[Footnote:
See note at the end of the chapter.]
In Canada, all was different. Living by the fur trade, she needed free
range and indefinite space. Her geographical position determined the
nature of her pursuits; and her pursuits developed the roving and
adventurous character of her people, who, living under a military
rule, could be directed at will to such ends as their rulers saw fit.
The grand French scheme of territorial extension was not born at
court, but sprang from Canadian soil, and was developed by the chiefs
of the colony, who, being on the ground, saw the possibilities and
requirements of the situation, and generally had a personal interest
in realizing them. The rival colonies had two different laws of
growth. The one increased by slow extension, rooting firmly as it
spread; the other shot offshoots, with few or no roots, far out into
the wilderness. It was the nature of French colonization to seize upon
detached strategic points, and hold them by the bayonet, forming no
agricultural basis, but attracting the Indians by trade, and holding
them by conversion. A musket, a rosary, and a pack of beaver skins may
serve to represent it, and in fact it consisted of little else.
Whence came the numerical weakness of New France, and the real though
latent strength of her rivals? Because, it is answered, the French
were not an emigrating people; but, at the end of the seventeenth
century, this was only half true.
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