“As all Canada is only one vast forest without any roads they could not travel by land; they make their journeys on the rivers and the lakes in canoes that ordinarily contain each three men. These canoes are made of sheets of birch-bark smoothly stretched over very light and slender ribs of cedar wood. They are divided into six or seven or eight sections by light wooden bars which strengthen and hold together the sides of the canoe.... As an entire canoe cannot be made with a single sheet of bark the pieces which compose it are sewed together with the roots of the spruce tree, which are more flexible and white than the osier, and these seams are coated with a gum which the savages obtain from the spruce.... The savages, and especially their women, excel in the art of making these canoes, but few Frenchmen excel in it.... The coureurs des bois themselves propel their canoes with small paddles of hard wood, very light and smooth; the man at the rear of the canoe guides it, which is the part of their calling which requires skill. The two other men paddle ahead. A canoe properly manned can make more than fifteen leagues a day in still water.... When they meet rapids or waterfalls which cannot be passed they go ashore and unload the bales.... These, as well as the canoe, are carried on their backs and shoulders until they have passed the falls or rapids and find the river suitable for again embarking on it; and this is called ‘making portages.’... In such a canoe these three men embark at Quebec or Montreal to go three hundred, four hundred, and even five hundred leagues from the colony to procure beaver skins among savages, whom very often they have never seen.” As the fur trade was supposed to be a monopoly controlled by the King of France and granted by him to a Trading Company, many of these coureurs were in the service of the company on a commission basis, but there were others who took the risk of disposing of their furs to a greater advantage, and so were known as “free traders.” If one were to make any distinction between the coureurs and the voyageurs he would speak of the former as the hunters and the latter as those who transported the furs by water, but in general there was not a distinct difference except in large trading companies where the work was highly organized.