As it was, the merchants in Montreal refused {33} to send up further supplies; his men remained unpaid; he even lacked a sufficient supply of food. There was nothing for it but to turn back, make the long journey to Montreal and Quebec, and there do his utmost to arrange matters. He had already sunk from 40,000 to 50,000 livres in the enterprise. In all justice, the king should assume the expense of further explorations in quest of the Great Sea. The governor, the Marquis de Beauharnois, shared this view, and had already pressed the court to grant La Vérendrye the assistance he so urgently needed. 'The outlay,' he wrote to the king's minister, Maurepas, 'will not be great; the cost of the _engagés_ [hired men] for three years, taking into account what can be furnished from the king's stores, would not exceed 30,000 livres at most.' The king, however, refused to undertake the expense of the expedition. Those who had assumed the task should, he thought, be in a position to continue it by means of the profits derived from their monopoly of the fur trade. The facts did not justify the royal view of the matter. La Vérendrye had enjoyed the monopoly for two or three years--with the result that he was now very heavily, indeed alarmingly, in debt. {34} His was not a nature, however, to be crushed by either indifference or opposition. He had reached the parting of the ways. Nothing was to be hoped for from the court. He must either abandon his enterprise or continue it at his own risk and expense. He went to Montreal and saw his partners. With infinite patience he suffered their unjust reproaches. He was neglecting their interests, they grumbled. The profits were not what they had a right to expect. He thought too much of the Western Sea and not enough of the beavers. He was a dreamer, and they were practical men of business. What could La Vérendrye say that would have weight with men of this stamp? Should he tell them of the glory that would accrue to his and their country by the discovery of the Western Sea? At this they would only shrug their shoulders. Should he tell them of the unseen forces that drew him to that wonderful land of the West--where the crisp clear air held an intoxicating quality unknown in the East; where the eye foamed on and on over limitless expanses of waving green, till the mind was staggered at the vastness of the prospect; where the very largeness of nature seemed to enter into a man and to {35} crush out things petty and selfish? In doing this he would be beating the air. They were incapable of understanding him. They would deem him mad.