English might irretrievably monopolise the entire of that trade which they now share with sufficient advantage. Demands some Panis, in order to indemnify the Indians who have surrendered some English prisoners. Ensigns Laronde and Chevalier de La Verendrye have also taken their departure; the first for Point Chagouamigon, and the second for the West Sea.

DISCOVERIES OF THE VERENDRYES, 1728-1750.

LES VARENNES DE VERENDRYE.

(From the French of Pierre Margry.*)

"There remains not even a vestige of the empire which we formerly flattered ourselves we had founded in America; and the men who sacrificed their lives there, have not received a sketch in our annals nor a line in our monuments." -Michel Chevalier.

In 1728, Peter Gaultier de Varenne, Sieur de la Verendrye, one of the sons of the Chevalier René Gaultier, Seigneur de Varenne, and for 22 years Governor of the City of Three Rivers, in New France, continued in sad obscurity in the territories which surround Lake Superior, a career whch had commenced brilliantly on the battle-fields of Europe.

A cadet in 1697, after two campaigns in America-the one in 1704, in New England, the other in Newfoundland in 1705 he spent the following year in Flanders, in the Grenadiers of the 1st Battalion of the Bretagne Regiment in which his eldest brother, afterwards killed in Italy, was then captain. His conduct in this regiment merited for him the most honourable mention. Notably at Malplaquet, finding the means of dis tinguishing himself amongst his comrades, "who themselves did wonders," he won the rank of lieutenant, having received nine wounds, from which he recovered, contrary to every hope, after having been left as dead upon the battle-field. This commencement gave promise of a brilliant future for one so young; but war had never been as destructive to the officers, of whom a great many perished of hunger.‡

M. de la Verendrye's father, a very fine man, who had no fault, says M. de Denonville, except the poverty which he bequeathed to his sons, forced him to return to Canada, there to accept a simple ensigncy to enable him to live.

This rank, which he partly owed to the recommendation of the Marquise de Vaudreuil,§ was inferior to the one he had so gallantly purchased with his wounds. Notwithstanding these claims to a better fortune, he, for seventeen years, vainly strove to obtain for his zeal and services a position equal to the one he had held under the Marshal de Villars. He had even several times requested permission to go to France, to obtain at Court, reparation for the oblivion in which he lived; and he grieved deeply at being unable to succeed.

But our misfortunes often form the path we have to traverse in order to attain a succes we had never hoped for. M. de la Verendrye gave new proof of this. He had at length obtained leave to go to France; and his first hopes would perhaps have been realized there, when, fortunately, he was detained by a circumstance which promised him glory conjoined with suffering. He went to the confines of the world whither he had been banished, and found the opportunity of making his name illustrious by the services he rendered his country-an advantage which men of mind esteem above honours, riches, and

* M. Margry is keeper of the Archives in the Department of Marine and the Colonies, at Paris, and all the correspondence which formerly passed between the French officials in Canada and the King and his Ministers, are in his possession. No higher authority could be cited than M. Margry, for no other has an equal opportunity of knowing the history of Canada, while under the Dominion of France. The following account appeared as a series of articles in the Moniteur during the Autumn of 1852.

+ Lettres de Maréchel de Contades.

Lavallée, Histoire de France, 2 Vols., 8vo., Chap. VI.

$ Etats du personnel de la Marine.

Mémoire de père de Gonor.

e. The circumstance I refer to was one of those enterprises which the conqueror of Rolland Barrin de la Galissonnière,* then Governor of Canada, pronounced to be, ause of its dangers, its fatigues, and its cost, nobler than open war." As that with M. de la Verendrye's name is associated is but little known even to those who of it, I will here give a slight sketch of it preliminary to a longer account which ppear elsewhere.

in 1728, M. de la Verendrye, who was then in command at Lake Nepigon, to the of Lake Superior, having received divers accounts of a river, whose course was westthought it might lead to the discovery of the Western Sea; in like manner as illusexplorers had in, the preceding century, believed-some that the Chickahominy, er of Virginia, and others, the Ohio and Mississippi,+ would conduct them to the ern Ocean. Consequently he thought to utilize these accounts; and with a man rgy action speedily follows mature consideration.

