pecial thanksgiving
service--nor without good reason, for upon the inveterate ruler and
leader depended the destiny of France in America.

The condition of the little colony had not improved during the absence
of the governing and inspiring spirit. From the force of
circumstances, it did not at once improve upon Champlain's return.
These first settlers of Quebec, whose food and living were easily got,
and with no ambition to work or trade, idled their time away. Gambling
and drinking were their common diversions, the more reckless spirits
taking to the woods and adopting the savage life of the hunting
tribes. These became the famous _coureurs de bois_, the picturesque
vagrants who were destined in the succeeding years to constitute so
serious a "problem" in the administration of New France. At first
Champlain could do little more than hold his colony together.
Intelligent as his purposes were, he received no help from the Court
of France or from the Viceroy De Monts, though the importance of the
enterprise of colonisation was set before Europe with every
circumstance of national pride and no detail of responsibility.

A painful evidence of the slight importance which the Louvre attached
to New France is furnished by the frequent and easy changes in its
patronage to which reference has already been made. On the
imprisonment of Conde, the young Duc de Montmorency purchased for a
song the Lieutenancy of New France, and he in turn sold it to his
nephew, Henri Levis, the Duc de Ventadour. All except De Ventadour had
been moved by the lust of gain; in his case, however, the motive was
religious--to win the infidels of the New World to the faith of the
Old. The Jesuits were his chosen instruments; and accordingly, in the
summer of 1625, Charles Lalement, Enemond Masse, and Jean de Brebeuf,
landed at Quebec. No guns boomed a welcome to the disciples of Loyola.
No salvos of artillery hailed their arrival. Their reception was even
distressing. In the temporary absence of Champlain, the Calvinist
Emery de Caen was in charge of the fort, and in the violence of his
heresy refused them shelter. The inhabitants, likewise, declined to
admit the newcomers to their homes. In despair at such treatment the
three Jesuits were on the point of returning to France, when the
hospitable Recollets invited them to the convent at Notre Dame des
Anges. In September the Jesuits made a clearing on the opposite side
of the St. Charles, and here they