as well as the Indians. In days of peace the coureur de
bois was looked on with less favour. The king liked to
know where his subjects were at every hour of the day
and night. A Frenchman at Michilimackinac, [Footnote:
The most important of the French posts in the western
portion of the Great Lakes, situated on the strait which
unites Lake Huron to Lake Michigan. It was here that
Saint-Lusson and Perrot took possession of the West in
the name of France (June 1671). See The Great Intendant,
pp. 115-16.] unless he were a missionary or a government
agent, incurred severe displeasure, and many were the
edicts which sought to prevent the colonists from taking
to the woods. But, whatever the laws might say, the
coureur de bois could not be put down. From time to time
he was placed under restraint, but only for a moment.
The intendant might threaten and the priest might plead.
It recked not to the coureur de bois when once his knees
felt the bottom of the canoe.

But of the seven thousand French who peopled Canada in
1672 it is probable that not more than four hundred were
scattered through the forest. The greater part of the
inhabitants occupied the seigneuries along the St Lawrence
and the Richelieu. Tadoussac was hardly more than a
trading-post. Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal were
but villages. In the main the life of the people was the
life of the seigneuries--an existence well calculated to
bring out in relief the ancestral heroism of the French
race. The grant of seigneurial rights did not imply that
the recipient had been a noble in France. The earliest