nterprises at last attracted to New
France its real founder. Samuel de Champlain du Brouage, born in 1567, a
faithful soldier of the king's so long as the war lasted, was unable to
endure the indolence of peace. After long and perilous voyages, he
enlisted in the company which M. de Monts, gentleman of the bed-chamber
in ordinary to Henry IV., had just formed for the trade in furs on the
northern coast of America; appointed viceroy of Acadia, a new territory,
of which the imaginary limits would extend in our times from Philadelphia
to beyond Montreal, and furnished with a commercial monopoly, M. de Monts
set sail on the 7th of April, 1604, taking with him, Calvinist though he
was, Catholic priests as well as Protestant pastors. "I have seen our
priest and the minister come to a fight over questions of faith," writes
Champlain in his journal; "I can't say which showed the more courage, or
struck the harder, but I know that the minister sometimes complained to
Sieur de Monts of having been beaten." This was the prelude to the
conversion of the savages, which was soon to become the sole aim or the
pious standard of all the attempts at colonization in New France.

[Illustration: Champlain----190]

M. de Monts and his comrades had been for many years struggling against
the natural difficulties of their enterprise, and against the ill-will or
indifference which they encountered in the mother-country; religious zeal
was reviving in France; the edict of Nantes had put a stop to violent
strife; missionary ardor animated the powerful society of Jesuits
especially. At their instigation and under their direction a pious
woman, rich and of high rank, the Marchioness of Guercheville, profited
by the distress amongst the first founders of the French colony; she
purchased their rights, took possession of their territory, and, having
got the king to cede to her the sovereignty of New France, from the St.
Lawrence to Florida, she dedicated all her personal fortune to the holy
enterprise of a mission amongst the Indians of America. Beside the
adventurers, gentlemen or traders, attracted by the hope of gain or by
zeal for discovery, there set out a large number of Jesuits, resolved to
win a new empire for Jesus Christ. Champlain accompanied them. After
long and painful explorations in the forests and amongst the Indian
tribes, after frequent voyages to France on the service of the colony, he
became at last, in 1606, the first gover