The fur trade
had been stopped for two years; and the people, bereft of their only
means of subsistence, could contribute nothing to their own defence.
Above Three Rivers, the whole population was imprisoned in stockade
forts hastily built in every seigniory. [Footnote: In the Depot des
Cartes de la Marine, there is a contemporary manuscript map, on which
all these forts are laid down.] Here they were safe, provided that
they never ventured out; but their fields were left untilled, and the
governor was already compelled to feed many of them at the expense of
the king. The Iroquois roamed among the deserted settlements or
prowled like lynxes about the forts, waylaying convoys and killing or
capturing stragglers. Their war-parties were usually small; but their
movements were so mysterious and their attacks so sudden, that they
spread a universal panic through the upper half of the colony. They
were the wasps which Denonville had failed to kill. "We should
succumb," wrote the distressed governor, "if our cause were not the
cause of God. Your Majesty's zeal for religion, and the great things
you have done for the destruction of heresy, encourage me to hope that
you will be the bulwark of the Faith in the new world as you are in
the old.
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