'he project of discovering by the interior a passage to the Grand Océan and by that na, which was proposed by our officers under Henry IV, Louis XIII, and Louis XIV, een taken up with renewed ardour during the Regency. Memorial upon memorial een presented to the Conseil de Marine respecting the advisability and the advantages king this discovery. Indeed the Père de Charlevoix was sent to America, and made eat journey from the north to the south of New France for the purpose of reliably ing the council as to the most suitable route to pursue in order to reach the rn Sea. But the ardour which, during the life of Philip of Orleans, animated the ment regarding the exploration of the west, became feeble and at length threatened otally extinguished, without any benefit being derived from the posts which they ready established in the country of the Sioux and at Kamanistigoya. When M. de drye came down to Michilimakinac with the intention of letting the Governor of lony know what information he had obtained from the savages respecting the river west, he met Father Gonor who had just arrived from the recently established posts Sioux, whither he had been sent during the preceding year as missionary. he Regent, in choosing between the two plans that Father Charlevoix presented to the close of his journey for the attainment of a knowledge of the Western Sea, h an unfortunate prudence, rejected the plan which it is true was the most expend uncertain-an expedition up the Missouri to its source and beyond-and decided olish a post amongst the Sioux. The Regent thus set aside the scheme which rds led Lewis and Clark to the Columbia; but he thought that through the estabt of this post more certain accounts than those already to hand would be obrespecting the route to the Grand Ocean, and that then would be the time to incur pense of the exploration. The post of the Sioux was consequently established in y Boucher de Montbrun and Father Guignas.§ Father Gonor, however, was to return without having been able to discover anything that could satisfy the exons of the Court respecting the Western Sea. The meeting at Michilimakinac . de la Verendrye, who, on his part was anxious to communicate to the Father the dge he sought, was equally pleasing to both the missionary and the officer. Each d what he desired-the one information, the other protection. Father Gonor arge of the memorials of M. de la Verendrye, and promised to support them, which rwards really did. Entering into the same idea as M. de la Verendrye, he conit would be preferable, in the interests of the discovery they had in view, to estaemselves with the Christinaux, or with the Assiniboëls, than to remain with the "This was also," wrote he, "the sentiment of Father Guignas, whom I have eard say that it was a vain endeavour to seek through the Sioux a path to the n Sea." The discovery of this sea, which for the fifty years following the death of r de la Salle, had been incessantly sought after, thus touched on a new and most

interesting epoch. Action and research were now to replace theory and conjecture. It is of these actions and researches that I now desire to give a summary.

Not contented with his first step, and after having obtained other information respecting the River of the West (Rivière du Couchant), and having secured amongst the Indians a brave and faithful guide, capable of conducting a convoy,* M. de la Verendrye himself went to Quebec to discuss with the Governor of New France the project he had formed of going to explore first the River of the Assiniboëls, and then the rivers situated towards Lake Ouinipigon, to within 500 leagues of Kamanistiguoya, thinking that at this distance one would be found leading to the sea.

The Governor who succeeded the Marquis de Vaudreuil (whose death occurred in 1725), was the Marquis Charles de Beauharnois, a member of a family that through its services, and its relationship to the Pontchartrains, held the highest positions in both the naval and colonial services. As captain of his ship, remarkable for his bravery in several combats, and particularly in 1707, on board the Achille,† he was not less distinguished by his extensive knowledge. For these several reasons he was not indifferent to the projects of M. de la Verendrye. In the preceding year even, M. de Beauharnois had already shown his sympathy, by restoring him to the rank he held in 1710. But he was induced also by another consideration to patronize the scheme.

The glories of discovery were not unknown to the Beauharnois family. One of the Governor's brothers, Claude de Beauharnois de Beaumont, had, as ensign of a ship, taken an active part in the discovery of the Mississippi, an enterprise undertaken by sea under D'Iberville and De Surgères; and in listening to M. de la Verendrye, he must have conceived the wish to add to this precedent in the history of his family the honour to be derived from promoting an undertaking of this kind. M. de Beauharnois had as an incentive the thought which formerly animated Samuel Champlain, the Récollets, the Jesuits and the Sulpicians, Jean Talon, the Count de Frontenac, the Cavalier de la Salle, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, and the Intendants Raudot, in the execution or the protection of those enterprises of which this last was the continuation. He hoped that from this expedition New France would gain considerable advantages as regarded both trade and science, and that great light would be thrown upon the geography of the new continent, even if the problem of the separation of America and Asia towards the north was not solved on this occasion, a problem proposed from the time of Cabot's voyage in 1497, and whose solution should have been the principal object of the expedition.

