Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 26, 2025
The merchants, La Chesnaye, Le Ber, and Le Moyne, were at the head of the faction with which La Barre had identified himself; and their hatred of La Salle knew no bounds. If we are to believe La Potherie, he himself had formerly, in defence of his monopolies, told the Iroquois that they might plunder the canoes of traders who had not a pass from him.
The authorities of New France were enraged when they learned that La Chesnaye had sent an expedition to the North Sea. In the meantime Frontenac had been replaced by another governor, La Barre. Tax collectors beset the ships like rats long before Quebec was sighted, and practically confiscated the cargo in fines and charges.
Fools and children unconsciously do wise things by mistake, as you know; and 'twas such an unwitting act sprung M. Radisson's plans and let the prize out of the trap. "Sink me an you didn't promise the loan of twenty men to hold the fort!" exclaimed Ben, stepping down. "Twenty and more and welcome," cried Radisson eagerly. "Then send Ramsay and Monsieur La Chesnaye back," put in Ben quickly.
For three days we wandered with nothing to eat but wild birds done to death by the gale. On the third day the storm abated; but it was still snowing too heavily for us to see a man's length away. Two or three times the caribou tossed up their heads sniffing the air suspiciously, and La Chesnaye fell to cursing lest the wolf-pack should stampede the herd.
Indeed, for the rubbing together of more doubloons in his money-bags I think that La Chesnaye's servile nature would have bargained to send souls in job lots blindfold over the gangplank. But, as La Chesnaye said when Pierre Radisson remonstrated against the knavery, the gin was nine parts rain-water. "The more cheat, you, to lay such unction to your conscience," says M. de Radisson.
The door blows open, and with a gust of wind a silent figure blows in. 'Tis Le Borgne, the one-eyed, who has taken to joining our men of a merry night, which M. de Radisson encourages; for he would have all the Indians come freely. "Ha!" says Radisson, "I thought 'twas the men I sent to spy if the marsh were safe crossing. Give Le Borgne tobacco, La Chesnaye.
La Chesnaye had been sent out to Canada to look after the affairs of a Rouen fur-trading company. Soon he became a commissioner of the West Indies Company; and when the merchants of Quebec organized the Company of the North, La Chesnaye became a director.
After ward-room mess, with fare that kings might have envied teal and partridge and venison and a steak of beaver's tail, and moose nose as an entrée, with a tidbit of buffalo hump that melted in your mouth like flakes the commonalty, as La Chesnaye designated those who sat below the salt, would draw off to the far hearth.
No one knew better than he how bitterly the monopolists of Quebec would oppose Radisson's plans for a trip to Hudson Bay; but the prospects were alluring. La Chesnaye was deeply involved in the fur trade and snatched at the chance of profits to stave off the bankruptcy that reduced him to beggary a few years later.
It requires no flight of the imagination to appreciate the rage Frontenac must have felt when, on returning to Canada, he saw before his eyes the effects of La Barre's rapacity and Denonville's perfidy, of which the massacres of Lachine and La Chesnaye furnished the most ghastly proofs. But in these two cases the element of tragedy was so strong as to efface the mood of exasperation.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking