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living, that they lost all love of domestic life, and all the civility of it. Many of them married Indian wives, and settled among Indians. These hunters would have become as unprincipled as the Bucaniers, if Catholic missionaries had not endeavoured to give them, and the Indians also, the principles of religion and honesty.

The hunters might have been waylaid and robbed, or their deposits of furs might have been stripped, but military posts, that is, fortifications and garrisons in them, were fixed at the confluence of the great lakes, to guard the frontier and protect the trade.

Some of the hunters have extended their enterprises twenty-five hundred miles into the interior to the banks of the Saskashawan River.

CHAPTER XIX.

WE have followed the French settlements in America to the time when Canada was surrendered to Britain, and briefly noticed the present circumstances of Canada. It is the object of this history to point out relations of events, as well as the events.

Those who understand what is meant by cause and consequence know what is meant by the relation of events. The French sent a colony to America. The first colonists were only acquainted with the country from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Montreal. Champlain, pleased with what he knew, penetrated westward to Lake Eric.

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He gave an interesting account of the country. Certain travellers and missionaries continued their discoveries, till they came to the river Mississippi; others sailed to its mouth, and went to France with intelligence that the river emptied into the Gulf of Mexico; and moreover related, that it flowed through an extensive and fertile country, and might become a valuable possession to France.

That country along the Mississippi was claimed by France, colonized by Frenchmen, and named, after the French king, Louis XIV., Louisiana. It was afterward sold by Bonaparte to the United States of America; and is now one of the United States, and a very important portion of our territory. Down to the settlement and naming of Louisiana, you see the relation of circumstances,-one preceding, caused the next in order.

In America, the men most active in the pursuit of knowledge were the missionaries of the Catholic Church. They came to the New World to instruct the natives in the religion which they believed; and they were eager to make themselves useful to Europeans by discoveries that might procure advantages to them.

Father Joseph Marquette, a Jesuit missionary, first entered the Mississippi, having started from Canada, and traversed the lakes and the wild woods till he came to the beautiful river. The Spaniards of Mexico had previously approached the banks of the Mississippi, but they had not found the embouchure, or mouth of this river.

About five years after the discovery of it by Marquette, Robert de la Salle, an adventurous and

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persevering traveller of the French nation, visited the Falls of Niagara; and during five ensuing years made himself well acquainted with the whole country from Quebec to the Mississippi.

In 1673, La Salle sailed down the Mississippi, and entered the Gulf of Mexico by the mouth of that river. He next went to France, and communicated to Louis XIV. the importance of the country watered by the great river. Louis afterward empowered him to conduct a colony thither, and the country on both sides of the Mississippi was called, in honour of the French king, Louisiana.

This colony from France went out to Louisiana, but did not reach the Mississippi. The river Mobile was then considered the eastern boundary, and the present State of Mississippi was included in what was then called Louisiana. The English on the east, and the Spaniards on the west, had no settled boundaries to their territories, so that Louisiana extended from the Gulf of Mexico indefinitely on both sides of the river.

But

French people at different periods for a century after the death of La Salle emigrated to Louisiana, and settled in different parts of the country. many of them looked for gold mines, and were disappointed in discovering them. Not till long after, when they had wasted time and money in digging for ore, were they convinced that the proper cultivation of the soil would afford them competency, which is better than riches.

Between 1732 and 1740, the population of Louisiana was increased by emigrants from France, and these being good farmers and respectable merchants, the labour of the former and the property

of the latter improved the condition of society in the country.

In 1763 Canada was ceded to Britain, and the French admitted that the boundary line which divided her thirteen colonies from Louisiana was the Mississippi. In that same year, France, taking little care for the province of Louisiana, and deriving from it no profit, yielded it to Spain.

Men do not like to receive new masters and new laws without their own consent. The grief which was manifested by the French colonies of Acadie, fifty years before, when they submitted themselves to the English, was not greater than that experienced by the people of Louisiana when a Spanish government succeeded to that of France.

In April, 1764, D'Abadie, the worthy governor of Louisiana, received orders to acquaint the colony under his control with the change of government. D'Abadie was one of the best of men. He loved his people like a father, and they felt for him the reverence due to a parent.

He dreaded to afflict them by this intelligence, and it was received with consternation throughout the province. For four years the Spaniards delayed to assume the government,-hoping perhaps that forbearance might reconcile those opposed to the succession.

In 1768, a Spanish force of a thousand men was sent to overcome all resistance, and the people of Louisiana would then have prevented their landing, but their magistrates restrained them. It is impossible for men to love because they are commanded to do so; and the French of Louisiana could with difficulty reconcile themselves to a

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Spanish government. Six respectable citizens were publicly executed at New-Orleans for their attachment to France; and then quiet, but not cordiality, succeeded to disorder in Louisiana.

For more than thirty years Louisiana was subject to Spain; but in 1800, Bonaparte represented to the King of Spain that France might defend Mexico, by possessing a station in America between the United States and that country; and once more Louisiana, yielded by the King of Spain, became subject to France.

No French government went into effect in Louisiana. Bonaparte thought it expedient to cede Louisiana to the United States; and as the country contained many valuable settlements, upon which the French and Spaniards had expended much money, the United States paid the French government about $15,000,000 for possession of this extensive territory.

The boundary line which separates Louisiana from the Spanish dominions, west and south-west of the former, runs along the River Sabine, and from that to the Arkansas River till it reaches the source; and thence along the forty-ninth parallel of latitude to the Pacific. The Russian possessions in North America extend to the forty-ninth parallel. The latter is the northern boundary of Louisiana, till it reaches the former United States' limits, somewhat west of Lake Superior.

This was the vast territory ceded to the United States by France in 1803. It is now divided into different states and territories by the United States' government. The whole of this important transaction was conducted in the most peaceable man