The Iroquois, who alone supply the English with considerable
beaver, have a deep interest in despoiling us of that advantage
by applying it to their own benefit. ¹

If not expelled thence [from Hudson Bay] they will get all
the fat beaver from an infinite number of nations at the North
which are being discovered every day; they will attract the greatest
portion of the peltries that reach us at Montreal, through the
Outaouacs and Assinibois, and other neighbouring tribes, for these
will derive a double advantage from going in search of the English
at Port Nelson--they will not have so far to go, and will find goods
at a much lower rate than with us. ²

New England had built up an active fishing industry and a
lively trade. Fishermen, in the small schooners they built them-
selves, fished on the Banks and salted down the catch for two or
three weeks at a time before coming ashore to dry it. The resultant
product was a poor grade of dried fish which became the basis
of a trade with the West Indies. The West Indies were producing
sugar with slave labour and the need for a cheap food for slaves
was admirably filled by this poorer grade of New England dried
cod. With fish and other foodstuffs, the New England ketches
carried lumber to make sugar casks and buildings, and horses to
work the sugar mills; they brought back sugar and molasses, the
latter to be made into rum for further trade.

Ship-building was encouraged, and there grew up an export
trade in masts and naval stores and a provision trade to New-
foundland. New England, well situated and fertile compared to
Newfoundland, produced a variety of trading products and her
ships could leave open ports all the year round. But as these
advantages built up the colony, they caused growing friction with
old England where New England began to be regarded as "the

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