"I
cannot tell you," wrote one governor, "how attractive this life is to
all our youth. It consists in doing nothing, caring nothing, following
every inclination, and getting out of the way of all restraint." In
any case the ranks of the voyageurs included those who had the best
and most virile blood in the colony.
Just how many Frenchmen, young and old, were engaged in the lawless
and fascinating life of the forest trader when the fur traffic was at
its height cannot be stated with exactness. But the number must have
been large. The intendant Duchesneau, in 1680, estimated that more
than eight hundred men, out of a colonial population numbering less
than ten thousand, were off in the woods. "There is not a family of
any account," he wrote to the King, "but has sons, brothers,
uncles, and nephews among these _coureurs-de-bois_." This may be an
exaggeration, but from references contained in the dispatches of
various royal officials one may fairly conclude that Duchesneau's
estimate of the number of traders was not far wide of the mark. And
there is other evidence as to the size of this exodus to the woods.
Nicholas Perrot, when he left Montreal for Green Bay in 1688, took
with him one hundred and forty-three voyageurs.[1] La Hontan found
"thirty or forty _coureurs-de-bois_ at every post in the Illinois
country."[2]
[Footnote 1: _Documents Relative to the Colonial History of New York_,
ix., 470.]
[Footnote 2: _Voyages_ (ed.
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