historian Charlevoix has, with
poetic justice, called him the "Father of New France."

[1] Brule was murdered by the Hurons in 1634 at Toanche, an Indian
village in the West.

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VII.

GENTLEMEN-ADVENTURERS IN ACADIA.

(1614-1677.)

We must now leave the lonely Canadian colonists on the snow-clad
heights of Quebec to mourn the death of their great leader, and return
to the shores of Acadia to follow the fortunes of Biencourt and his
companions whom we last saw near the smoking ruins of their homes on
the banks of the Annapolis. We have now come to a strange chapter of
Canadian history, which has its picturesque aspect as well as its
episodes of meanness, cupidity, and inhumanity. As we look back to
those early years of Acadian history, we see rival chiefs with their
bands of retainers engaged in deadly feuds, and storming each other's
fortified posts as though they were the castles of barons living in
mediaeval times. We see savage Micmacs and Etchemins of Acadia, only
too willing to aid in the quarrels and contests of the white men who
hate each with a malignity that even the Indian cannot excel; closely
shorn, ill-clad mendicant friars who see only good in those who {93}
help their missions; grave and cautious Puritans trying to find their
advantage in the rivalry of their French neighbours; a Scotch nobleman
and courtier who would be a king in Acadia as well as a poet in
England; Frenchmen who claim to have noble blood in their veins, and
wish to be lords of a wide American domain; a courageous wife who lays
aside the gentleness of a woman's nature and fights as bravely as any
knight for the protection of her home and what she believes to be her
husband's rights. These are among the figures that we see passing
through the shadowy vista which opens before us as we look into the
depths of the Acadian wilderness two centuries and a half ago.

Among the French adventurers, whose names are intimately associated
with the early history of Acadia, no one occupies a more prominent
position than Charles de St. Etienne, the son of a Huguenot, Claude de
la Tour, who claimed to be of noble birth. The La Tours had become so
poor that they were forced, like so many other nobles of those times,
to seek their fortune in the new world. Claude and his son, then
probably fourteen years of age, came to Port Royal with Poutrincourt in
1610. In the various vicissitudes of the little settlement the father
and