view of the matter. La Verendrye had enjoyed the
monopoly for two or three years--with the result that he was now very
heavily, indeed alarmingly, in debt.

{34}

His was not a nature, however, to be crushed by either indifference or
opposition. He had reached the parting of the ways. Nothing was to be
hoped for from the court. He must either abandon his enterprise or
continue it at his own risk and expense. He went to Montreal and saw
his partners. With infinite patience he suffered their unjust
reproaches. He was neglecting their interests, they grumbled. The
profits were not what they had a right to expect. He thought too much
of the Western Sea and not enough of the beavers. He was a dreamer,
and they were practical men of business.

What could La Verendrye say that would have weight with men of this
stamp? Should he tell them of the glory that would accrue to his and
their country by the discovery of the Western Sea? At this they would
only shrug their shoulders. Should he tell them of the unseen forces
that drew him to that wonderful land of the West--where the crisp clear
air held an intoxicating quality unknown in the East; where the eye
foamed on and on over limitless expanses of waving green, till the mind
was staggered at the vastness of the prospect; where the very largeness
of nature seemed to enter into a man and to {35} crush out things petty
and selfish? In doing this he would be beating the air. They were
incapable of understanding him. They would deem him mad.

Crushing down, therefore, both his enthusiasm for the western land and
his anger at their dulness, he met the merchants of Montreal on their
own commercial level. He told them that the posts he had established
were in the very heart of the fur country; that the Assiniboines and
Crees had engaged to bring large quantities of beaver skins to the
forts; that the northern tribes were already turning from the English
posts of the Hudson's Bay Company in the Far North to the more
accessible posts of the French; that the richly watered and wooded
country between Kaministikwia and Lake Winnipeg abounded in every
description of fur-bearing animal; that over the western prairies
roamed the buffalo in vast herds which seemed to blacken the green
earth as far as eye could reach. His eloquence over the outlook for
trade proved convincing. As he painted the riches of the West in terms
that appealed with peculiar force to these traders i