At the Seigniory of de Senneville this was a busy time. The Seignior, Jacques Le Ber, had been superintending the gathering of his harvests. A far-sighted and thrifty man in business affairs, while the whole colony existed in a state of extreme penury he had contrived to accumulate great wealth. To him the New World had proved wonderfully profitable. The Western fur trade had led to fortune. Indomitable energy and sound judgment aided him to overcome the difficulties under which the new country labored, while experience, joined to natural shrewdness, taught how to steer safely between the varying official interests which in turn directed the colony. The ravages of the caterpillars had left little harvest to gather, and had it not been for the marvellous incursion of squirrels, which fairly swarmed over the land, many of the people must have starved. Broken, uneven fields stretched to the borders of the forest. Amidst the stumps and prostrate trees of the unsightly clearing, the colonists pursued their labors, protected by a body of regulars whom the merchants had brought from Ville Marie. At short distances sentinels were posted to give the alarm at any sign of approaching danger. These were troublous times for the handful of French settlers scattered amidst the savage hordes and half-reclaimed forests of the New World. Amid tangled thickets and deep ravines, in the shade and stillness of columned woods, behind woody islets, everywhere there lurked danger and terror. The fierce and cruel Iroquois were on the war-path. These tireless savages owed their triumphs as much to craft as to their extraordinary boldness and bravery. They rarely approached the settlements in winter, when the trees and bushes had no leaves to conceal their advance, and when their movements would be betrayed by the track of their snowshoes, but they were always to be expected at the time of sowing and harvest, when it was possible to do the most mischief. Scarcely one of the little party collected at Senneville but had passed through scenes of grim horror. Though they chattered over their work with true Gallic light-heartedness and vivacity, most of them could have related experiences of the unsleeping hatred and cruelty of the Iroquois and the hardships of forest life.