
cure told him to do; and the Catholic Church would not risk casting in
its lot with a Congress that declared its religion had drenched England
in blood. English inhabitants of Montreal and Quebec, who had flocked
to Canada from the New England colonies, were far readier to listen to
the invitation of Congress than were the French.

Governor Carleton had fewer than 800 troops, and naturally the French
did not rally as volunteers in the impending war between England and
her English colonies. Should the Congress troops invade Canada? The
question was hanging