was built by La Salle seventy
years after their discovery by Champlain. This was _Le Griffon_, {61}
which, from Father Hennepin's description, seems to have been a kind of
brig. She was of fifty or sixty tons and apparently carried a real
jib. She was launched at the mouth of Cayuga Creek in the Niagara
peninsula in 1679. Her career was interesting, but short and
disastrous. She sailed west across Lake Erie, on through Lakes St
Clair and Huron, and reached Green Bay on Lake Michigan, where she took
in a cargo of fur. On her return voyage she was lost with all hands.

In the eighteenth century shipbuilding in Quebec continued to flourish.
The yards at the mouth of the St Charles had been enlarged, and even
then there was so much naval construction in hand that private merchant
vessels could not be built as fast as they were wanted. In 1743 some
French merchants proposed building five or six vessels for the West
India trade, besides twenty-five or thirty more for local trade among
the West Indian islands. A new shipyard and a dry-dock were hurriedly
built; and there was keen competition for ship-carpenters. In 1753
_L'Algonkin_, a frigate of seventy-two guns, was successfully launched.
The shipwrights experimented freely with Canadian woods, of which the
white oak proved the best. But the Canadian-built vessels for {62}
transatlantic trade never seem to have equalled in number those that
came from France.

The restrictions on colonial trade were rigidly enforced; no
manufacture of goods was allowed in the colonies, and no direct trade
except with France and French possessions. Canada imported
manufactured goods and exported furs, timber, fish, and grain. The
deep-water tonnage required for Canada was not over ten or twelve
thousand, distributed among perhaps forty vessels on the European route
and twenty more that only visited the French West Indies. A complete
round trip usually meant a cargo of manufactures from France to Canada,
a cargo of timber, fish, and grain from Canada to the West Indies, and
a third cargo--of sugar, molasses, and rum--from the West Indies home
to France. Quite half the vessels, however, returned direct to France
with a Canadian cargo. Louisbourg was a universal port of call, the
centre of a partly contraband coasting trade with the British
Americans, and a considerable importing point for food-stuffs from
Quebec.

French commerce on the sea had, however, a mighty rival. The
e