At Quebec, Frontenac did what he could to promote the bold designs of La Salle. Nevertheless, the explorer had been forced to furnish his own men and supplies, getting trading privileges in return--an arrangement by which the King had all the glory without any of the risk. There were those in Quebec, indeed, who suspected the Governor of having a personal interest in La Salle's adventures, and enemies were not slow to credit him further with a share in profits from illegal trade in furs. The Intendant Duchesneau fomented these suspicions, and his letters to the King and the minister were filled with black charges against Frontenac. The latter, in his turn, called the Intendant to account; and Quebec was then ranged into two camps--the Bishop and the Jesuits siding with the Intendant, while the Récollet friars and the merchants supported Frontenac. Every ship carried home to France a budget of letters filled with charges and countercharges, until it became apparent to the Court that a bitter civil strife was raging in the distant colony; and the King, unable to judge between the antagonists, finally recalled them both. The new Governor, La Barre, met with ill-omens on arrival. His predecessor had scarce departed when Quebec was visited by the first of those destructive fires which were destined to rage so often through its winding streets. The summer of 1682 had been exceptionally dry, and on the night of the 4th of August a fire began in the house of Étienne Planchon and spread with dreadful speed over the whole of Lower Town. Fifty-five houses were burnt to the ground on this occasion, and Lower Town became a heap of ashes. One house alone escaped, that of the merchant Aubert de la Chesnaye; and more than half the wealth of Canada was destroyed. If so be that misfortunes ever come singly, the history of Quebec at least has never been able to afford an example; and as if destructive fire were an insufficient visitation of angry fate, other misfortunes, no less cruel, now came upon the city. In these years, indeed, it seemed that Nature herself was leagued with the enemies of Quebec; for in the _Jesuit Relations_ we have a circumstantial if highly imaginative account of a violent earthquake which visited the Province in 1663:--