FOUNDING OF QUEBEC

The French made their first permanent settlement at Quebec in 1608; but the English had then been in Jamestown a year. From the first the continent was too small to hold two such boisterous, expanding, and conflict-loving people. Captain Argall in 1613 opened the ball by capturing the little Jesuit settlement at Flying Mountain on Mount Desert. From that time, for just a hundred and fifty years, the two nations were sparring with each other.

LA SALLE PRESENTING A PETITION TO KING LOUIS XIV

For many years this warfare was hedged in, because mountains, woods, and savages filled up a broad belt of territory between the English coast settlements and the St. Lawrence. But in war, as in the chivalric game of football, when you cannot break through the center, you play round the ends. Hence in every one of the six regular wars, besides various local squabbles, there was always fighting between French and English in Nova Scotia, or the Islands of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, or along that river. In 1613 the English captured Port Royal on the Bay of Fundy, and again in 1690 and 1710,—it became almost a habit,—in 1670 they broke into Hudson Bay; in 1745 and 1758 they mastered Louisburg; and in 1759 took Quebec.