bravely, moreover, through its own natural increase, for
the colonial birth-rate was high, large families being
everywhere the rule. In 1673 the population of New France
was figured at about seven thousand; in 1760 it had
reached nearly fifty thousand.

The development of agriculture on the seigneurial lands
did not, however, keep pace with growth in population.
It was hard to keep settlers to the prosaic task of
tilling the soil. There were too many distractions, chief
among them the lure of the Indian trade. The traffic in
furs offered large profits and equally large risks; but
it always yielded a full dividend of adventure and
hair-raising experience. The fascination of the forest
life gripped the young men of the colony, and they left
for the wilderness by the hundred. There is a roving
strain in Norman blood. It brought the Norseman to France
and Sicily; it took his descendants from the plough and
sent them over the waters of the New World, from the St
Lawrence to the Lakes and from the Lakes to the Gulf of
Mexico. Church and state joined hands in attempt to keep
them at home. Royal decrees of outlawry and ecclesiastical
edicts of excommunication were issued against them.
Seigneurs stipulated that their lands would be forfeited
unless so many arpents were put under crop each year.
But all to little avail. So far as developing the permanent
resources of the colony were concerned these coureurs de
bois might just as well have remained in France. Once in
a while a horde of them descended to Quebec or Montreal,
disposed of their furs to merchants, filled themselves