guided throughout his
administration by unjustified prejudices against the Jesuits and the
religious orders. Only the Sovereign Council, the bishop and the royal
commissioner could have opposed his omnipotence. Now the office of
commissioner remained vacant for three years, the bishop stayed in
France till 1675, and his grand vicar, who was to represent him in the
highest assembly of the colony, was never invited to take his seat
there. As to the council, the governor took care to constitute it of men
who were entirely devoted to him, and he thus made himself the arbiter
of justice. The council, of which Peuvret de Mesnu was secretary, was at
this time composed of MM. Le Gardeur de Tilly, Damours, de la Tesserie,
Dupont, de Mouchy, and a substitute for the attorney-general.

The first difficulty which Frontenac met was brought about by a cause
rather insignificant in itself, but rendered so dangerous by the
obstinacy of those who were concerned in it that it caused a deep
commotion throughout the whole country. Thus a foreign body, sometimes a
wretched little splinter buried in the flesh, may, if we allow the wound
to be poisoned, produce the greatest disorders in the human system. We
cannot read without admiration of the acts of bravery and daring
frequently accomplished by the _coureurs de bois_. We experience a
sentiment of pride when we glance through the accounts which depict for
us the endurance and physical vigour with which these athletes became
endowed by dint of continual struggles with man and beast and with the
very elements in a climate that was as glacial in winter as it was
torrid in summer. We are happy to think that these brave and strong men
belong to our race. But in the time of Frontenac the ecclesiastical and
civil authorities were averse to seeing the colony lose thus the most
vigorous part of its population. While admitting that the _coureurs de
bois_ became stout fellows in consequence of their hard experience, just
as the fishermen of the French shore now become robust sailors after a
few seasons of fishing on the Newfoundland Banks, the parallel is not
complete, because the latter remain throughout their lives a valuable
reserve for the French fleets, while the former were in great part lost
to the colony, at a period when safety lay in numbers. If they escaped
the manifold dangers which they ran every day in dealing with the
savages in the heart of the forest, if they disdained to link themsel