Du Tisne.--Bourgmont visits the Comanches.--The
Brothers Mallet in Colorado and New Mexico.--Fabry de la Bruyere.

The occupation by France of the lower Mississippi gave a strong impulse
to the exploration of the West, by supplying a base for discovery,
stimulating enterprise by the longing to find gold mines, open trade
with New Mexico, and get a fast hold on the countries beyond the
Mississippi in anticipation of Spain; and to these motives was soon
added the hope of finding an overland way to the Pacific. It was the
Canadians, with their indomitable spirit of adventure, who led the way
in the path of discovery.

As a bold and hardy pioneer of the wilderness, the Frenchman in America
has rarely found his match. His civic virtues withered under the
despotism of Versailles, and his mind and conscience were kept in
leading-strings by an absolute Church; but the forest and the prairie
offered him an unbridled liberty, which, lawless as it was, gave scope
to his energies, till these savage wastes became the field of his most
noteworthy achievements.

Canada was divided between two opposing influences. On the one side were
the monarchy and the hierarchy, with their principles of order,
subordination, and obedience; substantially at one in purpose, since
both wished to keep the colony within manageable bounds, domesticate it,
and tame it to soberness, regularity, and obedience. On the other side
was the spirit of liberty, or license, which was in the very air of this
wilderness continent, reinforced in the chiefs of the colony by a spirit
of adventure inherited from the Middle Ages, and by a spirit of trade
born of present opportunities; for every official in Canada hoped to
make a profit, if not a fortune, out of beaver-skins. Kindred impulses,
in ruder forms, possessed the humbler colonists, drove them into the
forest, and made them hardy woodsmen and skilful bush-fighters, though
turbulent and lawless members of civilized society.

Time, the decline of the fur-trade, and the influence of the Canadian
Church gradually diminished this erratic spirit, and at the same time
impaired the qualities that were associated with it. The Canadian became
a more stable colonist and a steadier farmer; but for forest journeyings
and forest warfare he was scarcely his former self. At the middle of the
eighteenth century we find complaints that the race of _voyageurs_ is
growing scarce. The taming process was most apparent in the cent