By this measure, trade at once sprang up with the Western Indians, since the French had no goods to offer them in any way to their liking at a reasonable price. Intercourse and familiarity ensued moreover in consequence; a fortified trading post was built at Oswego, which not only drew away trade from the French, at Michilimackinac and St. Marie, but from Albany and Moose as well. [Sidenote: Boundaries between French and English territory.] It has been observed that the ancient boundaries of Canada or New France were circumscribed by the Treaty of Utrecht, and that it is difficult to determine precisely the new boundaries assigned to it. The general interpretation adopted by the British geographers, as the country gradually became better known from that time up to the final cession of Canada, was that the boundary ran along the high lands separating the waters that discharged into the St. Lawrence from those that discharge into Hudson's Bay to the sources of the Nepigon River, and thence along the northerly division of the same range of high lands dividing the waters flowing direct to Hudson's Bay, from those flowing into Lake Winnipeg, and crossing the Nelson, or (as it was then known) the Bourbon River, about midway between the said Lake and Bay, thence passing to the west and north by the sources of Churchill River; no westerly boundary being anywhere assigned to Canada. This and other measures could have but one result: to make the French traders and the Government of New France perceive that their only hope to avert famine and bankruptcy lay in penetrating farther and farther into the west, in an effort to reach remote tribes, ignorant of true values and unspoilt by a fierce and ungenerous rivalry. It seems fitting to reserve the next chapter for a consideration of who and what the tribes were at this time inhabiting the territories granted by its charter to the Great Company; together with their numbers, their modes of life and relations with the factories. CHAPTER XIX. 1687-1712. Hudson's Bay Tribes Peaceful -- Effect of the Traders' Presence -- Depletion of Population -- The Crees and Assiniboines -- Their Habits and Customs -- Their Numbers -- No Subordination Amongst Them -- Spirituous Liquors -- Effect of Intemperance upon the Indian. Let us imagine for a moment that the Hudson's Bay Company had held traffic with the fierce and implacable Iroquois, the Mohawks or the courageous and blood-thirsty tribes of the Mississippi, instead of with the Crees and Assiniboines. How different would have been its early history! What frail protection would have been afforded by the forts and wooden palisades, often not stronger than that last fort of the Jesuits in the Huron country, the inmates of which were slaughtered so ruthlessly, or that other at Niagara, where the Chevalier de Troyes and ninety of his companions perished to a man.