n of the freedom of the forest; but if
his instincts rebelled, his mind and soul were passively submissive. The
unchecked control of a hierarchy robbed him of the independence of
intellect and character, without which, under the conditions of modern
life, a people must resign itself to a position of inferiority. Yet
Canada had a vigor of her own. It was not in spiritual deference only
that she differed from the country of her birth. Whatever she had caught
of its corruptions, she had caught nothing of its effeminacy. The mass
of her people lived in a rude poverty,--not abject, like the peasant of
old France, nor ground down by the tax-gatherer; while those of the
higher ranks--all more or less engaged in pursuits of war or adventure,
and inured to rough journeyings and forest exposures--were rugged as
their climate. Even the French regular troops, sent out to defend the
colony, caught its hardy spirit, and set an example of stubborn fighting
which their comrades at home did not always emulate.

Canada lay ensconced behind rocks and forests. All along her southern
boundaries, between her and her English foes, lay a broad tract of
wilderness, shaggy with primeval woods. Innumerable streams gurgled
beneath their shadows; innumerable lakes gleamed in the fiery sunsets;
innumerable mountains bared their rocky foreheads to the wind. These
wastes were ranged by her savage allies, Micmacs, Etechemins, Abenakis,
Caughnawagas; and no enemy could steal upon her unawares. Through the
midst of them stretched Lake Champlain, pointing straight to the heart
of the British settlement,--a watery thoroughfare of mutual attack, and
the only approach by which, without a long _detour_ by wilderness or
sea, a hostile army could come within striking distance of the colony.
The French advanced post of Fort Frederic, called Crown Point by the
English, barred the narrows of the lake, which thence spread northward
to the portals of Canada guarded by Fort St. Jean. Southwestward, some
fourteen hundred miles as a bird flies, and twice as far by the
practicable routes of travel, was Louisiana, the second of the two heads
of New France; while between lay the realms of solitude where the
Mississippi rolled its sullen tide, and the Ohio wound its belt of
silver through the verdant woodlands.

To whom belonged this world of prairies and forests? France claimed it
by right of discovery and occupation. It was her explorers who, after De
Soto, first set fo