from
this seeding.

The offensive and defensive bond against the Iroquois almost cost the
colony its existence. It was, in fact, another Hundred Years' War with
a foe as implacable as death itself. The constant aim of the French
was to organise and harmonise the tribes against their common enemy,
and to establish a league of which Quebec would be the heart and head.
All this was in direct contrast with the English system, which took no
account whatever of the Indian tribes. The English colonists in
Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Virginia displaced the Indian; the
French made him part of their system. New France was a trading colony,
New England an agricultural colony. The French, with few exceptions,
did not go to the New World to make a home, but to secure fortunes;
the English colonists went to the New World to settle; they bore with
them their household gods.

For a hundred years or more, New France was dependent on Old France
for provisions; and even up to the death of Champlain, there were, in
fact, only two plots of ground under cultivation by French
settlers--that of Louis Hebert in Upper Town, and the small farm of
the Recollects on the St. Charles. In New England, the settlers first
of all cleared the land, laid out their farms, and stored their
provisions against the winter season. They traded with the Indians and
acquired wealth, and for their greater convenience they made purchases
in the Old World. Thus, from the first days almost, the New England
Colonies were self-contained, while New France depended on Europe to a
degree amazing and pathetic. This fact strikes the keynote of the
French _regime_, explaining, as it does, most of the trials and
tribulations of New France in its perennial warfare with the Iroquois,
and in the later friction with New England.

Nor is it astonishing that New France never became self-reliant. From
first to last her natural growth was throttled, either by the greed
of the fur companies or by the mistaken paternalism of the Bourbons.
The Company of One Hundred Associates, which Richelieu founded in
1624, was no improvement on the previous administrations of New
France, in spite of its elaborate charter and the fact that Richelieu
himself was at the head of it. The fur companies were doubly politic
in discouraging agriculture, for the purchase of peltries thus became
practically the sole industry of the colony, while at the same time
the people were left dependent upon the s