In the meantime New France had entered upon a season of unexpected peace--unexpected because for at least two generations the conflict with the English colonists had been so continuous that Quebec had almost come to regard warfare as her normal state. The respite following upon the Treaty of Utrecht was the more welcome; and in that breathing space of almost thirty years it seemed as if a real prosperity had at last visited the St. Lawrence. The cultivation of flax and hemp and the weaving of cloth, which had been but a feeble industry since the days of Talon, now assumed real importance. Furs were still the main resource of the colony; but grain, fish, oil, and leather also found their way to France in increasing quantities. Quebec became the centre of a considerable shipping trade, and sea-going vessels were launched from the stocks on the bank of the little St. Charles. Moreover, the energies of the people presently found another and alluring field. In 1716 a missionary to the Sault Indians discovered the gensing root, which, as a medical drug, was quoted in European markets at its weight in silver. At first its price in Quebec was only forty sols per pound, but when the people saw its value rising to almost as many _livres_, the rush of searchers to the woods left all other industries at a standstill. Agriculture furnished a slow road to wealth by comparison with the hunt of the gensing plant, and Quebec passed through the fever of a modern gold-rush. Natural and economic conditions, however, had provided their own remedy; and in time the glut of the market and the extirpation of the gensing plant sent the feverish botanists back to their wonted pursuits. Then ensued a period of peace and quiet progress, of patriotic co-operation of the officials and the people for the good of the land. In 1725 the long and beneficent rule of the first Vaudreuil came to an end, and the Marquis de Beauharnois succeeded to the governorship of Quebec. The features of this and the succeeding administrations were the further expansion westward of New France and the construction of that chain of forts by which she sought finally to fasten her grip upon the continent. One by one these fortresses rose up in the far wilderness to hem in the English between the sea and the Alleghanies, and one by one they were demolished, as England and her colonies slowly rolled down the curtain on the drama of French dominion in North America. Nearer home, also, that is to say, nearer to Quebec, French enterprise had taken the form of building and manning forts; and as the fate of these scattered strongholds closely affects the story of Quebec, a brief outline of their location is here given.