took active shape. By persuasion and by promise of reward, the
"Colbert of New France" interested the prominent citizens of Quebec in
modest industrial enterprises of every sort.

But the outcome soon belied the intendant's airy hopes. It was easy
enough to make a brave start in these things, especially with the aid
of an initial subsidy from the treasury; but to keep the wheels of
industry moving year after year without a subvention was an altogether
different thing. A colony numbering less than ten thousand souls did
not furnish an adequate market for the products of varied industries,
and the high cost of transportation made it difficult to export
manufactured wares to France or to the West Indies with any hope
of profit. A change of tone, moreover, soon became noticeable in
Colbert's dispatches with reference to industrial development. In
1665, when giving his first instructions to Talon, the minister had
dilated upon his desire that Canada should become self-sustaining in
the matter of clothing, shoes, and the simpler house-furnishings.
But within a couple of years Colbert's mind seems to have taken a
different shift, and we find him advising Talon that, after all,
it might be better if the people of New France would devote their
energies to agriculture and thus to raise enough grain wherewith to
buy manufactured wares from France. So, for one reason or another,
the infant industries languished, and, after Talon was gone, they
gradually dropped out of existence.

Another of Talon's ventures was to send prospectors in search of
minerals. The use of malleable copper by the Indians had been noted by
the French for many years and various rumors concerning the source
of supply had filtered through to Quebec. Some of Talon's agents,
including Jean Peré, went as far as the upper lakes, returning with