They had already assumed this right, without waiting for the royal license; but thus far it had profited them little. The _gentilhomme_ was not a good shopkeeper, nor, as a rule, was the shop-keeper’s vocation very lucrative in Canada. The domestic trade of the colony was small; and all trade was exposed to such vicissitudes from the intervention of intendants, ministers, and councils, that at one time it was almost banished. At best, it was carried on under conditions auspicious to a favored few and withering to the rest. Even when most willing to work, the position of the _gentilhomme_ was a painful one. Unless he could gain a post under the Crown, which was rarely the case, he was as complete a political cipher as the meanest _habitant_. His rents were practically nothing, and he had no capital to improve his seigniorial estate. By a peasant’s work he could gain a peasant’s living, and this was all. The prospect was not inspiring. His long initiation of misery was the natural result of his position and surroundings; and it is no matter of wonder that he threw himself into the only field of action which in time of peace was open to him. It was trade, but trade seasoned by adventure and * Lettre de Meules au Ministre, 1685. ennobled by danger; defiant of edict and ordinance, outlawed, conducted in arms among forests and savages,--in short, it was the Western fur trade. The tyro was likely to fail in it at first, but time and experience formed him to the work. On the Great Lakes, in the wastes of the Northwest, on the Mississippi and the plains beyond, we find the roving _gentilhomme_, chief of a gang of bushrangers, often his own _habitants_; sometimes proscribed by the government, sometimes leagued in contraband traffic with its highest officials, a hardy vidette of civilization, tracing unknown streams, piercing unknown forests, trading, fighting, negotiating, and building forts. Again we find him on the shores of Acadia or Maine, surrounded by Indian retainers, a menace and a terror to the neighboring English colonist. Saint-Castin, Du Lhut, La Durantaye, La Salle, La Motte-Cadillac, Iberville, Bienville, La Vérendrye, are names that stand conspicuous on the page of half-savage romance that refreshes the hard and practical annals of American colonization. But a more substantial debt is due to their memory. It was they, and such as they, who discovered the Ohio, explored the Mississippi to its mouth, discovered the Rocky Mountains, and founded Detroit, St. Louis, and New Orleans.