M. de La Gorgendiere having offered me his son to act as clerk to M. Gamelin and comptroller in the Montreal office, for the auditing to be made, without increasing on that score the expenditure of your administration, I have consented on these conditions; M. Gamelin to give him 800 livres (shillings) on the commission of one per cent the company allow the receiver at Montreal, and M. Daine has assured me he was satisfied with his work.

I will not entertain, you, messieurs, with the discussion of the account to be rendered by M. Duplessis, M. Radisson’s heir, to your agent, who claims he owes 5 to 6000 livres.  Those discussions did not take place in my presence.

Most of the beaver shipped this year were put up in bundles, and shortage in cotton cloth for packing prevented shipment of the whole.

The disturbances which have occurred for some years in the upper country have effectively prevented the Indians from hunting; the post of the Bay which abounds ordinarily with beaver, produced nothing; those of Detroit and Michilimakinac, only furnished very little.  Happily the post of the Sioux and of the Western Sea produced near to 100,000 which swelled up the receipt; otherwise it would have been very middling.

The party commanded by M. Desnoyelles against the Indians Sakis and Foxes was not as successful as expected on account of the desertion and retreat of 100 Hurons and Iroquois who left him when at the Kakanons (Kiskanons of Michilimakinac?) without his being able to hold them, so that this officer found himself after a long tramp at those Indians’ fort, not only inferior in numbers but also much in want of provisions.  He was under the necessity of returning after a rather sharp skirmish which took place between some of his men and the enemy.  We lost two Frenchmen and one of our indians; the Foxes and Sakis lost 21 men, either killed, wounded or captured.

If the Sakis come back to the Bay, as they pledged themselves to M. Desnoyelles we are in hopes here that peace will again flourish and consequently the trade of the upper country.

I have seen, gentlemen, what you were pleased to say as to reduction in price on the summer-beaver.  I had been assured by reliable persons that this reduction might become very injurious to your commerce.  I have learned that some of this kind of beaver were carried to the English who pay two livres (shillings) for one and at a higher price than you pay over your counters.  It was from what you wrote me in 1732, that the hatters could make no use of that beaver, that at your request I published an ordinance of the 4th January, 1733, reducing the price of summer-beaver either green (gras) or dry (sec) to ten pence a pound, on condition that it should be burned.  There could be nothing suspicious in that.  But since you now deem that that reduction may be harmful, as I have also had in mind to invite the indians and even the French under this pretence to take the good as