The pursuits of the fur trader and fur trapper were far more congenial to them, and it was upon these that they chiefly depended.  The half-savage life of toil, hardship, excitement, and long intervals of idleness attracted them strongly.  This was perhaps one among the reasons why they got on so much better with the Indians than did the Americans, who, wherever they went, made clearings and settlements, cut down the trees, and drove off the game.

But even these pursuits were followed under the ancient customs and usages of the country, leave to travel and trade being first obtained from the commandant[23] for the rule of the commandant was almost patriarchal.  The inhabitants were utterly unacquainted with what the Americans called liberty.  When they passed under our rule, it was soon found that it was impossible to make them understand such an institution as trial by jury; they throve best under the form of government to which they had been immemorially accustomed—­a commandant to give them orders, with a few troops to back him up.[24] They often sought to escape from these orders, but rarely to defy them; their lawlessness was like the lawlessness of children and savages; any disobedience was always to a particular ordinance, not to the system.

The trader having obtained his permit, built his boats,—­whether light, roomy bateaux made of boards, or birch-bark canoes, or pirogues, which were simply hollowed out logs.  He loaded them with paint, powder, bullets, blankets, beads, and rum, manned them with hardy voyageurs, trained all their lives in the use of pole and paddle, and started off up or down the Mississippi,[25] the Ohio, or the Wabash, perhaps making a long carry or portage over into the Great Lakes.  It took him weeks, often months, to get to the first trading-point, usually some large winter encampment of Indians.  He might visit several of these, or stay the whole winter through at one, buying the furs.[26] Many of the French coureurs des bois, whose duty it was to traverse the wilderness, and who were expert trappers, took up their abode with the Indians, taught them how to catch the sable, fisher, otter, and beaver, and lived among them as members of the tribe, marrying copper-colored squaws, and rearing dusky children.  When the trader had exchanged his goods for the peltries of these red and white skin-hunters, he returned to his home, having been absent perhaps a year or eighteen months.  It was a hard life; many a trader perished in the wilderness by cold or starvation, by an upset where the icy current ran down the rapids like a mill-race, by the attack of a hostile tribe, or even in a drunken brawl with the friendly Indians, when voyageur, half-breed, and Indian alike had been frenzied by draughts of fiery liquor.[27]