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priests of the Franciscan order—Le Caron, Viel, Sa-
gard—had labored for years as missionaries in
Upper Canada, or made their way to the neutral
Huron tribe
that dwelt on the waters of the
Niagara.
After the
Canada company had been suppressed,
and their immunities had, for five years, been enjoyed by the
Calvinists William and Emeric Caen, the hundred associates,—Richelieu,
Champlain, Razilly, and
opulent merchants, being of the number,—by a charter from Louis XIII., obtained a grant of New France, and, after the restoration of
Quebec by its
English conquerors, entered upon the government of their province.
Its limits embraced specifically the whole basin of the
St. Lawrence, and of such other rivers in New
France as flowed directly into the sea; they included, moreover,
Florida, or the country south of
Virginia, esteemed a French province in virtue of the unsuccessful efforts of
Coligny.
Religious zeal, not less than commercial ambition, had influenced
France to recover
Canada; and Cham-
plain, its governor, whose imperishable name will rival
with posterity the fame of
Smith and of
Hudson, ever disinterested and compassionate, full of honor and probity, of ardent devotion and burning zeal, esteemed ‘the salvation of a soul worth more than the conquest of an empire.’
The commercial monopoly of a privileged company could not foster a colony.; the climate of the country round
Quebec, ‘where summer hurries through the sky,’ did not invite to agriculture; no persecutions of
Catholics swelled the stream of emigration; and, at first, there was little, except religious enthusiasm, to give vitality to the province.
Touched by the simplicity of the order of
St. Francis,
Champlain had selected its priests of the contemplative class for his
