14. In the year 1598 the Marquis of La Roche was commissioned to found a colony in the New World. The prisons of France were again opened to furnish the emigrants. The vessels reached Sable Island, a dismal place off Nova Scotia, where forty men were left to form a settlement. La Roche returned to France and died, and for seven years the forty criminals languished on Sable Island. Then they were picked up and carried back to France, but were never remanded to prison.
Founding of Port Royal.
15. In the year 1603 the country, from the latitude of Philadelphia to that of Quebec, was granted to De Monts. The chief provisions of his patent were a monopoly of the fur-trade, and religious freedom for the Huguenots. With two shiploads of colonists De Monts left France in March of 1604, and reached the Bay of Fundy. Poutrincourt, the captain of one of the ships, asked and obtained a grant of some beautiful lands in Nova Scotia, and with a part of the crew went on shore. De Monts began to build a fort at the mouth of the St. Croix. But in the following spring they abandoned this place and joined Poutrincourt. Here, on the 14th of November, 1605, the foundations of the first permanent French settlement in America were laid. The name of Port Royal was given to the fort, and the country was called Acadia.
Samuel Champlain.
16. In 1603 Samuel Champlain, the most soldierly man of his times, was commissioned by Rouen merchants to establish a trading-post on the St. Lawrence. The traders saw that a traffic in furs was a surer road to riches than the search for gold and diamonds. Champlain crossed the ocean, sailed up the river, and selected the spot on which Quebec now stands as the site for a fort. In the autumn he returned to France.
Founding of Quebec.
17. In 1608 Champlain again visited America, and on the 3d of July in that year the foundations of Quebec were laid. The next year he and two other Frenchmen joined a company of Huron and Algonquin Indians who were at war with the Iroquois of New York. With this band he ascended the Sorel River until he came to the long, narrow lake, which has ever since borne the name of its discoverer.
18. In 1612 Champlain came to New France for the third time, and the success of the colony at Quebec was assured. Franciscan monks came over and began to preach among the Indians. Champlain again went with a war-party against the Iroquois. His company was defeated, he himself wounded and obliged to remain all winter among the Hurons. In 1617 he returned to the colony, and in 1620 began to build the fortress of St. Louis. Champlain became governor of New France, and died in 1635. To him, more than to any other man, the success of the French colonies in North America must be attributed.