nd Three Rivers. It was at the risk of their lives that men ventured
beyond the guns of Montreal. The fur-trade was in the hands of
monopolists. The people could not raise enough food to feed
themselves, but had to depend on the French ships to a large extent.
The Company of the Hundred Associates had been found quite unequal to
the work of settling and developing the country, or providing adequate
means of defence. Under the advice of the great Colbert, the King,
young Louis Quatorze, decided to assume the control of New France and
make it a royal province. The immediate result of the new policy was
the coming of the Marquis de Tracy, a veteran soldier, as
lieutenant-general, with full powers to inquire into the state of
Canada. He arrived at Quebec on the 30th June, 1665, attended by a
brilliant retinue. The Carignan-Salieres Regiment, which had
distinguished itself against the Turks, was also sent as a proof of the
intention of the King to defend his long-neglected colony. In a few
weeks, more than two thousand persons, soldiers and settlers, had come
to Canada. Among {153} the number were M. de Courcelles, the first
governor, and M. Talon, the first intendant, under the new regime.
Both were fond of state and ceremony, and the French taste of the
Canadians was now gratified by a plentiful display of gold lace,
ribbons, wigs, ornamented swords, and slouched hats. Probably the most
interesting feature of the immigration was the number of young women as
wives for the bachelors--as the future mothers of a Canadian people.

The new authorities went energetically to work. The fortifications at
Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal were strengthened, and four new
forts erected from the mouth of the Richelieu to Isle La Mothe on Lake
Champlain. The Iroquois saw the significance of this new condition of
things. The Onondagas, led by Garacontie, a friend of the Jesuits,
made overtures of peace, which were favourably heard by "Onontio," as
the governor of Canada had been called ever since the days of
Montmagny, whose name, "Great Mountain," the Iroquois so translated.
The Mohawks, the most dangerous tribe, sent no envoys, and Courcelles,
in the inclement month of January, went into their country with a large
force of regular soldiers and fur hunters, but missed the trail to
their villages, and found himself at the Dutch settlements, where he
learned, to his dismay, that the English had become the possessors of
the Ne