ntations over {16} the lack of books or
the lack of wealth. The duty of the hour was such as to exclude all
remoter vistas. When called on to defend his hearth and to battle for
his race, the Canadian was ready.

[1] See _The Great Intendant_ in this Series.

[2] Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727-81), a statesman, thinker, and
philanthropist of the first order. It was as intendant of Limoges that
Turgot disclosed his great powers. He held his post for thirteen years
(1761-74), and effected improvements which led Louis XVI to appoint him
comptroller-general of the Kingdom.

[3] See _The Great Intendant_.

[4] The most important of the French posts in the western portion of
the Great Lakes, situated on the strait which unites Lake Huron to Lake
Michigan. It was here that Saint-Lusson and Perrot took possession of
the West in the name of France (June 1671). See _The Great Intendant_,
pp. 115-16.

[5] For example, Harvard College was founded in 1636, and there was a
printing-press at Cambridge, Mass., in 1638.

{17}

CHAPTER II

LOUIS DE BUADE, COMTE DE FRONTENAC

Louis de Buade, Comte de Frontenac et de Palluau, was born in 1620. He
was the son of Henri de Buade, a noble at the court of Louis XIII. His
mother, Anne de Phelippeaux, came from a stock which in the early
Bourbon period furnished France with many officials of high rank,
notably Louis de Phelippeaux, Comte de Pontchartrain. His father
belonged to a family of southern France whose estates lay originally in
Guienne. It was a fortunate incident in the annals of this family that
when Antoine de Bourbon became governor of Guienne (1555) Geoffrey de
Buade entered his service. Thenceforth the Buades were attached by
close ties to the kings of Navarre. Frontenac's grandfather, Antoine
de Buade, figures frequently in the _Memoirs_ of Agrippa d'Aubigne as
aide-de-camp to Henry IV; Henri de Buade, Frontenac's father, was a
playmate and close friend of {18} Louis XIII;[1] and Frontenac himself
was a godson and a namesake of the king.

While fortune thus smiled upon the cradle of Louis de Buade, some
important favours were denied. Though nobly born, Frontenac did not
spring from a line which had been of national importance for centuries,
like that of Montmorency or Chatillon. Nor did he inherit large
estates. The chief advantage which the Buades possessed came from
their personal relations with the royal family. Their property in
Guienn