CHAPTER XXIV.

1763-1770.

Effect of the Conquest on the Fur-trade of the French -- Indians again Seek the Company's Factories -- Influx of Highlanders into Canada -- Alexander Henry -- Mystery Surrounding the _Albany_ Cleared Up -- Astronomers Visit Prince of Wales' Fort -- Strike of Sailors -- Seizure of Furs -- Measures to Discourage Clandestine Trade.

[Sidenote: Effect of the Conquest.]

The conquest of Canada by the English in 1760[68] had an almost instantaneous effect upon the fur-trade of the French. The system of licenses was swept away with the _régime_ of Intendants of New France. The posts which, established chiefly for purposes of trade, were yet military, came to be abandoned, and the officers who directed them turned their disconsolate faces towards France, or to other lands where the flag of the lily still waved. The English colonies were not devoid of diligent traders ready to pursue their calling advantageously: but they shrank from penetrating a country where the enemy might yet lurk, a country of whose approaches, and of whose aspect or inhabitants they knew nothing and feared everything. As for the Indians themselves, they, for a time, awaited patiently the advent of the French trader. Spring came and found them at the deserted posts. They sought but they could not find; "their braves called loudly, but the sighing trees alone answered their call." Despair at first filled the bosoms of the Red men when they found that all their winter's toil and hardships in the forest and over the trail had been in vain. They waited all summer, and then, as the white trader came not, wearily they took up their burdens and began their journey anew.

For a wise Indian had appeared amongst them, and he had said: "Fools, why do you trust these white traders who come amongst you with beads, and fire-water and crucifixes? They are but as the crows that come and are gone. But there are traders on the banks of the great lake yonder who are never absent, neither in our time nor in the time of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers. They are like the rock which cannot be moved, and they give good goods and plenty, and always the same. If you are wise you will go hence and deal with them, and never trust more the traders who are like fleas and grasshoppers--here one minute and flown away the next."

More than one factor of the Company heard and told of this oft-spoken harangue, and many there lived to testify to its effect upon the assembled Indians. Not even was it forgotten or disregarded years afterwards in the height of the prosperity of the Northmen, whose arts of suasion were exercised in vain to induce the Red man to forego his journey to York, Churchill or Cumberland.

"No," they would say, "we trade with our friends, as our grandfathers