great leader of the white men at Hudson Bay to invite the Blackfeet Indians to come to these eastern waters in the summertime, and bring with them beaver and wolf skins, for which they would get, in return, guns, ammunition, cloth, beads, and other trade goods.  But this chief, though he listened patiently, pointed out that this fort on Hudson Bay was situated at a very great distance, that his men only knew how to ride horses, and not how to paddle canoes.  Moreover, they could not live without bison beef, and disliked fish.

After leaving the headquarters of the Blackfeet, Hendry rambled over the beautiful country of fir woods and pine woods until he must have got within sight of the Rocky Mountains, though these are not mentioned in his journal.  Then, after passing the winter (which did not begin as regards cold weather till the 2nd of December, and was over at the end of March) he returned to the French fort on the Saskatchewan, where he was received by the Commandant, de La Corne, with great kindness and hospitality.  These Frenchmen, he found, were able to speak in great perfection several Indian languages; they were well dressed, and courtly in manners, and led a civilized life in these distant wilds.  They had excellent trade goods and were sincerely liked by the Indians, but for some reason or other they lacked Brazilian tobacco, which seems to have been a commodity much in favour amongst the Indians.  With this the Hudson’s Bay Company were kept well supplied, and that alone enabled them in any degree to compete with the French.  But in ten years more this French fort would be abandoned owing to the cession of Canada to Britain.

The British, in fact, all through the first half of the eighteenth century, by their superiority in sea power, were steadily strangling the French empire in North America.  Acadia, or Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick had been, as we have seen, recognized as British in 1713, and Newfoundland, also, subject to certain conditions, giving France the exclusive right to fish on the western and northern coasts of Newfoundland.  The result was that when “New France”, or Canada and Louisiana combined, was at its greatest extent of conquered and administered territory, France held but a very limited seacoast from which to approach it—­just the mouth of the Mississippi, and a little bit of Alabama on the south and Cape Breton Island on the east.  Cape Breton Island was commanded by the immensely strong fortress of Louisburg, and the possession of this place gave the French some security in entering the Gulf of St. Lawrence through Cabot Straits.  But Louisburg was captured by the British colonists of New England (United States) in 1745; and although it was given back to France again, it was reoccupied in 1758, and served as a basis for the armaments which were directed against Quebec in 1759, and which resulted at the close of that year in the surrender of that important city.  In 1763 all Canada was ceded to the British, and Louisiana (which had become the western barrier of the about-to-be-born United States) was ceded to Spain; the French flag flew no more on the Continent of North America, save in the two little islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon adjoining Newfoundland, wherein it still remains as a reminder of the splendid achievements of Frenchmen in America.