Pierre, then acting in the interest of the infamous Intendant Bigot, who
coveted the western fur-trade, reached the foot-hills of the Rocky
Mountains and built a fort on the Saskatchewan not far from the present
town of Calgary.

We have now followed the paths of French adventurers for nearly a
century and a half, from the day Champlain landed on the rocks of Quebec
until the Verendryes traversed the prairies and plains of the
North-west. French explorers had discovered the three great waterways of
this continent--the Mississippi, which pours its enormous volume of
water, drawn from hundreds of tributaries, into a southern gulf; the St.
Lawrence, which bears the tribute of the great lakes to the Atlantic
Ocean; the Winnipeg, with its connecting rivers and lakes which stretch
from the Rocky Mountains to the dreary Arctic sea. La Verendrye was the
first Frenchman who stood on the height of land or elevated plateau of
the continent, almost within sight of the sources of those great rivers
which flow, after devious courses, north, south and east. It has been
well said that if three men should ascend these three waterways to their
farthest sources, they would find themselves in the heart of North
America; and, so to speak, within a stone's throw of one another. Nearly
all the vast territory, through which these great waterways flow, then
belonged to France, so far as exploration, discovery and partial
occupation gave her a right to exercise dominion. Only in the great
North, where summer is a season of a very few weeks, where icebergs bar
the way for many months, where the fur-trade and the whale-fishery alone
offered an incentive to capital and enterprise, had England a right to
an indefinite dominion. Here a "Company of Gentlemen-Adventurers
trading into Hudson's Bay" occupied some fortified stations which,
during the seventeenth century, had been seized by the daring
French-Canadian corsair, Iberville, who ranks with the famous