The West and the North-West of America being still unknown from California to Hudson's Bay, and the remote east of Asia being equally so, as well as the sea which in that direction divided the old world from the new, there were learned men who agreed with the navigators of the 16th century, that the union of the two continents was to be found in the latitude where Behring subsequently discovered the straits that bear his

name.

In 1718, Father Bobé, a priest of the Congrégation, who had strongly incited the Regent and his ministers to the discovery of the Western Sea, considered the space between New France and the Straits of Uriez as a vast territory. This ecclesiastic, who in other respects was a very learned man, thought that in travelling between the 47th and 70th degrees of latitude no sea would be found until the Gulf of Amur was reached, "which was formed by the countries of Japan, Tartary and Bourbonie." The latter name he gave to that imaginary country which it appeared to him should join America and Asia, and "by which"" as he says, "the Tartars and the Tartarised Israelites passed after the dispersion of Salmanazar, as is proved by the appearance of the Sioux, who resemble the Tartars." These chimeras of an enlightened man, believed in also by others no less so, led to the wish that France, placed by her possession of Canada in a position to realize the error, would send across North America an exploring expedition, which might dissipate the darkness resting upon the north-west of the continent.

M. de Beauharnois perceived without difficulty the importance of such an exploration, and by kindly receiving the proposal of M. de la Verendrye, he hoped to lift the veil

* Mémoire de la Verendrye, appended to the letter of M. de Beauharnois, of the 10th October, 1730. + Gazette de France, Personnel de la Marine.

Mémoire pour la découverte de la mer de l'Ouest, présenteé en Avril, 1718.

hid the ends of the world. Unfortunately, not daring to take that initiative which time, and under the pretext of this discovery, was taken by the Governor of na, M. de Bienville, a man less honest than he, he found himself unable to do anyxcept under conditions which would take the honour of making the discovery of stern Sea from France. The Russians were our rivals in the project. Before his Peter the Great, who came to Paris in April, 1717, two months after William had presented his memoir on the Western Sea to the Regent, called to mind as conversations with that great geographer, as his promises to the Academy of * and he determined that the space between Asia and America should be exy the east His successors, in compliance with the orders contained in his will, as his last act on behalf of Russia, concluded to despatch Vitus Behring and Thschiho were to advance eastwards to the Western Sea, and so reach America, while the officers, by a singular coincidence, would (under the government of one whose ephews were to approach the throne of Peter the Great), explore the interior of ern territories.

the one party were to be aided by their Princes whilst the others would have to solely on themselves, notwithstanding the kindness of the Governors of Canada e unable to proffer them anything but sympathy.

er M. de Beauharnoist had examined, with Chaussegros de Lery, the engineer, which had been made by the savage Ochagach, whom M. de la Verendrye chose he agreed with that engineer that New France "being traversed by two large having their sources in the centre, the one-the St. Lawrence-flowing to the the other the Mississippi-to the south, there could not be a tract of the 7 or 800 leagues to the westward without being likewise crossed by a large Such a thing would be contrary to all that had been ascertained in other counere so extensive a tract is always traversed by a large river. This argument the reports of the savages probable, from which, and considering the rumb line e the river, M. de Beauharnois and M. de Lery thought they could reach either ry discovered by D'Aguilar, or some other below California.

se considerations gave the Governor some hopes of success, which were increased aracter and tried intrepidity of M. de la Verendrye, whose family held desd positions in the army and church, and even in the Sovereign Council, where one others held the position of Conseiller-clerc. To him therefore he confided the of the enterprise of which he himself was the patron. Still as he was not blind any difficulties of such an enterprise, he deemed it prudent that before travelling such extensive and unknown countries, the explorer should feel his way and at s establish a post beyond the known limits, so that after having entered into relan the Indians he might penetrate further. M. de Beauharnois doubtlessly hoped n he would be able to speak with a better knowledge of facts, he would obtain the rotection for the men who so generously devoted themselves to this enterprise. He ed M. de la Verendrye to first establish a post on Lake Ouinipigon with 50 men ssionary, and he gave him in order to surmount the difficulties of the establishprofits of the exclusive right to the fur trade. Anxious to commence, M. de rye, by an agreement, signed on the 19th May, 1731, in presence of M. de e, Governor of Montreal, entered into partnership with certain persons who goods and equipments, and on the 26th August, after having passed Michilimahere he secured Father Messager as missionary, he found himself at the Grand of Lake Superior, 15 leagues to the S. S. W. of Kamanistigoya.

