It is interesting at this time to remember that England had colonists at Massachusetts Bay, and that this country was ambitious of obtaining more lands, and even of ousting the French. Indeed, in the year 1628 Kirk appeared in the St. Lawrence off Quebec, and though he did not take the place, Champlain, then the governor, had the mortification of hearing that, in his descent of the river he had captured four armed vessels and eighteen transports, which were conveying those artisans whom the great Richelieu had selected. This was a serious set back to the colonists, and was increased tenfold in the following year, for Kirk again appeared upon the scene, and summoned Champlain to surrender. That was the first occasion when the broad banner of England floated over the fort of St. Louis, and the site whereon the city of Quebec now stands. However, on returning home, Kirk discovered that the war with France was at an end, and as a result the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye was signed, and Charles I. handed back to France her possessions on the St. Lawrence, and Port Royal, in Acadie.
During all these years the progress of New France had been slow, and on the mighty St. Lawrence her colonists were lost in the immensity of their new possessions. In Acadie they had fared little better, and though Port Royal was handed back to them and they enjoyed peaceful possession of the country, it was not for a great number of years, for our fleets captured the province in 1654, and in our hands it remained till 1667, when Charles II. gave it back to Louis XIV.
We pass over those years in Canada with the mention of few events, amongst the most important of which was the danger which the colonists now encountered from the Iroquois. They had a deadly feud with these men from France, and we hear of their canoes ascending the Richelieu and lying off Quebec itself, taunting the small garrison. These uneventful times, however, produced scores of gallant men desirous of pushing on into the mysterious west, and the names of Etienne Brulé and of Nicolet loom large in the list. For a while the invasion of the Iroquois kept these spirits close to the forts at Montreal and Quebec, but when the Indian trouble had subsided, the Mohawks having been dispersed, these gallant men pushed on again. They were found on the great lakes, and to north and south of them. Hunters pushed into the wilderness in search of skins, coureurs de bois, often the younger sons of men of position in France, blazed their tracks through the forests, intent upon discovery. And with one or other were to be found the ubiquitous priest, bolder and more persevering than any perhaps. The tales of these wanderers fill one with wonder and admiration, and the history of these years of discovery teach us that the French were wonderful hunters and explorers. They took to the forests as a duck does to water. Often enough they associated with wandering bands of Indians, learned their language and lived with them for months and even years at a time, dressing in their hunting costumes. The fascination of the wilderness cast such a spell over the colonists that at this period, when men were sorely needed in the settlements, when the hold which France had on her fine possessions was none of the securest, scarcely a young colonist, be he habitant or the son of a man of consequence, could be persuaded to remain. Threats of severe punishment could not keep them. They broke from home ties, took their ponderous muskets, their bullet and their powder pouches, and went off into the forests, content to hunt and wander into a country which was entirely strange, and to indulge in a life of freedom and adventure, where hardship was the order of the day, and where only the strongest and boldest survived.
But it must not be supposed that the governing powers at Quebec, in their endeavours to retain these young men, entirely muzzled the desire to make fresh discoveries. They fostered the idea, selected suitable men, and equipped expeditions. Frontenac, whose name has secured an honoured place in the history of Canada, sent Jolliet to find that great water of which the French had heard, though it had been but vaguely mentioned. This intrepid explorer finally launched his canoe on the waters of the giant Missipi (as it was then spelled), and with Marquette, a bold Jesuit, paddled down the stream. René Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle, completed this important work of exploration, and with Tonty and Father Membré sailed down the long stretches of the Mississippi till he reached the Gulf of Mexico. This momentous voyage opened the eyes of the French very wide indeed, for the travellers could tell of fertile lands stretching from the great lakes to the gulf in the south, and of a huge expanse of country which would give refuge one of these days to millions of wanderers pressed out of their own native lands by the overcrowding there. However, beyond building a few forts, nothing more of consequence was done till we arrive at a period in which New France, now generally styled Canada, made rapid strides under the able leadership of her governors and the careful attention of Louis Quatorze.
