THE PRIEST AND THE MINISTER.
In the opening paragraphs of the third chapter of Parkman's Champlain and His Associates, will be found an account, of which these verses are little more than a paraphrase. When de Monts was commissioned to settle New France, the Roman Catholic clergy insisted that they be given charge of the souls of the heathen in the new land. De Monts was, himself, a Huguenot, and brought his own ministers with him, so that the ship that sailed to Acadia in 1604 bore with it clergy of both sects. This was the cause of ceaseless quarrels. "I have seen our curé and the minister," says Champlain, "fall to with their fists on questions of faith. I cannot say which had the more pluck, or which hit the harder; but I know the minister complained to the Sieur de Monts that he had been beaten." Sagard, the Franciscan friar, gives an account of the death of two of the disputants and of their burial in one grave. I have taken the liberty of making them the central figures of the dispute, though, actually, they were subordinates.