was summarily revoked by Louis XIV. Henceforth in name, if not in fact,
monopoly is ended in Canada.

By this time French explorers were pressing forward to unravel the
mystery of the interior. By 1659 two Frenchmen, Radisson and
Groseillers, had penetrated beyond the great lakes to the prairies of
the far West; they were probably the first Europeans to see the
Mississippi. By 1666 a French mission was established on the shores of
Lake Superior, and in 1673 Joliet and Marquette, explorers from Canada,
reached and for some distance descended the Mississippi. Five years
later Cavelier de la Salle was making his toilsome way westward from
Quebec to discover the true character of the great river and to perform
the feat, perilous in view of the probable hostility of the natives, of
descending it to the sea. In 1682 he accomplished his task, took
possession of the valley of the Mississippi in the name of Louis XIV.
and called it Louisiana. Thus from Canada as her basis was France
reaching out to grasp a continent.

There was a keen rivalry between church and state for dominance in this
new empire. In 1659 arrived at Quebec a young prelate of noble birth,
Francois Xavier de Laval-Montmorency, who had come to rule the church in
Canada. An ascetic, who practised the whole cycle of medieval
austerities, he was determined that Canada should be ruled by the
church, and he desired for New France a Puritanism as strict as that of
New England. His especial zeal was directed towards the welfare of the
Indians. These people showed, to their own ruin, a reckless liking for
the brandy of the white man. Laval insisted that the traders should not
supply brandy to the natives. He declared excommunicate any one who did
so and for a time he triumphed. More than once he drove from Canada
governors who tried to thwart him. In 1663 he was actually invited to
choose a governor after his own mind and did so, but with no cessation
of the old disputes. In 1672 Louis de Buade, comte de Frontenac (q.v.),
was named governor of New France, and in him the church found her match.
Yet not at once; for, after a bitter struggle, he was recalled in 1682.
But Canada needed him. He knew how to control the ferocious Iroquois,
who had cut off France from access to Lake Ontario; to check them he had
built a fort where now stands the city of Kingston. With Frontenac gone,
these savages almost strangled the colony. On a stormy August night in
1689 1500 Iroquois bu