to try them, and he exported masts to La Rochelle, which he hoped to see
used in the shipyards of the Royal Navy. He proposed to Colbert the
establishment of a brewery, in order to utilize the barley and the
wheat, which in a few years would be so abundant that the farmer could
not sell them. This was, besides, a means of preventing drunkenness, and
of retaining in the country the sum of one hundred thousand francs,
which went out each year for the purchase of wines and brandies. M.
Talon presented at the same time to the minister the observations which
he had made on the French population of the country. "The people," said
Talon, "are a mosaic, and though composed of colonists from different
provinces of France whose temperaments do not always sympathize, they
seem to me harmonious enough. There are," he added, "among these
colonists people in easy circumstances, indigent people and people
between these two extremes."

But he thought only of the material development of the colony; upon
others, he thought, were incumbent the responsibility for and defence of
spiritual interests. He was mistaken, for, although he had not in his
power the direction of souls, his duties as a simple soldier of the army
of Christ imposed upon him none the less the obligation of avoiding all
that might contribute to the loss of even a single soul. The disorders
which were the inevitable result of a free traffic in intoxicating
liquors, finally assumed such proportions that the council, without
going as far as the absolute prohibition of the sale of brandy to the
Indians, restricted, nevertheless, this deplorable traffic; it forbade
under the most severe penalties the carrying of firewater into the woods
to the savages, but it continued to tolerate the sale of intoxicating
liquors in the French settlements. It seems that Cavelier de la Salle
himself, in his store at Lachine where he dealt with the Indians, did
not scruple to sell them this fatal poison.