ance of the Anglo-Saxons,
down to the day when, cooped up within the first confines of their
conquests, fighting for life and liberty, the Canadians defended foot to
foot the honor of their mother-country, which had for a long while
neglected them, and at last abandoned them, under the pressure of a
disastrous war conducted by a government as incapable as it was corrupt.

For a long time past the French had directed towards America their ardent
spirit of enterprise; in the fifteenth century, on the morrow of the
discovery of the new world, when the indomitable genius and religious
faith of Christopher Columbus had just opened a new path to inquiring
minds and daring spirits, the Basques, the Bretons, and the Normans were
amongst the first to follow the road he had marked out; their light barks
and their intrepid navigators were soon known among the fisheries of
Newfoundland and the Canadian coast. As early as 1506 a chart of the St.
Lawrence was drawn by John-Denis, who came from Honfleur in Normandy.
Before long the fishers began to approach the coasts, attracted by the
fur-trade; they entered into relations with the native tribes, buying,
very often for a mere song, the produce of their hunting, and ,
introducing to them, together with the first fruits of civilization, its
corruptions and its dangers. Before long the savages of America became
acquainted with the fire-water.

Policy was not slow to second the bold enterprises of the navigators.
France was at that time agitated by various earnest and mighty passions;
for a moment the Reformation, personified by the austere virtues and
grand spirit of Coligny, had seemed to dispute the empire of the Catholic
church. The forecasts of the admiral became more and more sombre every
day; he weighed the power and hatred of the Guises as well as of their
partisans; in his anxiety for his countrymen and his religion he
determined to secure for the persecuted Protestants a refuge, perhaps a
home, in the new world, after that defeat of which he already saw a
glimmer.

A first expedition had failed, after an attempt on the coasts of Brazil;
in 1562, a new flotilla set out from Havre, commanded by John Ribaut of
Dieppe. A landing was effected in a beautiful country, sparkling with
flowers and verdure; the century-old trees, the vast forests, the unknown
birds, the game, which appeared at the entrance of the glades and stood
still fearlessly at the unwonted apparition of man--t