* On the fur trade the documents consulted are very numerous. The following are the most important: Mémoire sur ce qui concerne le Commerce du Castor et ses dépendances, 1715; Mémoire concernant le Commerce le Traite entre les François et les Sauvages, 1691; Mémoire sur le Canada addressé au Régent, 1715; Mémoire sur les Affaires de Canada dans leur Estât présent, 1696; Mémoire des Négotiants de la Rochelle qui font Commerce en Canada sur la Proposition de ne plus recevoir les Castors et d'engager les Habitants a la Culture des Terres et Pesche de la Molue, 1696; Mémoire du Sr. Riverin sur la Traite et la Ferme du Castor, 1696; Mémoire touchant le Commerce du Canada, 1687, etc. of the wilderness. Not only were the possible profits great; but, in the pursuit of them, there was a fascinating element of adventure and danger. The bush-rangers or _coureurs de bois_ were to the king an object of horror. They defeated his plans for the increase of the population, and shocked his native instinct of discipline and order. Edict after edict was directed against them; and more than once the colony presented the extraordinary spectacle of the greater part of its young men turned into forest outlaws. But severity was dangerous. The offenders might be driven over to the English, or converted into a lawless banditti, renegades of civilization and the faith. Therefore, clemency alternated with rigor, and declarations of amnesty with edicts of proscription. Neither threats nor blandishments were of much avail. We hear of seigniories abandoned; farms turning again into forests; wives and children left in destitution. The exodus of the _coureurs de bois_ would take, at times, the character of an organized movement. The famous Du Lhut is said to have made a general combination of the young men of Canada to follow him into the woods. Their plan was to be absent four years, in order that the edicts against them might have time to relent. The intendant Duchesneau reported that eight hundred men out of a population of less than ten thousand souls had vanished from sight in the immensity of a boundless wilderness. Whereupon the king ordered that any person going into the woods without a license should be whipped and branded for the first offence, and sent lor life to the galleys for the second. * The order was more easily given than enforced. “I must not conceal from you, monseigneur,” again writes Duchesneau, “that the disobedience of the _coureurs de bois_ has reached such a point that everybody boldly contravenes the king’s interdictions; that there is no longer any concealment; and that parties are collected with astonishing insolence to go and trade in the Indian country. I have done all in my power to prevent this evil, which may cause the ruin of the colony. I have enacted ordinances against the _coureurs de bois_; against the merchants who furnish them with goods; against the gentlemen