The French colonies were rather over-governed. There was too much parson and a great deal too much squire to suit the average peasant, so all the best of the men took to the fur trade. They wore the Indian dress of long fringed deerskin, coon cap, embroidered moccasins, and a French sash like a rainbow. They lived like Indians, married among the tribes, fought in their wars; lawless, gay, gallant, fierce adventurers, the voyageurs of the rivers, the runners of the woods. With them went monks into the wilderness, heroic, saintly Jesuits and Franciscans, and some of the quaintest rogues in holy orders. And there were gentlemen, reckless explorers, seeking a way to China. Of this breed came La Salle, whose folk were merchant-princes at Rouen, and himself pupil and enemy of the Jesuits. At the time of the plague and burning of London he founded a little settlement on the island of Mount Royal, just by the head of the Rapids. His dream was the opening of trade with China by way of the western rivers, so the colonists, chaffing him, gave the name La Chine to his settlement and the rapids. To-day the railway trains come swirling by, with loads of tea from China to ship from Montreal, but not to France. During La Salle’s first five years in the wilderness he discovered the Ohio and the Illinois, two of the head waters of the Mississippi. The Indians told him of that big river, supposed to be the way to the Pacific. A year later the trader Joliet, and the Jesuit Saint Marquette descended the Mississippi as far as the Arkansas. So La Salle dreamed of a French empire in the west, shutting the English between the Appalachians and the Atlantic, with a base at the mouth of the Mississippi for raiding the Spanish Indies, and a trade route across the western sea to China. All this he told to Count Frontenac, the new governor general, a man of business who saw the worth of the adventure. Frontenac sent La Salle to talk peace with the Iroquois, while he himself founded Fort Frontenac at the outlet of Lake Ontario. From here he cut the trade routes of the west, so that no furs would ever reach the French traders of Montreal or the English of New York. The governor had not come to Canada for his health.