There were perhaps three thousand souls in the colony prior to this period, and it was obvious that many more were required if France was to retain her rights there. The astute young king was the first to recognise this, and we find him sending emigrants in large numbers, emigrants who had been carefully selected. They consisted of young men of the peasant class, called habitants, and of officers and younger sons, for the most part unmarried. Then ship loads of peasant girls and demoiselles were dispatched to the colony, and every inducement offered to these men and women to marry and settle down. Indeed, young men who failed to take notice of these inducements were harried and taxed till they fell in with the wishes of their king. In addition to these emigrants, men of some family were persuaded to go to the colony, and from these smaller "gentilhommes" a Canadian noblesse was formed, seigneurs were selected from amongst them, and a form of feudal life commenced in the backwoods. The seigneur had a huge grant of uncleared forest, he built his log hut or cabin, and a rough fort to protect him against the Indians. And about this fort gathered his habitants, tilling the land he allotted them, and paying their rent in kind, a portion of corn, a few bear skins, fresh salmon from the lake, or other commodities. Allegiance they gave to their seigneur for the simple reason that these seigneuries were scattered and widely separated, and self-support was their only policy, for otherwise they would have fallen victims to the first redskin marauders.
And thus we find the possessions of France slowly being peopled, till in the year when Steve and his friends reached the Alleghanies, the colonists numbered some 60,000 souls, exclusive of some ten thousand living in Acadie, once French but now English, though the habitant who had filled that smiling land was French by birth and intensely French in thought and sympathy. We find Cape Breton, an island just north of Nova Scotia, a possession of France, with the formidable fortress of Louisbourg situated upon it, and its ramparts bristling with cannon. Hunters and coureurs de bois had sailed across the lakes, and knew every foot of their shores, while soldiers and agents of France had built forts and trading posts in numerous places, had erected stockades at certain points on the Mississippi, and were slowly progressing in a scheme which promised soon to allow the men descending this mighty Mississippi to join hands with men of their blood at New Orleans, settled some time ago by the French.
Look again at the map for a moment, and see what such a line of forts meant. It cut the northern continent into two unequal parts, leaving France the major portion lying to the west, as well as that wide tract between the Mississippi and the Alleghanies. It was this portion, commencing with the valley of the Ohio, which they determined to occupy, despite the fact that our hunters and pioneers had penetrated its forests years before, and it was this same valley in which their own Indians were now camping, having harried and massacred far and wide, and set fire to all the settlements not only in the valley, but as far as and beyond the Alleghany range.
History repeats itself, and it is strange to consider that the constant forward movement of these persevering French was copied years afterwards by those gallant men who opened up the great west of North America to the thirteen colonies, that the work of exploration carried on in Canada by hunters, by coureurs de bois, and by the restless and bold spirits of the young noblesse was repeated on the far side of the Alleghanies. Not that our trappers, even at this date, when the French were doing their utmost to oust the British from the Ohio valley, had been backward. They had done much, and a glance at the map will show the reader that they had a station on Lake Ontario, Oswego by name, which was well in advance of their own frontiers, and which, in fact, was a bitter thorn in the side of the French. But adventurous though our trappers were, they had not penetrated so far perhaps into the wilderness as had the French, for the simple reason no doubt that ways of communication were less frequent and difficult to come across. A French trapper might enter his canoe at Quebec, and there was water to take him hundreds of miles into the heart of the country, to the farthest bays and creeks of the giant lakes. True, there were mighty falls, as witness those of Niagara, but a canoe could be carried. There were "portages" where canoes must be taken from the water, the stores piled upon the backs of willing Indians, and the whole outfit carried to some point above the falls. But these did not altogether bar the great waterways, and on this account prospecting and exploration was easier for the French. And thus we find them at the period of this impending conflict masters of the St. Lawrence, with strong places at Quebec, Montreal, Niagara, and Frontenac, not to mention the huge and elaborately defended fortress at Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island. We hear of their soldiers and trappers, with thousands of Indians south of the great lakes, of their forts on the Mississippi and on the river Richelieu and on Lake Champlain. In fact, these energetic men, in spite of their paucity of numbers, were swiftly surrounding the British, cutting off the thirteen States from the smiling interior of America, and aiming no doubt at their final extermination. We shall see, however, that even an apathetic people may at last see their danger, and that England was not to be so easily driven from a colony which had been founded by her hardy sons.