The natural products of a country are an important factor in making its people. Canada, as compared with most other fields of colonization, with Spanish America for instance, or the East Indies, was a poor land. It had practically no mineral wealth, though traces of iron and copper were found {334} in the region of Lake Superior. In the earlier part of the eighteenth century Charlevoix wrote: 'The first source of the ill fortune of this country, which is honoured with the name of New France, was the report which was at first spread through the kingdom that it had no mines; and they did not enough consider that the greatest advantage that can be drawn from a colony is the increase of trade. And to accomplish this, it requires people, and these peoplings must be made by degrees, so that it will not appear in such a kingdom as France.'[1] The great weakness of Canada was the paucity of the white population. Had mines been discovered, the colony would no doubt have been much stronger, for a far greater number of colonists would have come out from France; and, while the character of the people would have been, in a sense, at least as restless as it actually was, the restlessness would have been localized in the mining areas, which would have become large centres of population. [Footnote 1: Charlevoix's _Letters to the Duchess of Lesdiguières_, giving an account of a voyage to Canada (Eng. translation, 1763, p. 31). The letters began in 1720.] [Sidenote: _Agriculture, fisheries, and fur-trading._] In the absence of minerals Canada depended on agriculture, fisheries, and fur-trading. Of these three industries, agriculture alone conduced to permanent settlement. The fisheries did not directly much concern the life of the colony up the St. Lawrence river, for the fishing-grounds were mainly in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and on the coasts of Newfoundland and Acadia; nor did fishing, when the fishermen found their principal market in Europe, and were in great measure domiciled in Europe, contribute much to the colonization of North America. Fur-trading again, the great speciality of Canada, made for movement and for wandering life, not for colonization. This is pointed out by Charlevoix, who dwells upon the evil results of giving licences to trade, as encouraging vagabondism, and notes as {335} the second cause of the ill fortune of Canada, the want of resolution in its people, and their constant moving from place to place, instead of carefully selecting a place for settlement and staying there.[2] [Footnote 2: Charlevoix (as above), pp. 31-5.]