The furs of other animals, otter, marten, and mink, were also in demand but brought smaller prices.  Moose hides sold well, and so did bear skins.  Some buffalo hides were brought to Montreal, but in proportion to their value they were bulky and took up so much room in the canoes that the Indians did not care to bring them.  The heyday of the buffalo trade came later, with the development of overland transportation.  At any rate the dependence of New France upon these furs was complete.  “I would have you know,” asserts one chronicler, “that Canada subsists only upon the trade of these skins and furs, three-fourths of which come from the people who live around the Great Lakes.”  The prosperity of the French colony hinged wholly upon two things:  whether the routes from the West were open, and whether the market for furs in France was holding up.  Upon the former depended the quantity of furs brought to Montreal; upon the latter, the amount of profit which the coureurs-de-bois and the merchants of the colony would obtain.

For ten days or a fortnight the great fair at Montreal continued.  A picturesque bazaar it must have been, this meeting of the two ends of civilization, for trade has been, in all ages, a mighty magnet to draw the ends of the earth together.  When all the furs had been sold, the coureurs-de-bois took some goods along with them to be used partly in trade on their own account at the western posts and partly as presents from the King to the western chieftains.  There is reason to suspect, however, that much of what the royal bounty provided for this latter purpose was diverted to private use.  There were annual fairs at Three Rivers for the Indians of the St. Maurice region; at Sorel, for those of the Richelieu; and at Quebec and at Tadoussac, for the redskins of the Lower St. Lawrence.  But Montreal, owing to its situation at the confluence of the St. Lawrence and Ottawa trade routes, was by far the greatest fur mart of all.

It has been mentioned that the colonial authorities tried to discourage trading at the western posts.  Their aim was to bring the Indian with his furs to the colonial settlement.  But this policy could not be fully carried out.  Despite the most rigid prohibitions and the severest penalties, some of the coureurs-de-bois would take goods and brandy to sell in the wilderness.  Finding that this practice could not be exterminated, the authorities decided to permit a limited amount of forest trading under strict regulation, and to this end the King authorized the granting of twenty-five licenses each year.  These licenses permitted a trader to take three canoes with as much merchandise as they would hold.  As a rule the licenses were not issued directly to the traders themselves, but were given to the religious institutions or to dependent widows of former royal officers.  These in turn sold them to the traders, sometimes for a thousand livres or more.  The system of granting twenty-five annual licenses