ise
whatever had been related concerning the religion of all nations, from
the earliest times.--Miss Aikin's _Charles I._, vol. i., p. 39.]

[Footnote 96: "La colonie Francaise etablie sous Charles IX. comprenoit
la partie meridionnale de la Caroline Angloise, la Nouvelle Georgie,
d'aujourd'hui (1740) San Matteo, appelle par Laudonniere Caroline en
l'honneur du roi Charles, St. Augustin, et tout ce que les Espagnols ont
sur cette cote jusqu'au Cap Francois, n'a jamais ete appellee autrement
que la Floride Francaise, ou la Nouvelle France, ou la France
Occidentale."--Charlevoix, tom. vi., p. 383.]

[Footnote 97: See Appendix, Nos. XV., XVI. (see Vol II)]

CHAPTER III.

Little or no effort was made to colonize any part of Canada for nearly
fifty years after the loss of Roberval; but the Huguenots of France did
not forget that hope of a refuge from religious persecution which their
great leader, Coligni, had excited in their breasts. Several of the
leaders of subsequent expeditions of trade and discovery to Canada and
Acadia were Calvinists, until 1627, when Champlain, zealous for the
Romish faith, procured a decree forbidding the free exercise of the
Reformed religion in French America.

Although the French seemed to have renounced all plan of settlement in
America by the evacuation of Florida, the fishermen of Normandy and
Brittany still plied their calling on the Great Bank and along the
stormy shores of Newfoundland, and up the Gulf and River of St.
Lawrence. By degrees they began to trade with the natives, and soon the
greater gains and easier life of this new pursuit transformed many of
these hardy sailors into merchants.

When, after fifty years of civil strife, the strong and wise sway of
Henry IV. restored rest to troubled France, the spirit of discovery
again arose. The Marquis de la Roche, a Breton gentleman, obtained from
the king, in 1598, a patent granting the same powers that Roberval had
possessed. He speedily armed a vessel, and sailed for Nova Scotia in the
same year, accompanied by a skillful Norman pilot named Chedotel. He
first reached Sable Island, where he left forty miserable wretches,
convicts drawn from the prisons of France, till he might discover some
favorable situation for the intended settlement, and make a survey of
the neighboring coasts. When La Roche ever reached the Continent of
America remains unknown; but he certainly returned to France, leaving
the unhappy prisoners upo