Eight years had now passed since the founding of Quebec. Lakes Huron and Ontario had been reached, the Ottawa route had been explored, the friendship of the Hurons had been secured at the price of enmity with the Iroquois, missionaries were converting or trying to convert the Indians, and fur trading was briskly carried on; but colonization had made as yet little or no way. There were a few permanent residents at Quebec; but lower down at Tadoussac, and higher up at Three Rivers and Montreal, where in the summer white men and coloured foregathered to exchange their wares, in the winter no Frenchmen were to be found, unless it were one or other of the much enduring Recollet missionaries. In France it was the trade of Canada, not its settlement, that was matter of concern. As in the case of Newfoundland, the merchants of the western seaports of England set themselves to keep the island from being permanently colonized, anxious that the fishing traffic should remain in their own hands: so in the case of Canada, the merchants of the western seaboard of France regarded colonization as at best a useless expense, at worst a measure by which they might lose command of the fur trade. The climate of Newfoundland and of the St. Lawrence region was not such as to induce Englishmen or Frenchmen to make these lands their homes. Rather they seemed places for summer trips alone, to be left in winter icebound and desolate. Trade interests and nature combined to check the colonization of Canada; that anything was done in the way of settlement in the early years of the seventeenth century was due to missionary enthusiasm and to the foresight and tenacity of Champlain. [Sidenote: _Dispute among French traders._] [Sidenote: _Company of the One Hundred Associates formed by Richelieu._] He had formed a company of merchants, chiefly connected with Rouen and St. Malo, who nominally controlled the trade of the St. Lawrence; but they were not at one amongst themselves, some were Catholics, others were Huguenots, while the merchants of La Rochelle refused to join the combination, {70} and traded in defiance of the monopoly which the rival towns claimed to possess. Various changes followed. About the beginning of 1620, Condé was succeeded as Viceroy of New France by the Duc de Montmorency, and in 1625 the latter sold his office to his nephew the Duc de Ventadour. In 1621, the privileges enjoyed by the Rouen and St. Malo company were transferred to two Huguenot merchants, the brothers De Caen: the result was ill feeling, and on the St. Lawrence open feuds between the old and the new monopolists, until in 1623 some kind of union was formed. Eventually, in 1627, all former privileges were annulled, and the control of Canada passed into the hands of a new strong company, known as the One Hundred Associates, at the head of which was Richelieu. [Sidenote: _Building of the fort at Quebec._]