e beginnings of his enterprise proved to M. de la Verendrye how great the nd expense entailed by such an exploration. He had taken but a few steps in rness when he again placed himself, his nephew, and his two sons at the disposal nistry for the purpose of commencing the expedition. On the 10th of October, years after the departure of M. de la Verendrye, the Governor and his adminHocquart, wrote to M. de Maurepas: "M. de la Jemerays, a nephew of M. de la

Verendrye, informed us that if His Majesty would bear the expense, it would be easy to succeed in discovering the Western Sea; that at present they are at Lake Ouinipigon, but that they and their companions were perfectly unable to undertake this enterprise, having lost more than 43,000 livres, and the voyageurs would not go further without being paid what was due them, nor would those who had equipped the expedition advance any more goods to enable them to continue their journey. The outlay, monseigneur," added they, "will not be great; the cost of the engagés for three years, taking into account what can be furnished from the king's stores, would not, according to the calculations we made in presence of M. de la Jemerays, exceed 30,000 livres at the most. We have the honour to mention that by the agreement we cannot oblige them to go beyond Lake Ouinipigon, which we did not believe was at so great a distance." A reply was received from the Court that it was not expedient for the king to undertake the expense proposed by MM. de Beauharnois and Hocquart, and that those who had undertaken the enterprise should be in a condition to continue it by means of the profits derived from their privilege of the fur trade. The same words pretty nearly were repeated on 12th April, 1735.

The die was cast. M de la Verendrye had either to abandon the enterprise or continue it alone at his own risk and peril, without any other means than the privilege of trade. With only this alternative he followed the dictates of honour which bade him brave dangers and impose self-sacrifices. He was already burdened with the debt of the first equipment, and he now assumed that of the second. He employed his nephew and three of his sons, and prepared a fourth, 18 years old, to accompany his brothers the following year, causing him to be taught the art of making plans and drawing maps; and he busied himself with this enterprise, which notwithstanding all obstacles, enabled him to obtain by his energy such great results, as to shed a lasting brilliancy upon his own name and upon that of the man who had encouraged his efforts.

II.

The chief honour that M. de la Verendrye won from his enterprise was owing not to his success, but to his struggles against obstacles more easily imagined than understood at this distant day. However, we must remark that his greatest trials were not due to his enterprise in itself, but to the false and embarrassing position in which he continually found himself, without other provision than the fur trade and its profits.

The fur trade, imposed or accepted as the means of meeting the expenses of the discovery, had in countries so distant as those into which he was to penetrate, the disadvantage of retarding the explorers, who, in obtaining subsistence and provisions, consumed in travelling between Montreal and the countries they were exploring, a precious portion of the time, strength and energy, which should have been employed in pressing forward. The necessity of trading brought with it that of the establishment of befitting posts to attract the savages, and of placing landmarks on the route, which, as it took men, time, and money, tightened the circle of difficulties by which M. de la Verendrye was surrounded. As he was inevitably obliged to obtain by trade all the means required for advancing his explorations, he was compelled to see himself by turns tormented on the one hand by the Ministry, which was dissatisfied with the progress of the exploration, and on the other by his covetous associates, who were anxious to recover, with high interest, the price of the equipments.

Thus it happened that M. de la Verendrye, was incessantly harrassed by his associates, and reproached nearly as often by the ministery whose half protection he had obtained. In fact if M. de Maurepas had but given even the degree of protection which should have been accorded the explorer on the advice of Father Charlevoix*-who spoke with the same freedom with which he wrote his History of New France-he might have concluded that he had done enough. The Reverend Father, to whom the project of M. de la Verendrye had been communicated, at first failed to realize that as the measure of the king's protection was greater or lesser, so would the execution of the enterprise be affected; and he finally made light of the difficulties of the exploration. He said "that these establishments were

* Mémoire du Père Charlevoix, 10th October, 1751.