rty-two years he persevered, amid every kind of hardship, danger, and discouragement, in the effort to build up New France. He had personal ambitions as an explorer, which were kept in s

deals, he did not s

ccomplishment, we must hasten to recognize the extraordinary value of his writings as an index to his mind and soul. His narrative is not an epic of disaster. It is a plain and even statement of great dangers calmly met and treated as a matter of course. Largely it is a record of

s soberness and steadiness he possessed imagination. In its strength and depth his enthusiasm for colonization proves this, even if we omit his picture of the fancied Ludovica. But as a man of action rather than of letters he instinctively omits verbiage. In some respects we suffer from Champlain's directness of mind for on much that he saw he could have lingered with profit. But very special inducements are needed to draw him from h

he sixteenth and seventeenth centuries-to Ramusio, Oviedo, Peter Martyr, Hakluyt, and Purchas. No age can show a more wonderful galaxy of pioneers than that which extends from Columbus to La Salle, and among the great explorers of this era Champlain takes his place by virtue a

. At the same time, he is the only writer of importance whose trail crosses that of Champlain, and some light is thrown on Champlain's personality by a juxtaposition of texts. That is to say, both were in Acadia at the same ti

mental difference in temperament, can be found than the description which each gives of the Ordre de Bon Temps. To Champlain belongs the credit of inventing this pleasant means of promoting health and banishing ennui, but all he tells of it is this: 'By the rules of the Order a chain was put, with some little ceremony, on t

all the members of the Order, carrying each a dish.' Around stand the savages, twenty or thirty of them, 'men, women, girls, and children,' all waiting for scraps of food. At the table with the French themselves sits the Sagamos Membertou and the other Indian chiefs, gladdening the company by their presence. And the food!-'ducks, bustards, grey and white geese, partridges, larks, and other birds; moreover moose, caribou, beaver, o

To Champlain, Lescarbot doubtless seemed a mere hanger-on or protege of Poutrincourt, with undue levity of disposition and a needless flow of conversation. To Lescarbot, Champlain may well have seemed deficient in literary attainments, and so preoccupied with the concerns of geography as to be an uncongenial companion. To whatever cause conjecture may trace it, they did not become friends, although such lack of sympathy as existed shows itself only in an occasional

on unceasingly till his last day. How incessant were its dangers can be made out in full detail from the text of the Voyages. We may omit the perils of the North Atlantic, though what they were can be seen from Champlain's description of his outward voyage in the spring of 1611. The remaining dangers will suffice. Scurvy, which often claimed a death-roll of from forty to eighty per cent in a single winter; famine such as that which followed the failure of ships from home to arrive at the opening of navigation; the storms which drove the frail shallop on the rocks and shoals of Norumbega; the risk of mutiny; the chances of war, whether against the Indians

were not to parcel out the seaboard of North America to the exclusion of the French. As for the religious basis of his fortitude, we do not need Le Jeune's story of his death-bed or the record of his friendship with men of religion. His narrative abounds throughout with simple and natural expressions of piety, not the less impressive because they are free from trace of the theological intolerance which envenomed French life in his age. And not only did Champla

rnished by his early book on the West Indies and Mexico, where he was going over ground already trodden by the Spaniards. His other

er he was the explorer, that is, the man of action, willing to record the broad results, but without the instinct which led Lescarbot to set down the minutiae of life in a small, rough settlement. There is one side of Champlain's activity as a colonizer which we must lament that he has not described-namely, his efforts to interest the nobles and prelates of the French court in the upbui

s, including the Des Sauvages of 1604, relate to the basin of the St Lawrence. Mariner though he was by early training, Champlain achieved his chief success as an explorer by land, in the region of the Great Lakes. Bad fortune prevented him from pursuing his course past Martha's

ays of Cartier the French had known that savages inhabited the banks of the St Lawrence, but Champlain is the pioneer in that great body of literature on the North American

ly from one angle. Furthermore, the volume of their description is so great as to overwhelm all readers who are not specially interested in the mission or the details of Indian custom. Champlain wrote with sufficient knowledge to bring out salient traits in high relief, while his descriptive passages are sufficiently terse to come within the range of those who are not specialists. When we remember the perpetual interest which, for more than three hundred years, Europe has felt in the North American India

blemish or tend to impugn the good faith of his statements on matters where there is no other source of information. Everything considered, his substantial accuracy is much more striking than his partial inaccuracy. In fact, no one of his high character and disinterested zeal

n in the deeds and character of Alfred the Great; thus Canada has had from the outset of the present stage in her development a great possession in the equal self-sacrifice of Montcalm and Wolf

ry, but the founder of Quebec; and it is a rich part of our heritage that he

GRAPHI

inal

s de Champlain, pabliees sous le Patronage de l'Universite Laval. Par l'Abbe C.-H. Laverdiere,

amplain's writ

urs,' describing h

di

ges,' describing

t Law

of 1613, covering

lus

of 1619, covering

lus

f 1632, which repr

ges from 1603 for

ive from 1

tise on the dutie

h Tran

rs,' in a translati

y the Hakluyt S

es (1604) was tra

grimes'

f 1604-18 inclusiv

e Prince Society

, with the Rev.

fine work, but not

orm. Fortunately,

een reprinted, wi

essor W. L. Grant

rly American His

es quoted in the

translation, with

1604-16 inclusive

nnie Nettleton

notes by Profes

Co., 1906). This t

32, and also give

es' which appe

l Lite

a' series); Biggar, 'Early Trading Companies of New France'; Slafter, 'Champlain' (in Winsor's 'Narrative and Critical History of America,' vol. iv, part i, chap. iii); Salone, 'La Colonisation de

rt

at ascribed to Moncornet is undoubtedly spurious, as has been