Nor need the fate of the mutineers be told here. The fate of mutineers is the same the world over. Having slain their commander, they fell on one another and perished, either at one another's hands or among the Indians. As for the colonists of men, women, and girls left in Texas, the few who were not massacred by the Indians fell into the hands of the Spaniards. La Salle's debts at the time of his death were what would now be half a million dollars. His life had ended in what the world calls ruin, but France entered into his heritage.
With the passing of Robert de La Salle passes the heroic age of Canada,—its age of youth's dream. Now was to come its manhood,—its struggles, its wars, its nation building, working out a greater destiny than any dream of youth.
CHAPTER VIII
FROM 1679 TO 1713
Radisson quarrels with company—Up Labrador coast—Radisson captures his rivals—Radisson ordered back to England—Death of Radisson—Jan Peré the spy—The raid on Moose Factory—Sargeant besieged
Before leaving for France, Jean Talon, the Intendant, had set another exploration in motion. English trade was now in full sway on Hudson Bay. In possession of the Mississippi, the Ohio, the Illinois, the Great Lakes, France controlled all avenues of approach to the Great Northwest except Hudson Bay. This she had lost through injustice to Radisson; and already the troublesome question had come up,—What was to be the boundary between the fur-trading domain of the French northward from the St. Lawrence and the fur-trading domain of the English southward from Hudson Bay. Fewer furs came down to Quebec from Labrador, the King's Domain, from Kaministiquia (Fort William), the stamping ground of Duluth, the forest ranger. The furs of these regions were being drained by the English of Hudson Bay.
Talon determined to put a stop to this, and had advised Frontenac accordingly. August, 1671, Governor Frontenac dispatched the English Jesuit—Father Albanel—with French guides and Indian voyageurs to set up French arms on Hudson Bay and to bear letters to Radisson and Groseillers. The journey was terrific. I have told the story elsewhere. Autumn found the voyageurs beyond the forested shores of the Saguenay and Lake St. John, ascending a current full of boiling cascades towards Lake Mistassini. Then the frost-painted woods became naked as antlers, with wintry winds setting the dead boughs crashing; and the ice, thin as mica, forming at the edges of the streams, had presently thickened too hard for the voyageurs to break with their paddles. Albanel and his comrades wintered in the Montaignais' lodges, which were banked so heavily with snow that scarcely a breath of pure air could penetrate the stench. By day the priest wandered from lodge to lodge, preaching the gospel. At night he was to be found afar in the snow-padded solitudes of the forest engaged in prayer. At last, in the spring of 1672, thaw set the ice loose and the torrents rushing. Downstream on June 10 launched Albanel, running many a wild-rushing rapid, taking the leap with the torrential waters over the lesser cataracts, and avoiding the larger falls by long detours over rocks slippery as ice, through swamps to a man's armpits. The hinterland of Hudson Bay, with its swamps and rough portages and dank forests of unbroken windfall, was then and is to-day the hardest canoe trip in North America; but towards the end of June the French canoes glided out on the arm of the sea called James Bay, hoisted the French flag, and in solemn council with the Indians presented gifts to induce them to come down the Saguenay to Quebec. Fort Rupert, the Hudson's Bay Company's post, consisted of two barrack-like log structures. When Albanel came to the houses he found not a soul, only boxes of provisions and one lonely dog.
A few weeks previously the men of the English company had gone on up the west coast of Hudson Bay, prospecting for the site of a new settlement. Before Albanel had come at all, there was friction among the English. Radisson and Groseillers were Catholics and French, and they were supervisors of the entire trade. Bayly, the English governor, was subject to them. So was Captain Gillam, with whom they had quarreled long ago, when he refused to take his boat into Hudson Straits on the voyage from Port Royal. Radisson and Groseillers were for establishing more posts up the west coast of Hudson Bay, farther from the competition of Duluth's forest rovers on Lake Superior. They had examined the great River Nelson and urged Bayly, the English governor, to build a fort there. Bayly sulked and blustered by turns. In this mood they had come back to Prince Rupert to find the French flag flying above their fort and the English Jesuit, Albanel, snugly ensconced, with passports from Governor Frontenac and personal letters for Radisson and Groseillers.