history from the mission to the Mackinaw of the fisherman and tourist of to-day. The beginnings made in Lower Michigan bear such important relations to facts of larger moment that time must be taken to point them out. In previous chapters I have spoken of the English colonists as contented with their prosaic life, and as not seeking to enter the regions beyond the Mountains and the Lakes. This requires some qualification. Within the State of New York are the Hudson and the Mohawk Rivers. The Dutch, having a passion for beaver equal to that of the French themselves, early occupied the confluence of the two streams, and then began throwing out advanced settlements along the line. of the smaller one. The English conquest of the Dutch colony did not at once change its character. Furs long continued the leading staple of its commerce. The two rivers presented the readiest means of reaching the West found south of the St. Lawrence. From the very first, the people of New York cultivated good feeling and commercial relations with their neighbors of the "Long House;" and these, whether in peace or war, were able to influence all the tribes to the very sources of the Mississippi. After they had crushed the Hurons, these intractable warriors claimed Southwestern Canada as their own; and after their Western conquests they set up a claim to all the lands to the Mississippi, south of the southern boundary of Michigan. No nation was ever more jealous than the Six Nations; but the skilful diplomatists of New York succeeded in winning from them many valuable concessions, some of which they did and some of which they did not understand. These will be more fully noticed in another place; but here it is important to remark that after the colony had passed into English hands, they sometimes permitted the New York traders to pass through their country to the Lakes. Once on the shore of Lake Erie, the traders were but a few days' paddling from the best beaver-grounds in the whole Northwest-those of the lower Michigan Peninsula. "The region between Lake Erie and Saginaw was one of the great beaver-trapping grounds. The Huron, the Chippewas, the Ottawas, and even the Iroquois, from beyond Ontario, by turns sought this region in large parties for the capture of this game, from the earliest historic times. It is a region peculiarly adapted to the wants of this animal. To a great extent level, it is intersected by numerous water-courses, which have but moderate flow. At the head-waters and small inlets of these streams the beaver established his colonies. Here he dammed the streams, setting back the water over the flat lands, and creating ponds, in which were his habitations. Not one or two, but a series of such dams,,were constructed along each stream, so that very extensive surfaces became thus covered permanently with the flood. The trees were killed, and the land was converted into a chain of ponds and marshes, with intervening dry ridges. In time, by nature's recuperative process -the annual growth and decay of grasses and aquatic plantsthese filled with muck or peat, with occasional deposits of boglime, and the ponds and swales became dry again. numerous "Illustrations of this beaver-made country are enough in our immediate vicinity. In a semicircle of twelve miles around Detroit, having the river for base, and embracing about one hundred thousand acres, fully one-fifth part consists of marshy tracts or prairies, which had their origin in the work of the beaver. A little farther west, nearly one whole township, in Wayne County, is of this character."1 Such temptation as this the Dutch and English traders could not be expected to resist. When Denonville came to Canada as governor, in 1685, he found New France beset on either side. The English of Hudson Bay were seeking to draw the trade of the Northwestern tribes to those northern waters; the English of New York were seeking to draw it to Hudson River. The competition threatened to become too keen; for the Englishman offered cheaper goods, and the Indians liked his rum as well as they did the Frenchman's brandy. 1 Hubbard : Memorials of a Half Century, 362–363. But, more than this, Governor Dongan of New York had divined the ideas of La Salle, and had begun to counterwork them. He proposed that the English should enter the West, exclude the French, and limit them to the St. Lawrence. It was a war of ideas. It was at this time that New York obtained from the Iroquois the first of those concessions which afterward played so important a part in English policy, and became the basis of the New York claim to the Western country. The two mother countries were at peace; but Denonville and Dongan conducted a long correspondence growing out of the rival claims, often angry, sometimes bitter. The French governor sometimes despaired of his cause, although he triumphed in the end. The Iroquois were never friendly to the French, and often hostile; and they now strove to alienate the Northwestern tribes from them. But Denonville had some great advantages over his rival. He was absolute in Canada, and was thoroughly supported by his king, while Dongan was wholly unsupported. The English king was a creature of Louis XIV.'s, and the colonies other than New York, although Dongan was upholding their common cause, were wholly indifferent to the issue. Still he might have won but for one force that he was powerless to overcome: he had no weapon that he could oppose to the French coureurs des bois. These redoubtable bush-rangers, always proud of their French blood and language, and always impatient of French authority; devoted to the King, but caring nothing for his law; leading a life picturesque and reckless; with the bravery and generosity of the traditional outlaw; familiar with every stream and at home in every forest; delighting in illicit trade; often under the ban of the governor; ready to confess themselves or quick to shed blood; rapidly succumbing to the hardships and dangers of their irregular life, but still more rapidly recruited from the settlements-the coureurs des bois now rendered to New France one of their greatest services. They had become so numerous that every family in Canada was said to have a member in the bush. They had great in |