Sometimes the French boats escaped; sometimes they were captured; but from this interruption of peaceful oversea traffic Canada suffered grievously.  Another source of weakness was the interruption of agriculture which followed in the train of war.  As a rule the Iroquois spent the winter in hunting deer, but just as the ground was ready for its crop they began to show themselves in the parishes near Montreal, picking off the habitants in their farms on the edge of the forest, or driving them to the shelter of the stockade.  These forays made it difficult and dangerous to till the soil, with a corresponding shrinkage in the volume of the crop.  Almost every winter famine was imminent in some part of the colony, and though spring was welcome for its own sake, it invariably brought the Iroquois.  A third calamity was the interruption of the fur trade.  Ordinarily the great cargoes descended the Ottawa in fleets of from one hundred to two hundred canoes.  But the savages of the West well knew that when they embarked with their precious bales upon a route which was infested by the Iroquois, they gave hostages to fortune.  In case of a battle the cargo was a handicap, since they must protect it as well as themselves.  In case they were forced to flee for their lives, they lost the goods which it had cost so much effort to collect.  In these circumstances the tribes of Michilimackinac would not bring down their furs unless they felt certain that the whole course of the Ottawa was free from danger.  In seasons when they failed to come, the colony had nothing to export and penury became extreme.  At best the returns from the fur trade were precarious.  In 1690 and 1693 there were good markets; in 1691 and 1692 there were none at all.

From time to time Frontenac received from France both money and troops, but neither in sufficient quantity to place him where he could deal the Iroquois one final blow.  Thus one year after another saw a war of skirmishes and minor raids, sufficiently harassing and weakening to both sides, but with results which were disappointing because inconclusive.  The hero of this border warfare is the Canadian habitant, whose farm becomes a fort and whose gun is never out of reach.  Nor did the men of the colony display more courage than their wives and daughters.  The heroine of New France is the woman who rears from twelve to twenty children, works in the fields and cooks by day, and makes garments and teaches the catechism in the evening.  It was a community which approved of early marriage—­a community where boys and girls assumed their responsibilities very young.  Youths of sixteen shouldered the musket.  Madeleine de Vercheres was only fourteen when she defended her father’s fort against the Iroquois with a garrison of five, which included two boys and a man of eighty (October 1692).

A detailed chronicle of these raids and counter-raids would be both long and complicated, but in addition to the incidents which have been mentioned there remain three which deserve separate comment—­Peter Schuyler’s invasion of Canada in 1691, the activities of the Abnakis against New England, and Frontenac’s invasion of the Onondaga country in 1696.