Pathfinders of the West eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 313 pages of information about Pathfinders of the West.

Pathfinders of the West eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 313 pages of information about Pathfinders of the West.

Those Companies for being badly served on account of inexperience and through poor economy, as will happen at the beginning of all affairs, were put to large expenses.

The English had already seized on Boston abandoned by the French after their new discovery; beaver and elk peltry were much sought after and at a very high price in Europe; they could be had for a needle, a hawk-bell or a tin looking-glass, a marked copper coin.  Our possession was there very well-off.  The English who made war to us in France, also made it in Canada, and began to take the fleet about Isle Percee, as it was ascending to Quebec.

As four or five vessels came every year loaded with goods for the Indians, it was at that time quantity of peas, plums, raisins, figs and others and provisions for M. de Champlain; a garrison of 15 or 20 men; a store in the lower town where the clerks of the Company lived with 10 or 12 families already used to the country.  This succor failing, much hardship was endured in a country which then produced nothing by itself, so that the English presenting themselves the next year with their fleet, surrender was obligatory; the governor and the Recollets crossed over to France and the families were treated honestly enough.

Happily in 1628 or 1629, France made it up with England and the treaty gave back Canada to the French, when M. de Champlain, returned and died some years later.

Those of the Company of 100, who were persons of dignity and consideration, living in Paris, thought fit to leave the care and benefits of commerce for Canada with the Rouen and Dieppe merchants, with whom joined a few from Paris.  They were charged with the payment of the governor’s appointments, to furnish him with provisions and subsistence and to keep up the garrisons of Quebec and Three-Rivers where there was also a post on account of the large number of Indians calling; to furnish the things necessary for the war; to pay themselves off the product and give account of the surplus to the directors of the Company who had an office at Paris.

It has been said that Dieppe and Rouen benefitted and that Paris suffered and was disgusted.

To M. de Champlain succeeded M. de Montmagny, very wise and very dignified; knight of Malta; relative of M. de Poinsy, who commanded at the Island of St Christophe where the said M. de Montmagny died after leaving Canada after a sojourn of 14 or 15 years, loved and cherished by the French and the natives—­we say the French, although the complaints made against him by the principals were the cause of his sorrow and he resigned voluntarily.

It is to be remarked that all the commerce was done at Rouen to go out through Dieppe on the hearsay and the fine connections that the Jesuit Fathers who had taken the Recollets’ place, took great care to have printed and distributed every year.

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Pathfinders of the West from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.