s till he amassed fortune enough to buy off punishment, or till
he had lost taste for civilized life and remained in the wilderness,
_coureur des bois_, _voyageur_, or leader of a band of half-wild
retainers whom he ruled like a feudal baron, becoming a curious
connecting link between the savagery of the New World and the _noblesse_
of the Old.

Duluth, of the Lakes region; La Salle, of the Mississippi; Le Moyne
d'Iberville, ranging from Louisiana to Hudson Bay; La Mothe Cadillac in
Michilimackinac, Detroit, and Louisiana; La Verendrye exploring from
Lake Superior to the Rockies; Radisson on Hudson Bay--all won their fame
as explorers and discoverers in pursuit of the fur trade. A hundred
years before any English mind knew of the Missouri, French _voyageurs_
had gone beyond the Yellowstone. Before the regions now called
Minnesota, Dakota, and Wisconsin were known to New Englanders, the
French were trapping about the head waters of the Mississippi; and two
centuries ago a company of daring French hunters went to New Mexico to
spy on Spanish trade.

East of the Mississippi were two neighbours whom the French trapper
shunned--the English colonists and the Iroquois. North of the St.
Lawrence was a power that he shunned still more--the French governor,
who had legal right to plunder the peltries of all who traded and
trapped without license. But between St. Louis and MacKenzie River was a
great unclaimed wilderness, whence came the best furs.

Naturally, this became the hunting-ground of the French trapper.

There were four ways by which he entered his hunting-ground: (1) Sailing
from Quebec to the mouth of the Mississippi, he ascended the river in
pirogue or dugout, but this route was only possible for a man with means
to pay for the ocean voyage. (2) From Detroit overland to the Illinois,
or Ohio, which he rafted down to the Mississippi, and then taking to
canoe turned north. (3) From Michilimackinac, which was always a grand
_rendezvous_ for the French and Indian hunters, to Green Bay on Lake
Michigan, thence up-stream to Fox River, overland to the Wisconsin, and
down-stream to the Mississippi. (4) Up the Ottawa through "the Soo" to
Lake Superior and westward to the hunting-ground. Whichever way he went
his course was mainly up-stream and north: hence the name _Pays d'en
Haut_ vaguely designated the vast hunting-ground that lay between the
Missouri and the MacKenzie River.

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