Answers to these questions may be gathered, it is hoped, from the following brief introductory narrative.

The territorial claims of France in the gulf and valley of the St. Lawrence were founded on the discoveries made in the name of the French king, Francis I, by that brave Breton mariner, Jacques Cartier, in the celebrated voyages undertaken by him in the years 1534 and 1535. An attempt at colonization made in the latter year, the site chosen being the left bank of the St. Charles near Quebec, failed miserably; nor were the similar attempts made in 1541 by Cartier and in 1542 by Roberval any more successful. Cartier did not again return to Canada, and all efforts in the direction of colonization were suspended for sixty years, though French fishermen continued to visit the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In the year 1603 a notable figure appears upon the scene, Samuel Champlain, the true founder of French power on the continent of America. A few years previously a certain naval captain named Chauvin, who enjoyed considerable influence at court, had applied for and obtained from King Henry IV a patent granting him exclusive trading privileges in the St. Lawrence. This he had done at the instance of one Pontgravé, a leading merchant of St. Malo, well acquainted with the St Lawrence trade, whose business instinct had led him to see that the fur trade alone of that region might be a source of vast wealth to any single company controlling it. One condition of the grant was that not less than five hundred persons should be settled in the country, and another that provision should be made for the religious instruction both of the settlers and of the natives. Having obtained the patent, neither Chauvin nor Pontgravé, whom he appointed as his lieutenant, seems to have thought of anything but the conversion of their privilege into money. They sailed to the St. Lawrence, but proceeded no further than Tadousac, where they set up a trading establishment. At the end of the first summer season they returned to France, leaving some sixteen men behind them so ill provided for that eleven died during the winter of disease and hardship. The rest would have died of starvation had not friendly Indians supplied them with food. Chauvin made two more trips to the St. Lawrence without doing anything to redeem his engagements, and in the year 1601 he died.

The death of Chauvin having voided his patent, the king was moved to constitute Knight Commander de Chastes, Governor of Dieppe, his representative in the western world. A company was formed, and an expedition was organized and placed under the command of Pontgravé, as a man having special knowledge of the St. Lawrence navigation. By request of de Chastes, Champlain was associated with him. At this time Champlain was thirty-six years of age, and had already distinguished himself as soldier, sailor, explorer, and geographer. His chief work in the two latter characters had been done in connection with a voyage which he had made to the West Indies and Mexico in one of the vessels of the King of Spain. On his return he described the places he had visited in a work, still extant, illustrated by curious maps and pictures of his own drawing. Champlain had higher views than mere money making and no more valuable man could have been assigned to the expedition. Setting sail with Pontgravé from Honfleur on the 15th March 1603, he arrived at Tadousac on the 24th May. How earnestly he was bent on carrying the Catholic faith into the wilds of Canada is shown by a conversation he reports having had with an Algonquin chief, into whose mind he was trying to instil correct views as to the origin of things, and particularly of the human race. The Algonquin had been under the impression that the Creator had placed arrows in the ground, and then turned them into men. Champlain assured him that this was an error, man having been made in the first place out of clay, and woman from a rib taken from his side while he slept. He dwelt somewhat also on the propriety and duty of the invocation of saints, with a view, as the Abbé Faillon hints,[1] to counteracting any prejudice against that doctrine which Chauvin and his companions, who were Calvinists, might have endeavoured to create in the savage mind. Judging, however, by the Algonquin's replies to Champlain's catechising, his mental attitude was one of admirable neutrality, securely founded on nescience, regarding any or all of the doctrines in debate between Rome and Geneva. Chauvin had attended strictly to business.

Before returning to France, Champlain explored the river St. Lawrence as far as the Lachine Rapids. On the way up he anchored before Quebec, the situation of which he describes; doubtless he recognized it as the place near which Jacques Cartier and his men had spent their terrible winter. In passing Three Rivers he noticed how advantageously it was situated both for trade and for defence. He explored the country in the vicinity of the Lachine Rapids sufficiently to recognize that the land to his right, as he ascended, was an island (Montreal). Of the rapids themselves he says that never had he seen a torrent rushing with such impetuosity. Returning to Tadousac he proceeded down the river to Gaspé and Percé and entered the Baie des Chaleurs. After making, according to his custom, as many observations and inquiries as possible in regard to the character and outlines of the country, he returned to Tadousac, and, gathering his party, which had meanwhile been doing some profitable trading with the natives, set sail for France, where he arrived on the 20th September. M. de Chastes, under whose authority he and Pontgravé were acting, had died in the month of May. Champlain, therefore, went alone to court, exhibited to the king a map he had made of the country, and gave such information as to its resources and capabilities as he had personally gathered. The king was much interested; and, desiring that the work so well begun should be vigorously prosecuted, he issued a patent to a Huguenot gentleman, Pierre Dugas, Sieur de Monts and Governor of Pons conferring upon him exclusive trading privileges for a period of ten years not only in Canada, but in Acadia. The essential condition of this grant, it has been said, was the establishment in the countries mentioned of the "Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman faith"; but, if such was the case, the terms of the document seem a little lacking in precision, as they speak only of instructing the natives in the principles of Christianity and the knowledge of God, and thus bringing them to the light of faith and the practice of the Christian religion. As de Monts was a Huguenot the generality of these terms may not have been without significance.

De Monts had been in Canada before, having accompanied Chauvin on one or two of his voyages to Tadousac. He had also some knowledge of Acadia, and had conceived a preference for that region, as being more favourably situated and milder in climate than Canada so far as he knew it. To that quarter, therefore, he directed the expedition, which left Havre under his command in March 1604. The result was complete failure owing to causes into which it is impossible in this hasty narrative to enter. Suffice it to say that, opposition having been raised to the privileges enjoyed by de Monts, the king, who was an accomplished politician—it was he who had thought Paris "well worth a mass"—cancelled his patent, and thus destroyed all the expectations which he and his business associates, who had incurred great expense in equipping the expedition, had founded thereon. Some progress had been made in settlement at Port Royal, and